Page 129 of I Dreamt That You Loved Me

But I didn’t have the heart to tell her that so instead, I shrugged and said, “I didn’t think it would be such a big deal.”

My mom stared at me, aghast. “Not a big deal?He’s my son-in-law.”

I couldn’t believe she was playing the son-in-law card. “I’m your only daughter. Get your priorities straight.” I was only half-joking, because really? She was Team Gabriel?

“I have my priorities straight. You’re still my number one. But we care about Gabriel too.” She looked to Sean for backup. He grunted in agreement. “I think you two need to sit down and have an open, honest conversation before you make any major decisions. He’s worked so hard to get to a good place. He’s not the same man who left you.”

“Yeah, well, if he was doing so great, why did he leave me hanging for three years? He could have at least had the common decency to pick up the phone and call me.” I was really harping on that, but it was a hard thing to wrap my head around.

They say that time heals all wounds, but that was a lie.

All the old hurt and resentment had resurfaced with his reappearance. All the nights I’d cried for that man, wondering where he was and if I’d ever see him again, only to find out that he’d been off in the fucking desert doing drugs.

I used to wear his old Jimi Hendrix T-shirt to bed every night until one day I realized that it smelled more like me than him, and I’d sobbed so hard that my stomach hurt and my ribs were sore for two days.Over a stupid T-shirt.

“He never came back formeand now that it’s convenient forhim,he expects me to fall back into his arms like nothing ever happened?” I shook my head. “Nuh uh. It doesn’t work that way.”

My mom and Sean exchanged another meaningful look.

“He came back,” Sean said finally. “About three days after you left for Bali, he showed up at Monks. Said he’d been sittingoutside the apartment waiting for you to come home. He was in a bad way. Wouldn’t have been any good for you…”

Three days? I’d missed him by three days? What was it with us and the curse of threes? I left in May. He returned in May.

I should have waited longer than ten months. What was wrong with me?

No one ever told me he came back. Although I knew he must have at some point since he’d obviously picked up his things from the cabin, just thinking about him waiting for me pierced my heart.

“You want to hear the rest?” Sean asked.

I nodded. “Tell me everything. I want to hear it all.” If I’d asked sooner, maybe we could have saved ourselves a lot of time and heartache.

“About six months after he came back, he asked for your address. I thought he was just gonna send a letter. But he flew to London and just missed you again. You were in Paris at the time.”

My throat closed up and I felt like I was going to cry. How did we keep missing each other? And who would fly all the way to London without calling to check if I’d be there? Gabriel, that’s who.

“I don’t know the whole story, but he ran into some trouble,” Sean continued. “The paparazzi were hassling him, and I guess he snapped. Punched one of the guys and broke a camera.” He chuckled like the whole thing amused him, but I saw nothing funny about any of this.

That didn’t even make sense. Gabriel didn’t have a violent bone in his body. “But Gabriel wouldneverdo something like that.”

“Yeah.” Sean blew out a breath. “Wasn’t one of his finest moments.”

“He was staying with Ian,” my mom said as if that explained everything.

“So he flew to London, got into some trouble, and then he just…left?” I asked, trying to make sense of this.

My mom said, “I think he knew that he wasn’t ready for you yet.”

Sean picked up the ball and ran with it. They were a tag team now. “When he got back from London, he really started doing the work. He got more serious about his music, and he turned his life around.” Sean’s voice was filled with pride. As if Gabriel was his own son, and not just the guy whose career he managed.

“He said that he wanted to be a better man,” my mom said. “For himself. And for you.”

God. That was such a Gabriel thing to say.

He’d always been a good man though. The best kind of man. Generous with his heart, kind and loving, with an enthusiasm for life that was infectious. Which was why it had been so difficult to reconcile the Gabriel I’d married with post-surgery Gabriel who cared about nothing and no one, not even himself.

“Sounds like you’ve spent a lot of time with him.” I tried to keep my voice neutral, more inquisitive than accusatory but wasn’t sure how well I’d succeeded.

“We wanted to make sure he had somewhere to go for the holidays and got spoiled on his birthday, and that he always knew he had a family that cared about him,” my mom said simply.