Page 75 of If This is Love

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“So,as strange as it might sound, that experience of feeling like I was trapped in a place just because the people in charge were bigger than me helps me understand what these women are going through.” I forced a small, sad laugh. “I never went to Oklahoma or law school. The irony was that my husband and I had dreamed about starting an outreach to women and young girls because of my experience in foster care, which is another story for another day. So when I found myself sort of in the shoes of the same women I was trying to help, I went to the women’s shelter because I wanted to work there and learn and carry the vision we had. I had nothing better to do anyway. And they gave me a job. I learned everything I could and worked my way up over the years, and I was going to stay there forever.Butwhen I heard from this amazing woman in New Orleans, who told me her story and told me her dream… there wasn’t a doubt in my mind that this was where I was called to next. So that the dream my husband and I shared will get to take flight with hers.”

I paused to smile at Skye and noticed she was hiding behind Chloe, covering her face with her hands while her shoulders were heaving.

“Oh myheavens,” I blurted out, waving my hands at Chloe and standing up. “I think we need to take a moment. Skye.” I went to her, wrapping my arm around her shoulders. “Here, come sit down.” I led her to the chair. “Oh my lord, see this is why I didn’t—”

“No…it’sgood,” she blubbered and then shook her head, looking up at me through her big, spilling blue eyes with her chin trembling. “I mean, it’snotgood… it’sawful, but I just had no idea you went through all that. I just thought you lost your husband, and that broke my heart in half.” Her bottom lip quivered again. “Now it feels like it’s in a hundred pieces.”

“I think,” I said, cupping her trembling chin, “you need to go hug your hubby.”

She pouted theatrically. “Yeah, I think that would be good.”

“Yeah,and,” Chloe spoke up, “this was actuallyreallygood. You gave us a lot of great quotes, and I think I might want to do a multi-part series of shorts that tell your story. I think you should talk about your time in foster care, too. This is important for you to do specifically because you’re the director. You’re kind of the face of it, too.”

“Yeah.” Skye jumped off the chair and threw her arms around my neck. “Thisisyour dream, too. And Michael’s.” She pulled away from me and held my shoulders, looking at me through those hyper-focused blue eyes of hers. “This is a dream foreveryonewho has felt like you did in the middle of all that.Iam who we are serving, but so areyou. Don’t forget that.”

I smiled at her. “I promise.” I looked at Chloe, who was packing everything away, and my stomach turned with nerves. “Hey, sis, how long does it normally take before you upload these?”

“Well, with the others, I’ve just been uploading them as everyone does them since everyone is kind of putting them off, but for yours I think I’ll cut it up into a couple of segments and intersperse them between the others.” She folded up the tripod and slipped it into a slim, black bag. “Yours is also going to be featured on the Destination Destiny website with your bio, so I’ll probably wait until Frankie gets it uploaded. It might be a week or so. Did you want to watch it and let me know if there are parts you want to cut out?”

I shook my head. “No, it’s all fine. I was just curious.”

Just curious if anyone mentioned in that story might catch wind of this. Hearing from any of them now would be interesting to say the least.

20

GABE

DOWNTOWN, NEW ORLEANS

No matter how far or how long you run, the ghosts of your past will follow you, and eventually they will catch up, grab you by the ankles, and drag you back to a place you tried to forget. And here I fucking was, showing up for a meeting where I basically had to snuggle up with the worst of my ghosts and apologize for the way they’d had their heel on my neck for years.

Given that Destination Destiny’s headquarters were still only halfway built, Skye had started renting out a shared workspace downtown to serve as offices and meeting space whenever she needed them in the interim. The meeting with Emma and Austin was taking place in one of the conference rooms, and I asked Ruth to drive me and Gunner. I didn’t tell her it was because I was convinced this meeting was going to go as bad as it possibly could, and when it did, I wouldn’t be able to drive for the rest of the day.

Ruth led the way through a set of glass doors, which she reached for and pulled open before I could because one, she was closer, and two… I got a little distracted by the way her long, slender fingers swept over the handle and wrapped around it, and apparently Ruth was the kind of person who could make grabbing a door handle look elegant and sexy.

I knew from the very moment I found her knocked out on the sidewalk that she was going to completely ruin me, and here we fucking were.

“Talk to me, friend,” she said, striding in her high heels and fitted, knee-length skirt next to me. Ruth dressed in business casual was a whole other completely different and debilitating level ofsexy, and I was wearing slacks with a dress shirt, so even a half-mast boner would be a serious problem right now, so I stared at the tile floor. “Start talking to me now before we go inside so it won’t feel like jumping in freezing cold water when we get in there.”

I squinted as I took the door handle from her and gestured for her to go ahead. “How do you know that’s what that feels like?”

She caught my gaze for a second with her brows gently lifted in understanding. “I just imagine that’s how it feels knowing what kinds of things are… y’know… difficult for you.”

I suddenly couldn’t keep my secret, inner running commentary from speaking out loud. “Literally nobody has ever understood me the way you understand me.”

Ruth suddenly made a noise; like a little gasp or just a microsecond, sharp intake of air, and if my stupid mouth had an ass available for kicking, I would be the first person to sign up.

Despite her insisting that talking before we went inside would be helpful, she remained silent, so I did too. I’d obviously gotten a little spoiled by how affectionate she was with me and took our closeness completelywrong, and that sounded way too much like I wasinto herin the pathetic, needy way that I secretly was. And now I’d made her uncomfortable before we were about to go in this meeting where I was for sure going to wind up making literallyeveryoneuncomfortable.

Ruth cleared her throat and blinked rapidly, her long, obsidian eyelashes fluttering and lying flat against the apples of her cheeks for a second. “Thank you for saying so.” She smiled up at me as we continued to walk. “Michael used to say something like that, so it’s nice to hear.”

I would probably be chewing on that statement for the rest of the week. Anytime she compared me to Michael, I basically stuck her words in a petri dish and cranked my overthinking microscope all the way up to its highest level of magnification.

Was that a good thing? It had to be a good thing. Shelovedhim. She wasdevotedto him, and he’d been gone for nearly ten years. But she was alsothat devotedto him. What if the things about me that reminded her of him just made her sad? What if they gave her nostalgia for him, and I was just a guy she liked being around because I reminded her of him so much?

“You’re welcome,” I said to my feet.

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