Page 74 of Better Off Wed
“What did Ivan mean when he said your mother had left?”
With my head on his chest, I heard Gideon’s pulse speed up. He put the remote on the arm of the sofa and swallowed. “She left when I was eight years old. My dad raised us. He had to work overtime to care for us, so a lot of the home stuff fell to me when my aunts or grandma couldn’t come and help. It was a lot.”
I licked my lips and said, “I’m so sorry.”
“It was a long time ago.”
I nodded, my face rubbing against his shirt. “Why did your mom leave?”
“My dad had met her when he was in the military, andthey’d settled here when he got out. She popped the four of us out within six years. We were four out-of-control boys. She was at home all day with us in this small town she’d never wanted to move to. I guess it was just too much for her.”
With his arm draped around me, I felt the moment his hand spasmed on my arm. I wondered if he thought I’d be the same. If I’d cut and run back to the city at the first sign of trouble. But where would I go?Whywould I go, when all my happiness was right here with him?
“I’m so sorry, Gideon,” I repeated.
“It’s fine,” he replied, but the hitch in his voice told me it was a wound that still caused him pain. “I mean, I had my aunts and uncles. I had my grandparents. I had my brothers and my dad. And after my dad died, the whole family rallied. I’m lucky.”
Like he was lucky to get out of the fire with only the burns he sustained. Funny kind of luck, I thought.
He flexed the hand that wasn’t holding me. I watched the low light glint on the signet ring he always wore on his right hand. He shifted, pulling the ring off to hold it between his thumb and forefinger. “My dad got sick when I was seventeen. Pancreatic cancer. Died within four months of feeling an ache in his back.”
“Oh, my goodness. I’m so sorry,” I said for the third time. I wished there was something else I could tell him, but nothing seemed right.
“He gave me this ring and told me to watch over my brothers when he was gone. That’s the Mars family crest,” he said, gesturing to the design on the ring. “He said family’s allwe’ve got at the end of the day, and as the eldest it was my job to watch over my brothers and take care of my grandmother.”
“Your grandmother doesn’t seem like she needs taking care of.”
Gideon huffed a laugh. “No, she doesn’t, does she?”
I lifted my head off his shoulder and looked in his eyes. “That’s a lot of pressure to put on a seventeen-year-old.”
He stared into my eyes and said nothing.
I pushed his hair off his forehead, my heart aching for the little boy who’d been through so much. No wonder Gideon had been unsurprised when I’d told him I was leaving the morning after our wedding. It wasn’t just his scars that made him believe everyone abandoned him. His mother had left when he was a small child, and his father had died suddenly—and that was before his ex had rejected him for the crime of saving the lives of three kids.
Gideon had started a business and expanded it in order to employ his brothers. He’d hired his cousin Connor. The only reason he’d agreed to an arranged marriage was for them and to make his grandmother happy. He dropped everything to go bail Wendy out when she ran out of gas.
He always put me first, and not just during sex. He’d plate up my food before his own and always give me the better cuts of meat. He was protective and tender and patient.
Everyone came before Gideon. He put every single other person ahead of him, as if his needs didn’t matter.
Pressing a hand to his heart, I asked in a whisper, “And who is supposed to take care of you?”
There was a flash in his eyes. Pain and yearning, there and gone. Even now, he didn’t understand. He didn’t think hedeserved someone to take care of him. Didn’t realize that that someone wasme.
Because this was love unlike anything I’d experienced before. How else could I describe the overwhelming feeling of fullness in my chest? The fear that I would lose something I so desperately wanted? The weightless, breathless feeling of being the one he chose? Offindingeach other when life had seemed so bleak before I saw him standing at the end of the aisle.
“Gideon, I—” I stopped. Exhaled. Tried again. Failed.
Even though he was the best man I’d ever met, I was afraid.
How could I measure up to him? He who was so patient and brave and selfless and loving? He who was my perfect man, who demanded nothing of me? He who made me believe in a future that I had thought was only a fantasy?
Why would he want someone as thoroughly inadequate as me?
Because it had barely been a month. How could I trust that things would stay good? What if in another month or a year or longer, Gideon decided that actually, hewasn’tsatisfied with me? He needed more. He needed someone else. Someone better. What would happen then?
I would be heartbroken again, but it would be so much worse, because my feelings for him were immense and growing every day. If I didn’t tell him how I felt, it meant I could hide a little part of me. Keep it safe.
