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My hunger for actual food was replaced by my hunger for her. I’d practically made love to her the best I could on that cramped Amtrak train ride, yet I now wanted to spread her out over the expensive linen on our bed and eat her pussy instead.
My stomach growled, and I let out a small sigh. “I can show you as soon as we’re done eating. I’d hate for this meal to get cold.”
“Yes, after the meal we can finish going through the boxes. I’ve barely taken anything from the first one.”
This time, I let out a low growl. “Of course.” I then turned to my meal and we ate in companionable silence.
Harper had once or twice expressed concern over what she thought she would find, and I hated to downplay her fears because they were real to her. She had practically hyperventilated the day she awoke in my bed after the ordeal with Jayson. I just couldn’t even begin to wrap my head around it all. This wasn’t some horror movie or Hollywood thriller. It was real life, and things like that didn’t happen.
She ate a few bites of everything, then stood up and announced that she was finished. I let her return to the boxes and used the guise of eating to stay away for as long as I could.
It became harder when she would find a bookend, snow globe, or some other silly thing my father had and would hold it up wanting to know more about it. I finally gave up on finishing my plate, but I did take a few minutes to clean everything up. By the time I returned to her with the bottle of wine and glasses in my hand, she held up a photograph of me and my father.
“You both are so handsome. When was this taken?”
I took it from her hand and looked down at the two of us in our tuxedos. It’d been taken at a charity function for the schools in Chicago. All of the Titans, young and old, were in attendance, and we’d been photographed from every angle throughout the night so by the time I escaped out the back an hour into the show with my actual date, I’d never been happier to have gotten away.
“Just a Titan event in Chicago. I don’t know why my father kept things like this lying around.” I went to set it aside, but she grabbed it away from me.
“He was proud of you, Gabriel.”
“Maybe,” I said, then looked across the room to the window. I had hoped to have hidden my expression as I thought about all the times I’d spent with my father where I’d known I had failed him. That night was no exception. “But then again, maybe not. That night was very important to my father. He was being honored for his philanthropical work with the inner city schools and communities, but instead of staying to see him take the stage, I slipped away with some girl whose name I can’t even remember now. I ended up missing the whole damn thing, and he’d even wanted me to take the stage with him.”
“Oh no,” she lamented, then shook her head. “Despite that, he was very proud of you still.” I shrugged, then grabbed the stack of photographs and pretended to flip through them until she spoke again. “I know he was because he told me so just a few weeks before his murder.”
“Murder?” I questioned, then let out a sarcastic laugh. “His death was ruled an accident, Harper. Nothing in these boxes is going to convince me—”
“That’s why I am determined to keep looking. It’s a lot easier to make and believe assumptions, especially when they prove your own preconceptions. You look through those pictures, and I’ll focus on other things.”
I did as she asked, only once or twice watching her examine each item. That essentially concluded the look through of the first box, and I shook my head as she opened and started to sift through the second one. This box was smaller than the others, and while it contained some papers, she skimmed over them but would shake her head when they didn’t contain anything she was looking for.
I almost wanted to throw her last words up in her face, but I leaned back instead and had nearly dozed off until she nudged me. My eyes flew open, and I looked down at a small jewelry box. I recognized it immediately. I grabbed it in an attempt to push it aside, but she opened it and pulled out one of the small metal jerseys.
“You got this for him, did you not?” she asked.
I exhaled in irritation. “Obviously, Harper. They were a Father’s Day gift.”
“When did you get them for him?”
“Does it matter?”
“To me, it does.”
“Oh, does it?”
“What’s wrong with you, Gabriel. Obviously all of this stuff was important to your father or else he—”
“That’s the point. I don’t give a damn about any of this.” I reached down and swiped at the box, knocking its contents to the floor. “He died six months ago, Harper. I don’t want to relive it all over again. Can’t you understand that?”
There. It was out.
I’d been so overcome with grief when they’d died that I had their housekeeper box up whatever she wanted to keep before I donated everything else to charity. I didn’t give a damn about sentimental items even when she’d had a few boxes of heirlooms delivered to me, I stuffed them in a closet in my penthouse, and I hadn’t looked at them since. After all of that was done, I put the house I grew up in on the market.
When there had been a Harper and me, I’d planned to live there with our children, but shit happened and thinking about what I’d lost with her, I was never so glad when the offers flew in. A month later, the estate was closed upon, and I’d pushed it all out of my head.
Harper interrupted my trip down memory lane when she placed her hand on my arm. “I’d give anything to have had these precious memories with my own father preserved. You think you mean this, but you don’t. You can’t.”
I moved away from Harper, then turned to face her. “When my parents died, it was the hardest goodbye I had to say after...” When my voice trailed off, I suspected she knew what I was going to say because she closed her eyes and squeezed them shut. “I got through it once and I’ve finally accepted their death and moved on. There’s no conspiracy or mystery to be found. Whatever my father had made calls and discussed with George didn’t lead to his death. We need to stop living in the past and get the fuck over everything.”
