“Are you really not going to try? I thought you loved her.”
“I do.”
“Then you have to tell her you’re sorry. Even if it amounts to nothing.”
* * *
Two hours later, after a rough time leaving the airport and navigating busy San Francisco traffic, John pulled over to the curb outside Gabi’s condo building. He put his car in park and rested his elbow on the window ledge. “Godspeed, little brother. Do you want me to wait in case she kicks you out on your ass?”
I shook my head. “No, I’ll call a cab if I have to. But could you do me a favor?”
“Anything.”
“Call Anna. Let her know my offer was serious, and that we’ll stay in touch with her.”
John nodded. “You got it. Anything else?”
I shook my head. “I can take it from here.” I got out of the car and went to close the door but hesitated. I leaned over to look inside at my older brother, a man I didn’t understand for a very long time. “Hey, John?”
“What’s up?”
“Thanks for going with me to the ranch. I don’t think I could have done it alone.”
He grinned. “Sure you could have, Jakey. But I’m glad I was there to see you in action. You said everything I’ve wanted to say since I was fourteen years old.”
“Why fourteen?”
He got a far-off look in his eyes. “Fourteen was a bad year for me.”
Enough said. I wasn’t going to make my brother relive anything right now. Something told me he and I would be meeting for beers a lot more often and swapping war stories from our childhoods. Even though the conversations would be hard, I looked forward to letting him in and vice versa, and knowing him better.
Hell, I might even go sailing with him one of these days if he asked.
I patted the hood of his car before he drove off, and I turned to Gabi’s condo. The stucco was painted bright pink in the light of the setting sun. She might not even be home, but I had to see her face to face. I had to tell her what she’d done was incredible and that I felt so small in the wake of her selflessness.
She needed to know.
So, feeling reborn after confronting my father and saying what I had been burning to say for decades, I strode to her front door and buzzed her unit number. No answer. I tried again and again but got nothing.
Damn it.
I hung my head and groaned. Just my luck. I fell onto the bench near the front doors, stretched my legs out, and wondered what the odds were that she was ignoring the call or simply not home. It could go either way. Minutes crept by and eventually turned into an hour. People came and went, but I didn’t ask them to let me in.
It had to be her to invite me in.
I was half asleep when I heard high heels clicking down the walkway. I opened my eyes and saw a red pair of pumps. I followed a pair of familiar, lean denim legs up into the eyes of the woman I loved.
Gabi stared down at me with her arms folded across her chest and a pair of sunglasses pushing her curled bob back. Pieces stuck out every which way. She had on a pair of neon yellow earrings, her lips were painted pink, and she had dark eyeliner on.
She looked like the badass she was.
I scrambled to my feet. “Hey.”
“What are you doing here?” Her tone held no anger, no resentment—no anything, really.
I pulled a folded piece of newspaper out of my back pocket and handed it to her. It hadn’t been easy to get the page off the crazy lady on the plane. It cost me twenty bucks. “I saw this.”
She looked down at her own picture on the front page but never took the paper. “Oh.”