Page 63 of Gideon
The sound of footsteps sounded behind me. I swiped at the few errant tears that had dared to streak down my cheeks as he sat down beside me.
“Here,” he said. I listened to his voice. There was no malice, no anger to be found there. I turned to look at him, and then at the box between us.
“What is this?” I asked, confused.
“This is five watches, worth quite a bit, three gift cards worth about a hundred each, and five thousand dollars in cash,” he explained. I looked up at him in utter shock. He sat there with an easy smile on his face, as though this were the most natural conversation in the world.
“What?” I questioned, in complete shock.
“It’s what you asked for. Assurance. If things go south. If my brothers freak out, or if I somehow hurt you, or you just get too scared and need to go… here’s what you need.” Just like that. As though it were nothing. My mind couldn’t wrap around the thought.
“Seriously?” I barely breathed.
“Someday, Naomi, you’ll get it. You’ll get that when I say I have you, I mean it. When I say that I’m not going to hurt you, I mean it. When I say that I will help you, I mean it. Someday,” he said with so much emotion tinged in his deep, resonant voice, it nearly brought me to tears all over again.
“I’ll leave you to it. I’m inside when you’re ready to talk more. Or if you just need a laugh. I’m good for those, too,” he added, bumping his shoulder into mine.
“Thank you,” I whispered, unable to trust myself to speak more than that.
He stood once more, leaning down to kiss the top of my head before I heard his footsteps retreating back towards the house.
Gideon Temple. What a confusing, baffling saint of a man.
CHAPTER16
GIDEON
The last few days of our honeymoon passed by in the blink of an eye, and she never brought up the box again. It was an unspoken truth between the two of us. I had two options. I could live in fear, worried that I would wake up one morning and she would be gone, vanished into the night like a fleeting dream in the morning light, or I could trust her. Just as she had trusted me. She had trusted me with so fucking much it was breathtaking. Sort of like having the wind knocked out of you from a punch to the gut. She trusted, and she gave, and she had no idea how fucking incredible she was.
There had been no more kink in our last few days, though the flirting had been scorching hot. I didn’t want to push her into another scene until she was ready. A scene could take time to decompress from and then there was the delayed drop. That had been a thing. She’d woken up with nightmares two days after our scene, her heart racing and calling out for help. The sound of it, her tortured cries and gasping fear, had settled into my heart like a blade and ripped me apart. It only reminded me that she had probably called out just like that as a young girl, only no one had been there to save her. I thanked fucking sky-daddy on high that it wasn’t the case now. Now I was there to hold her and keep her safe. For as long as she would let me.
“Gideon?” Naomi called from the deck of the Ataraxia. I had been working on fixing the fridge in the cabin of the boat and she had decided to join me, soaking up the sun on the deck while I worked. I stood, wiping the sweat from my brow as I ran up the steps to join her.
“What’s up?” I asked, pulling the tail of my shirt up to wipe my face off. It was hot as balls out today and I was sweating my ass off while I worked.
“I’ve been thinking about what you said,” she began, sitting up on her elbows as she lay out on the deck of the boat. “I think I’m ready to just bite the bullet. I know you were going to call Zeke and give me time to talk to Talia, but I think I’m losing my nerve. I think I just need to do it. Tell them all at once, you know? And then I can talk to Talia without having to relive this same nightmare over and over by having to tell it to each person at different times.”
To say I was surprised would have been a vast understatement.
“Are you sure, Naomi? I don’t want to push you to tell more than you want to. This is about you and your comfort levels,” I urged her to understand.
“No, I’ve thought a lot about it. I think it’s the right call. Get it all out and be done,” she reiterated.
“If you’re sure, then that’s what we will do,” I agreed, plopping down on the deck beside her. The sun felt amazing, but the heat could fuck right off, if you asked me. It was the perfect kind of day to be out on the water. I wanted more than anything to take this beauty out on the open water, but my little dinghy of a sailboat would have to work for today. Someday, it would be different.
“Want to go sailing today?” I asked her. “It’s one of the last days before the honeymoon ends and we have to put on the sacred act of pretending to give a fuck about Zion.”
“You certainly have a way of putting things,” she teased, giggling lightly at my sarcasm.
“If you’re ready to tell everyone, then I’m happy to facilitate that. With the honeymoon ending on Sunday, we’ll end up at one of my brothers’ houses for dinner soon. We can use that opportunity to tell them,” I explained.
“Why would we be at one of their houses?” she questioned, shielding her eyes from the sun as she turned to look at me.
“Well, we can’t exactly host a big dinner with all of my brothers and their wives at our place,” I scoffed, the explanation obvious.
“Are dinners with your brothers a common occurrence?” she asked, rolling over onto her stomach and looking up at me.
“They are, and even more so with all the weddings. It’s become a sort of thing we do. After the honeymoon ends, we all gather at one person’s house and have a big dinner. Usually to discuss steps in the plan and such,” I explained, laying down on my back beside her.
