Our confessions messy and dangerous.
But as his tongue touched mine, and we began a dance that twisted me up and made me fly, I didn’t care.
I hugged him back.
I kissed him back.
And then it was over as he pulled away.
The early morning sunshine shone through the window, highlighting a shadowy bruise on his jaw and the discolouration under his eye, reminding me violence had found him once again.
That his troubles weren’t over.
“Are you okay?” My question was breathy, my heart out of control.
He chuckled darkly. “No, I’m not fucking okay. I miss you, O. I’ve missed you my entire goddamn life.”
My knees wobbled. “I meant your incident with whoever hurt you.”
“Oh, that.” His forehead furrowed. The connection between us faltered as he took a step back. “Yeah, I’m fine.”
His departure wrenched deep inside me but my question had done what I’d intended. I’d popped the bubble we’d been in. The bubble we had a habit of creating. The precious, perfect moment where it was just us and kisses and nothing else mattered.
If we could live in that illusion, we could be happy.
But we couldn’t because real life wasn’t that easy.
“Justin said a few men surprised you outside your warehouse. That they were friends and family of one of the painted girls.”
Gil stroked his jaw where a bruise hinted he’d been punched pretty hard. “They got a few strikes in, but I didn’t let them use me as a punching bag like I did my uncle, if that’s what you’re worried about. I fought back.”
“I’m just worried that society is lynching you.”
“They don’t know I didn’t kill those girls.”
“No, but vigilante justice is dangerous.”
He shrugged. “Nothing I don’t deserve.”
“Don’t. Don’t keep saying that.”
He didn’t argue. Instead, he stared at me the way he’d stared at Olive. With undying affection and unconditional love. “Feel free to throw a punch too, O. A fist would hurt far less than you cutting me out of your heart.”
Tension once again detonated around us.
My heart flurried.
My stomach knotted.
I couldn’t look away from him.
This was another blistering moment.
A moment that could fix all other moments.
A fragile moment where we could break the ice, talk, and find happier ground than this precarious plateau we currently navigated.
But I didn’t know how.
Gil raised his hand as if to touch me. He licked his lips as my name fell with a whisper, “O...I—”
I shook my head. I backed away.
Gil honoured my wishes.
Barely.
His body bristled with explosive need. The sudden softness of before vanished as he clipped, “If you don’t leave to go to work now, I won’t be responsible for what I’ll do. I won’t care my daughter is the bathroom. I won’t care that I hurt you beyond anything. I’ll grab you and fuck you, and I won’t let you out of bed until you forgive me.”
I stood rooted to the spot.
Unable to move.
Unable to stay.
It was my turn to struggle with a sentence. “Gil...I—”
He pinched the bridge of his nose, his hand trembling. “Go, O. I don’t want to hurt you any more than I have.” He looked up, his eyes blazing emerald desire. “And I will hurt you. That’s why you’re keeping your distance, isn’t it? Because you know that soon I’m going away. And no one knows for how long. I could be an old man before they let me out. I might die in there. What sort of bastard would I be to fight for you to love me, only to abandon you all over again?”
He gave me the saddest smile. “Fuck, I wish I’d never let you go when we were younger.”
I tripped backward.
I’d waited so, so long to hear that.
It sucker-punched me in the chest. It ripped out my soul. It brought tears to my eyes.
Olive darted from the bathroom with toothpaste dripping all over her pyjamas and her toothbrush in her hand. “Dad, I don’t like O’s toothpaste. Do you have the stuff we use?”
And just like that, another moment was gone.
Again.
I sucked in a breath, jittery and lost.
Gil swallowed back the hurt between us and ducked to scoop his dirty daughter from the floor. “Sure, it’s in my bag.”
Life once again carried us in different directions as he performed fatherly duties, and I grabbed my handbag, looked at him one last time, and slipped out the door.
I was two hours early for work.
I was trembling like a fool.
I was in so much more trouble than I feared.
Chapter Twenty-Two
______________________________
Gil
I LASTED THREE days.
Three long, terribly excruciating days of loving O, wanting O, knowing I couldn’t have O.
We’d both come to the same painful conclusion.
This was all we could afford.
This tentative friendship.
This tense flatmate arrangement.
After that first day when O went to work and I did my best to come to terms with letting her go, I looked for apartments so I didn’t have to destroy any more of her life.
But the market held no decent rentals and the ones viable required a one-year lease. I had no idea when I’d be called to trial, and frankly, I couldn’t fucking afford anywhere anyway.
Not with my business in ruin and hate still vicious online.
I had to accept that for now, I had no choice.
No choice but to stop cursing Justin for his charity and stop hating myself for taking O’s generosity. This was my life right now...no matter how I wished it wasn’t.
Life slipped into a routine.
O would go to the office, and I’d spend the day with Olive, all while doing my best to find work. I allowed the necessity of earning money and the needs of life to drive me, but I also permitted myself space to enjoy my daughter. To make up for lost time. To learn all about her and the growth she’d done in the year that I hadn’t been part of her life.
I did it for her.
I did it for me.
We made memories that hopefully would sustain me through whatever was coming.
By the time O returned in the evenings, I’d already have dinner cooking and conversation carefully stayed on Olive and her increasing excitement of returning to school.
O’s idea of a tutor was great but just added yet another financial strain.
I made a note to see about taking out a loan, so I could make Olive’s hopes a reality. Not that I held my breath with my current shitty situation.
When bedtime came around, O would vanish into her room, and I would lie on her couch doing my best not to get hard or burst through her door and force her to listen to me. To tell her I was wrong in staying away. That I needed her to fight beside me...like she always had.
I missed her.
I wanted her.
But I wouldn’t do that to her.
At least having Olive between us gave us safe harbour and prevented any chance of breaking our strange, brittle truce.
Our voices had to stay light and civil for innocent ears. Our interactions had to be upbeat and chipper, all while we acted our arses off for my daughter’s sake.