As the seconds tick past, my mind whirs with possibilities, trying to convince my heart that Gill's over-exaggerating or overestimating his influence on the situation. But I know that's not true. Gilleon doesn't make mistakes like that.
Karl had your mother killed, Regi. Because of me. Elena, she's dead because of me.
Gill reaches up and rubs at his shoulder, where the bullet grazed his flesh. The wound's mostly healed now, pink and ragged at the edges but closed up. That's how my heart feels—or how it felt before now. The wounds were there, yes, and they still hurt sometimes, but they weren't open and oozing, waiting for infection to take over. I'm terrified that this conversation is going to rip them wide open.
“When I lived with my mother,” Gill begins when I don't say anything else, running his hand down his face again. I know he doesn't like to talk about that part of his life, all of the horrible things he endured while trying to keep his mom from plunging into the deep end. He pauses and takes a deep breath, the muscles and tendons in his hands standing out against his tight knuckles as he curls them into fists. “Fuck,” he growls, looking down at the floor and putting his hands on his hips as he tries to pull himself together. Me, I feel like I'm in a dream right now. Okay, nightmare. But I feel like I'm asleep, floating through a fantasy world that'll burst into bubbles at first light. So, since I can't do anything about my own hurting, I decide to focus on Gill's.
Without thinking twice about it, I stand up and move across the room, sliding my arms around Gill's strong midsection and resting my head against his chest. He sucks in a deep breath before returning the favor, holding me tight, fingers fisting in the back of my white sweater.
“I remember,” I tell him, my breath coming in short, quick bursts as I push back another set of tears. At this point, I don't even really know what exactly it is that I'm crying about: Gill, my mom, his mom, maybe even … me? I haven't cried for me in a long, long time. “I remember when I was nineteen,” I say, closing my eyes against the warmth radiating from Gill's chest, “you'd just turned twenty, and we were supposed to go to dinner for your birthday. Me, you, and Cliff. I remember you calling your mom because you were surprised she hadn't called you on your birthday. You went into your room, and you didn't come out. You told Cliff and me that you weren't feeling well.”
“I called my mom's number and some guy answered,” he says, filling in the blanks for me. “He said she'd been shot during some drug deal gone bad.” He takes another breath and scoots me back just enough to look into my eyes. “I didn't tell you because we were so happy then: me, you, and dad. And you'd just started to really smile again.” Gill reaches up and brushes a stray tear away with his thumb, making my breath hitch.
I imagine him smiling through the pain, struggling with that loss alone, and I feel a wave of sadness break over me.
“Thank you for sharing with me,” I tell him, and I mean it, too. The things he's telling me now, these are things that Gill never shared before. It gives me hope, too much hope, that this could really work between us again. Shit. I step back out of his arms, crossing my own over my chest and staring down at his bare feet on the hardwood floor. “But I assume this all ties together in the worst of ways?”
One of my tears hits the floor and splatters on Gill's toes. I'm transfixed by it, can't even bring myself to look away.
“It gets worse,” he admits, and I nod because hell, I'm invested now, all in. I gave up the life I'd built, the only life my daughter had ever known, that my stepdad loved, and I dragged them all into this with me because I still love Gilleon. I could live a thousand years and still love him with a fierceness that hurts. Whether we end up back together or not, I'm a part of all this, so I have to see it through. “It gets so much worse, Regina.”
And it does.
Because all of this, this pain and this tragedy, it all leads to the day that Gilleon left. And even though I miss my mom, miss her so fucking much that I can't breathe sometimes, I missed Gilleon more. More. Most.
The idea that my mother is dead because of … Gilleon. I don't see how all this fits together yet, but I'm scared, a cold chill traveling from my heart right down to my toes.
“I need a minute, okay?” I say, realizing that I can only take so much, can only process so much at once, and he nods again, not trusting himself to speak. In the back of my mind, I know why I'm doing this, why I'm asking for a break: I don't want whatever this is to come between us, to push us apart, to make me lose Gilleon again. I'm afraid.
I glance up, and we look into one another's eyes for a moment, the feelings I admitted earlier floating in the air between us. We need to talk about those, sure, but first, I have to hear what Gill has to say about all of this. After more than a decade, I'll finally know why he left.