Page 69 of If This is Love

After letting Jax in the backseat, I got into the driver’s seat and had to sit for a moment to breathe and blink.

I couldn’t stop shaking, and I couldn’t identify what this feeling swirling around in me was. I couldn’t shut up the awful, hateful words that echoed from years and years ago and just made mehate myself. Andwhydid I always go straight tohating myself?

I’d just had the most tender, sweet, wonderful moment with a man who was so endeared to me that I couldn’t even put it into words, and I couldn’t even enjoy it because all the noise from years ago was justtoo freaking loud.

And since I was alone in my car, I just let myself cry.

I shifted into drive and then pressed my hand to my mouth and just cried for the whole drive down and around the block. I parked in my driveway and waited a moment to cry a little longer. Everything just hurt, and it hurt even worse because what I should’ve been feeling right now was affection and happiness, and instead, I was just sad. Missing my husband and also wishing I could’ve just stayed with Gabe all day long.

But I couldn’t stay with him feeling like this. If he saw me feeling like this, it would just be that first Sunday lunch all over again. He would think he was the reason I couldn’t stop shaking and crying and ultimately had to sit in my own damn driveway for thirty minutes with the AC blasting and the music turned up when it wasn’t him at all. I couldn’t let him think that. He was already so beat down, and he already carried so much guilt that wasn’t his to carry, and I couldn’t add to that. Especially since this persistent, rattling pang of endearment that wouldn’t leave my heart was really starting to feel like love.

And I couldn’t even be happy about that either.

18

GABE

ALGIERS POINT, NEW ORLEANS

Iwasn’t as pissed at Luke as I might’ve expected to be knowing he was literally going tobarge in on mein the exact moment Ruth shattered all my expectations about basically everything by kissing me. And I waspissed, but I wasn’t seeing-red-and-ready-to-murder-my-baby-brother pissed. Because as loud and over-the-top as his intrusion was, the loudest thing in the room was Ruth’s reaction, and that scared the hell out of me.

Somethingwas going on between us. Way more ofsomethingthan I allowed myself to believe would happen for all three months we’d known each other, and whatever it was, it wasn’t taking a traditional route, that was for sure.

The other thing that was for sure was with that kiss, she tore apart my whole world and stitched it back together with her at the center of it.

I didn’t know what we were or would be. I just knew I belonged to her now. She also told me pretty much point-blank that she was sorting out her own shit. I imagined she was just as out of practice as I was, and whatever was going on just needed to go slowly. So I wasn’t going to needle her to talk to me about the kiss, or how she was feeling about me, or if she wanted to go out for dinner, or marry me and have beautiful, mini-Ruth babies with me, or anything crazy like that. But I was going to make sure I was around her every chance I could get.

Including by volunteering to help out at an impromptu Luke-and-Chloe-engagement-party-prep meeting at Liza and Connor’s house a couple of days later.

But there wasn’t anything I wouldn’t do to spend time with Ruth, and at least this time I hadn’t been tasked with stuffing envelopes. Brennan and the ladies had that covered. I was in the kitchen with Connor assembling centerpieces by attaching mason jars and fairy lights to splintery planks of wood.

“I don’t get the mason jars, man,” Connor mumbled, threading the fairy lights through holes we’d cut out of the plank. “Like, we grew up drinking out of mason jars because that jar makes a perfectly good glass when your mawmaw’s not pickling stuff, and she’s got at least three dozen of them. Now this shit istrendy. And the jar I was drinking out of because I didn’t feel like washing the dishes is all over my wife’s Pinterest boards.”

I squinted at him through one eye while I screwed one of the lids to the plank. “Her fuckingwhat?”

“Pinterest boards.” He shrugged. “I don’t know what they are, but they’re on this app on her iPad, and she’s got one for everything and each of us.” He waggled the fairy lights at me. “She’s got a Pinterest board called ‘Cookies for Gabe’.”

“Huh.” A smiled toyed at my mouth. I didn’t know what the fuck Pinterest boards were, but it was a nice feeling to be thought of enough to have one designated for me and my not-so-secret sweet tooth. “Well, in that case, I appreciate the gesture, whatever it is.”

I looked across the house to the living room where Ruth was on the couch with Liza, Skye, and Sabrina, tying little royal purple bows on the invitations. Brennan was sitting cross-legged on the floor in his fancy-ass, tailored slacks with Savannah in his lap while he stuffed the invitations into envelopes. The ladies were all talking cheerily about something, and Ruth paused for a second when I caught her gaze and smiled at me.

“So how’s it going?” Connor spoke up again, his voice a little lower this time.

I looked away from Ruth and saw him wearing a shit-eating smirk.

I turned my attention to the lids and the plank again. “I’m not really surprised that Luke’s been running his mouth to you, but I am a little surprised you’re bringing the bait to me, Deneau.” I slowly turned the screwdriver. “It’sdelicate. Leave it alone.”

Connor coughed into his fist and got back to work with the fairy lights. “Sorry, sir.” There was a knock at the door, and then he immediately dropped the lights and stepped away. “I got it!”

Giving the last lid one last turn of the screwdriver, I set it down and picked up the fairy lights to finish for Connor, taking his spot next to the counter because it had a direct line of sight to where Ruth was sitting. And I would string fairy lights on ridiculous, splintery, mason jar centerpieces every day for the rest of my life if it meant I could just stare at her.

Not in a creepy way of course. Just anappreciativeway. She was a very beautiful woman, and I really appreciated that… appreciated her face… her full lips that smiled often… her high cheekbones and skin like polished stone, and eyes that changed from amber, to deep honey-brown, to sometimes warm russet, depending on the lighting. Her long, elegant fingers and delicate hands that she used to gesture exuberantly when she spoke about something with excitement, as she tended to do often. Her impeccable, elegant posture and beautiful back. Her swan-like neck. Her sculpted calves. Other things I was trying not to think about so I didn’t pitch a tent in my jeans right here at this very wholesome friend gathering.

“Cooper, oh my god!” Sabrina suddenly shrieked just as she leaped off the opposite end of the couch Ruth was sitting on. She darted around it and made a beeline for the front door, shoving a bewildered Connor out of the way and slamming the door shut behind her.

The whole room stopped and stared at Connor and the front door. He was just standing there with a quizzical look on his face, brows quirked at the center and nostrils flaring a little like he was trying to sniff out trouble. He looked at the door and then at the group in the living room, back and forth a few times before he gripped the doorknob.

“Riley.”

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