Page 44 of Good Guy Gabe

I roll over into him. “Are you okay?”

“No. Yes. No. Fuck.” He sits up, moving way too fast for this hour, only to slump forward. “I know. My sister told me.”

“You know what?”

“About you. About . . . about him.”

A chill settles over me as I put space between us. The way he says that? The rejection is swift and heavy.

And painful.

I tell myself to hold my tongue, to accept the rejection as I have countless times, but I’m raw. Hemademe raw for this exact moment.

“So, what? This was a goodbye fuck?” I seethe. “Fuck Miss Alabama one last time before you kick her to the curb?”

“What? Shit, no! Fuck, I’m doing this wrong. I’m—”

He reaches for me, but I skitter out of his reach, backing myself in the corner, immediately feeling naked and exposed in a way I’ve never felt with him before, not even in that bathroom at the gala. I squat down and wrap my arms around myself to cover up as I best as I can.

I’ve spent years humiliated by the fact that I had no idea what my husband was doing directly below my feet as I mindlessly went about my days. None of the accusations that I knew could match the fact that Ididn’tknow. But none of the humiliation has ever been as acute as the string of Gabe’ssemen leaking out of me onto the floor. It’s enough to knock the stupidest, most indulgent sob out of me.

Gabe is on me in a blink of an eye, scooping me up and holding me in his arms. “I know you’re innocent, I swear. I promise you, if anything, you’re even more amazing than you were already. It was just a lot, and I don’t understand a bunch of it. There were so many articles, and none of the time lines make sense, and you were missing from so much of it, and—fuck. I shouldn’t have sprung this on you now. Forgive me?”

I hiccup like a toddler and hug him tightly, burying my face in his shoulder as my teeth grind. A shiver races up my spine. “Don’t scare me like that, okay?”

“Never again. Let’s get you tucked back in and talk about it in the morning.”

“I’d rather talk about it now, if it’s all the same.”

“It is wild how small this is.”

Gabe chuckles softly as he gets two giant mugs out of the cupboard.

I tug at the hem of his jersey. It seemed like a fun idea when I picked it from his closet before he scooped me up and carried me to the kitchen, a neutral area for me to explain about Brian. I have the jersey Cora got me, of course, but that doesn’t smell like Gabe. He’s never worn that. He would never fit into it. So when I saw this hanging in there, I expected it to be a tent and then didn’t pay attention when he pulled it out.

On me, it’s a comfortable but very short and slim-fit dress. Long enough to cover my butt but nothing left to the imagination. And he sat me down atop the island, so there’snothing but my thankfully full-coverage panties between my flesh and the cold marble surface.

“There’s no way you fit into this. This has to be Merrick’s. He’s tiny.”

“Don’t you ever say that to his face,” Gabe warns me, but he laughs as he says it. “And nope, that’s my number. That’s my name. That’s last year’s away jersey.”

I tug it out from my chest. There’s a bit of extra space, and if I was Cora, I’d be able to quantify it better, but I don’t make garments. I would call this a ladies’ large. And not a busty ladies’ large. “How on earth did you get it on?”

The electric kettle beeps, and Gabe pours a cup for each of us. Mine is chamomile mint tea. Gabe’s hot chocolate bomb fizzes and pops open in an explosion of rainbow mini-marshmallows.

“I have a guy for that,” Gabe says as he pours too much honey into my tea, not that I would ever correct it.

“You have . . . a guy?”

“Yep.” He grabs a couple ice cubes from the freezer and tosses them into my tea. “Between the jerseys and the shoulder pads, you can, you know, get trapped.”

I do my best to hide my smirk, but my lip is twitching. “Does everybody have a guy?”

“Well, no. Not everyone. And it’s not like it’smyguy. He helps Jennings, too. And Thompson. Rydell Thompson, not Donnie Thompson. I think Bodley.”

I bite my lip. “What’s his name?”

“It’s Steve. He’s—you’re making fun of me, aren’t you?”

---