Total pages in book: 144
Estimated words: 138522 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 554(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138522 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 554(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
“I like the cold.” I turn to him. “And the blanket. You’re always taking care of me.”
“Is that a bad thing?” he asks, reading the million layers to my emotions, even when I don’t realize they’re there, between us, owning their own little place, even when I think they don’t.
“I swore I’d take care of myself from now on.”
He grabs the edges of the blanket and walks me to him. “But now you don’t have to take care of yourself. You have me. You don’t fully know that yet, but you will. You will know you have me.”
“I know right now that I have you.”
“Right now,” he repeats. “Meaning soon I’ll be gone.”
“Kenneth will drive you away. You just don’t know it yet.”
“No one, dead or alive, will drive me away,” he replies. “Try to relax. This will be over quickly. I know how Jean Claude and my father work. All of this is too close to them. They’ll make it go away.”
“By pinning it on us?”
“We’re a complicated layer of shit on their show. We aren’t how this ends for them.”
He’s confident. I see that in his face. I see more there, too. “What do you know that I don’t know?”
Chapter fifty-six
Gabe
What doesn’t she know?
Much.
There is much she doesn’t know and she won’t know. Ever.
That question hangs in the cold night air that shifts with a gust of wind. Abbie shivers and I let go of the blanket that I’ve wrapped around her. “I’ll turn on the fireplace.” I don’t wait for her reply. I walk to the wall by the sliding door and flip on the outdoor fireplace I should’ve turned on when I exited in the first place.
Abbie follows me, steps to me again in front of the fireplace. “What don’t I know Gabe?” Her eyes narrow on me. “Oh God. Tell me you didn’t—”
“I didn’t what, Abbie?”
“Hire the assassin. You didn’t, right?”
That question punches me in the chest. "I answered that question for Reese."
“Answer it for me. Just me. Did you have Kenneth killed?”
Did I have her ex-husband killed?
And there it is. A question I created by making her prior question of “what don’t I know” become more complicated than it had to be, by making it about everything, not one thing. Not one fucking thing, as it was intended.
“No. I didn’t hire a hitman to kill your ex-husband and can I say, just using the word ‘husband’ where you’re concerned pisses me the fuck off. After knowing you, and knowing him, I don’t understand how you ended up with him.”
Her eyes widen and she tries to turn away. “Fuck,” I murmur, and catch her arm, pulling her back to me. “That wasn’t about you.”
“It sounded like it was about me.” She hangs onto the blanket but doesn’t touch me. “It sounded judgmental and pompous and—”
“All of those things. Yes. But it wasn’t about you.” My jaw sets hard and I look at the flames now flickering in the fireplace, old demons clawing at me, and it’s pissing me off. The past doesn’t get to have that kind of control over me. I step closer to Abbie. “Look, I’m all too aware of the fact that I just responded to you based on my past, not the present. And you’re the present. My present.”
“You do know that I have plenty of reasons to judge you by my past, right? My very recent, extremely raw past.”
“No,” I say rejecting that idea, but choosing my words cautiously. “You don’t. I haven’t given you any reason to believe that I’m going to let you down the way your ex let you down.”
“And I have you?” she demands. “Because that’s what this is about, right? An ex?” She tilts her head. “Is KM an ex?”
It’s an inevitable question I don’t intend to answer. “What this is,” I say, directing us away from KM, making this about Abbie, which is safer than making it about me, “is me asking what the police will ask. How did someone like you end up with that asshole?”
“I didn’t choose to be with an asshole. He didn’t seem like an asshole at the time.”
“How did you meet him?”
“A charity event, which obviously contributed to me feeling like he was a good guy. He donated big that night. He asked me to dinner. He wined and dined me.”
“And you fell in love.” The idea grinds through me with ridiculous amounts of jealousy. I didn’t know her then.
“I think it was more infatuation,” she replies. “He seemed to have the world in his hands and it was powerful. It was interesting. And yet, he seemed so kind.”
“When did you discover the real man?”
“Six months after I married him, he changed. Or rather, he showed his true colors.”
“Why did he go to that kind of effort to convince you that he was what he wasn’t?”