Chapter 515 No Luck

Gail’s POV

I drove to the estate with the windows down, even though the morning air was cool enough to raise goosebumps on my arms. The radio remained off the entire way. I kept replaying the previous night in my head: the sound of Julian’s hand connecting with Jude’s face, the way the blood had looked against his collar, and the expression on Katia’s face when she confirmed who he was. By the time I turned into the long driveway, my hands were gripping the steering wheel tightly, and my throat felt raw from holding everything in.

Grandma was already in the garden when I found her. She was sitting on the stone bench near the roses, with a cup of tea resting on the armrest beside her. It was the same way she had sat on countless other mornings whenever one of us needed somewhere quiet to collect ourselves. She looked up as soon as she heard my footsteps on the path, but she did not ask why I was there. Instead, she moved her cup and patted the empty space beside her.

I sat down. For a moment, I simply watched the roses, trying to figure out where to begin without making myself sound as foolish as I felt. Then the words came rushing out before I could stop them.

“I invited them to dinner so they could meet him,” I said. “Callum. That is what he told me his name was. Callum Davies. He was kind. He listened when I talked. And then Julian walked in and called him Jude, and everything fell apart. Julian grabbed him. He slapped him. Katia stood there and told me it was true, that he was the same man who had pretended to be her husband and tried to take her company. He ran. He just ran out of my house and left me standing there with blood on my floor and no idea what I was supposed to do next.”

My voice cracked toward the end. I pressed my palms against my eyes and tried to hold back the tears, but they came anyway. Grandma did not say anything. She simply reached over and rested her hand on my back, just as she used to do when I was younger and everything felt too overwhelming to handle.

“I have no luck with men,” I admitted once I could speak again. “Anthony left because he could not handle the life that came with this family. I waited years after that. I told myself I was fine on my own. Then this man showed up, and he seemed different. I let him into my life, and he turned out to be the same kind of person who hurt Katia. At my age, I should know better. I should be able to tell when someone is lying to me. Instead, I cooked him dinner and introduced him to my family like he belonged there.”

Grandma waited until my breathing became steady before speaking. Her voice was quiet but firm.

“You are not foolish for wanting to be loved, Gail. Anthony left because he was weak, not because you were difficult to love. And this man, Jude, used the same weakness Elliot has always exploited in lonely people. He found the part of you that was still hoping to find love, and he took advantage of it. That does not make you careless. It makes him cruel.”

I wiped my face with the sleeve of my sweater and stared at the ground between my shoes. Then Grandma asked a question I had not expected.

“Did you sleep with him?” she asked.

I shook my head. “No. We never got that far. But I will not sit here and pretend I was not in love with him, or at least with the version of him he showed me. I was planning to sleep with him the night Katia and Julian came over. After they left. I had already made up my mind. I wanted to stop waiting and finally experience what it felt like to have someone stay.”

The admission left me feeling exposed. I expected Grandma to judge me, but instead, she continued rubbing my back gently.

“Then it is good they came when they did,” she said. “You would have given him something he had no right to take, and you would have spent the rest of your life wondering how you missed it. You did not miss it because you are bad at reading people, Gail. You missed it because he spent weeks making sure you would. That is what men like him do. They study your weaknesses and use them against you.”

I leaned against her shoulder and closed my eyes. The garden smelled of damp earth and the last of the summer roses. Somewhere inside the house, a door opened and closed, but no one came looking for us. Grandma kept her hand on my back, allowing the silence to continue until the worst of the shaking in my chest had passed.

“The family will handle him,” she assured me after a while. “Julian and Katia already know what this is. They will not let him near you again. But you have to stop blaming yourself for wanting something real. Wanting love is not a mistake. Trusting the wrong person is something that happens to people who are still willing to hope. I would rather you keep hoping than become someone who never tries again.”

I remained on that bench until the tea in her cup had gone cold and the sun had moved high enough to warm the path in front of us. I did not feel completely better. The humiliation was still there, along with the anger and the painful realization that I had almost given myself to a man who had been lying to me from the moment we met.

But at least I no longer felt as though I was facing everything alone. Grandma knew me well enough to tell me exactly what I needed to hear without making it sound prettier than it was. And for the first time since Jude had run out of my house, that felt like enough to help me get through the rest of the day.