immediate and if I weren’t pressed against him with my hand on his chest I wouldn’t have felt the tremble. But I did and I had to admit I liked the feel of it.
His chin dipped and his gaze lowered until our eyes locked.
“You ready to take me home?”
“Yeah.”
And without another word, he pulled me from the conference room. He spoke not a word as we navigated the complicated security checkpoints to exit the building. He remained silent when he helped me into his car. He didn’t make a peep when he slid behind the wheel and bowed his head. I gave him what he needed and didn’t try to fill the silence. It wasn’t uncomfortable as such but it was heavy.
I simply sat and waited.
Minutes went by and we just sat in his car in the parking garage. Gabe looking at his lap. Me looking out the windshield doing my best to sneak glances at him without him catching me. My heart hurt for him. Not because I felt like Zane had crossed a line he shouldn’t’ve. My heart didn’t hurt because he’d grown up in poverty. No, it hurt because I had a feeling Zane was right and Gabe lived closed off and would continue to do so. Zane was also right that material things meant nothing and that was all Gabe seemed to have.
“We were homeless,” Gabe blurted out and my body jerked in shock. “Not at first. It took a few years after Dad died. We went from our house to an apartment. Then a smaller apartment. Then an apartment in a shitty area. Then to sleeping in my mom’s car. That went on for a long time. We’d shower at truck stops. Every once in a while to give me a bed she’d rent a shitty motel room or get us into a shelter. It wasn’t smart, her wasting money on a motel, but she still did it—for me. So I’d have a bed. Before that, when we were still in the last shitty apartment we had a neighbor. She was a nice old woman. Straight-up good to her soul and when I was so hungry I couldn’t stand it I’d go to her place and she’d feed me. The woman was dirt poor and she’d still give me something to eat.”
“That was very kind of her.”
Sweet Jesus, really, that’s all you can think to say. She was kind, really?
“I survived off the kindness of others. I had to beg for my next meal. My mom tried the best she could. She worked her ass off and hustled. But once you’re so far down in the hole it’s damn near impossible to get out. If she didn’t have me, have the responsibility of taking care of a kid, it would’ve been easier for her.”
That might’ve been the saddest thing I’d ever heard.
“Maybe,” I admitted. “But I bet her having you got her through the dark times. I bet it was because she had you that she never gave up. And I bet you were the only good thing in her life at that time. So it might’ve been easier on some level, her just having to look out for herself. But she still would’ve been worse off because she wouldn’t’ve had you.”
Gabe’s eyes lifted from his lap and he gave me a sharp nod.
Then he started his car and we went back to silence as he pulled out of the parking garage.
When we got back to the Severn River Bridge I scanned the shoreline wondering which house was his. All of the homes were big and beautiful. All of them lit. I vaguely wondered if his outside lights were on a timer. Then I noticed every house had a dock and wondered if he had a boat. Zane had mentioned cars—that was plural—a house, and money, but not a boat.
I wanted to ask but didn’t.
We made it over the bridge and I forced myself to think about Delilah. That was why we’d gone to the office in the first place. Or was it? The scene had played out like a carefully crafted ambush.
I shoved those thoughts aside and made a mental note to ask Anaya about Zane the next time I talked to her. She and Kyle would be home from vacation in a few days. Maybe Kyle would bring her and Maxine over for a cuddle—that was, I’d cuddle Maxine, not Anaya, that’d just be weird.