Page 63 of The Broken Heart Playlist
I try for a casual shrug. “It’s just, you know, you haven’t dropped by in a while.”
“Are you saying you missed me?”
“I’m saying I noticed you haven’t been around.”
“So, you missed me,” he declares, making it a statement and no longer a question.
I chew my lip into the pause, admitting to nothing.
“There was a problem with one of the companies I used to work for,” Gideon says finally. “They asked me for help and that took up a lot of my time.”
I nod. That explains a lot, but... “You still haven’t answered my question.”
He steps out onto the porch, wearing an expression I can’t decipher. “You asked whether I was mad at you?”
“Yes.”
He sighs. “I admit I was a little...upset.”
“Upset?”
“Yeah.” Gideon raises his hand. It startles me and I stumble back a step, my shoulders tense. A cold sweat breaks out on my skin.
But all he does is drag that hand through his hair in frustration as he stares at a point over my shoulder.
“Two weeks ago, I asked you out on a date and you said no,” he says. “But you asked me not to give up on you and I agreed.”
My heart is hammering away. My feet are frozen in place. I can’t seem to move.
“Then on Saturday I watch you go out on a date and—” He looks at me then and his voice cuts off abruptly. “Kate, what’s wrong?” Concern sharpens his words.
I swallow and force the words out. “You’re angry,” I explain in a small voice.Small. After I vowed never to be small again. Shame settles in my chest.
“I’m not angry. Well, maybe I am a little, but I’m more...”
And then he seems to realize what I’m saying. He rears back, as though I slapped him. “Wait a minute, you think I would hurt you?” He swallows and his arms lift slightly, as if he wants to reach for me, but he makes a visible effort to lower them and keep them rigidly at his sides.
“Kate, please, listen to me very carefully. I don’t know what happened in your marriage. I can only guess it wasn’t good, but I will never, ever physically harm you. Do you understand?”
I simply stare at him, processing his words.
“I can’t promise I’ll never be mad at you,” he continues, “because I’m sure there will be times when I’ll get angry at you and you’ll get angry at me, but what I can promise is that I’d sooner cut off my right arm than raise a hand to you.”
I feel his promise all the way to the deepest parts of my soul. The strange thing is, he’s talking as though we have a future together, as though it’s a given that he’s in all my tomorrows and I’m in his. It ought to freak me out, but it doesn’t. Not at all. Instead, I feel settled. Relieved. A tiny bit hopeful.
“Do you believe me?” he asks. There’s an urgency to his tone that underscores his sincerity.
“Yes,” I answer on a shaky exhale.
“Are you okay?”
I nod, my heart slowly returning to its normal rhythm.
He takes a deep breath. “What I was trying to say is that I was more hurt than angry that you went out on a date on Saturday. I was giving myself time to deal with the hurt before I spoke to you, but then I got caught up in work.”
My breath hitches at the frank admission. Then his words register. He believes I went on a romantic date with Joel. In themidst of this emotion-filled moment, a small part of me quietly celebrates. Gideon is jealous. The glimmer of fear I felt earlier is pushed out by the thought of how much this man appears to care for me.
“It wasn’t a date,” I tell him. “I work with Joel. We went out to discuss an upcoming project.”
