A Secret to Keep (31 page)

Gates pushed the denim down and she lifted her hips to appease the descent of her jeans. For a moment, she lay there with her chest heaving under his intense gaze. “You are beautiful.” He rasped before moving back to his task of planting kisses and sucking softly at her rapid pulse.

“I’ve…missed…you…so…much.” Her labored breathing kept her from being able to string more than two words together without feeling light headed, and the searing hot sensation of his lips and tongue on her skin wasn’t helping either.

“How much?” He breathed into her hair and nuzzled her neck, nipping at the overly sensitive spot below her earlobe.

“More than you know. Please, now.” She pleaded with him to stop teasing her. She was delirious from his touch and she fought to catch her breath as he moved to his knees, straddling her to remove his shirt and unbutton and unzip his jeans. Her lips curved into a wicked smile watching his impeccable physique hovering above her and she licked her lips in anticipation of his lips rejoining hers.

He watched her through veiled eyes and she arched her back to allow him to reach under her to undo the clasp on her bra. Releasing her breasts from the lace, Gates grinned before lowering his mouth to one of the peaks and gently sucked her heated flesh.

She moaned his name and sank her fingers into his hair, pulling him closer to her body. “Please, don’t stop.” He continued his long and laborious assault on her breasts taking one in his mouth at a time, driving her mad with the unbelievable sensations. He reached down to her waist and he looped his fingers into the black lace of her underwear and pulled them down her legs. He sat back again and quickly discarded them along with his jeans and boxer briefs. He hesitated for a moment and her eyes popped open to look at him. Lowering himself back to her she relished in the feel of his naked flesh against hers.

She gasped when he slowly entered her and she arched to meet him as he sank himself deeper. She groaned as she heard his guttural moans match hers. He was the most incredible lover she’d ever had and she wanted more and more.

“You are everything I’ve ever wanted.” Gates murmured in her ear as he continued to rock against her. Their rhythmic motions increased in speed and before she knew it, she could feel tiny explosions shooting through her body. She held on to him as he continued to push into her, finally reaching his own release.

His body collapsed onto hers and then he rolled to lie flat on his back, both staring at the ceiling, struggling to catch their breath. She slid over placing her hand on his chest and looked up to see him staring at her.

“What is it?”

She looked at him sheepishly and yawned as she rested her head in the crook of his arm and closed her eyes. “This feels perfect.”

He hesitated for a moment, then leaned over and kissed the top of her head, sinking deeper into the mattress, holding onto her. She could feel the thump of his heart beating against his chest and before long she fell asleep.

###

Stretching, Sloane slid her hand across the stark white linens only to detect a cool empty space. Her eyes popped open and she discovered Gates had vacated his side of the bed. She pushed herself up on her elbow, clutching the sheet to her bare chest. Her hair tumbled over her shoulders in disheveled waves and she blinked, trying to adjust to the bright morning sunshine pouring through the window. She turned to see Gates standing on the other side of the room already dressed and watching her.

“You’re up early.” She yawned, looking at
the bright blue numbers on the clock displaying 7:30 am.

“Ah, yeah. Sloane, I have to go.”

“Go? You just got here. I thought you weren’t leaving until tomorrow.” She sat up against the pillows, pulling her legs up and clutching the sheet.

“One of my meetings has been rescheduled for Monday and I really need to get back since I’ve been in Seattle all week. I’m really sorry.” He barely looked at her and she noticed he seemed to be descending back into that distant shell of himself when she first saw him in Antony’s office months ago.

“Gates? Is everything all right? I mean, last night-”

“Of course. Everything’s fine. I just need to get back.”

“Oh.” Dropping her eyes, she looked at the kaleidoscope of bright yellow rays funneling through the windows across the bed. She looked back at him and his feeble attempt to reassure her with a slight smile. “I thought you’d be here longer this time. Can’t Evan or Angelica handle the meeting for you?”

“I wish they could, but they can’t. Look, I’ll call you okay?” His eyes darted away from hers as she searched his face for some explanation. Picking up his bag, he turned and headed for the door.

“Wait, did I do something?”

“No. No. It’s not...” His shoulders slouched and he hung his head briefly. Taking a deep breath, he turned and walked over to sit beside her, taking her hands in his. She looked in his eyes for even some glimmer of what the problem was. She’d fallen asleep wrapped in his arms and now it felt like an entire wall of ice had formed around him. “I told you. I need to get back.”

“And that’s the only reason?”

“Hey. Last night was amazing okay? Unfortunately, I have a lot going on right now. I’ll call you.” Taking her face in his hands, he leaned in and kissed her gently on her forehead. Pulling back, he looked in her eyes before dropping his hands from her face, standing up, and walking out of the room.

Leaning her head back against the mahogany headboard, Sloane listened as the front door closed. She’d open herself up to Gates once again and sadly realized nothing had changed.

Gates threw himself into his work over the next few weeks after Brayden’s party. He continued to replay everything that happened between him and Sloane over in his head and he could kick himself for leaving. He honestly didn’t know what else to do. After secretly carrying his burden around, he finally opened up to Evan about why he’d come back early that weekend and now Evan was reading him the riot act.

“I knew something was going on. What’re you crazy?” Evan asked Gates, handing him the files he requested before taking a seat. “You blew her off like that? Why? You obviously have feelings for her and she has them for you. What’s the problem?”

“Evan, it’s not that simple.” Gates stared at his friend and tried to look as pulled together as he could. He knew he was failing and there was no doubt Evan could see right through him.

“Not that simple? Both of you were there that night, clothes came off,
things
happened, so what’s the problem?”

“We were caught up in the moment. It wasn’t some reaffirmation of our love for each other. We’d just celebrated our son’s first birthday, the stars were out, we were alone and one thing led to another.” He could see the wheels turning in Evan’s head and knew he was in for the interrogation of his life.

“One thing led to another? Do you know how lame that sounds? In this situation, what’s wrong with that?” The exasperation on Evan’s face grew and Gates knew the more he denied it, the more Evan could see right through him.

“You don’t get it. Neither one of us was thinking about what would happen the next day or what it means now that we’ve slept together again. Sloane wants a family and I…” He drifted off, looking at the picture of a smiling Brayden at his birthday party with
Elmo
on his desk.

“You what? What do you want, Gates? Do you want Sloane or not?”

“It’s not that easy, Evan.”

“You keep saying that but, yes, it is.” Evan stood and leaned on the back of his chair looking at Gates intently. “Gates, she’s the mother of your son and the love of your life. What’s the problem? There isn’t anything else to it. You’re either with her or you aren’t. It’s that simple. You’re making this harder than it has to be.”

“I wish it was, Ev, but she deserves something I can’t give her.”

“What’re you talking about?”

“She deserves the family she’s always wanted. She deserves someone devoted to helping her raise Brayden and to be there, but I can’t do that.” Throwing his hands up Gates stood and walked over to the bay of windows. “Take a look around. This is all I know, Evan. This is what I do. It’s who I am. I can’t be there all of the time. At some point, I’m going to disappoint her or Brayden and I don’t think I could live with that. If we stay the way we are, then I can’t disappoint anyone or let anyone down.”

“Well, that’s not possible now, is it? You’ve slept together and that changes things.” Evan paused and looked over at his friend and sighed. “Gates, is that really what you’re worried about? Letting them down?”

“Isn’t that what I do? Evan, I can’t be there all the time.”

“Let me ask you something, Gates. Do you know anyone besides
Superman
that can? I don’t care who it is, no one is going to be able to be there at every moment, but what you can do is try to be there as much as you can. I’m sure Sloane understands that by now. You’re putting more pressure on yourself than anyone else.”

Gates turned to look out the window at the clouds banking up in the distance. “I’m too much like him, Ev.” Gates offered with funeral-like solemnity. He was just like Victor. Everything about him and his life was just like his father. “Lying there with her in my arms, felt right. But then, I realized nothing bad has influenced Brayden’s life. Sloane’s amazing with him. She has friends around him that provide so much stability. What can I do but come in and wreck all of that? I’m his father and I can’t do anything for him but support him monetarily. Coming and going out of his life each weekend or video chats every other day, that’s not being a father. I don’t know how to do anything more than that. Now I understand why my father was never there. He didn’t know how.”

He stood with his hands in his pockets and his shoulders sagged as he stared at the busy streets below. Gates had agonized for weeks over his abrupt decision to leave Sloane’s house the morning after the party. He’d watched her for hours sleeping in his arms and he realized he couldn’t give her or Brayden what they deserved. No matter how much he wanted to be with her and watch their son grow together, he knew it wasn’t going to work. It wasn’t fair to Brayden and it wasn’t fair to her. He wasn’t going to hurt them again.

“So, what do you deserve, Gates?”

“What?” Gates replied, shooting Evan a puzzled look.

“What do you deserve? Don’t you deserve a family and to be happy?”

“This isn’t about what I deserve, Evan. It’s about what’s best for Brayden and Sloane, and I’m not it.”

“How do you know that? Huh? It’s pretty obvious she’s okay with you being a part of their life. So that’s it? You’re giving up?”

Scrubbing his hands across his face, Gates leveled his eyes at his best friend. Why couldn’t he understand? It wasn’t that he didn’t want to be with Sloane. He did. He loved her, but he didn’t want to hurt her anymore. When she’d told him ‘everything was perfect’, he realized then he could never be the man she wanted him to be. “I have no choice, Evan.”

“Gates, you do have a choice. There’s one big difference in all of this from the relationship you had with your father, or the lack of a relationship you had with him. You’re
not
Victor. I don’t care how much you may believe you don’t have anything to offer Brayden; you do. He deserves to have you as a father. And contrary to what you believe, you deserve to be happy too. You can’t rob that little boy of the father he deserves to have. You can buy him anything he wants in this world, but Gates, that kid is going to love you no matter what you buy him or don’t buy him. Hell, he loves you already for the small amount of time you’ve spent with him. That’s all he needs. He just needs you in his life. Don’t take that away from him.” Evan started towards the door then turned around to look at Gates. “Oh, and another thing…the difference between you and your dad…you
want
to be a father to your child. He didn’t.”

###

“I still can’t believe he left.”

“Liyah, please, give it a rest. I don’t want to talk about Gates anymore.” Sloane was trying her best to push thoughts of their night together out of her mind and failing miserably.

“It doesn’t seem like Gates. He’s not one for playing games so I’m a little surprised by the whole situation.”

“I know.” All she’d been able to do since the morning he walked out was wonder what had gone wrong. It wasn’t like Gates and she had no clue what she’d done. She couldn’t figure out his standoffish attitude or the fact his calls to check on Brayden had become sparse over the past weeks. Even their video chats for him to see Brayden on a regular basis weren’t the same. None of it made sense to her.

“Have you heard anything from him?”

“He called once right after he left. We’ve had a few video chats. I’ve sent him some pictures and updates. That’s about it.”

“Wow. That’s crazy. What are you going to do?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. One minute things are good and the next he’s gone. You know how I told you he wants to support me so I can stay home with Brayden and I told him I would think about it?” She waited for Liyah to nod before continuing. “Well, he didn’t even wait to get my answer.”

“What are you talking about?”