Love's Cruel Redemption (The Ghost Bird #12)(115)

But my heart didn’t understand that. All I kept seeing was him with someone else, and it hurt.

I pressed my ears, as if I could squash hard enough the sight of them kissing could go away.

In my crying, I knew. I suddenly knew everything I was asking the boys to accept. To take on for themselves and ignore.

Like Kota had felt when he walked in on me kissing Gabriel.

I’d known he was in pain. Even though later he admitted he knew it had been happening and he’d ignored it, just seeing it upset him.

It wasn’t until Nathan and Danielle that I realized the tremendous pain I was putting them all through. I was horrified at myself.

How could I ask them to do this? To be okay with not just knowing, but possibly seeing something like this?

And knowing it was fake, it made my feelings toward what they were going through layer guilt upon me. If it had been real, like I’d done with the others, how much worse would I feel?

I was the hypocrite among them. The full weight of reality lowered itself onto my shoulders, crushing all the ideals I’d had before about this relationship.

Was it fair to ask them to only date me? Lily’s team had decided that they wanted to marry her, but was what they went through...could they go through this pain every day?

The shouting drew me out of my depth of thought, and I lowered one hand to hear it clearer, still unable to tell what was going on.

I opened the door just a crack to peek out, prepared to hold my ground inside the bathroom.

Gabriel was shoving himself at Nathan. Something happened, and Nathan tripped over Gabriel, landing hard, his forehead hitting Gabriel in the nose.

They continued to fight, with Gabriel shouting at him.

I couldn’t take this. I opened the bathroom door, shouting at Gabriel, wanting him to stop attacking Nathan.

Nathan recoiled when he looked at me, appearing stricken. In a flash, he was up and out of the trailer.

No! He shouldn’t leave! Not in the state he was in. “Nathan!” I cried out, and stumbled to the door, wanting to stop him. The door had slammed shut behind him.

Gabriel was on the ground, blocking my way, and he was bleeding badly.

I stopped, agony making me ache in every bone. I dropped down, hovering over Gabriel, looking over the damage.

His eyes were squinty as he covered his face. “Motherfucker...”

“Stop talking,” I said, surprised at how angry I sounded. I didn’t have anything nearby so I ripped off the shirt I was wearing, leaving myself in only a bra. I held the shirt to his nose. “Stop the bleeding.”

Gabriel winced as the cloth touched him, but he took over, holding it to his face. He sat up on his other elbow, and looked at me. “There’s a med kit. In that bathroom.”

I wanted to leave him to clean himself up, but I couldn’t do it. Nathan needed me, but Gabriel needed help too.

I went to the bathroom to retrieve the kit and brought it to him.

It took several minutes before the blood subsided enough that we could see the damage. His nose wasn’t broken, only severely split along one edge, and his lip was bleeding, too.

“He’s got the head of a rock,” he said.

In those moments, I realized Nathan wasn’t coming back. “I think I should go after him,” I said.

“Why?” Gabriel said. “Did you see what that motherfucker did?”

I pulled back from him. Now that this happened, it had jarred me from my crying jag reaction into something colder, ready to face whatever this was. There was too much pain, overwhelmingly thick between us all. I needed to help repair it before the damage was irreversible.

This wasn’t their fault.

“Danielle tricked him, didn’t she?” I asked.

“He was dumb enough to fall for it.” He picked up the bloodied shirt and the med kit, going to the bathroom with gauze at his nose. He stood in the bathroom, looking in the mirror and angling his face to check out the damage. “I may need stitches.”

“We should get you to the hospital,” I said. “But you shouldn’t blame Nathan for what happened. I know Danielle probably did something to get him to do that. And I know he was supposed to be friendly with them to get information from them.”

“Then why did you run off?” he asked. He dropped the stuff into the sink of the bathroom. Keeping the gauze to his face, he taped it in place. “Fuck, it hurts.”

I crossed my arms over my stomach, wanting to help him but he was doing it all to himself. It was chillier in the room wearing just the bra. “I didn’t want Danielle and Marie to see me reacting to it.”

“Then why didn’t you let me in?” Gabriel said, he dropped his attention from his taped up nose to look at me. He reached for me, putting hands on my shoulders. “You scared the shit out of me. You walked in, I thought...that was it. That you’d change your mind about all this. If you broke it off with Nathan...”

I closed my eyes. He was so close to me. I couldn’t answer him.

I wasn’t sure I could tell him.

“Sang,” he said, his voice softer now. “Trouble...”

I shook my head, still refusing to look at him.

Only I kept seeing Nathan kissing Danielle.

And the pain returned. After the shock of their fight wore off, it all came back. The agony. The hurt.

Realizing the truth.