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.
Gabriel gripped me, shaking me softly. “Sang!” he cried out. “Don’t do this to me. Please...”
“I can’t do this,” I whispered, opening my eyes a bit but not looking at him. Blurred with tears, I shook where I stood, every part of me breaking down.
I slumped and he followed me to the floor. In a heap, I was crying again. I thought I could work through it, but I couldn’t stop thinking of the damage I was doing.
“I’m sorry you saw all that,” he said, his voice a harsh whisper. He scooped me up, putting me in his lap.
I wanted to cry alone, but I couldn’t pull away from him. It was a comfort I didn’t deserve.
But I pressed my face into his shoulder anyway. It was selfish of me. He needed to get to a doctor. I needed to get to Nathan. Nathan didn’t deserve to feel like he had to run off.
But we needed this moment so I could break it down, because I’d ignored it for too long.
“Tell me it’s not over,” Gabriel whispered. His tears were flowing freely and he held me close to him. “Sang, you can’t do this.”
“I can’t do this to them,” I let out. The burning in my lungs making it one of the hardest things I ever had to say to him. “I can’t...do this to you.”
“Do what?”
I looked up, his crystal eyes blurry to me. “I can’t ask you all to feel this every time...I didn’t know what I was asking fully. But I know now. I know what Kota felt, what you feel...I can’t ask them to go through this every day...forever...”
Gabriel’s face contorted. He shook his head slowly, forming syllables but not finishing a word.
He gripped me and tightened his hold around me. “It’s not you asking us,” he said. “We’re asking you. That’s how it has to be. And it is.”
“I can’t...”
“You can if it is what we want.” His chin shifted as he spoke against my forehead. “Because I can’t ask you to pick me over Victor. Or Kota...or the others.”
Pick one?
I heard him say this, and my mind tried to keep up with the context. If I didn’t accept the relationship we’d been considering, what was the alternative?
Picking one.
Or none...
But could I ever do that?
I lowered my head until I could bury it into his shoulder again. I didn’t have an answer. It was like picking which of my fingers I wanted to keep, picking one to live with alone. It didn’t make sense.
And despite my brain telling me picking none might help them all, I couldn’t get myself to do it. My heart wouldn’t let me.
So what was left?
But I couldn’t stand this. I couldn’t take it.
“I can’t ask you all,” I said, going back to it. “I don’t want to leave, even if I should.”
“Don’t.”
“I don’t want to.”
“Don’t,” he said again. He rocked gently with me in his lap. “You’re not going anywhere, Trouble. You’re my Trouble, remember? And if it feels wrong, it’s the wrong thing to do.”
“I don’t know what to do.”
“You stay. And you help us find a way to make it happen.” He pulled back to look at me. “Because the alternative...that’s not what we want.”
“It’s not fair for me to ask you all to only date,” I said. “That’s just...”
“What we were considering,” Gabriel said. “This was the plan. From the get go. We want to stay with you. We weren’t interested in anyone else, which is why we’re agreeing to it. It isn’t about going without. It’s because we want you with us. We want to be with you, because of how you make us feel.” He grumbled low and then burst. “Fuck, Sang, we all love the shit out of you.”
My lips quivered and my face ached as I tried to not cry again, for his sake. “Nathan didn’t want to. Silas...”
“They do,” he said. “He was just here trying to kill me to get to you. He fucked up...”