Concealed - A Hiding From Love Novel #2 (4 page)

Alexis

Si la Montaña no va al Mahoma, Mahoma irá a la Montaña.

If the mountain won’t go to Mohammad, Mohammad will go to the mountain.

I
slow my bike down as I coast into the parking lot of my apartment building. My backpack is hurting my shoulders, and as soon as I stop, I take it off, rolling my head from side to side. Then I swing my leg over the bike frame and stand with it leaning against my hip while I fiddle with the buckles on the helmet and remove it, my long hair in a ponytail, but sweaty all the same.

As I roll the bike over to the rack and slide it in to lock it up for the night, I hear a car door slam and a deep voice says, “Here we go. Look who came to welcome me to the neighborhood.”

I whip around to find Gabe standing in the middle of the sidewalk in front of my apartment building, holding a large cardboard box.

“What are you doing here?” I grit out.

He shifts the box to one side so he can stand more comfortably, and I can’t help but note how his biceps flex below the sleeve of his charcoal t-shirt.

“I told you I was in Austin to stay,” he says, smiling his big, hungry lion smile at me. “I just had my first day at my new job, and now I’m moving into my new apartment.”

My eyes shoot up to his. “New apartment? Where?” I already have a very bad feeling rolling through my gut.

“You’re looking at it,” he replies, smiling even bigger and giving his head a little jerk to the side.

“What?”

“Right there, babe. Number 143, behind the bike rack.”

I turn, and there is the open door to apartment 143. Inside, I can see bits and pieces of moving boxes, the edge of a sofa, and crumpled newspapers.

My heart freezes while the rest of me breaks out in a sweat. No. No, this isn’t possible. He has not just moved into my building. This can’t be happening. Not after everything I’ve gone through to get Marco and my parents to forgive me.

“You can’t,” I whisper.

“What was that?” he leans toward me.

I swallow, trying to find my voice again. “I said, you can’t move in here. I’ll talk to the manager. I’ll tell them you’re stalking me. You can’t do this.”

He looks at me for a minute, his brow creased, his eyes narrowed. Then he walks into the apartment and very carefully sets the box down before coming back outside.

“I am
not
stalking you and you damn well know it,” he growls with barely contained anger.

“Well, what the hell do you call this?” I answer, sounding somewhat hysterical and feeling very hysterical.

“I call it moving into the only apartment building in town that I know of right now. The fact that it’s near you shouldn’t matter. I mean, after all,
we
never mattered, right?”

A sharp pain lances my midsection at his words, his tone. He sounds hurt. I can’t imagine Gabe ever being anything but fine. Gabe doesn’t do hurt. It has to be my imagination. All the same, it affects me.

“You know that’s not true,” I say softly. “Of course we mattered. But it was a one-off, you know?” I try to make my tone gentle even though I know the words are anything but. “One of those flings you have on vacation or whatever. It would have never survived the real world, Gabe.”

I look him in the eye, willing myself to stare him down. What I see there doesn’t help. It’s pain, and anger and something else so flammable that I’m afraid smoke might roll off his wide shoulders at any moment.

“A one-off,” he says quietly. “A fling?”

I nod my head, suddenly feeling sick and exhausted and more than a little confused.

He takes a step closer, and then another, until he’s looming over me, his eyes flashing, his breath coming rapidly.

“I was in
love
with you, Alexis Garcia. Heart and soul. Totally and completely in love. I waited for you for months. I was faithful and devoted, and I was ready to live my life for you.
That
was no fucking one-off.”

He breathes in, almost as if he’s smelling me. My heart beats a tattoo inside my chest, and I can feel the burn behind my eyes as I look at the pain in his. I feel panic rise inside of me, and I step away from his searching, penetrating gaze.

“I can’t,” I whisper. “I just can’t.” And I run.

It takes everything I have to keep the tears at bay. Everything. I lie on my bed with the curtains drawn, knees tucked into my chest in the fetal position for what must be hours. The sun sets outside. My phone rings and beeps and dings with calls and texts and voicemails. And still, I lie there, the only sound in my dark apartment the fan of the air conditioning unit flipping on and off as the room cools then heats back up.

After Gabe showed up the day before, I set it aside, did what I’d been doing for two long years – pretended it was nothing more than a random occurrence that would do nothing to upset the order of my life. I lied to myself, but now I can’t. Can’t pretend he doesn’t exist, can’t ignore his presence in my world. I can feel him again. Like I did in Afghanistan. Feel the beat of his heart, the rhythm of his breath, the heat of his body. It’s like I’m a fish on the end of the line and he’s the fisherman. Every time he pulls the line tauter, I feel it, and it hurts like hell.

Finally, after the streetlights in the parking lot outside have already turned on, I hear pounding on my front door.

“Alexis! Lex! Are you in there?” Marco’s voice echoes around the courtyard of my building.

I take one deep, shuddering breath and sit up, smooth my hair, and go to open the door.

“Jesus, Lex, I’ve been calling you for hours,” Marco nearly shouts as he walks past me into the apartment.

“I’m sorry. I wasn’t feeling well, and I guess I fell asleep.” This new lying thing I have going on is not good.

“What’s wrong? Do you need me to get you some medicine or something?”

“No, just a headache. I’m okay now I think.”

He looks at me for a minute before he starts pacing around the living room. “Well, I’m sorry to have to give you bad news when you aren’t feeling well, but you’ll never believe who I just saw getting out of a pickup truck down in the parking lot.”

Oh, actually I would
. But I don’t answer. I just stand and wait for his revelation.

“The soldier. The one, well, you know. He got out of a truck and then unlocked the door to one of those studio apartments downstairs and went inside. Lex, it looks like he’s moved into the building.”

I’m not sure how I’m supposed to react. What response does Marco want? What does a dutiful girlfriend who has no feelings left for the other guy say and do? The fact that I’m having to think about this is not lost on me. Shouldn’t I know how I feel? Shouldn’t my reactions be automatic?

Instead, what pops out is, “I thought you said he rode a Harley?”

Marco gapes at me. “Seriously, Lex? This guy has moved into your building and all you’re worried about is what he drives?”

“Well, maybe it wasn’t him is what I’m saying. Maybe it was just someone who looks like him. I mean, since he was in a truck and all.” Good recovery. Damn, I’m a genius.

“The Harley was on a trailer parked next to the truck. How many tattooed jarheads are there walking around your apartment building, Lex? I’m sure it was him.”

Marco’s sarcasm is grating on my nerves. I want to say that Gabe was in the Army, not the Marines, but I hold my tongue. This whole thing is hard enough without having to figure out what will piss him off and what won’t. All I can think about are the talks he and my parents had with me after I got back from Afghanistan.

Marco was always there, acting like he was my older brother or something. The reality is, my actual older brother, Tomás, couldn’t have cared less who I was dating. He was busy finishing his MBA at the time, and when my mother forced him to come home and have a talk with me, he said, “So, this guy put his life on the line to protect you, and he loves you and wants to come to school with you? What’s the problem?”

But Marco always understood exactly what Mom and Dad did. He understood the psychological repercussions of being trapped by hostile forces in a war-torn country and how that might create a false sense of attachment between two people. He knew what Gabe and I had felt for one another wasn’t real. It was circumstances, nothing more. But I still hate that tone in his voice, the one that says I’m a child and don’t know what I need in life.

“Fine!” I throw my hands in the air and march toward the kitchen. “So it’s him, and it looks like he’s moved into the building. What exactly do you want me to do about it? I don’t own the property. I can’t control who lives here.”

Marco follows me. “I want you to stay the hell away from him and tell me if he approaches you again. He’s been in a warzone, Lex. He might be unbalanced, you know? I don’t trust him anywhere near you.”

“Oh, for god’s sake, Marc. He’s not unbalanced. In fact, he’s one of the sanest people I’ve ever known. You didn’t see him over there. He was totally in control of it. He knew the things that could mess with your head and he dealt with them better than anyone I saw.”

I put the electric kettle under the faucet and fill it then flip the switch to heat water for tea. I definitely need something soothing right now. I feel like I’m a door and Marco and Gabe are battering at me from both sides. The real question is who’s going to break me first.

Marco stands at the entrance to the kitchen, looking tenser than I’ve ever seen him.

“He might have seemed perfectly sane to you years ago, but you have no idea what’s happened to him since he got out. For all you know, he’s been in jail for the last two years.”

“Actually he’s been in college,” I mutter as I load dishes in the dishwasher.

“What?”

I straighten and turn to look him in the eye. “He’s been in college, not jail. College in Hawaii.” There. I said it.

“And how, exactly, do you know this?” he asks slowly.

“Letters. He wrote me. I never answered any of them. I didn’t lie to you. I wasn’t in touch with him, but he did try to get in touch with me, and I did read the letters.” And emails and Skype messages.

Marco stares at me as though I’ve grown a second head. “And you never thought to mention this to me until today? You never thought I’d be interested in the fact that the asshole who slept with my girlfriend was still in contact with her?”

“I didn’t want to have to deal with
this
, with you. I didn’t mention it because it didn’t matter. I wasn’t answering the letters. I never responded in any way. I told you it was over and it was. I couldn’t control what he did, and it didn’t matter.”

Marco shakes his head, and I can see the muscle in his jaw tick. “So he managed to tell you that he was going to college in Hawaii after he got out? How long did these letters of his keep coming? Three months, six months, a year? Did he write to tell you he was coming here?”

“No, of course not! Right after he got out, when he moved to Hawaii, was the last one.” I still have that letter, in the back of my dresser drawer. I can recite it word for word.

Dear Alexis,

I’m not sure if you read these letters, and I guess it doesn’t really matter. This is the last one I’ll write. I got an honorable discharge last month. But you probably already know that since I sent you my flight plans back to the States. I spent some time in Sacramento with my mom. She’s doing well, has a new boyfriend who seems like a good guy. It was nice to see her happy. Gives me hope that maybe I can be someday too.

I told you I wanted to try college, so I’m in Hawaii. Hilo has some great surfing, and Nick is going to come out in a few months to go to school too. I’m not sure what I want to major in, but I guess there’s time to decide.

I hope your life is whatever you want it to be, Alexis. I’ll always wish you would have told me what went wrong with us, but that doesn’t seem to be in the cards. Just know that everything I said to you, everything that happened between us, was the truth. I was never anything but honest with you. And I guess honesty means I have to say goodbye to you now. It’s about the last thing I want to do, but I can’t keep loving someone who doesn’t exist.

--Gabe
.

I wonder what changed his mind since he wrote that letter? Why has he come all this way after all this time? Why can’t he leave well enough alone? Why can’t he leave me alone?

“Look,” I say, softening my tone and stepping over to Marco, “it doesn’t matter where he lives or how many times he talks to me. He’s not my boyfriend. You are. You’re the one I’ve been with since I was sixteen, you’re the one who’s part of my past and my present, and you’ll be part of my future. He’s just some guy, a mistake I made in a different time and a different place. He can’t hurt us.” I touch him lightly on the arm and then wind my fingers through his as I have so many other thousands of times over the last four years.

Marco sighs and shakes his hair out of his face then adjusts his glasses. He gingerly picks up my other hand. “You swear?” he asks. “Because this is scaring me, Lex. I can’t lose you.”

I lean forward and give him a kiss on the lips. “You won’t,” I promise.