her. His eyes searched her face as he frowned a little.
“What?” she asked in confusion.
“At least I showed up this time?” he asked.
Her mouth fell open. She realized she had said the words aloud and not in her head. “Yes,” she said, accepting that they were her truth and they deserved to finally be given voice.
His frown deepened as he slid his hands into the pockets of his tuxedo pants.
She stepped back from him, trying so hard not to notice how devastatingly handsome he looked in his black tuxedo. So damn good.
“I called and explained what happened,” Gabe said before glancing up as snow began to lightly fall.
Monica did the same. “Yes, you did. You always call with an explanation...of why you’re late, why you’re canceling, why you’re not even making plans to see me anymore,” she said, as she held up a hand to let one single snowflake float down upon it. “Making phone calls is not the problem.”
“What is?” he asked.
She crushed the snowflake inside her fist. “I can only guess,” she said, looking anywhere but at him. “I don’t know why you’re fading out of this relationship, but you are. First your family and now me, I guess.”
“My family?”
“Yes!” she stressed and then took a breath to reclaim her calm. “If you can cut them off and move out and be okay with not having them in your life, what does that say about your loyalty to me?”
“So now I’m disloyal?” Gabe asked, his voice low.
“And I’m divisive?” she countered.
“What?” he asked, obviously confused.
Monica knew she was all over the place. So were her emotions. Even in the storm of her anger, she knew she could find temporary calm in his arms. It would be so easy to push aside her fears and her annoyance to just get lost in him. Holding him. Kissing him.
“Deny that your family blames me for the distance between you,” she said.
His eyes shifted. That was telling.
So, Nicolette had voiced her issues with me to him already.
“You have nothing to do with the way things are between me and some of my family,” he said, not directly answering her question.
Gabe was not a liar.
“But I don’t want you to take them for granted because you don’t know what it feels like to not have family,” she said, wishing the feeling wasn’t so familiar to her.
“I don’t want to be taken for granted either, Monica,” he countered.
“Yes, but if you can walk away from them so easily—”
Gabe frowned. “You think my decision to stand independently was easy?”
She shrugged. “It seems to be.”
He snorted in derision. “A lot of things aren’t what they seem,” he said, giving her a once-over before looking away from her.
She stiffened. “If you meant that for me, you’re wrong, because I am exactly what I claim to be.”
“Supportive? Understanding? Selfless?” he asked, his voice filled with censure. “You’re the one in the wrong.”
Monica gathered her skirt in her hands as she marched over to stand before him. “Not supportive? Not understanding? Anything but selfless? Me?” she asked, poking his chest with her index finger after each question. “Are you crazy?”
“Are you?” he shot back.
“To think you would ever see me as your equal after I was your maid?” she asked. “Yes, I just might be.”
Gabe’s face hardened. “I left behind the workers at my restaurant to try and share some of the night with you,” he said, his tone as stiff as his face. “And you greet me with complaints.”
“Not complaints. Just truth,” she said, lowering her hands and balling them into tight fists that pressed the tips of her nails into the flesh of her palm.
“I don’t need this shit right now, Monica! Not from you,” he said, his voice rising and battling with the sounds of the metropolis, which filled the chilly night air.
“When?” she said quietly.
Gabe paused with his chest heaving. “What?” he asked, his face a mask of confusion.
“Over the last few months, you’ve barely given me the time of day, so when should we have talked?” she asked, remembering nights where she’d sat fully dressed and disappointed because a mishap at the site of the restaurant kept him from showing up for a date.
Gabe eyed her with intensity as he smoothed his hand over the shadow of his beard before turning to walk away from her, then suddenly turned again. “I thought you understood how important this restaurant was for me. If I mistook that, I apologize, but I won’t pretend that it doesn’t