“What about Rachel?”
“I left before she returned. She refused to speak to me for months.”
“Don’t lie to me, Gabriel. I brought your jacket back. I folded it and put it on top of the blanket and set it on the porch. That was a clue. And didn’t someone see my bike?”
“I don’t know what they saw. Grace gave me my jacket, and no one mentioned you or your name, not that I would have recognized it. It was as if you were a ghost.”
“How could you have thought it was a dream? You weren’t that drunk.”
He closed his eyes and clenched his fists. Julia watched the tendons stand out on his arms, rippling up and down.
Gabriel opened his eyes, but kept them fixed on the table. “Because I was hungover and confused, and I was strung out on coke.”
Slam.
That was the sound of Julia’s fairy tale crashing into the unyielding wall of reality. Her eyes widened, and she inhaled sharply.
“Didn’t Rachel ever tell you what precipitated the fight? Richard knew when he picked me up at the airport in Harrisburg that I was on something. He searched my room before dinner and found my stash. When he confronted me, I snapped.”
Julia closed her eyes and put her head in her hands.
He sat very still, waiting for her to speak.
“Cocaine,” she whispered.
Gabriel squirmed in his chair. “Yes.”
“I spent the night in the woods, alone, with a twenty-seven-year-old coke head who was strung out and drunk. What a stupid, stupid girl.”
He clenched his teeth. “Julianne, you are not stupid. I’m the fuck up. I should have known better than to lead you out there in my condition.”
She exhaled slowly and her shoulders began to shudder.
“Look at me, Julianne.”
She shook her head.
“I saw your father that morning.”
Julia peered over at him. “You did?”
“You know what it’s like to live in a small town. The gossip started when Richard brought Scott to the hospital and neither of them would explain how he got hurt. Your father caught wind of it and came over to see if he could help.”
“He never mentioned it.”
“Richard and Grace were embarrassed. I’m sure your father wanted to protect them from small town gossip. Since no one but you and I knew what happened between us…” His voice trailed off, and he shook his head. “Why didn’t you tell Rachel?”
“I was traumatized. And humiliated.”
Gabriel winced. He reached over to take her hand in his, his eyes burning into hers. “Don’t you remember what happened between us?”
Julia threw his hand back.
“Of course I remember! That’s the reason I’ve been so screwed up. Sometimes I’d think back to that night and I’d believe what you said. I’d try to convince myself that you must have had a reason for leaving.
“Other times, all I could think about was how you abandoned me, and I’d have nightmares about being lost in the woods. But do you know what the sickest thing is? I hoped that you would come back. For years I hoped you’d show up on my doorstep and tell me you wanted me. That you meant what you’d said about being glad you’d found me. How pathetic is that?”
“That is not pathetic. I agree that it looked like I abandoned you, but I swear I didn’t. And believe me, if I had thought for one moment that you were real and living in Selinsgrove, I would have shown up on your doorstep.” He cleared his throat, and Julia felt the reverberation of his knee bouncing up and down underneath the table. “I am an addict. This is who I am. I have a need to control things and people, and that need will never go away.”
“Are you on something now?”
“Of course not! You think I’d do that do you?”
“If you’re an addict, you’re an addict. Whether I’m here or not makes no difference.”
“It makes a difference to me.”
“Addictive personalities can latch on to anything: drugs, alcohol, sex, people…what if you become addicted to me?”
“I am already addicted to you, Beatrice. Only you’re far more dangerous than cocaine.”
Julia’s eyebrows shot up in surprise.
He reached over to take her hand again, stroking the veins that stood out against her pale, thin wrist. “I’m confessing to you now. I’m destructive. I’m moody. I have a bad temper. Some of that has to do with my addiction and some of that has to do with my—past.
“Was it wrong of me to think so highly of you that my only explanation for your existence was that you were either the product of a desperate mind or the crown of God’s creation?”
His words and his face were so intense that Julia had to pull away. The combination of his voice and the feel of his long cool fingers stroking her veins…She was worried her skin would catch fire and she would disintegrate into a pile of ash. “Are you still doing drugs?”
“No.”