“You are, Zoey, I know you are. I’ve never seen you like this over a man before. I’d hate for you to throw away a chance at happiness.”
My eyes filled and I decided to be completely honest with her. It was the only way we could move forward.
“I hate knowing that he’s had sex with you.”
Chloe flinched as if I slapped her, but squeezed my hand and said, “Zoey, it meant nothing.”
“It does though, Chloe. It means something to me. You’ve been intimate, even if it was only once, and you had a son together. That’s not nothing.”
“No, you’re right … But we never had feelings for each other. Not the way you guys do.”
I took a deep breath and asked the question I was terrified to ask.
“Will you tell me what happened?”
Chloe shook her head and said, “No, Zoey. Don’t do that to yourself. All you need to know was that I was out with my friends, I’d been drinking, and I decided to do something totally out of character. I never regretted it, especially not after I got Christopher out of it, but I’ve always thought of it as like a dream. Something that happened, but in an alternate reality. I never loved him. I never wanted a relationship with him. And he never wanted that with me.”
“I don’t know if that’s enough,” I admitted softly, tears streaming down my face. “But, God, Chloe, I like him so much…”
This time, my sister held me as I wept. When I was finally tapped out, I leaned back to look at her and said with a wry laugh, “We’re quite the pair, aren’t we?”
She hugged me and said, “I love you, Zoey.”
“I love you too.”
Chloe’s phone dinged, so she pulled it out of her purse and checked the message.
“Gabriel says that Chris is fine. They’re about to go to the pool, then have dinner. He asked if he could keep Chris overnight, then take him to school in the morning.”
“Are you going to let him?”
Chloe’s eyes held a tinge of sadness, but her lips turned up as she said, “Chris was upset with me, but you should have seen his face when he first saw Gabriel. This is going to be good for him … I’m going to say yes. It’s what’s best for Christopher.”
After she responded, she put her phone away and asked, “Can I stay here with you tonight? I don’t want to be alone.”
“Of course,” I replied, thinking it would probably be good for both of us to have each other tonight. “We can order pizza, watch a movie … whatever you want.”
“That sounds perfect,” Chloe said with the first genuine smile I’d seen since all of this had happened.
As we scarfed down pepperoni pizza with black olives and watched How to Lose a Guy in Ten Days, one of our go-to movies, I thought about what I was going to say to Gabe when he came over the next day.
I needed to be strong and keep my pants on this time; jumping him before he had a chance to even make it in the house wasn’t going to help us work through our issues. Forgiving my sister wasn’t easy, but we were family … With Gabe, it wasn’t as easy as forgiveness; he hadn’t done anything wrong. In fact, it wasn’t really about him, it was about me … and I wasn’t sure if I had it in me to ignore the fact that he had been intimate with my sister. Especially when I’d have a constant reminder of that fact.
Did that make me a terrible person? Maybe.
But I couldn’t help the way I felt…
Chapter Thirty-Seven ~ Gabe
I’d just had the most incredible night of my life, and when I eased out of the carpool lane at Christopher’s school, I did it with a huge grin on my face.
We’d gone swimming at the hotel pool, went to Five Guys for burgers and fries, then stayed up and watched Thursday night football on TV. And through it all, we talked. We talked about what my childhood was like, what his was like, about playing football in college, then the NFL. He told me about his breakup with Grace, the long distance was too much for them, and I talked about how Reardon had always been my best friend.
We didn’t share everything, and didn’t delve into some of the really heavy stuff, but it was a wonderful beginning, and I was so proud of the young man he was.
Chloe had really done an amazing job raising him, and based off of what Chris had told me, Zoey played a big part in it as well.
I’d tried to push thoughts of Zoey and the issues we were having to the back of my mind, wanting to really focus on getting to know Chris better, but when I’d laid down at night, I could no longer deny my fears.