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Mr. Gold had been to The Rabbit Hole a grand total of twice. The first time was when Garrick Hordor had harassed him out, but the second time, he’d managed to sit in a corner blocked by Dove and have a drink. It wasn’t socializing, not exactly, but sometimes it was nice to sit in a bar instead of alone at his desk.
So, when he went this time, he didn’t know for certain that Belle would be there, but the possibility that she might be was a deciding factor.
He sat in his Cadillac for almost half an hour outside, watching it fill up. On a crowded Friday night, his appearance could have gone one of two ways—wholly unnoticed in the crowd, or a night-ruining disturbance for everyone there. If Belle was inside, the second would have been worth it, but only if she didn’t ignore him. This was too big a variable, though, since Belle had every reason to ignore him. In fact, it would be one of the smartest things she’d ever done, as far as he was concerned.
But that didn’t mean he could handle it.
If he’d been smart, he would have sent Dove in for reconnaissance, but he’d been miserable company to anyone with the misfortune of being near him, and even he was not so horrible as to make his one loyal companion spend an extra second pretending they were friends.
Really, there were two options for his night not being a total failure. The first was that he made it inside, had a drink unnoticed, and made it back to his car. The second was that he saw Belle, and she ignored his bristles like she always did and talked to him, at which point he would apologize profusely and she would forgive him. Maybe after, she’d fall into his arms, and he’d kiss her properly, but that wasn’t anywhere near as important as being able to speak to her again.
The likelihood of his Belle fantasy playing out was so low, he hardly entertained it as a possibility. For one, he’d been horrible to her. For another, it would mean he’d have to actually open his mouth and apologize.
Sitting here in the parking lot, his car was getting cold, especially since he’d cracked a window for oxygen. As he had all week, he forced down the thoughts of how he’d left Belle in the blizzard, far colder than this and with much less recourse. At the time, he’d spent almost an hour fighting through snow to get to his building, and he’d arrived wet and nearly frozen solid, but he could now recognize that he had not, actually, had the worse end of the deal, considering his misery was self-inflicted.
But then, much of his misery these days was self-inflicted.
The doors opened and Nottingham walked out. He wrinkled his nose. At least Belle wouldn’t have to deal with—
And then she followed him out, and Gold straightened up. Where were they going?
Before he could talk himself out of it, he was out of the car. The row of parking had been plowed, but was still slippery, and it took him a few seconds to get purchase with his cane so that he could walk forward. He hurried around, and then he was glad he did because Nottingham had Belle pinned to the wall by the wrists where he was mauling her.
He didn’t know that he had ever utilized the strength he kept up with in quite such an impressive manner as he did hurling Nottingham to the ground.
“How dare you.” He raised his cane, and then Belle was on his arm, telling him to wait. He glanced down at her flushed cheeks, her dilated pupils. What was going on?
“Mr. Gold, he didn’t attack me,” she said, slurring. He glanced down at Nottingham cowering on the floor like a cockroach, and considered hitting him anyway.
“You wanted this?” he asked.
“No,” she said, and he raised his arm again, glad for the chance to put the fear of god in Belle’s worst admirer. “No, I didn’t want this, I want you. But this was consensual.”
Somehow, if he could just have a second, he would be able to make sense of this situation. Belle and Nottingham were making out. Belle claimed to still want him, even after all of the things he’d done to her. Even after he’d cut all ties and left her in a blizzard and told her he didn’t love her.
She stumbled into him, and he caught her, staggering a little under her dead weight. Why was she dead weight?
“Belle?”
Fuck. He hadn’t meant to call her that. When she slid further into him, he turned to Nottingham and snarled, “What did you do to her?”
“I didn’t do anything!” he said. “I swear, this was all above board, she said it was okay!”
His grip on her tightened because she was stumbling and lilting forward. There was no way she was just drunk. No way, in fact, that she had consented to this situation while being of sound mind.
“Miss French.” That was better. He tried to shake her. “Miss French, look at me.”
She mumbled something he couldn’t quite make out, and then all but fell on him. He tried to heft her up, but she was still trying to move herself, and he didn’t have enough agility for two people.
“Look at me,” he tried again, and then she stumbled forward into him. Without a second thought, he dropped his cane to catch her, and then they both stumbled backwards. He was going to murder Keith Nottingham, and that sewer rat would thank him for doing it by the time he was done.
“Belle?” If he could just get her to stand on her own two feet, he could get her to the car, but she was practically unconscious in his arms.
Without use of his cane, he felt like a one-legged man dragging two entire people around, but he managed to get Belle to his car and toss her somewhat unceremoniously into the backseat. If anyone saw him, they’d think he was kidnapping her, but he didn’t have time to care. She groaned and mumbled something as he shoved her legs in so he could shut the door, and then he limp-ran to retrieve his cane because he was afraid she’d wake up enough to try to break free and then he’d have to start the whole process over again.
Once settled in the car with the heat on and Belle safe in the backseat, he had no more distractions from what had just happened. What if he hadn’t been here, staring at the door like a man staring into a battlefield?
Belle mumbled something, possibly about a purse, and Gold glanced at her in his rearview. She was as flushed and pasty as she’d been when he’d abandoned her in the blizzard—even wearing the same coat.
“I’m taking you to the Nolans,” he told her, as if she had any idea what he was saying or where she was. She probably didn’t even know he was there.
“The baby,” she said, and his eyebrows flew up. Maybe she could hear him.
“Yes, they just had a baby.”
She mumbled something else, and a little wisp of the pain he’d felt for almost two weeks vanished. She was safe. He had saved her. Maybe, in her drugged state, she hadn’t remembered what he’d done, but she said she wanted him. Drunk Belle couldn’t have lied that well, could she?
Did that mean that drunk Belle knew she had consented to making out with Keith Nottingham? It didn’t matter. It wasn’t like he had any right to be jealous. A more useful emotion would be guilt and self-flagellation over the fact that he had driven her into Nottingham’s caveman arms.
He pulled up in front of the Nolans’ house, next to the truck that had been sitting outside the bait shop, and put the car in park but didn’t turn it off. Belle had curled up with her eyes closed, continuing to mumble about who knew what. He didn’t want to leave her in a cold car, but if he left the heat running, she might rouse enough to do something foolish.
He left it on anyway, and by the time he knocked on Mary Margaret’s door, he’d worked himself into a state somewhere between rage and panic.
It took long enough for the door to open that Gold wondered if they’d all died, but then he was staring down Sherriff Nolan and his wife.
“Mr. Gold!” Mary Margaret said, eyes widening. “What are you doing here?”
He swallowed. He hadn’t thought this through. “I brought Belle.”
David frowned while Mary Margaret stood on her toes as though he might have been hiding her behind him. “Where is she?”
“She’s unconscious in the car.”
Why couldn’t he speak like himself? He should have just called Dove. That would have been preferable to standing out of the way while strong, handsome David Nolan pushed past him to jog toward his car. He limped after, beating Mary Margaret and her baby monitor, at least.
“What happened?” David asked, staring into the backseat.
“She was drugged at the bar,” he said, and Mary Margaret gasped. “At least, I think she was. She’s not acting drunk.”
He couldn’t even remember how to sound like himself while David opened the backseat to find Belle trailing a hand over the dips in the leather.
“I’d have brought her in myself, but—” He gestured to his cane.
“That’s all right, David can carry her.” Mary Margaret laid a hand on his arm, and he flinched but didn’t pull away. David half-dragged Belle out of the car, and Gold was glad it wasn’t him when she started to fight back.
“Belle, it’s just me!” David said. “Can you stop being so stubborn for one second?”
“No,” he said quietly, and Mary Margaret let out a tiny laugh under her breath. God. God , what if he hadn’t been there? Belle was still struggling, babbling something while David, with much more patience than one might expect, told her she could not walk on her own.
“What happened?” Mary Margaret asked. “Who drugged her?”
David let out an annoyed huff, then knocked Belle’s legs out from under her and scooped her up. Mary Margaret hurried over to throw Belle’s arms around his neck, and Gold swallowed down any jealousy and resentment. David Nolan was happily married, and was only carrying Belle in his arms like a bride because he had to.
He followed close behind, but stopped at the door once David had brought Belle in. Though he wanted to just waltz in behind them, something stopped him. Decorum? Fear? Belle?
But Mary Margaret turned around, hand on the knob, and before she could even open her mouth, he had followed them inside.
“Let’s put her in the guest room,” Mary Margaret said. “And then we can all talk in the hall.”
Gold followed David to a floral room where he dumped Belle on top of a floral quilt. Mary Margaret obviously liked flowers, but did Belle? He didn’t know. He only ever saw her wear jeans and flannel and red lipstick. Flowers would suit her.
Belle groaned, and Mary Margaret walked around to hold her hand and stroke her hair out of her face. Gold’s chest panged. That could have been him if he hadn’t fucked everything up.
Of course, if he hadn’t fucked everything up, Belle would never have been drugged in the first place. They could have been sitting in his shop playing chess right now.
“So what happened?” David asked. “Who drugged her, do you know?”
He watched Mary Margaret kneel by Belle’s head because her mouth was moving. It should have been him.
“Mr. Gold?”
He shook his head. “It was Keith Nottingham. He had her up against a wall when I found them.”
David said something, but Gold was too busy watching Mary Margaret tenderly stroking Belle’s hair off her forehead in one hand while she held hers with the other. They were whispering to one another. Did Belle know what she was saying? Were they having a conversation?
“I have to go,” Gold said, starting for the door. He made it out of the room before David was blocking his way.
“Where are you going?” he asked.
Where was he going? To sit in his car and stare at the Nolans’ front door until Belle emerged from it tomorrow? No. He needed to do something productive, something useful.
“I’m going to kill Keith Nottingham.” He stepped around David, but the bigger man got in his way again. He clenched his teeth. David Nolan was lucky that Gold was unwilling to hit any of Belle’s friends with his cane.
“Get out of my way.”
“Absolutely not,” David said. “You can either stop now and tell me what happened, or I can arrest you for making a credible death threat and question you down at the station.”
Gold pursed his lips. Of course Belle’s best friend was a cop.
“Fine. We’ll go kill Keith together,” he said. “Legally.”
To his credit, David gave this proposition serious thought. Maybe Gold didn’t hate him.
“Mary Margaret, will you be okay if I go arrest Keith?” he asked. Gold almost rolled his eyes. Who else was going to arrest Keith if not the only policeman in town?
“Of course,” she said. “I’ll take care of Belle. Just keep me posted.”
David nodded, though only Gold could see him. “All right, Mr. Gold, you can tell me your side of the story on the way.”
“I’m driving,” Gold said, limping around him.
“Nope.” David grabbed his badge off a hook by the door. “We’re taking the squad car.”
Gold sighed. At least a squad car was bound to scare him. He could accept that.
It wasn’t hard to find Nottingham, and once Gold told David the whole story, he had no qualms with arresting him. Only for Belle’s sake did Gold stay in the squad car as directed when David went to retrieve Nottingham from the bar, and then when he stuffed him into the backseat and he saw Gold, he screamed.
“Shut up,” Gold said. “I can’t beat you to death while you’re behind the divider.”
Nottingham took this to heart and shrank back into a corner. Gold wouldn’t forget though. He would just beat him later.
They pulled into the station, and, while David dragged Nottingham out of the back, Gold climbed out, flexing his fingers in case he needed to kneecap Nottingham if he tried to run.
But he didn’t. He followed as meekly as Gold had ever seen anyone follow a cop, and didn’t protest as David led him to the holding cell, stumbling all the way. How drunk was he?
“I’m not saying shit if he’s here.” Nottingham pointed both cuffed hands at him. “So if you want me to talk with him, I want a fucking lawyer.”
“I am a lawyer,” Gold said. “And it would be a conflict of interest for anyone I know to represent you. And I know everyone.”
This was, to anyone with a brain, a blatant lie, but Nottingham didn’t seem to have a brain even when he was sober, and he just let out a sob as he all but fell onto the cell bed.
“Sleep it off tonight,” David said. “You can tell me all about it in the morning.”
Gold frowned, but David was locking the cell and there was nothing he could do about it now. He hadn’t known David Nolan for long, but he could already tell the look in his eye meant he wasn’t budging, and in Gold’s current state, his only tool for persuasion was violence. He had no illusions that he could beat the sheriff in a fight even with the help of his cane, and also, he did not relish the idea of being arrested for assaulting an officer.
Now, since he hadn’t driven himself, he was at the mercy of David Nolan and his squad car. He could have called Dove, but bringing more people into this fold was not an attractive option.
“All right,” David said, holding the door open for him. “Come on, let’s get a coffee.”
Gold frowned. “What?”
“You need someone to talk to,” David said. “Let’s talk.”
His lip curled, and he would have stood unmoving until this situation was resolved, but he didn’t want Keith Nottingham to hear any of this, so he followed David outside.
“I’ve already told you everything I know,” he said. “And I promised to let you have the first go at Nottingham tomorrow. What more could you possibly want to talk about?”
David opened the passenger door like some weird act of chivalry, then jogged around to his side.
“I don’t know,” he said. “Maybe you want to talk about why you abandoned Belle in a blizzard?”
Gold froze with his hand on the door. He should have called Dove.
“No.” He folded himself into the car, though he’d have preferred to slam the door and limp home. Even his pride had to capitulate to the circumstances sometimes.
“Okay, how about what you were doing at The Rabbit Hole when you found Belle and Keith?”
Why hadn’t he called Dove? “It’s a public bar. Are you planning on asking every patron the same question?”
David glanced at him, hands on the wheel. He hadn’t turned the key yet. Gold was trapped. Could he even open the passenger door without David’s permission now? What if it was child-locked like he was a prisoner?
“Look, Mr. Gold, I love Belle,” he said, and Gold flinched, the memory of him sweeping her off her feet and carrying her to bed burned into his retinas. “She’s been my wife’s best friend since high school, she’s the only real family either of us have, and she is the person we trust to raise our child if anything happens to us.”
“How lovely for you,” Gold muttered. Maybe he would take his chances with the snow and his leg.
“However.” David rapped his hands on the wheel. “I promise that anything you say stays just between us. I’m not going to go reporting back to Belle—or Mary Margaret.”
“I don’t care what anyone talks about with Belle,” he said, almost choking on her name. Saying it instead of Miss French felt too intimate, especially if she wasn’t even there.
David still wasn’t turning the car on. Maybe it wasn’t too late to flee.
“Has anyone ever told you that you are infuriating?” David asked.
Against his better judgment, Gold smirked. “Often.”
“I just don’t think you hate Belle,” David said. “I don’t think you even dislike her.”
Gold clenched his teeth, staring at the dashboard so he would have something to do. What David did not know, what no one knew, was that, under his overcoat, he had a miniature astrolabe pinned to his lapel.
“Of course I don’t hate her.” He could admit that. It wasn’t like not hating someone was a declaration of love and devotion.
“What were you doing at the Rabbit Hole?” David asked.
“Having a drink.”
“In your car? Sitting outside?”
Was it better to admit the truth or make up a lie that made him feel equally pathetic? “My leg was aching,” he said. “I needed a few minutes before I walked in.” David Nolan did not need to know how long he’d actually sat outside in his car.
David glared at him, then finally turned the key. Heat blasted them while David buckled, but Gold didn’t just in case he had to throw himself out at a stop.
“Okay, you don’t want to talk, I get it,” David said. “No one wants to talk to a cop.”
“I have nothing to say,” Gold said. “And if this is an interrogation, I’m going to have to exercise my right to remain silent.”
“How about I talk, then?” David said. “And you can just correct me if I get something wrong.”
“Is this an official interrogation?” Gold asked.
David sighed in a way Gold thought most people wanted to sigh around him, and he almost grinned. It was sometimes, occasionally nice when people weren’t afraid of him.
“No.” He took his badge out of his pocket and set it in the cupholder. “That would be an abuse of power. This is not part of an official investigation.”
Gold licked his lips. He could still refuse to talk. He was Mr. Gold—he could do whatever he wanted.
He waved a hand for David to continue.
“So, you bought the old cannery and surrounding land to come back to Storybrooke for whatever reason,” David said. He was starting from the beginning, then. “And you thought you’d intimidate the owner of the little shop with a corner on your land, get a little extra cash. And then you met Belle.”
Was this how it felt when Gold set a verbal trap? He didn’t like it.
“Correct so far,” he said.
“You met Belle, and you realized you had your work cut out for you, but you already had a reputation as the town beast. You figured you could just intimidate her away like you intimidated everyone else.”
He said nothing. Was he so easy to read, or had he just gotten sloppy?
“But then she didn’t go away, and you realized she wasn’t afraid of you, and you thought maybe—just maybe—she was worth more than just crushing her.”
“No,” he said. “I planned to crush her from minute one.”
“Yeah.” David glanced at him with a too-knowing grin. “Because you were both enjoying it.”
That was just conjecture and he refused to acknowledge it. He stared straight forward, impassive.
“Fine, so you and Belle do whatever you did with the wall and the hamsters and the lease. I won’t pretend to understand it no matter how many times my wife explains it to me. You’re flirting. You’re getting closer. Close enough that, when Belle calls you in an emergency, you’re there. No questions asked.”
Gold couldn’t speak now. He remembered his phone ringing after he’d been so blase in telling Belle he wasn’t interested in love, in her. At the time, it had felt like the smart thing to do. If he was besotted, he could deal with it. He was old and had lived a full, miserable life, but she was young. She deserved the chance at something better than him.
He remembered the way his heart beat when she flashed across the caller ID, the way he’d run through every possible mean thing he could say to convince her not to come by, and then she’d needed him.
People needed him all the time, but never like this.
“Nothing yet?” David asked. Gold shook his head. “Well, I should thank you for that, at least. My daughter was born safe and sound in a hospital because of you. I’ll always be grateful.”
“It’s no matter,” he choked out. Why hadn’t he run from the car at the first opportunity?
“And then you and Belle get trapped together in a blizzard and she kisses you, and you abandon her.” He looked at Gold expectantly, but Gold was too busy trying to remember how to breathe to respond. David sighed. “I get it. You were scared. It was a lot. But I know you don’t hate Belle, because you had no reason to drive Mary Margaret to the hospital otherwise.”
“I never said I hated her,” he said, wishing his voice wasn’t so thin and frail. “Just that I didn’t trust her.”
“I don’t believe that either,” David said. “You know people, Mr. Gold. If you didn’t, people wouldn’t be afraid of you.”
Gold’s hand drifted toward his lapel, but he forced it back down to his cane. If he was going to become emotional in David’s car, he was absolutely not going to let him see that he wore Belle’s gift at all times.
“It’s not just Belle,” he said against his better judgment. “I don’t trust anyone.”
“But you know Belle,” David said. “She’s as trustworthy as they come.”
He shook his head. “There’s only one person I trusted unconditionally, and he’s dead.”
David was quiet. Perhaps he already knew about Neal, but he didn’t think Belle would have told anyone. He trusted her that much, at least.
“Why did you cede the land to her?” David asked.
“I didn’t want to see her anymore.” It wasn’t a lie. Seeing her just reminded him of what he’d done, what he’d lost, how he’d wielded the familiar cruelty like a weapon against the one person he never thought he’d want to harm. It hurt too much, especially since he had no hope of his mouth moving to form an apology.
“Because you don’t feel the same as she does?” David asked.
He wanted to die. He wanted to be drunk. He wanted to have never met Belle.
“No.” His voice came out so soft, he wouldn’t have believed it was him if he’d heard it.
“Because you regret your choices?”
She had told him she’d find someone who wanted her love. There would be no one who wanted it more than he did, but there would be someone who deserved it more.
“I regret causing her any pain.” The head of his cane caught the light from a streetlamp, and he twisted it so the light hit the black paint instead. “I want nothing but Belle’s happiness.”
“So, we’re in agreement, then,” David said. “We both want Belle to be happy.”
“She will be someday,” Gold said. Had he really started the evening thinking he might speak to her? Might kiss her again?
David let out a sound like a growl. Gold’s ability to frustrate was unparalleled.
“She wants you and you want her, and I don’t understand why you’re being so stubborn about it.”
“I’m not a prince, David,” he snapped. “I’m not the beloved town sheriff or the charming owner of a local business. I’m an interloper, an enemy. I swooped in and broke a little piece of the town, and I’ll keep doing it, because money is the only thing that can be counted on in this world.”
David shook his head. “You’re just too scared to talk to Belle and admit you were wrong.”
Of course he was scared. He was born scared. Everyone had always told him he was a coward, and somewhere down the road, it had stuck. Cowardice was in his blood. At least he wasn’t a drunk like his father.
“Mr. Gold.” David pulled up to a stop sign, and Gold had seen that sign before. Had David just been driving in circles?
“I’ve done too much wrong,” he said, the words tumbling out. “I can’t undo anything now. Maybe if I’d gone back, fought through the blizzard twice.” He shrugged, letting the thought dangle.
David shook his head. “You can’t take it back, but you can make amends. You can apologize and work to be better.”
He had only ever worked to be better for one person, and that one person had died in his arms. He wasn’t sure he could take another such loss, whether from death or anything else. People thought he was strong, but he was just a survivor, someone who did what it took. He hadn’t a strong bone in his body.
“I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”
David considered this, watching the road with a furrowed brow. “Well, the first step is acknowledging what you did and why. It’s not an excuse, but it is an explanation.”
Acknowledging what he did. Why. He was not the type of man to sort through and examine his emotions. That was too uncomfortable an activity, better left to men who weren’t fuckups, like David.
“And then?”
“And then you ask Belle what she needs from you,” he said. “And then you do it.”
He made it sound so simple. What if Belle needed him to leave, though? What if she needed him to pack up the cannery and drive back to the city, never to return?
“She misses you,” David said. “She just wants you to be honest with her.”
“I’ve never lied,” he said.
David’s glare was so intense, he almost laughed. The man did not wear anger well. Perhaps because he actually liked himself and his life.
“There’s a difference between technically honest and truly honest, and you of all people know that.”
He did know that. He’d lived his life toeing that line.
“I want to know what happens to Nottingham,” he said. “I want to know the full story.”
David tapped his fingers on the wheel. “Okay. I’ll make a deal with you. You like deals, right?”
He really did not like being on the other side of such a verbal trap. He sighed. “What do you want?”
“I want you to talk to Belle.”
If he’d thought for even a second, he probably could have predicted that answer. Still, it hit him like a ton of bricks. It was one thing for him to sit outside a bar and fantasize about clearing the air with the woman he—well, the woman he liked a lot—but it was completely different to feel beholden to doing so.
But if he was beholden to doing so, he couldn’t chicken out. Mr. Gold did not break deals.
“You’ll call me as soon as you know the full story, and when you know Belle’s all right.”
“Of course,” David said. “And you’ll talk to her within twenty-four hours.”
Twenty-four hours. Not too much time, but certainly long enough for him to panic over it.
“Twenty-four hours from now, or twenty-four hours from her waking up?” he asked.
“From now.” He glanced over. “No trying to get out of this on a technicality. It’s 11:13 p.m. and by 11:13 p.m. tomorrow, you will have broken the silence.”
Something in his chest eased. By 11:13 p.m. tomorrow, there would be an actual resolution and not just the one he’d forced. He would know without a shadow of a doubt whether or not he’d ruined everything.
“You have a deal, Sheriff Nolan,” he said.
David grinned. What must it be like to be generally happy all the time like the Nolans? Like Belle? He’d never known, but maybe someday—someday soon—he’d find out.