Page 30 of Every Broken Piece
All I’ve ever wanted in life is stability. A job I love. A home I can call my own even if it is a tiny apartment. Maybe a cat. I don’t think that’s asking too much.
But apparently it is.
Chapter eighteen
Gabe
Me: Because I was lonely. That first time I text you, I was sitting in a bar drinking, feeling sorry for myself and you were the only person I thought of to reach out to. I probably shouldn’t have, but I don’t regret it. I haven’t read a book in years. I’ve been so busy raising my son and working that I never took time to read. I used to love to read. You brought that back to me. I enjoy talking to you about books and the cat you want. I look forward to our texts. I don’t know what this is, but I like to think of it as the beginning of a friendship
Ihit send before I can think too much about how I just bared my soul to this woman I barely know but feel like knows me better than anyone.
Chapter nineteen
Tess
Istare at his text for a long time, speechless and feeling a little apprehensive but a lot like I want to smile.
Wow. Just...wow.
But that doesn’t explain the entirely different Gabriel Strong I get Monday through Friday. Maybe it doesn’t matter. I’m there when he needs me on the lonely weekends. I know his son is a junior in college. That has to be a huge change in Gabe’s life. For so long it was just the two of them and now it’s just Gabe.
And I know a little but about being lonely.
And then I think of the twenty grand hanging over my head, and I know I can’t get any closer to Gabe than I can to anyone else. Especially to Gabe. If Sandra Jansen discovers I know a billionaire, then she’ll send her goons after him.
I scooch further into my blankets as despair settles on me like a fourth blanket.
I can’t have friends. I can’t have lovers, or boyfriends or a husband. Maybe not even a cat.
Me: What book are you reading now?
And, yet I can’t walk away from this either.
Monday morning:
Me: Good morning ?
GS: Good morning, Tess
I stare at the message, dumbstruck because he’s never answered my good morning messages before.
Friday night we texted off and on for a few hours about the books we’re reading, the books I’d read that I would recommend to him. We signed off by saying goodnight and we didn’t text the rest of the weekend. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t think about him.
He’s always on my mind and I read his text about being lonely over and over again. I can relate to the loneliness. I have Amelia and her friends—which are my friends, even though I’m so afraid to claim them—but I’m still lonely. I still crave the connection of another person and if I’m being honest, I crave the connection of a partner.
I’ll never get that. Not unless Sandra Jansen goes away for good and she’s not going to. She’s always going ot haunt me. She’s always going to pop up just when I feel comfortable in the new life I created.
I spent Sunday Googling places to move to. I have some money squirreled away because I’ve learned the hard way to have ameans of escape. I don’t have twenty grand and even if I did I wouldn’t give it to the man Sandra sicced on me.
I need to get out of Ohio. I need to stay away from Chicago. I need to go to a city I can afford, which means I need to avoid the coasts. Maybe a tiny town in the Midwest, like Kansas.
Or Denver.
For a hot minute I let myself daydream about being Gabe’s personal assistant in person instead of virtually. It can’t happen because I can’t draw this evil to Gabe’s doorstep, but it would be nice.
By Monday morning I’ve settled on Kansas City, and I start making plans to move.
Amelia: Times up. Where are we going for your birthday?
