“I don’t hate you.”
She whimpered, and she cupped his face. “This is so hard. I’ve never felt this way with anyone.”
Gabriel placed his hands over hers. “I’m sorry. Your kids seem settled for the night. I’ve got a spare room. Stay here, and then I’ll take you back home tomorrow.”
“And risk more gossip?”
“They already have issues with you, Amy. I don’t think it matters what you do or don’t do. They’re going to hate you.”
She nodded her head. “I’ll stay for tonight. I can’t get home without you driving anyway.”
Gabriel pulled away from her with reluctance. He wanted her in his arms. When she was there he knew he could protect her. They cleaned up the kitchen and went into the living room to finish watching some television with the children. He settled on the far side of the couch with Mia resting her head in his lap. Amy sat on the other. He glanced her way several times and noted her shirt sleeve had ridden up. The round red dots of cigarette burns glared back at him. She’d left the bastard for over a year, and the scars from the burns would stay with her for some time. Eventually, the scars would fade, but unless he did something she would remain Steven’s wife for the rest of her life. She wouldn’t let anyone inside. He knew the pain of trusting someone. Trust didn’t come easily to him. Staring at her arm and thinking about her response, Gabriel came up with a solution. She needed to realise she was a woman. His feelings for her were not weakening like he hoped they would. His feelings were only getting stronger. He sipped at his beer, watching the television.
At some point, Amy left to put the children to bed. Gabriel had told her to put them in the room at the end of the hall. In a spell of inspiration, he’d decorated the room in order for her children to have a place to stay. He didn’t want to tell her that he’d decorated the bedroom with the intention of her children staying with him.
He waited for her downstairs thinking about how far she’d come since he’d met her. No longer did she cower away from people in the street or turn the other way. She held a conversation without looking to bail at a moment’s notice.
Amy was a strong woman, and he needed her to see the strength inside her. Whether she’d gotten over what Steven did to her because of the kids or for some other reason, the fact was, she’d gotten over it. He knew there were times she hurt, but that was to be expected. Gabriel knew he would never abandon her. He cared about her too much to let her go. In his heart, he knew he wanted Amy to be his. For her, he could be a better man.
Putting the beer down, he went to see how she was doing. He wanted to help her wherever he could. His feelings for her were not something he took lightly. He knew how he felt, and it scared him with its intensity.
Mine.
She walked out of the bedroom door leaving it ajar. “I want to be able to hear them,” she said with a smile. Her smile made him want to fall to his knees and beg her to be his.
He nodded and followed her down the stairs, the kiss they’d shared playing in his mind.
Mine.
That one word kept whispering through his mind like a mantra. Amy wasn’t a thing for him to possess. She was a person to make her own choices.
For a forty-five year old man, he was behaving like an adolescent.
“Amy,” he said. She stopped and turned around. “When you said you wanted to feel what it was like to be kissed without being afraid, did you mean anything else?”
“What do you mean?” she asked.
“Have there been other things that you’ve only experienced fear?” He’d read her file and knew the type of man her husband was.
Chapter Three
Amy didn’t know how to respond to him. How did you tell the man you had intense feelings for that there was nothing about your marriage that you hadn’t been afraid of? Steven got off on the fear he instilled in others. When would she be rid of that bastard? He’d controlled her while he’d been married to her, and he was controlling her from prison.
“You don’t want to know the answer.”
“I wouldn’t ask if I didn’t want to know.”
She licked her lips and stared past his shoulder while thinking about her life with Steven. From the moment they had started dating to when Gabriel had carried her out of hell, she’d been afraid of Steven. “There was never a moment when I wasn’t afraid. He dominated every part of me.” Why hadn’t she seen what her life had become?
“Why did you marry him?”
“I got pregnant and didn’t have a choice. I was seventeen, scared, and my parents organised everything.”
“Did you ever love him?”
She sucked in her lips and shook her head. “No, I never loved him. I couldn’t stand his guts.” Amy broke down allowing the tears and her pain to fall away. She went to her knees, but Gabriel caught her and carried her to the couch in his sitting room. The television was playing to itself, and she let go. For six years she’d been living a nightmare. Six years of being under a man who did nothing but scare her.
“Have you ever talked about it with anyone?” he asked.
“Who is there to talk to? Most of CapeFalls doesn’t believe me, and I’ve spent most of my life thinking I should just live with it.”
“I don’t think like that.”
“You’re the only person I know who believed me. In CapeFalls, there seems to be this old written rule that we stick together as a town. What I don’t get is when I first told someone, I was laughed at. My mother told me that what a man does with his wife is his own business, and CapeFalls says to stay out of other people’s business or something like that. I think our precious little town needs to rethink the rules.” She rubbed the tears from her eyes even though more fell afterwards. “I sometimes relive that night in my head, over and over again. I don’t know what would have happened if Billy hadn’t known how to dial your number.”
He rubbed her arm and lifted her legs over his lap. They were so close, and she wanted to do nothing more than bury her head against his chest and forget about her life before she met him.
“Why don’t you tell me about him? Tell me about your life and what led you to marrying him and not throwing his ass in jail.”
She stared into his eyes. The magnetic blue always managed to soothe her. He was hard but gentle with her. Anna had offered to be her sounding board, but Amy had been afraid to talk to anyone about her time with Steven. Gabriel was different. He didn’t judge her or look down on her. In his own way, he cared about her.