Page 75 of Your Soul to Keep

Gabe’s tug on my hand woke me from my reverie.

With his chin dipped down, he reached behind me to carefully unwind the tie from my hair. Sliding it onto his wrist, he worked his fingers through my hair, fanning it out around me, his gaze soft on my face.

Everything I held together on my own for so long unraveled under his hands.

“Beautiful,” he murmured. “For twenty years I dreamed of this hair spread over my pillow.”

My eyelids fluttered shut, his sweet words too much for my fragile heart to process. How could I have left him out in the cold the way I did?

“I’m so sorry, Gabe,” I whispered.

Sliding his palms up the sides of my neck, his strong hands cradled the back of my head. His eyes searched mine, asking questions and giving answers in a way words could not. “No one has ever come close to making me feel the way you do.”

I was completely, irrevocably in love with him. I had been since we were teens.

It had been real.

Lasting.

The truth hurt. Because I had hurt him badly and deprived myself.

Losing my dad cast me into a pit of blackness where there was no hope. When blessed numbness leached in to take its place, I convinced myself in an act of self-preservation what we had was only puppy love.

Now I knew different.

And Gabe had not had that numbness to protect his tender heart.

I could barely face it.

Swallowing tightly, I confessed, “I should not have frozen you out.”

He hushed me. “None of that. It was a terrible time for you, and you were practically a child. I wasn’t much older.”

He cupped my face in his hands. Tilting his head back, he held my eyes, revealing the sadness in his as he shook his head slightly. “We wouldn’t have made it, Shae-baby, that’s the truth. It hurt. It was hard. But you’ve lived in my heart all these years. And whatever I had to go through to get back here with you, I’d do it again and again.”

Tightening his grip on my face, he pulled me up to my toes.

My hands wrapped around his wrists. I held on as he gently opened my mouth with his. Softer than I believed he could, he brushed his lips over mine and licked inside my mouth, tentatively tasting me as if it was the first time.

The first time. His face wreathed in smiles as he bounded up onto my front porch, his enormous heart on his sleeve.

As if unleashed, the pain of the past tore through me with a guttural sob.

I clung to him, my eyes squeezed shut, spiraling downward until a pair of strong arms wrapped around me and held me together. “I’ve got you, Shae-baby.”

Still, the onslaught of memories continued.

My dad withering before my eyes, his lips dry and chapped as he assured me I would be okay financially. I only wanted him, but money was all he had left to give.

I shook my head as if to rid myself of the memory.

Gabe cupped the back of my head and tucked my forehead to his wide chest, his deep voice a reassuring murmur in my ear.

I began to shake.

Standing at Dad’s grave with Nan on one side, Gabe on the other. I sucked in a breath at the resurrection of that buried memory. He was there.

Quinn’s small face, red from crying, as she clung to her mom across from me. I’d shut her out as well.

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