Page 61 of Gonzo's Grudge
“Yes.” He didn’t look away. “I wanted you,” he continued. “That started before I had all the information. When I did learn more about you, I should’ve walked away. I didn’t. That’s on me. I asked your father to step up tonight because using you is the last thing I ever wanted to be true, but it is. I came into this wanting to show your father, I could get to him. I wanted to remind him there were repercussions for what he did to my son. And I won’t lie and say there were moments before I shared a breath with you that I thought yes, you deserved to pay for the sins of your father the way my son paid for mine. But I pulled over after loosening the battery cable on your car and met your gaze in the dark of night. A moment when a young woman on the side of the road in the dark was vulnerable and I expected to meet a meek, mild girl. Instead, I locked eyes to yours and saw a quiet strength. I saw a woman unafraid of the world even the bad things like an unexpected breakdown. From the moment I shared space with you, I was gone in a way I had never been before. I wanted your dad to face what he did tonight while I faced you. I don’t want it to be this way. I wished I could tell you that no, I didn’t use you. But the truth is, yes that’s how it started, but it’s not at all how it ended. And the only way to hope you could see that is to put you in a room where you are given all of it and then able choose without anyone’s hand on your back what you want in your future.”
“Choose,” I repeated, dumbly, because the word felt too big for my mouth.
“Me,” he said, quiet. “Or not me. But now knowing that when I said I wasn’t a good man, you at least know while I am the worst of the worst, I don’t ever do anything without cause or reason. Yes, I will kill for my family and you should know when I say it, I mean it. I want this, IvaLeigh. You woke something up inside me that I’ve never felt before. I can’t tell you it’s gonna be easy. I’m anything but an easy man. What I can tell you, though, I’d do anything for you including walking away. I fell in love with you in the midst of the worst experience of my life. You have seen the worst parts of me and the lengths I will go to and not apologize. And even with all of that, I’m asking you to choose. And I’m hoping somewhere you can find a way to still choose me.”
A laugh broke out of me that wasn’t funny. “You have a way with romance.”
“I’m an outlaw,” he stated casually. “This is what passes for flowers.”
Silence. Not empty. Full.
“Devyn gets the files,” I wanted to confirm, because I needed to be sure I heard right inside. “Tonight. That will give your son his freedom?”
“Tonight, yes, the files will go to GJ’s attorney who will do an emergency filing to have GJ released immediately. Don’t know if that will be tomorrow or the next day, but it will get him released.” He shared with his eyes locked to mine. “Your father knows if he doesn’t, this ends with a different kind of truth.”
“What does that mean?”
“It means,” he stated carefully, “that the law gets the first swing. After that, if I don’t like the outcome, then I take matters into my world. I won’t let men sleep easy when they lock up my boy on a lie. In my life, we know the lines and if we do the time, we do it, but it will never be because of a setup.”
I breathed out through my nose and nodded because the world I grew up in did not have room for sentences like that and the world I live in now does, and I am the one who moved from one into the other.
“You hurt me,” I muttered, surprising myself with how simple it came. “Not like she said you would. Not with other women. With silence. With letting someone else talk to me first. With showing up with empty warnings that lacked real context. All you had to do was tell me things started wrong, but changed. I can accept change, Gabriel. I can’t take being blindsided.”
He flinched. He didn’t defend himself. “I’ll do better,” he said.
My throat burned. “I’m not ready to forgive you.”
“I didn’t ask you to,” he shrugged. “I asked you to hear the truth. I don’t need your forgiveness, IvaLeigh. I need to know you understand my world and the way things work.”
He leaned his hip against the rail, keeping that distance like it mattered. I realized he was waiting for me to tell him to come closer or to leave, and in that moment the power of it hurt more than anything Hampton Stanley had said in my apartment.
“I can see you need some time to process. I need to make sure the files get to Devyn. Do you want to see me tomorrow?” he asked, and somehow the question was laced with something deeper.
I looked at his mouth. At his hands. At the leather hanging on his shoulders. I looked at the window where I could see my mother’s shadow and my father’s shoulders sagging beneath the weight of what he had done.
“I want you to keep telling me the truth, the whole truth, not the parts you want me to know,” I explained. “Even if it makes me hate you, I want to know all of the pieces moving around us.”
“I can do that,” he agreed, like a man saying he can breathe air.
“And I want you to send Devyn everything and then some. I want you to get GJ out clean. I want you to destroy Hampton Stanley with the law and not the outlaw because GJ deserves to have his freedom be truly free from any of these men.”
His mouth tilted, not quite a smile. “Yes, ma’am.”
“And after that,” I stated, swallowing, “when I’m ready, I’ll call you. And then I’ll want a ride.”
He huffed a laugh that sounded more like relief than humor. “That I can do.”
We didn’t touch. Not then. He gave me a chin lift that felt like a contract between people who knew what it cost to write their names in a deal. He went back inside and collected the papers without looking at my father and told my mother her pie looked good even though no one had cut it. Then he left through the front door like a man who knew he can find his way back without being led.
“Tomorrow, IvaLeigh,” he promised before climbing on his bike and riding away.
I stayed on the porch until the lamp buzzed itself tired. Mom came out and leaned beside me and didn’t ask me what I planned to do with my life, for once. We stood there like the house needed us to hold it up.
“Do you hate me?” she asked finally, voice small. “For not knowing what he was doing. For trusting him even when my gut told me something was wrong.”
“No,” I shared. “I hate him.”
She nodded. “Me too.”
