pull his hand into my lap but he resists, shooting me a dark look out of the corner of his eye.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“Why haven’t you come to me since the fundraiser?”
Gabriel’s jaw muscles tense. “I’ve been busy.”
“Reading the gossip column in the paper?”
He looks up, eyes flashing. “Alexis, do you want something? Or have you just come to annoy me?”
“Yes, I do want something, actually. I want you to let me in.”
He rolls his eyes. Rolls. His. Eyes. Like how a petulant teenager would react to a parent trying to “hang.”
“Do not roll your eyes at me!” I snap. “That’s a fair request, Gabriel. Aren’t you tired of all these games we play? It doesn’t have to be like that. If you let me in we won’t have to pretend anymore. We could be a team.” I cover his hand with mine. “We could be a family.”
His lip curls but he doesn’t respond, just looks back down at the paper. I doubt he’s actually reading the sports highlights and I know I am meant to take this as a dismissal.
Part of me wants to go, too, to scuttle away with my tail between my legs. What did I think was going to happen? Did I think he would take my hand and we would skip all the way to the storage shed, where we’d toss purple heroin into the air like confetti?
“Gabriel, please,” I say, grabbing his chin and turning him to face me. “I’m tired. Aren’t you tired?”
“Always,” he replies in a dull voice. “I’m always tired.”
“Then let’s stop this and start working together.”
Gabriel yanks out of my grip and rises to his feet. He gives me a look that presses like lead weights on my shoulders. I feel I might sink into the earth’s crust with the force of it.
“Stop it, Alexis,” he says. “There’s no point.”
And then he leaves, and I collapse against the cushions. I’m almost glad it didn’t work. I’m embarrassed and hurt and angry, but I feel guilty too. I did just put myself out there and get denied, but part of my motivation for doing so was to get inside knowledge on his purple heroin operation. I wonder if Gabriel saw through me, or if he just wants nothing to do with me.
Maybe it’s a bit of both.
I sigh and get to my feet. If I’m not getting anything from Gabriel, I have a couple of leads to follow up. I’ve been trying to reach dockworkers who have witnessed the meetings to see if I can use any descriptions of the mysterious third party—the one selling the drugs to Gabriel—to try to identify them. If I do, I think I’ll be able to cut Gabriel out of the narrative entirely.
After that, I have to start getting Harry ready for the family portrait we’re taking this afternoon. Gabriel’s publicist said it would be a good idea to put one on the website.
It’s crazy to think that Gabriel just flat out rejected me, but in a couple of hours, he will have his arm around me with a bright smile on his lips.
He will pretend to love me, and I will pretend that it doesn’t hurt like hell knowing that he doesn’t.
By the time the photographer, Edie Armstrong, arrives and the soft-box lights have been set up, Gabriel is back to the smiling, doting version of himself. He wraps an arm around my shoulders and jokes with the photographer about how “this one doesn’t have a bad side,” and I smile and go along with it, though I can’t help but replay this morning’s not-fight in my head.
Stop it, Alexis. There’s no point.
The contrast between how he was this morning and how he is now is so stark that it hurts. The worst part is, this doesn’t feel fake, though I know it is. It has to be.
“Let’s get the three of you on the sofa,” Edie says, adjusting her camera. “We’ll take some standing shots after.”
She has sharp, cat-like brown eyes and a tangle of dark curls tied in a bun at the top of her head. She seems to see more than most, her studious stare catching and zeroing in on seemingly mundane parts of the room. I wonder what she sees when she looks at us. Does her supervision pierce Gabriel’s thick veil of lies?
Gabriel and I arrange ourselves on the sofa, with Harry balanced between us, and Edie offers a few directions before she starts snapping photos.
“Good,” she