Page 42 of Careless Whisper (Modern Vintage Romances #11)
Naomi
Y ou know that sound when a bomb goes off—the sharp, high-pitched whistle that drowns out everything else? It’s not the world around you making it, but your brain trying to protect you from what it just witnessed?
That’s what I heard when I saw Gage kiss the blonde he brought to Maison.
That sound hit me hard.
Singular.
Deafening.
My heart went quiet just to survive it.
It was my fault.
I should’ve never told the biggest commitment-phobe in New Orleans that I’d fallen in love with him.
The words had slipped out when he was inside me.
“You make me feel so fuckin’ good, baby,” Gage groaned as he pumped in and out of me.
He cupped my ass, lifting me so he could go deeper.
“Say you’re mine,” he demanded, his blue eyes looking intensely into mine.
It was uncharacteristic of him to say something like that—and it freed something inside me, something that had been building for months now, a need to tell him how I felt, show him my heart.
“I am,” I whispered.
And then, after we orgasmed together, I whispered in his ear, “I love you.”
There was that whistling sound then, too.
He’d pulled out immediately like he’d just found out I had syphilis.
Usually, we lay together, he even slept at my place unless he had to head to a site early in uptown, then he’d stay at his house, which was there. Not this time.
Three little words, and it was over .
I knew it when he gave me a tight smile, a peck on the cheek, and ran .
Did it hurt to see him, just two days since I spilled my heart, kissing another woman? Yes .
Was I surprised? No .
I was, after all, a practical woman.
I knew what it meant to be an obligation.
My severely God-loving uncle and aunt let me stay with them in Baton Rouge after my parents passed away when I was thirteen.
They treated me like a duty, a penance. I’d promised myself that when I had relationships, they’d all be authentic and would exist only because I wanted them to and because my affection and love were reciprocated fully and wholly.
After telling Gage how I felt and having it thrown in my face, I could no longer pretend that what we had was sustainable.
We weren’t just casually dating any longer.
I’d caught feelings, and he didn’t do that.
He’d been clear about that from the start. I appreciated his candor, his openness—and then, slowly but steadily, I fell in love.
How could I not?
Gage Walker was a wonderful man.
It didn’t hurt that he looked the way he did.
Broad and muscular, he had a striking presence, with a bold tattoo spanning his upper back and a sleeve of ink winding down one arm.
He kept his hair closely cropped for practicality, and the neatly trimmed beard was a habit he’d picked up as a teenager, back when he was eager to look older.
He loved his parents—visited them every week without fail. I saw them once, by accident, when I bumped into Gage at the Easter parade in the Marigny. He was walking with them, laughing. But when he spotted me, he didn’t stop. Just gave me a nod and kept moving.
He was close to his younger brother, who was studying medicine at LSU, and I knew he was footing the bill.
His little sister was at Juilliard in New York, dancing, and he was covering that, too.
He never once complained. Just mentioned them with quiet pride, like helping them was the most natural thing in the world.
He never said it outright, but I had the sense he helped his parents, too, and not just with time or running errands, but with money.
He was the son who never needed to be asked.
He talked easily about his family, and whenever he did, I felt a pang and wished they were mine as well. He told me stories about holiday traditions, which I foolishly and, to my disappointment, kept hoping he’d include me in.
Now, he was making it clear to me—whatever we had was done, and it was because of me. I hadn’t been able to keep it casual. I’d broken the contract we had made to keep it simple.
“Not lookin’ for more than sex and companionship, baby.”
Aurelie and her band started playing the last set of the night, and as if it were just for me, began with Que Sera, Sera .
She’d tried to talk to me about Gage being at Maison with a woman during the break, but I’d told her it wasn’t an issue since Gage and I weren’t in a relationship.
But damn it, it had felt like one.
He spent nearly every free evening and weekend with me. He cooked for me and let me cook for him. We watched movies together and went out, just the two of us, and not just with groups of friends.
I met Gage when his company, Walker Restoration, was hired to renovate the building next to my shop and apartment on Royal Street.
It hadn’t taken long for me to learn that he wasn’t just a muscle-bound guy in a hard hat swinging a sledgehammer around for fun. He was a top restorer of old buildings, and his reputation stretched from the Garden District to the Marigny.
If you had a hundred-year-old Creole cottage falling in on itself or a fire-damaged Second Empire mansion about to crumble into the street, Gage was the person you called.
The French Quarter might’ve been a party to the rest of the world, but to us locals, it was a living museum—a federally protected historic district with rules so strict they’d fine you for repainting your shutters the wrong shade of green.
Most contractors didn’t have that expertise.
Gage did!
He had a master’s in historic preservation and construction management—how’s that for sexy?
Tattooed forearms and a degree in saving the past.
He didn’t slap plaster over a rotted beam and call it a day. He’d get into the bones of a building, study its history, and trace the line of every joist and cornice until he could hear the house breathe as it used to.
I once heard him argue with a city inspector for twenty minutes over the phone about a set of 1850s cypress doors.
Gage won.
I think I fell in love with him the day he took me to the Lafitte House on Burgundy Street. He was overseeing a complete restoration, down to the handmade crown molding and hand-lathed balusters.
The place was gutted, just exposed brick and dust and possibility.
I remembered walking through it with him, listening to him talk about the old French-style chimneys and the transom windows above the doors, how they used to let air flow through before modern AC.
He touched every beam like it was sacred.
“Buildings are like people,” he told me, standing in that hollowed-out parlor. “You think they’re broken, but they just need someone who knows how to look at them right. Someone patient enough to bring them back.”
I didn’t know if he meant it as a metaphor. Knowing Gage, probably not. But I felt something shift in me that day. I let him into my heart even though it wasn’t something he wanted.
Now, as I watched him leave Maison with the blonde he’d kissed so passionately, I held on to my tears.
I’d learned long ago that mourning the truth didn’t get you anywhere. I could’ve cried and cried that my loving parents were gone and that at the age of thirteen, I was now cloistered in a home with no love, no affection, no kind words—just the harshness of scripture.
But what would the point have been?
Instead, I made it work with Uncle Fred and Aunt Frannie—swear to God those were their names, not making it up.
Once I was eighteen, I hightailed it out of Baton Rouge and their influence. I still sent them a Christmas card if I remembered to, but we didn’t have a relationship. I didn’t want it.
They hadn’t been nice or kind to me. They hadn’t been generous. They hadn’t spoken warmly of my mother (Uncle Fred’s sister) or my father, disparaging them when I’d just lost them.
That was also a promise I’d made to myself—I’d only have people in my life who were kind to me, who respected me, who cared for me.
Gage and his date disappeared into the chaos of Frenchmen Street.
I let out a long breath. I’d now have to get over the man, which wouldn’t be easy.
It was the first time in my twenty-nine years that I’d fallen in love—and I knew the fallout was going to hurt like hell.
But I’d gotten past my parents’ death—found a way to be happy.
I’d get over Gage, I didn’t doubt that.