After all her bravery shouting at Jesse, she wasn’t sure what to say.
He drove slowly, his body tense beside her. She dropped her hand onto his thigh and he immediately covered it with his own.
They rode in silence the entire way back to the house.
Chapter Nineteen
Gabe burned inside and he wasn’t sure what would put out the flames. All the frustrations, all the pain piled up, and he was slowly being crushed.
The saving grace was Allison’s presence, and even that he had no right to enjoy. Their relationship was a sham, a fake. Maybe comparable to what Jesse had done. She’d unwittingly used his desire to be there for others against him.
Yet he could have sworn something more was growing between them. He had to believe it. Had to cling to that hope.
Had to know, because waiting any longer was wrong. He wasn’t strong enough to let this one ride.
If it had been winter he would have lit the fire, just for something mundane to do with his hands. Instead, he found himself wandering the house. Moving things around. Adjusting chairs. Hell, he probably would have gone out and found a hole or two to dig if Allison hadn’t come up and wrapped herself around him.
She snuck her hands under his shirt, pressing her palms to his back. Her cheek resting on his chest. God, he felt as if she was drawing strength from him when she did that, and he didn’t have anything left to give right now.
Except, it was Allison, and he would always have something for her. He caught her head with a hand, stroked her hair. Pulled the strands over her shoulders and tangled his fingers in the soft mass.
His heart stopped racing, and when she tugged him toward the bedroom, he went.
She crawled on top of the covers and patted the space beside her. “Come here, Angel Boy.”
A snort escaped involuntarily. “I’m not great company right now.”
“I gave him hell.” Her eyes flashed. “Jesse, I mean.”
“I figured that’s what you were doing. You didn’t have to.”
She caught him by the chin. “I wanted to. And you stop it with that suffering-in-silence business. You don’t have to be quiet around me. Hell, you’ve heard me moan and groan and complain more than anyone. If you want to call your cousin a few bad names, I can take it.”
The sentiment was nice, but wasted. Jesse was right. Gabe rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling. “No use. It’s true. I do try to be a saint, and look at the results. I’m as fucked for trying to do good as not.”
Allison leaned over him, touching his face gently. “What’s wrong?”
Make or break time. He’d taunted Rafe to be brave enough to fix the things that needed fixing. Gabe stared into her concerned face and knew this had to change. It was time to move forward. Now he’d find out if it was with her or without.
“You remember my brother Michael?”
A flash of surprise lit her eyes. “Of course.”
“I think you’d already moved away when he died.”
She nodded. “I still heard. Paul was pretty tore up—the entire grade twelve class was.”
Gabe took another breath to brace himself. “It was my fault.”
Allison jerked. She sat upright and stared at him, confusion crossing her face. “I…hang on. I thought he got hit by a car.”
Gabe shuddered, throwing an arm over his eyes. He had to get to the end of this, but he couldn’t bear to watch her as he spoke. “He did. But it was my fault. I was supposed to go out celebrating with him that night. His eighteenth birthday had been only a few days earlier, and he wanted to hit the bars. The Angel Boy Colemans, painting the town red. He was so excited, in that way only he could get. He was like this light in the family, always joking around, making everyone happy.”
She grabbed hold of his free hand and gently stroked his fingers.
He was surprised she wasn’t running from the room in terror.
Gabe pushed forward. “He’d always looked up to me, and I had promised to take him out once he was legal. Big-brother shit, the older more mature twenty-one-year-old initiating the newbie. Rites of passage and all that. Only I called it off at the last minute.”
The pain flared again. If only he could turn back time and change his actions.
“Something came up?”
Oh God. “Had a girl I was seeing, and she’d promised me the moon that night. I ditched him to go out fooling around. It was nothing important, nothing I had to do so desperately. It was selfish and thinking of what I wanted, not what he needed. When he had too much to drink, I wasn’t there to stop him from wandering out into the road and getting hit.”
Allison crawled over top of him. Surprise made him move his arm as she leaned over and stared down into his face.
She had tears in her eyes.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
Easy to say, impossible to believe. “I could have stopped him. He would have whooped it up a little, but I would have prevented him from getting shitfaced. Could have driven him home, and he’d still be here. One minute he was alive, the next he was gone.”
In that moment their entire family changed.
She tugged on his shoulders. Gabe pulled himself to a sitting position. With her straddling his thighs, their faces were right in line with each other so she could peer straight into his eyes as she spoke. “Gabe Coleman. You don’t honestly believe you are responsible for your brother’s death.”
When he would have looked away, she tilted her head in warning.
He sighed. “We dealt with psychologists. The entire school had grief counsellors in, and one came to talk to the family. She told us how sometimes bad things happened to good people, and that life went on. I heard it, I get it. Doesn’t matter what I think, though, because everything changed. Ma lost her joy, Ben got mean and ugly. Rafe was only eight, and you know how hard losing family is when you’re a kid.”
She knew. Allison knew all too well what kind of pain it was to lose someone you loved.
She leaned forward and covered his mouth with hers. Briefly. Just a caress. Touched her forehead to his and spoke against his lips. “It wasn’t your fault.”
He breathed in her scent. The taste of her on the air. “I left after that, to hide from the pain and the blame. I was gone for a bunch of years before I realized I was running and there was nothing chasing me.”
“So you came back.”
“I came back because I loved the ranch, and I loved my ma. And…” He had to do it. Had to finish this. “I came back because Rafe asked me to.”
Allison lifted her head, the question clear on her face.
“He got drunk one night. Ben. Losing Michael tore him apart, and he started drinking. When I ran away I managed to avoid most of his mess, but one night he got liquored up enough he kind of lost his mind. He didn’t lay a finger on Ma or Rafe, but he smashed a bottle. A piece of glass flew out and hit my kid brother.”
She pressed her fingers to her lips, shock in her eyes. “The scar on his cheek?”
Gabe nodded. “I came home. Figured I could at least be a buffer between him and the others.”
“Oh, Gabe.”
“It worked. He stopped drinking as much because he gets some weird satisfaction out of telling me just how fucked up I am.”
Allison cupped his neck in her hands, eyes filled with moisture. “You came home to rescue them, and you’ve been doing it ever since.”
Nailed it. “Even, it seems, to people who don’t need saving.”
“Fuck Jesse.”
He couldn’t stop it. He snorted. “No, thanks.”
“You know what I mean.” She squeezed harder, fingers stroking the tight muscles at the top of his spine. “You’re a decent, kind man, and no matter what your motivations were to start with, if you weren’t a giving person deep down, you never would have tried to be there for others. Especially not for as long as you have.”