Page 26 of Culmination
Little had I known, that was exactly what my father was expecting.
I jolt as tiny fingers grasp my forearm. When I look up, Gabriella is gazing at me, confused, curious, and it kills me not to take her into my arms this very moment. I thought the first time I told Gabriella about my mother would’ve been when we were out from under my father’s thumb. When I’d ask her to help me find her. When I’d ask her…to be mine forever, telling her everything in hopes she’d still love me. Still decide to stay.
I thought it was too late. I thought Gabriella was lost to me. But she’s here now. That has to mean something.
“Adrian, what do you mean? What about your mother? You told me she was dead,” she whispers softly, shaking her head just the slightest bit.
I tuck a loose strand of hair behind her ear, unable to resist the urge to touch her. My hand lingers. “Gabriella, you know I haven’t been forthcoming with you about many things, but you must know it was for your protection. I never meant you harm, physically or in any other way. You must believe me.”
The next moment lasts a lifetime between us. My little lamb’s lids flutter closed, and her shoulders heave as she breathes in deeply. I bide my time, not wishing to rush her, wanting to show I can be patient. When she opens them, hope soars in my heart.
“I do, Adrian. I believe you.”
Three sweeter words have never been uttered in the history of the human language.
“Then sit back, darling,” I request, although what I’d rather do is pull her into my arms. “For I have a story to tell.”
I SIT HERE INshock as Adrian spills out the whole story. Of his father’s madness that had descended too far into the underground for Adrian to willingly follow. Of how he tried to shield me from it all. How, every time he thought he was one step closer to being out of his father’s shadow, Theo somehow found a way to lure him back in.
I’m reeling from it all. Everything I ever thought is now questionable, and I’m suddenly off-balance. The confounding empathy I feel for him creates turmoil I can’t quite fathom inside me. I no longer know what’s up or down, wrong or right. What I am, however, realizing is that perhaps Adrian and Rafe aren’t so different from each other.
That implication sends me further in upheaval.
Two men on Theo Morningstar’s puppet strings; both desperate to find escape.
Both desperate for me.
Perhaps that’s why it was so easy to fall for them both. I want to bury my face in my hands, tug at my hair, dosomethingbecause my insides are all twisted and confused and my heart feels like it’s being pulled into two entirely different—and yet so similar—directions.
Adrian swallows hard then clears his throat. I look up and see he’s staring at me expectantly, waiting for my response.
It’s like I’m seeing him for the first time. Or, well, the way I saw him that first time. There’s a vulnerability on his face I’ve never seen before, and he looks just like that lost little boy he must’ve been so many years ago. Tears well in my eyes and I’m not quite sure who they’re for.
The little boy essentially abandoned by both parents at such a young age.
The man who, by the look on his face, feels abandoned by me.
Or for me, the girl who loved this man so fiercely, only to lose it all because he simply couldn’t tell her the truth when it mattered most.
The girl who maybe still lovesthisman, the one she’s always known him to be. The one she’s been seeking for so long, only to have given up all too quickly.
The woman who’s fallen in love with someone else. Is starting a family with someone else.
Where the girl ended and the woman began is now blurred to me, and I have no idea how to reconcile those two people. If I even can.
“You should have told me,” I whisper as tears spill out onto my cheeks. “Things could have been so different.” I blink the tears away as memories flood my senses. “But…that last day. You choked me. You were willing to harm me, Adrian.”
He shakes his head. “Think, Gabriella. Did I? Did I hurt you, even the slightest, on purpose?”
My eyebrows furrow. Thinking back to that day… God, have I remembered everything differently? Have I misconstrued Adrian’s actions in my urge to get away from him?
He must notice the confusion on my face. His hand cups my jaw, the touch electrifying, soothing, and all too familiar. My breath catches as his eyes search mine, unspoken questions rising between us both. The intoxication of his emerald-green gaze nearly makes me forget we’re no longer a couple.
“Gabriella, I would never have hurt you. I will never hurt you. Despite what you may believe, you and I are meant to be. We’re two matching scars, hurt by those we love most.”
The door to my heart, the one he closed that day just a few months ago, threatens to burst wide open to allow him back in. They’re words I needed to hear for far too long, and if I’m not careful, if I don’t keep my head, I’ll fall for them all over again.
But with Adrian, that’s all it’s ever been: beautiful words reeling me in time and time again until I’m so utterly intertwined in all that is him that I can’t break free.
