The Same

ANNA

“How much did you hear?”

Gavin’s words echoed in my head. I hadn’t even had time to process it all, and now he was asking how long I had eavesdropped on him and his sister.

“Annalise?”

His voice brought me crashing back to reality. I stared up at the man who felt like a stranger and felt my bottom lip start to tremble.

“I’m not a child.”

Gavin shoved his hands in his pockets and shook his head. “No, you’re not.”

His brow furrowed, and he closed his eyes before sitting down next to me with his back against the bed frame. I drew my knees up to my chest and wrapped my arms around them.

“She didn’t mean for you to hear any of what she said, Annalise,” he murmured. “Chloe’s worried about me and my agenda—not yours.”

“Whether or not she meant for me to hear it, she meant what she said, Gavin,” I pointed out. “And none of what she said was wrong… Not even her noticing that you don’t love me.”

He rolled his head to the side to look at me. “She’s a detective. It’s her job to notice shit. Not every couple professes their love every five minutes.”

We sat quietly with a heavy wall of tension between us.

“Do you walk around on eggshells around me?” he asked suddenly.

My gut reaction was denial, but I hesitated and let myself really think about it.

“In the beginning, I was afraid to let myself want this—to want ~you~—too much. Once I opened up to the possibility of us…” I bit my lip and shook my head.

“I’m terrified to lose you, Gavin. And if there isn’t love to keep us together, then what’s to stop you from leaving if I’m too annoying? Or too pushy? Or too… ~much~?”

His eyes snapped to mine. “There is nothing more in this world that I want than you. You are the only one who has ever tried to run away from this.”

“That’s not fair,” I argued.

He shrugged. “Why not? You left the night I asked you to sign the contract. You left after Chelsea got under your skin—”

“Do you really want to bring her up?” I seethed. “Because I seem to remember your sister sharing an interesting tidbit about how I made Chelsea jealous.”

Our eyes locked and narrowed. The vein in Gavin’s forehead pulsed.

“She’s not the only one wondering whether this whole marriage is just to get back at the only woman who ever really had your heart, Mr. Powell.”

Gavin stood up. “It’s time for bed.” He looked down at me. “Before one of us says something that might actually hurt the other.”

I got to my feet and crossed my arms over my chest. “Why didn’t you just marry her? She wanted you. She would have had children to keep you.”

“No, Annalise!” he snapped. “She wouldn’t have.”

I rolled my eyes. “How do you know that?”

“Because she didn’t!”

He slammed the cell phone from his pocket down on the bedside table and started undressing angrily.

Every muscle in his body seemed to be pulled taut, ready to snap. He was breathing heavily, and his jaw was clenched.

I stared at him, trying to make sense of his admission. Part of me knew we were on the precipice of an argument that would define the future of our relationship.

“What do you mean,” I asked slowly, “‘she didn’t’?”

He froze halfway between, taking his shirt off. I watched his ribs under his skin as his chest rose and fell. When I met his eyes, they were filled with unfiltered pain.

Gavin seemed at war with himself, torn between telling me the truth and telling me to leave him the fuck alone. I waited quietly for his decision.

Finally, he nodded and sank onto the bed. I sat at the foot with my legs crossed, facing him.

“Last year, Chelsea was pregnant.”

My hand flew up to my mouth as it fell open. Of all the things he might have said, that was the last one I was expecting. Gavin barely seemed to notice my surprise.

“I’m not sure that she would have even told me if I hadn’t come home early to find her crying on my bathroom floor. She tried to hide it, but I saw the test in the trash can.”

He ran a rough hand over his face. “I was over the moon. We had some problems even then, but we had been together a long time, and I’d always wanted to be a father. I thought it was meant to be.

“Chelsea felt the opposite. She refused to talk about it. I tried to get her to see how great being parents could be. We had everything, and we could give our child an amazing life.

“She didn’t want to hear any of it. She sulked and eventually withdrew into herself completely. After about two weeks, she came to me with an ultimatum: she would have our baby on the condition that we get married.”

My heart clenched at the thought of them together in that way, but I forced myself to keep my expression neutral.

“I agreed, of course,” Gavin continued. “But the way she was acting felt…wrong.”

He sighed and looked away. “Then she was asked to do a major cover shoot. The only problem being it was six months away. At that point, there would be no hiding that she was pregnant.

“She would have had to turn down the job or tell the magazine about the baby and hope they agreed to keep her on.

“Instead…” His voice trailed off, and he cleared his throat. “Instead, she ended it.”

I gasped. “She got an abortion?”

He swallowed and nodded. “At first, she told me she lost it. I was sad, but it was out of her control, right? A couple weeks later, I brought up the fact that I would like to try again once she was ready.

“She told me the truth about what happened. And that she didn’t want a baby. Ever.”

I wrapped my arms around myself as I took in what Gavin was telling me. He had never looked as sad as he did then.

“The two of you hadn’t discussed children?” I asked.

He ran a hand through his hair. “We had. She always avoided the question about when she wanted kids. I assumed she was focused on her modeling career, and that when she was ready, we would settle down and start a family.”

He shook his head with a grimace. “After the abortion, she still expected us to get married. We were both pro-choice, so she couldn’t understand why I felt so betrayed.

“Meanwhile, I was grappling with the fact that I didn’t really know the woman I thought I loved. She never gave me a choice, and I realized then she never would. I could either stay with her, a woman who could apparently lie to me with truly admirable ease. Or I could be a father. Not both.

“The final straw came when she tipped off the media that we were going to a jewelry store,” he continued. “She could feel me pulling away and was trying to back me in a corner.

“We were picking up a birthday gift she had ordered for her mother, but every news outlet ran a story that we were looking at engagement rings.”

“I ended things for good shortly thereafter.”

“I’m sorry, Gavin,” I said quietly.

“Don’t be.” He grimaced. “It would have imploded eventually. I’m glad we didn’t bring a baby into that mess.”

“It still hurt.”

He pursed his lips. “I’d spent so much time trying to make our relationship work, and it didn’t matter.

“The worst part was realizing that she cared more about fame and attention than she did about my feelings.”

I shrugged and let my shoulders fall heavily. “That’s because you loved her.”

His eyes snapped to mine. “I only thought I loved her.”

I chuckled humorlessly. “There’s no such thing as thinking you love someone, Gavin. You loved her.

That doesn’t change just because she broke your heart.”

He stared at me for a long moment. I could see the wall come up behind his eyes and knew I had stepped out of his unspoken boundary once again.

“Whatever, Annalise,” he muttered.

He stood to turn off the light, but there was one last thought I couldn’t get out of my head.

I was already in trouble. Why not jump with both feet?

“You never denied it,” I said.

He paused and looked at me with an arched brow.

I swallowed. “When your sister accused you of using me to make Chelsea jealous, you didn’t actually deny it.”

His jaw clenched. “I have never lied to you,” he said, his voice low. “I have wanted you from the moment we met.”

My hope lifted slightly, but he wasn’t finished.

“When I decided that I wanted to offer you the contract, I did it because I think you’re an incredible woman,” he continued.

“That does not mean I don’t enjoy the pain that I know it brings Chelsea to see me with you. And it doesn’t mean that it didn’t factor into my decision.”

My mouth was suddenly dry. “You’re using me to get back at her.”

He took a deep breath. “I’m using you to get what I want. I suggest you do the same, Annalise.”

With that, he flicked off the light.