“Well, if you called first you wouldn’t interrupt something, and it only happened twice.”
“Oh shut up, please don’t remind me. Do you want a beer?” I ask as I pull one out.
“I want one, but you aren’t getting one unless you plan on spending the night. There is soda in there, or water.”
“Bossy,” I mutter as I grab a Dr. Pepper, then pop the top. I rarely allow myself to have soda, and the fizzy sweet has me sighing with pleasure. Grabbing plates, I bring them to the island where Gabe is picking at the chicken.
“Fried okra? I tell you every time, Liv, don’t buy this stuff. There’s green beans or something else.” The words get lost as he starts popping the little pieces of fried yummy badness into his mouth.
I laugh as I make my plate. I’m able to get a few handfuls of okra before he growls and I give up trying to get close to it. Gabe is one of those guys who requires complete focus on whatever he’s doing. So it’s silence as we eat, a comfortable silence, though. Even if Gabe weren’t my brother I’d like him, for all the reasons most people don’t like him. He’s dead honest to the point of being mean. Then there’s the way the guy is never nice, if he pays you a compliment treat it like gold, because it is. He has a low tolerance for bullshit and considers anything that isn’t important to him bullshit—and there are very few things that are important to him.
But there’s this other Gabe, the Gabe who is loyal to the end. If he likes you, if you managed to win his friendship and he cares about you, there isn’t a thing he wouldn’t do for you if it’s within his power, and he’s not above going outside the lines of polite society to do it. When he got back from overseas he was still healing and wasn’t in the best shape. Still, he saw things were wrong between me and Connor. He told me to leave Connor if I needed to. But the last thing I was going to do was run from Connor to Gabe. I learned my lesson: no one else could make my life better but me.
My plan had been to wait until my sister left for college. She really liked Connor, and she felt safe in the home we had created for her. Only six months before she left, as she and I began making plans for her room and board and setting a budget, Connor started pushing for me to take the money out of her account. I resisted, then started checking our accounts, accounts he always told me I didn’t need to worry about because as the man he was responsible for them. Stupid as it sounded, it was how it had been with my parents, even when my dad was away, so I didn’t think anything of it.
When I saw just how much damage was done, I filed for divorce and filed charges against him for theft and forgery. On the advice of my aunt I had kept a small account my grandmother had given me separate from all of our other checking and savings. It was only six thousand, but it was important to my grandmother because it was there in case I ever needed to leave my husband. The account was one she had set up for four daughters and at the time seven granddaughters because she wished she’d had it while she was married to my abusive, alcoholic grandfather. I was able to prove I never intended for Connor to have access and that he managed to get it and forged my signature on the slip to pull the money out.
Over the course of the year, the time it took to get the divorce granted, Connor prosecuted and the bills sorted, Gabe never said a word. He was a silent source of comfort and advice, and he gave me a place to sleep while I got my crap together. Then almost eighteen months after I thought it was over, I woke up to a phone call from Connor saying he was sorry as he cried then hung up. I found out someone had broken into Connor’s place and beaten him so badly he was nearly unrecognizable. Connor had been extremely vain. Even as I told myself it wasn’t Gabe, two days later Gabe dropped off eight thousand dollars at my place. He told me to consider it my divorce settlement. We never talked about it or Connor ever again.
I’m picking at my chicken when Gabe gets up to get another beer. I love that about Gabe, he’s so like our dad. He never asked me to get him a beer, he never expe
cted me to bring dinner or cook when I stayed with him for that month after the divorce. As far as our dad was concerned, he was there to take care of the women in his life, not because he didn’t think we could take care of ourselves but because he wanted us to know we meant more to him than what we could do for him.
Gabe pulls at his massive beard. I notice it is slowly going gray amid the coal black, matching the silver appearing in his buzz cut. “Talk, Liv, what’s up? Is it the new job or our bratty little sister? Or is it finally a guy?” I blush and he smiles. “Finally. Damn, I was beginning to think you’d shut down the store forever. Which is bullshit. One bad apple shouldn’t spoil the whole damn orchard, sis.”
“It’s not like that. He’s like so out of my league it’s hilarious to even think of something happening with him for longer than five minutes. I just... I’m not sure if even five minutes is a good idea.”
“Okay, again I call bullshit. You’re an awesome woman. There are far more men out of your league, who don’t deserve you, than there are in your league. But you’re gonna have to settle sometimes; those are the facts of life. What’s wrong with getting a little ass and keeping it low-key?”
I fight not to roll my eyes. Gabe is crazy sometimes. “Oh a few reasons. It’s Rourke freaking Vega and he just happens to be my boss, because his mom is my new client and he’s paying the bills.”
His eyebrows go up. “Nope, Rourke Vega definitely isn’t in your league. He’s exactly the kind of guy you should stay away from. The guy is too used to having whatever he wants the way he wants it. Unless you mix it up and make him work for it, then no, even five minutes is a bad idea. Coming from a guy who hates it when chicks play games. This isn’t a game really, you just have to make him work, ’cause if you give in too soon he won’t appreciate what he worked to get. Make him see all those chicks he’s fucked are cubic zirconia, and you are a diamond.”
“Gee, thanks. I think.” I’m still confused.
“What don’t you get?”
I roll my eyes. “Don’t ask like it’s a stupid question since that was confusing as shit. The guy is my employer for the next six months so nothing is going to happen in that time, he made that crystal fucking clear. Then I don’t get you thinking I’m some kind of ho who just gives it up anyway. I’ve only been with two guys ever: Connor, who I didn’t sleep with until we were two months in and seeing each other every week. And a random hookup, but that’s it. Two guys, it’s not like I give it up to just anyone.”
“Wait. So Vega told you he wasn’t going to fuck you while he was your employer. How the hell did you two get that far when you met the guy like three weeks ago?”
Crap, I blush so hard I get dizzy for a minute. “I—look, it doesn’t matter how he told me, it just matters he did.”
“No, it matters. Has he copped a feel or kissed you?” Gabe is looking like scary-ass biker dude who will break you in half for touching his bike, or in this case his sister.
“No, none of those things. It’s nuts and a part of the reason the whole thing seems like some bizarre dream. When we first met, it...there was just something there. Then the same day, after I met with his mom and we had dinner, I might have—I don’t know what either of us did. He just told me as I was leaving employees were off-limits, I was off-limits and to leave before he made a liar of himself...” I shrug as I trail off, remembering the moment in the kitchen when I fought the urge to throw myself at him and beg—for what, I don’t even know. It takes a minute to realize Gabe is just staring at me. “What?”
He says it so quietly, as if he were whispering it to me. “You’re in love with him.”
I close my eyes and shake my head. No. I am not. It’s absurd, it would never work. I fight to get the words out, but I can’t and I hate myself then burst into tears. God damn it. Gabe holds me close and doesn’t say a word.
***
Rourke
“I think I’ll actually start spending the night starting tonight. If that’s all right with you?” The words are out before I’ve thought them through. That’s a lie, I’ve been thinking about sleeping here, with Olivia right down the hall from me, almost continuously since I got here and about ten times a day over the last two weeks. Even as I’ve been doing my best to push her away, to keep away from her, she’s on my damned mind every single day.
Then I get here to a lecture from my mother to be nicer to Olivia. She was upset Olivia had left the moment she knew I was coming. It was clear Olivia was hurt enough by the way I was acting toward her that she couldn’t take it anymore. The thought of Olivia running from me burned as badly as the gunshot through my body had, leaving a different path of destruction.