Page 3 of Loving Gabe

I can’t do that though. I watch with envious eyes as they talk and he gets a smile out of her.

My date and I continue dancing and I tell myself that it’s for the best.

I need Aubrey to be happy.

I pull my date closer on the dance floor and kiss her hungrily. I picture it’s Aubrey I’m kissing; just like I have been seeming to do lately with every girl I kiss. It never does the trick.

Chapter One

Gabriel

I start shutting everything down for the holidays. Fucking finally. I’m in definite need of a break.

A sigh escapes before I can stop it.

Most days, this place isn’t easy to run. We have been pretty busy, and lots of staff had been either quitting or calling in sick. We were so busy just handling everything with the lack of staff that we hadn’t been able to find time to hire more people. About three weeks ago, we finally caught our breath and were able to hire and prepare new staff just in time to go on our annual Christmas break. It was really important to my friends’ parents that we all take this time off every year, and we have never let them down.

Everyone gets busy with their lives, but these two weeks were always dedicated to family.

They were my family in every way that mattered. My parents were long gone from my life and I don’t have any regrets about that. They left me when I was young, and I spent most of my life wondering what I had done wrong that they didn’t want me. Then, one day, they came back, but it was only because they saw my name all over the place and discovered that I had become rich.

My best friends, Chase, Dylan, Theo, and Nolan, are all brothers. They had two other siblings, Aubrey and Hudson. Aubrey was their sister, and the only girl in the family, which meant that everyone was overprotective of her. That meant that they were always warning me away from her at any chance they could.

I knew they had caught me checking her out multiple times, but they probably didn’t worry about it too much because they knew that I wouldn’t want to risk losing the only family I had.

Hudson was also known as Stitch to everyone else. He was a member of a motorcycle club. He lived out of town, so I never got to see much of him unless his family made him come by for holidays. He was a decent man, and I knew he would protect anything he cared about. I couldn’t help but respect that about him.

I was automatically invited to family gatherings, which was such a nice feeling. I didn’t want to jeopardise anything with them, even if it meant denying my heart.

When my parents who had abandoned me came back, they made a big speech about how they missed me and regretted leaving me behind; but I knew they just wanted the money I now had.

I’m not going to lie, I have plenty of it.

I gave my parents a cheque and told them not to ever come back because I wasn’t going to give them anything else; no matter how much they begged.

Cold hearted? Maybe. But they didn’t give two shits about me when I was young, so why would I care about them now? I don’t want to hear their sob story.

They left. End of story.

I push my thoughts to the back of my head. There’s still too much to do before I leave. I still need to give many staff additional tasks to do while we are gone.

Everyone knows we are gone for two weeks, so it’s their job to take care of absolutely everything. It’s what we pay them for.

This day has been one mess after another. I glance over at the clock, and it is only four in the afternoon. Fuck, I do not know how much more of this I can take. I’ve reached the point where I’ve completely run out of steam from work. My holidays couldn’t come fast enough.

The phone rings, and I already dread answering it before I see who is calling.

“Gabriel,” I snap out without meaning to.

“Oh, someone’s in a mood,” my best friend retorts.

I shake my head but a small smile graces my lips. “Chase, how are you doing man?” I ask.

It has been about two weeks since I had last seen him. He had to take a trip out of town for some last-minute meetings on a job that was top priority.

We all own a security company together. The company had started off small, but slowly we had become well known and are now the number one security company in the world. Three of Chase’s brothers had joined us in the company when we started. The five of us work in different fields of the company as we all have different skillsets. I had known Chase’s family my whole life, so they are all like brothers to me. I knew that I could trust them and that they had my back.

We take every job seriously, and we go to many lengths to protect the people who hire us.

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