Seducing My Dad's Best Friend novel · Chapter 7 of 24

Chapter 7: Gabe's POV

Gabe's POV

I went to the charter desk on Monday morning to end it.

I had rehearsed it on the walk across the yard.

Devon, I can't do this. You deserve better. It was a decent speech and I knew every word.

She was alone in the office with the heater going and a pot of coffee, and she looked up and smiled at me.

"You've got your serious face on," she said.

"We need to talk."

"We do." She pushed a chair toward me with her foot. "I want to say something first. May I?"

I sat down.

"I've been sure about us since the day you taught me how to splice a line," she said. "I've never doubted you. But the last two weeks you've been somewhere else."

"Devon."

"I'm not asking where. I'm asking you not to decide anything until after Stan's dinner."

"Why the dinner?"

"Because he's going to stand up in front of the whole harbor and hand you his half of the yard, and I want him to do it happy." She folded her hands on the desk. "If you are going to end us, you tell me afterward. To my face. With my ring on."

"That's not fair to you."

"I know it isn't. I'm asking anyway."

She had her chin up and her eyes steady.

I did not like what I felt.

It was not love and it was not pity.

It was the old weight, the one I'd carried for fourteen years, the one that said I owed people and had never finished paying.

"After the dinner," I said.

She came around the desk and kissed my forehead.

"Thank you," she said. "That's all I wanted."

I walked out into the cold feeling sick.

Stan found me at the end of the dock an hour later.

I was standing at the rail looking at the lake, and I knew his step on the planks without turning around.

He leaned on the rail next to me.

He was sixty-five now and his hands, on the wood, looked older than they had last year.

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