You Will Be Mine (New Horizon Book 3)

Chapter 20: Gabe

I kind of just want to put all that ugliness and tension from before behind us and take my mate to a nice dinner instead of taking a step back to talk about all the stuff she said to me earlier, but she doesn’t seem to want to let it go. She says she just wants a minute to apologize and explain herself, so I agree to take her someplace quiet and private so we can talk.

But it’s not because she has any explaining or apologizing to do. It’s me. I’m the one who was wrong for snapping at her like that, which I only did because I was feeling attacked and exposed. I thought I’d been careful to keep her shielded from my past, at least until she gets a chance to know me, but she figured me out somehow.

I should have seen this coming. She is a mage, after all. So is Clarice, and she’s an empath who can sense things about people they may not even realize about themselves. Somehow, it’s not surprising that Jeannie seems to be able to do the same.

Or maybe it is what I accused her of. Maybe she’s gotten it in her head that all men are players, guilty until proven innocent, and she’s just had the misfortune of being paired with a mate who can do nothing to disprove that. Because the truth is, that is me.

That’s who I was not all that long ago. My last casual encounter with a woman was just over a week ago, and it went down essentially the way Jeannie accused me of. I basically still had the stink of that random fling on me when I met her, my long-awaited mate.

But I can’t let myself lash out at her just because she caught on before I was ready. I need to just come clean now and work on controlling the damage. I did what I did, and now I must face the music.

I didn’t have much of a plan when I agreed to drive us somewhere quiet. Honestly, we could have just talked in the car where we already were, but I needed the time to think and clear my head. And now that we’re parked again, I realize I’ve brought us to a place Garrett and I used to like to come when we were teenagers.

A lot of humans like to use this overlook as a place to bring dates to make out in the car, but we used to come here together, just the two of us, and trek a little way into the trees to a spot that is eerily, peacefully quiet and looks out over the town below. We’d just sit there talking for hours, planning out our futures and venting our teenage frustrations, until it got late and we had to rush home before curfew.

It may not have been planned, but this is actually the perfect spot. I might need to get out and move around as I have this conversation with Jeannie because there’s a whole lot bottled up inside this body.

“Well this seems … romantic,” she comments uncertainly, looking around and taking in our surroundings.

It’s just a parking lot that backs into a cliff, surrounded by woods on either side and overlooking the town straight ahead. And though it’s kind of a nice view here, Garrett’s and my spot is way better.

“Sometimes,” I admit, chuckling nervously. “But I’ve never come here for that. Actually, it was Garrett I used to come here with, and we have a certain spot I’d like to show you if you’ll allow me.”

And allow me she does. She even lets me pull out a little chivalry and manners and come around to open the door for her so I can lead her there like a gentleman. I’m sure it’s not going to help my case for the next part, but it’s still important to me that I do everything I can to treat her right when I have the chance.

We haven’t even made it to my spot yet before Jeannie starts in with her apologies, but I cut her off.

“No, that’s really not necessary,” I try to assure her, but she jumps in before I’ve even finished.

“No, Gabe. Let me get it out this time.”

“I’m trying to tell you to stop because it’s me who should be apologizing,” I insist, which seems to pause her in her tracks, her mouth frozen into a little “o” of surprise. “You weren’t in the wrong earlier. I was. I was reacting defensively, but it was because you weren’t wrong about anything you were saying, and I hated hearing it. That’s not how I want you to think of me, but I can see why you would.”

I gently grasp her by the elbow to nudge her along. We’re almost to the spot, and I really want her to see it. I think she’ll love it as much as Garrett and I used to, and it feels kind of special to finally have someone to bring to such a “romantic” and sentimental place.

“It does bother me that you think all that without knowing more about the reasons why I am the way I am and why I’ve done the things I’ve done though. It’s not what you think. I don’t enjoy living the life of a playboy, if that’s what you’re imagining.”

I can tell from the skeptical look she’s giving me that a playboy is exactly what she thinks I am. I’m still left wondering exactly what she’s seen and heard that makes her think that, but I also know that it’s no secret. Pretty much the whole pack knows. Girls talk, and a night spent with the future Alpha makes for a ripe piece of gossip.

“It’s not typical for a werewolf to go so many years without knowing who his fated mate is,” I begin to explain. “Even if a guy gets to be my age and still isn’t mated, it’s usually a decision that’s been made by one mate or the other, like with Garrett and his rejection. I mean, it’s not like it’s unheard of to be twenty-four with still no sign of a mate, and it does happen, but it’s rare and we’re not designed for it. The longer it goes on, the more it affects a werewolf to still be alone. And I’m an Alpha wolf, the one most likely to become the pack's next Alpha in fact, so there’s a lot of external pressure there for me too. I need my mate, and I need her soon.”

“So, you’ve been shopping around to see if you can find someone to settle on just to have any old mate and call it good enough?” she questions, sounding a bit irritated at the thought.

And honestly, so am I. My instinct is to lash out at her because I don’t appreciate that she thinks so little of me, but I also see where she’s coming from. I’ve alluded to being as loose with my virtue as she suspects, and I’m also getting the sense that virtue and modesty are important to her. Maybe it’s even partly why she’s already so attached to the idea of fated mates. And if I’ll sleep around, then it’s not much of a stretch to assume that I’m not really trying that hard to save myself for my fated mate in any other way either.

“No,” I deny her accusation, taking in a careful, calming breath through my nose. “Not shopping around. More like coping. I do want my fated mate, and I am waiting for her. Simon has been craving her since pretty much the moment he awakened when I turned sixteen, and he gets really worked up about it sometimes. I know you probably can’t even imagine what it’s like to share your body and mind with a whole other consciousness and personality, but when the man and the wolf are in disagreement about anything, it can be pretty miserable. He’s been disagreeable with me from the moment he woke up, and when he gets into one of his funks of pacing and longing for our mate, I can’t even think. I can’t sleep, I can’t focus. I’m useless until I get him to quiet down.”

I take another breath, feeling that restless angst creeping up through every part of me, the pacing that I knew was coming already starting. She has her arms crossed over her body as she watches me move first in one direction before throwing my hands up and turning on my heel to walk the other way.

“I don’t enjoy it, the time I spend with other women. It’s a chore for me, and I’m disgusted with myself about it before, during, and especially after. Sure, there have been times in the past where I’ve had some fun flirting with girls, but not since I was a teenager.”

I realize that I might be explaining this too generally, avoiding telling her the details that are most likely to help her understand. And it’s her understanding and forgiveness that I want most of all, so I abruptly shift into getting more personal about it.

“I met a girl who interested me shortly before I turned sixteen, and we explored the wonders of s*x together. She was my first and most definitely was not my mate, and Simon hated me from the instant he awakened because of what I did with her. He was dormant then and had no say in it, and he only ever wanted to be with our mate. He despised me so much that he wouldn’t even tell me his name for the longest time.”

Jeannie takes in a sharp breath when I admit that, and I realize I let myself get a bit too close to revealing things I’m not yet ready to tell her. If she asks me why he suddenly shared his name after I met her, I’ll have to confess the full truth.

But I can also tell from the look on her face that she’s still a bit confused, and it occurs to me that I still haven’t told her the most important part.

“You’re probably wondering why I bother if it’s such a chore, or how I went from the eager, curious teenager to the distant, aloof playboy, and the answer is Simon.”

She seems a bit taken aback by that, but her surprise quickly morphs into suspicion. She’s probably wondering how the Simon she knows could have anything to do with my wanton ways.

“When he gets worked up about how lonely and miserable he is without our mate, there’s only one way to quiet him down,” I continue explaining. “I discovered it by accident the second time that I was with a girl who interested me. Because you see, I get lonely too, but unlike my wolf, I understand that sitting around crying about it accomplishes nothing. The way I saw it then, there was nothing wrong with spending a little time with someone I had no intention of getting serious with. A little fun was okay in my book, but I didn’t want to get locked down to someone who was not my mate.”

“But after it was over, Simon went silent and dormant on me for a few days, and it was finally peaceful in my head again. A lot of my werewolf abilities were suppressed, but I could focus again for the first time in weeks. Figuring out that having s*x with someone would get Simon off my back for a time was how I made it through high school, and it’s how I manage to keep my job now.”

That revelation literally knocks Jeannie back half a step, but she doesn’t say anything yet, still only watching and listening with interest. She’s been focusing on me and what I’m telling her so intently that she hasn’t even bothered to look at the view yet, but I’ll fix that once this part is finally over. Almost there.

“At first, I wanted a casual relationship with someone I was already close to,” I reveal to her the biggest mistake I’ve ever made, but without naming names. “Neither of us were mated, so I told myself we were just a couple friends keeping each other company and helping each other out. But I quickly learned that staying with the same person for too long is dangerous. Feelings start to creep in, and that’s not what someone with an undiscovered fated mate out there somewhere should be messing around with.”

I cringe internally when I hear how that sounds out loud, but if she’ll give me a chance to later, I’ll explain the whole Gabby situation a bit better. I don’t feel like I was the one the most in the wrong there, and I only hope Jeannie will come to see it that way too.

“And that’s how I’ve become the man standing before you now, the one who is ashamed to have to admit the truth to someone I genuinely care about and really want to try to build something with. I wanted you to get to know me, the real me, before you ever found out about that part of me, but I promise you that’s not who I am. That’s not who I want to be anyway. I just always felt like I had no other choice. I was lonely, and my wolf was making me absolutely miserable and useless, so it was a quick, easy fix to all my immediate problems.”

I don’t know what to make of the expression on Jeannie’s face or how to predict her reaction to my confession. Only Garrett knows all that about me, and having to say it all out loud again leaves me feeling quite vulnerable and exposed. I’m not proud of it, and I hate that she knows it now, but I am a little relieved that it’s finally out there.

Through most of the week I’ve spent with her, I’ve worried that something like what happened with Nora earlier would catch up to me, and it would ruin everything I’m working toward with Jeannie. How am I supposed to get her to trust me when pretty much any woman she might encounter around the packhouse might whisper something to her to make her question her relationship with me? And the worst part is that it’s all true.

But I really hope that since the truth is coming directly from me, and I’ve just told her the deepest, darkest parts of my secrets, exposing my weaknesses and flaws to her, that she’ll be able to find it in her heart to try to understand me rather than making snap judgments like everyone else does. She’s my mate. She’s linked and connected to me in a way that no one else ever can be, and I’m putting all my hope and faith in that fact.

I’ve been hoping for her sympathy, and maybe even her forgiveness, but instead, she stands there with her arms still crossed over her chest, her normally plump lips drawn in a tight line. She’s silent for far longer than I’m comfortable with after everything I’ve just told her.

“Oh boo hoo, Gabe,” she explodes at me in the next instant. “You expect me to feel sorry for you? As though being lonely and miserable somehow excuses your decision to sleep your way through the women of your own pack, breaking their hearts and casting them aside as if they are no more to you than used Kleenex?”

Stunned speechless, that’s what I am. There’s no breath left in my lungs, and I couldn’t move if I tried. I just poured my heart out, bared my soul to her, and this is not at all the response I expected from her.

Especially not when the reason she wanted me to bring her here in the first place was to apologize for the things she said earlier. I thought that after she understood my reasons, she’d be more apologetic and forgiving, not less.

“You didn’t have a mate, Gabe? That’s your excuse?” she rants. “Me? I didn’t have a friend, not a single one. No siblings, no mother. A father only spoken of as though he was some nameless villain. I had my chores and my overprotective grandparents, and you want to talk about lonely? Try having only cows to keep your confidence, and chickens to tell your secrets to. Then maybe you can talk to me about lonely.”

I inhale sharply, knowing in my gut that she might be right that I’ve been selfishly making excuses for myself, and yet I don’t feel ready to accept that. I’ve been hurting all these years, and no matter what she’s been through, it doesn’t take away from that fact. Maybe she’s stronger than I’ll ever be, but I did what I had to do to get by. To push through. If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t be standing here right now. I know it.

And I had hoped that of all people, my mate would understand. The feeling of being punched in the gut is soon replaced by anger brewing deep and low in my belly, spreading its heat throughout me until I explode.

“It’s not the same, Jeannie! It was easy for you. You couldn’t have made a wrong decision if you wanted to. Maybe you were the perfect little princess all your years, but you didn’t have a choice. There was no room for you to make mistakes like the rest of us, no beds for you to climb in when it got rough. So, don’t stand there and judge me for the things I’ve done when you couldn’t possibly know what it was like for me.”

After I’ve said it, I immediately regret it. Hearing it out loud, I realize I haven’t made the argument I thought I was making before I opened my big mouth.

“And you think that’s a good thing?” she shoots back at me. Of course she does. I earned that.

“That’s not what I meant,” I attempt to walk it back, but I know it’s already too late.

“It doesn’t even matter. Even if I had other people around, I wouldn’t have done what you did.”

“Oh? And how are you so certain of that? How could you possibly know how you would have reacted in my shoes?”

“Because it’s wrong, Gabe, and I’m not like that,” she answers, her words slicing right through me.

Because she’s right. It was wrong, and I knew it. Simon knew it too. He’s been my own personal Jiminy Cricket in my head all these years, making it so I can’t even claim that I didn’t realize what I was doing was wrong. He’d never let me forget it.

And what she said before still stings too, about all those girls being my own packmates that I’ve treated like that. Exactly what sort of Alpha does that make me, anyway? Not to mention, she doesn’t even know the part about how Garrett was one of the people who got hurt either, but I do. And I feel sick about it. I had hoped for her to understand and comfort me, but I suppose her actual response is the one I deserve.

“I don’t treat people like that. I don’t hurt people,” she goes on. “And how do I know it? Because I feel it. I’m not blind. I’ve seen the way women around the packhouse look at you, and I’ve seen the hurt and longing in their eyes. You might be able to look away, ignore it, and act like it’s not true, but I can’t. I could never do that to someone.”

I know she’s right about that too. She may not be experienced with people, but I’ve seen how she is with animals and even plants. I’ve never felt so ashamed, and what’s worse is that she’s my mate. I can’t hide from her, and it’s breaking me inside that this is how she sees me now.

“I liked you, Gabe. I really did,” she goes on to say, and I start to panic about where this conversation is going.

She liked me? That sounds decisively past tense.

“You can be really sweet when you want to be, and up until now, the only reason I was hesitating to let myself get close to you is because I know you have a mate out there waiting for you to find her. I didn’t want to take that away from you or be some distraction to tide you over,” she confirms what Garrett has been warning me about this whole time.

I hate that he was right, and that she still has no idea what she is to me. I also wonder if it would even make a difference or maybe even just make it worse now if she did.

“But now that I know all this, I don't think I'm all that interested anymore.”

I feel a pang right through my chest, where my heart used to be before she just murdered it with words I never wanted to hear from her mouth.

“How come you’re so sweet to me, but you’ve been so horrible to everyone else?”

Because you’re my mate, Jeannie, and you mean everything to me. I only wish I had the nerve to say it out loud.

“If you were capable of romance and being a gentleman all this time, then why did you wait?”

Because you’re the only one who will ever get to see that side of me.

“And what’s worse is you can’t even see what’s so wrong about it. You’re not sorry. You have no intentions of making it up to them.”

“How would I ever make it up to them?” I can’t help but interject finally.

It floors me that she would even want me to. I saw how jealous she got with Nora, and I’ve seen it a couple other times too when I’ve interacted with other women where she could see, even if she does her best to hide it. It makes no sense that she would want me to have even more reason to talk to them.

“Oh, I don’t know, an apology seems a good place to start,” she retorts sarcastically. “A real one. A heartfelt one. But I doubt you’re even capable of that, since you don’t think you’ve done anything wrong.”

“It’s not that. I just don’t see what good it would do now,” I argue half-heartedly, wondering if the real reason is that she’s right, and I don’t want to have to admit that I’ve wronged anyone.

“I know you don’t,” she scoffs and rolls her eyes.

She’s managed to put distance between us since the start of this conversation, and I can feel Simon whimpering in my mind about that. He senses her pulling away from us too, and knows as well as I do that we’re on the verge of being rejected.

“How do I prove to you that I’ve changed, and I’m not that guy anymore?” I plead for a second chance.

“You don’t,” she retorts dismissively. “Because you haven’t changed. This whole conversation is a testament to that. Yeah, maybe you’ve put in a little extra effort with me, but maybe that’s just because I’m a bit of a novelty to you. And my grandpa taught me better than to ever let someone like you break my heart. I won’t be your next victim. I don’t want you.”

“Jeannie-please-don’t-say-that,” I beg her in a single breath, dropping to my knees. “Please. Don’t reject me. I can’t take it. Simon can’t take it.”

“Cute,” she scoffs again. “Nice try, bringing your wolf into it.”

“He was always in it,” I argue, deciding it’s now or never. I have to tell her. “You’re my mate, Jeannie. That’s why it’s different with you, and why he’s responsive to you and only you. It's why now that we've found you, he can't bear spending even a single night without you.”

“I’m not falling for it,” she insists, cutting me off and taking another couple steps away from me before I can explain my reasons for not telling her sooner. “But I’m not rejecting you. Not all of you, anyway. If you want to hang out again, you better come to me with four legs and a tail next time. Simon, I like. You, I’m not so sure.”

Her words cut deep, though I have to admit there’s a small flicker of relief when she says she’s not outright rejecting me. I know I have my work cut out for me in figuring out how to fix this mess I’ve created, but there’s still a chance as long as she doesn’t reject me before I can make it right.

But before I even have a chance to figure out what to say to her, I notice she seems to be eyeballing a tree not far from us. She studies it for a moment before it even clicks in my head what she might be doing.

“No, Jeannie, don’t!” I try to stop her, but she’s already turned and started running for the tree.

I pick myself up from the ground and try to run after her, but I only have mere seconds to close the distance before she’s already starting to fade and flicker out of existence. I reach out and try to grab her, but by the time I’m close enough, she’s not there anymore. It’s just the tree, looking exactly the same as it always has.

I can’t resist rubbing the bark of it and then just holding my hand against it, trying to get some sense of whatever Jeannie feels when she touches trees. But there’s nothing. To me, it’s just a tree.

And I’m suddenly regretting telling her what Clarice told Garrett and I about the most likely way she can control her connection to the trees because apparently, it works. And now she’s gone.