they lost their apartment. His mom had sunk into a depression and lost her job. With no money, no school cafeteria, Gabe had gone for long stretches of time not just hungry but starving until his mom found another job. That wasn’t heartbreaking—it was soul-crushing. And I took an oath right then and there never to give Gabe grief when he tried to force-feed me. I’d eat whatever, whenever, as long as it gave him peace of mind.
He also explained that he’d invested in Garrett’s software company which Garrett still owned on top of working at Z Corps. Therefore when Garrett sold the G2 application Gabe and Garrett both made a mint. The more I listened to Gabe talk about money, the more I realized he didn’t have a problem with it, as he told me. He was smart, invested, saved, had healthy retirement accounts but spent his extra money on whatever he wanted. That wasn’t a problem in my book. He worked hard to earn it and spent it how he saw fit.
Between conversations learning about him, I told him everything about me. It was like a non-stop forty-eight-hour speed date. We crammed months’ worth of getting-to-know-you into hours. And somehow it was perfect. It felt right. We fell in love with a look. We got to know each other in a hospital bed after we’d been kidnapped together.
It was us.
Totally.
And now Zane was driving us back to Gabe’s house and we’d be there soon. Weirdly, I wasn’t nervous about this. It didn’t feel fast even though it was. It was lightning speed and I hoped we never slowed down.
A phone rang from the front seat of the Suburban. I tore my eyes from car-watching out the back window and slid my gaze between the two front seats. Thankfully, sometime in the last four days since Gabe had been in the back seat bleeding, someone had the SUV detailed and there were no more dark red smears on the light gray leather. At first, I was concerned about sitting in the seat Gabe had been laid across. I was worried I’d have some sort of flashback. But strangely I was comforted. We’d gotten Gabe to help. He was alive. I was alive. And all was well.
“Joe,” Gabe answered. There was a long pause. Then he finished with, “Right. We’ll be there in about twenty. See you when you get back.”
Gabe tossed the phone back in the cupholder, craned his neck to look at me, and smiled.
“Your parents are going to the store.”
That was something else that happened. My dad took to calling Gabe. Not me—Gabe. I thought he was doing this in an effort to glean some insight into who Gabe was. Or maybe he was talking to Gabe so much because he was waiting for Gabe to expose that he was really an asshole so my dad could throw me in his rental car and drive me back to Milwaukee under protest.
I didn’t ask Gabe’s opinion on this. I just rolled with it. My mom on the other hand called me and she did this every few hours. At first, I thought she was doing it to make sure I was really okay. But then I realized she wasn’t. She called to tell me about Gabe’s house. I’d admitted I’d been staying in a safehouse so I’d never been to Gabe’s home. My mother had excitedly told me all about it. The view was magnificent. The kitchen was a chef’s dream. The sunroom would be a perfect reading nook. The dock was spectacular. The master bedroom was paradise and the bathroom was to-die-for. The last part I found alarming and told my mom to stop snooping in Gabe’s personal space. I knew she’d ignored me when she called again to tell me about the walk-in closet and all the other closet space besides. Needless to say, my mom loved Gabe’s house. She didn’t make it into a big deal that I was moving in with a man I’d known a short time, into a house I’d never seen. In one of our conversations she’d whispered, “When it’s right, it’s right. And only you know if it’s right.”
My mom was a smart lady and since she reminded me I was the only person who knew what was right for me, I let it go and moved on.
“My mom’s sweet but she’s bossy when she’s in the kitchen,” I blurted out.