“You can’t be serious.”
“How could I know?” Chloe asked, her eyes pleading with me to understand, which I absolutely could not do. “I chickened out and he asked you instead. I figured it would give him a chance to be in the same space, even though neither of them knew. I never imagined that you and he would develop feelings for each other … It was only supposed to be a week.”
“But I got the dates mixed up and came early,” I mumbled, letting it all come together in my head. “And still, when I told you I was staying, and who was here, you didn’t say anything.”
“I couldn’t,” she insisted. “I’d lied to you for all of those years. You’d given up everything for us and moved to help, and I’d repaid you with lies … I couldn’t tell you that over the phone.”
“And you never told him?”
Chloe shook her head.
The weight of everything came crashing down on my shoulders.
Gabe was a father to a twelve-year-old boy. A child he never knew existed. My nephew.
It was all too much.
I half fell to my knees, then slid the rest of the way to the floor, my hands coming to my head as pain overtook the fear.
“Go away.”
“Zoey … please.”
“Go!”
I heard her heels clicking away from me, then Gabe’s voice. “Don’t go anywhere,” he said, his tone harsher than I’d ever heard it. “I need to talk to your sister. I’ll meet you in my office. Reardon will show you the way.”
“This way,” I heard Reardon say, then the sound of Gabe’s footsteps getting closer.
I felt movement behind me, then his arms enfolded me, my back hitting his chest as his chin rested on my shoulder.
“It’s true,” he said, and I couldn’t tell if it was a statement or a question. “She never told you?”
I shook my head, my heart aching.
“I have so many questions,” he murmured.
“Yeah,” I managed, leaning back into him.
“There was nothing between us,” Gabe said, causing the first tear to escape down my cheek. “We shared a moment, nothing more.”
“What happened?” I asked. Not wanting to know, but needing to.
“I was twenty-two, twenty-three. It was my first year in the NFL and my team won the Super Bowl. I didn’t have much to do with it, but I was still a part of the team, and we did a lot of celebrating. Reardon was with me, and we were partying and going a little nuts with it all … We were at one of the parties and were quite a few drinks in. I hate to say it, but during that time, I had no trouble picking up women and I used that to my advantage. That night, it happened to be Chloe. It was meaningless … A mutually satisfying encounter that I didn’t think of again until I recognized her face ten minutes ago. It wasn’t even a night. No one went home with each other, we had sex right in the club we were in…”
I made a strangled sound.
“Sorry,” Gabe said, his arms contracting around me. “I know you don’t want the details, I just wanted you to know that it was only sex. One time. And I never saw, or heard, from her again.”
I pushed out of his arms and stood, leaning on the rail for strength as I looked up into his beautiful face.
“I don’t blame you, and I’m sorry, so sorry, that she kept Christopher from you,” I said as he came to his feet and covered my hand with his own. “But it’s too much. She lied to me too, for all of these years, and I’m so angry with her. I’m also so sad for you that you’ve missed out on so much, and I don’t know what you’re thinking or feeling, but I have to say, I’m over the moon that Christopher gets to find out that not only does he have a father, but that it’s you.”
“Zoey,” Gabe started, his face full of the myriad of emotions he was feeling.
I held up my hand to stop him, needing to get my words out and get out of here as fast as I could. I felt like my insides were boiling lava, and I was about to erupt any moment.
“I need some time … to process, and to figure out what I want…”