12 Days of Gabriel–A series of vignettes told from Gabriel’s POV:
Mad for You #8
“Are we still on for lunch today?”
Her voice held nothing of the strain and confusion from this morning. Emma sounded hopeful, as if last night and my ensuing distance was a thing of the past. How I wish it was. How I wished Embry would let go, how I wished I hadn’t been so supremely arrogant to think I could dismiss her as I’d dismissed all the others before her.
I sighed, hating the fucking predicament I’d put myself in. “I would love nothing more, Emma. I’m afraid I can’t though. I’ve got a ton of paperwork to get through.”
Her answer came immediately. “Oh, it’s okay. I’m sorry to bother you.”
I heard the rejection in her voice, the panicked resistance to feeling it and the emotional disconnection that was so natural to Emma as breathing. One day I hoped to be someone she could trust with her full range of emotions. Someone capable of showing her it was okay to be vulnerable, to need me.
Today wasn’t that day. Maybe never.
Agony, much like what I’d felt when she rejected me after Prom, attacked. It was a true physical sensation, one that barely left me with breath. I grabbed my desk, leaning forward as if to keep her from disconnecting the call. “Emma, wait!”
“Yes?”
I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t confide in Emma and tell her the truth about this afternoon. She’d want to know everything, as was her right, but I wasn’t ready for her to know the whole ugly truth of how I’d been living since my father died.
Once again the real fear that I wasn’t good enough for her came up to choke me. I couldn’t find the words to make things right. Closing my eyes, I leaned back in my chair. “I’m sorry for this. I’ll make it up to you. I promise.”
“You don’t have to apologize, Gabriel. There’s nothing to make up. Things happen. We’ll have lunch another day, okay?”
Sweet, sweet Emma didn’t understand what I was really saying. How could she? Why would she ever suspect that I’d come to close to getting engaged with my Submissive? Hell, why would she ever think that I was the way I was?
Sitting there alone in my office, I couldn’t help but wonder it too. Why did I have to be this way? Why couldn’t I just be as simple as I presented?
Why?
I didn’t know. So all I could say was “I will make it up to you,” and prayed I could keep my word to her without breaking her heart in the process.