She followed him and stopped when he rounded on her.
“Is he important to you?” he asked.
“Who?” And then it dawned on her. He was asking about Blake. “He’s my friend.”
“I thought he was your publicist but it’s obvious the two of you have a personal relationship,” he stated.
She didn’t like how he could still read her.
“I don’t think my relationship with Blake or any other man is your business,” she shot back. It was probably just the emotions from the day that had built up and needed release that had her almost screaming at him.
He stood his ground. His gaze narrowed and his lips thinned. “Would you still say that if you knew how badly I wanted to kiss you right now?”
Gabriel shouldn’t play his hand like that. He especially shouldn’t have told Kinsley that he wanted to kiss her. But he did. Denying it wouldn’t make it go away and a part deep inside him needed to know if she was with another man because that would be the equivalent of a bucket of ice water being poured over his head.
Did he have a right to know?
Hell, no.
“That’s not a good idea,” she finally responded, lifting her gaze from the tiled floor.
“Hell, I know that. I wasn’t asking if it was a good idea. I was telling you to keep your distance, so I don’t embarrass myself,” he stated.
That seemed to rile her up.
“You know, you could’ve called all those years ago. Or stopped by to see me before you took off into the Army and disappeared.” She was emphasizing her words by waving her hands around.
“Are you kidding?” A quick shot of anger darted through Gabriel, firing his insides. He needed to make sure he understood her correctly before he let himself go too far down that path. “You think I signed up for the military without telling you goodbye? Is that how you remember it?”
“I was in the hospital. You never came to see me.” Her chin quivered, betraying the stone-cold emotion on her face. “What was I supposed to think?”
“I did show. Your father refused to let me come into your room. He said you resented me for getting in the crash and that you’d be fine. I came every day and was turned away. I texted you dozens of times every day and you never responded.”
“I had a concussion. My father took my phone away,” she stated. “Why didn’t you send someone in with word?”
“I was young and stupid, so eventually I believed him. I was busy licking my wounds. He told me you never wanted to see me again and that if I pushed the issue, he’d see to it I was arrested for reckless driving.” If it was now, he sure as hell wouldn’t let her father get away with that. He’d been trained not to shake things up at that age and was on strike three. One more and he’d lose everything. “You should know better than anyone else that I couldn’t afford one more strike.”
She seemed to simmer on those words for a few minutes before trying to speak. “He took away my phone. The doctor said it wasn’t good for me to be on the screen. I got it back a few weeks later and my mother said I could have ten minutes a day.” She stared up and to the left, recalling the information. “I checked for messages from you. Why wouldn’t you have texted?”
“After a month of not getting a response, I stopped,” he admitted. So much came into focus now but he still had questions. “Lainey came to visit me and said you didn’t want to anything to do with me ever again.” He was too embarrassed to admit to Kinsley now that he’d written to her for an entire year with no response. He’d been a lovesick pup, licking his wounds.
“She did what?” The shock on her face had him rethinking everything he’d been told back then. Her question was also rhetorical.
The desire to reach out to her and pull her into his chest was a physical ache. It caught him off guard and he needed to slow his roll because that heartache that had caused him to lose twenty pounds because eating made him sick that also eventually turned into a fire in his belly to fight back against the world and become the best soldier he could.
If holding her again could erase all the years of hurt he’d faced he would. “It was a long time ago, Kinsley. I think we’ve both moved on since then.”
A piece of him was happy to know that she hadn’t rejected him. It made him feel like he might be able to trust his judgment again when it came to women. Was that the reason he’d kept them at arm’s length most of his adult life? He’d gotten over his childhood crush with her years ago. Or, at least he’d believed he had.
As old wounds opened and he felt the pain like this had happened yesterday instead of forever ago he wasn’t so sure.
Either way, Gabriel needed to button up because standing there in the kitchen with her and being hit with all those emotions from the past wasn’t doing good things to his self-control.
“Why not reach out on social media?” she argued but he could see the fight was draining from her. Were her emotions on the same roller coaster?
“Because you blocked me from your accounts,” he stated.
“I promise that I did no such thing,” she countered.
“Then, who? Your father?” He gripped the edge of the counter to keep his hands busy.
“Either him or my mother. Neither thought I should go out with you in the first place. They were pretty vocal about it actually. I don’t know why I didn’t put two-and-two together before.” There was that lost quality to her voice
