Page 65 of Forever Yours
“I’ll go get some stuff while you finish rolling that.”
Devlin wandered through the maze of snowmen until she reached the accessories. She was bent over one box sorting through the items when she heard a shuffle on the step.
“It’ll just be a sec, there’s plenty of other boxes for you to look at until I’m done.”
“I’m not here to decorate,” Gabe’s voice came from behind her.
She shot up. “What are you doing here?”
“I came to see if Annabelle needed any help. Sebastian decided he was being clever to use the spa weekend to get out of having to build a snowman outside, so I thought I’d stop over.”
Devlin crouched again and started sifting through a box marked ‘gloves’. “We’ve got it, thanks for the offer.”
She thought he’d walked away and was grateful for it until he spoke again.
“I don’t want you to be mad at me.”
Anger surged through Devlin at these words, words that erased his involvement in the issue and placed the blame only on her. She stood and whirled around, her face heated, and she was sure her cheeks were mottled red. The words poured out of her.
“How could you do this? Submit your proposal when I was ready to give everything up for just the possibility that you and I could be more than fuck buddies,” she sputtered.
“We’re more than that, Devlin, and you know it. This isn’t a passing fling for me. It hasn’t been a passing thing since Boston, but you were the one that hid yourself from me. I’ve just been playing catch-up with you from day one.”
Devlin didn’t know what to say to this. She did know that she had to admit some culpability for this situation.All of ita voice whispered, since she was the one at the cabin who’d said they had to be honest about what would happen, but she didn’t want to listen to this voice. This voice had gotten her into trouble one too many times to decide now was a good time to heed its advice—case in point, not submitting her proposal.
“Why are we doing this, Gabe? Why didn’t we stick to the plan at the cabin that it would be for one night. It would’ve been so easy to end it then.”
“Easy? Ending this was impossible, that’s why we didn’t. Whether you like it or not, one of us is going to win and one of us is going to lose. Life works like that.”
“No, it doesn’t. Life isn’t that cut and dried, Gabe.”
“How is it not? I see no nuance in this, nothing that tells me we can figure it out as we go, even though that’s what we said at the cabin. There will be resentment on one or possibly both of our ends. You for blaming me for not submitting your proposal, and me for submitting before we could start to figure things out.”
“So, you admit you submitting the proposal was premature.”
Gabe threw his hands into the air. “I don’t want to keep going over this, Dev.”
“I’ll make it easy for you. I’m going to submit my proposal before this afternoon’s deadline. If you insist there must be a winner and a loser, let’s make it a real battle.”
“I don’t want to battle you.”
“You already started it when we got back. You’ve made my choice very easy. I’m not going to lose.”
She picked up her snowman accessories and stormed past him, bumping his shoulder on her way out of the gazebo.
Gabe followed her back to where Annabelle was standing, and her smile fell off her face when it became apparent that the two of them hadn’t had a harmonious reunion.
“Hey,” she ventured. “How’s it going?”
“Devlin decided to submit her proposal,” Gabe shot out. “I’m glad she’s doing it, but the rest of this? She’s clearly angry about something and taking it out on me.”
“That’s it!” Devlin yelled, dropping her belongings and scooping up some snow. She made quick work of the icy substance, forming it into a little, neat snowball. “No man is going to tell me what to do!”
And with those words, she hurled the snowball at Gabe, hitting him square in the chest. Her eyes widened and Gabe’s narrowed. She backed up, almost bumping the snowman behind her over.
“Guys,” Annabelle started, as Gabe made his own snowball. “Let’s not get crazy here.”
“Crazy?” Gabe asked. “She hits me with a snowball, and you want to caution us both to not be crazy?” He lobbed a soft throw and it appeared to go in slow motion, all three of them watching until it landed right on Devlin’s head.