He looked at Harper. She was no longer crying, but she shifted her eyes away, refusing to meet his gaze. He wanted to go to her, to kneel at her feet and beg her to believe him, but that would only embarrass her. He struggled against the guilt and sadness tearing through him and forced himself to finish the story.
“A week later she said she aborted the baby and broke up with me. We were kids, living in separate dorms. We didn’t even have wedding rings. She said the baby wasn’t mine anyway and that she had no interest in living in a shitty little town. I don’t even know if she was ever really pregnant or if it was part of her bigger scheme. I didn’t love her, but she did break me, for a long damn time. I trusted her, and my head was all messed up. One week I thought I was having a child, and the next she said it was all a lie. I didn’t know what to believe or where to turn. I had let everyone down.” He shifted his eyes away to try to regain control.
He heard his mother crying, and he looked across the table as his father held her.
“Son…” his father said with a strained voice.
“I’m sorry, Dad, Mom.” He looked at Harper and said, “Harper, I’m so sorry.”
Tears ran like rivers down her cheeks. She didn’t even try to wipe them away. She crossed her arms over her stomach, but she didn’t look away this time. He had no idea what that meant.
“It makes me sick to think of you going through that alone,” his mother said through her tears. “We’re your parents, honey. We love you, regardless of what choices you make. How could you not know that?”
“I wasn’t thinking straight, Mom. I was embarrassed and hurt. I’d been played in the worst way. What kind of a man gets played? Dad would never let that happen to him. I was a mess. I was angry and sad and flat-out mortified. I wasn’t going to come back home with my tail between my legs. I started the annulment process, and then I drank like a fish.” He told them what he’d already explained to Harper about how he fell into the bottle and then climbed back out, only to throw himself into his schoolwork and, eventually, his jobs.
“By the time I came out the other side of it, I was working at KHB and on the fast track to moving up the corporate ladder. I thought if I could make a name for myself, something to make you proud, it would compensate for all the lost time and the pain I’d caused. But I got so lost trying to bury those mistakes, I forgot who I was. I forgot how families worked, how to have meaningful friendships. At that point, my past was buried so deep, I never thought about it.” He looked at Harper and said, “Maybe it was self-protection, a way to put my grief and shame under lock and key. I don’t know. What I do know is that when I met Serena, I remembered what it was like to have friends, to care about people. That was last summer when I called you, Dad. When I came to town and Beckett dragged me to the music festival.” He met Harper’s gaze and said, “That’s when I met Harper.”
Harper cleared her throat. “Excuse me.” She pushed to her feet, and Gavin stood up. “I’m sorry. I just need some space to think.”
He followed her into the house, and when she grabbed her keys and phone, he touched her hand, drawing her sad eyes to his, driving the knife in his heart deeper. “Harper, please don’t leave.”
“I have to, Gavin. I need time to think.”
He curled his hand around hers and she didn’t pull away. Thank fucking God.
“I screwed up, Harper, but I didn’t mean to. I didn’t hide the baby from you, and I know I sound like a liar, saying I haven’t thought about that day at the courthouse in the last decade, but it’s true. I swear it on the lives of everyone I love.”
“Gavin, don’t,” she said wistfully. “I can’t do this now.”
“Please, just hear me out. I was in survival mode. I don’t know if I blocked it out, chose not to think about it, or what I did, but it wasn’t anywhere on my radar. The pain of what she did was there. That was real to me, but marrying her? It’s like it never happened. I don’t know how else to explain it. When I think of that time in my life, the courthouse was a blip. It’s not like I was in love and my marriage of twenty years broke up. We were two kids in a courthouse making things legal so I could raise a child I had no idea wasn’t mine. We didn’t even go back to the same dorm room afterward, Harper. Please, try to understand what it was like.”
“I trusted you,” she said just above a whisper. “I’m so hurt…”
“I know, sweetheart, and I’m sorry. I can’t change how I handled it, and I’ll regret it for the rest of my life. Do you think I wanted to hurt you? To hurt my parents? I love you more than I’ve ever loved anyone or anything. If I could go back to the day I told you about that time of my life and the shit show that I became afterward and find that awful memory so I could tell you about it, I would. God, I’d do it in a heartbeat, because while I survived losing a baby I thought was mine, I’m not sure I could ever come back from losing you.”
“I have to go.” Fresh tears spilled from her eyes.
He followed her outside, wanting to grab her by the shoulders and beg her to stay, but he was the hurricane and she was the sea. The harder he pushed, the farther she’d run. Watching her climb into her car nearly brought him to his knees.
“Harper!”
She stilled at his desperate plea.
“Are you coming back?”
She looked directly into his eyes, tears sliding down her cheeks, and said, “I hope so.”
AS HARPER DROVE away, sobs burst from her lungs. She didn’t know where to go or who to talk to. She’d just driven away from the only person she wanted to talk to. But with Gavin’s mother in tears, his father looking like he’d aged ten years in the space of an hour, and Gavin…
Her strong, sensible boyfriend, the man who had helped her find her way to honesty from day one, had looked guilt-stricken and sick, like it had taken all of his strength to push words from his lungs.
How was she supposed to process her own feelings when the man she loved looked just as devastated as she was?
She thought about calling Jana. But she was the one who had convinced Harper to stop waiting for the other shoe to drop. The frigging shoe not only dropped, it landed on my flipping head. She wiped her eyes, driving aimlessly as she debated what to do and where to go. The thought of telling anyone what was going on was too much to bear. She drove to her cottage, but as she stepped onto the porch, she remembered Gavin’s note, the lollipops he’d left, and how he’d helped her unpack her life and put it back together.
She inhaled a ragged breath and pushed the door open. As she stepped inside and looked at the stark little cottage, the place she’d once called home, it felt stifling and cold at once. She closed the door and paced, but her legs were weak. She collapsed on the sofa and cried into her hands. Thoughts whirled in her head, snippets of the things Gavin had said, images of the hurt in his eyes, and sounds. God, the sounds. His mother’s soft sobs, his father’s strained voice, Beckett’s apologies, and Gavin’s voice turning thin as a frayed thread as he told the story of his suffering.
Her head fell back against the cushion and she stared up at the ceiling, remembering how she’d faked being sick to get out of her blind date. She laughed softly, thinking of how persistent, yet careful, Gavin had been with her. He always knew just what she needed.
But he’d kept his marriage from her.
Maybe that was what he needed.
She pushed to her feet again, feeling like a stranger in her own house. She wasn’t the same person she’d been when she got home from LA. She was better, stronger, more confident in what she wanted.
I want Gavin.
Heartache pressed in on her.
She walked to the bedroom. Even though they’d replaced the furniture so they could rent it fully furnished, images of them making love slammed into her. She turned on her heel and walked out the door.
Through the blur of tears, she climbed back into her car and drove away.
Her go-to thinking spot had become Gavin’s dock. Our dock. More sobs bubbled out.
Pull yourself together and think. Her mind was too cluttered with pain and love and so much confusion she was lucky she didn’t drive off the road. She drove as if on autopilot, weaving through the dark streets of Wellfleet, passing galleries and restaurants, heading toward the pier, her old thinking spot. Maybe the sea air would help her make sense of her careening emotions.
She was glad to see only a handful of cars in the parking lot. Mac’s Seafood and the Pearl were closed, as was the WHAT Theater and shops, leaving only the draw of the harbor. She got out of her car, wishing she’d brought a sweater, and filled her lungs with the cool night air. A group of teenagers was skateboarding at the other end of the parking lot, their voices carrying in the air. The wind picked up as she stepped onto the worn wooden slats of the pier. She passed a young couple snuggling on a blanket in the sand below. A pang of longing sliced through her.
When she reached the end of the pier, she held on to one of the splintery wooden pilings, listening to the sounds of the water splashing against the pilings, the creak of fishing boats, and tinny clanks of their hardware rattling in the wind. Potent, fishy scents permeated the salty air. Harper wrapped her arms around her middle, hoping the cold air would cleanse the hurt from her heart. Goose bumps rose on her flesh as her dress whipped around her legs. Cold air wasn’t strong enough to do the trick. Her pain was bone deep. The problem was, she wasn’t alone in her pain, and she couldn’t separate Gavin’s from her own. They were too entangled, and she didn’t have the faintest idea how to separate them.
She lowered herself to the edge of the pier. It was so different by the bay than it was on the pond. Here the cold wind whipped, indifferent to the chaos in her mind, whereas on the pond the breeze was gentle, caressing, and soothing. Like Gavin. He wasn’t a gale-force wind, as he’d claimed on their first date. He was a constant, stabilizing breeze that lifted and calmed. That thought sent a pang of longing and pain through her. She wished she could be angrier, flat-out pissed. It would be so much easier than being hurt and sad.
She closed her eyes, letting the cold air chill her to the bone. Maybe she could freeze the hurt out. She sat shivering against the wind for a long time, remembering how she used to come there to write. Being near the water had always helped her creativity flow, but she’d needed more than that when she’d come home from LA.
She’d needed Gavin.
He hadn’t just helped her find her way back to her passion. He’d become one of her passions. Her biggest passion.
My best passion.
She tried to push that thought away, but it was like trying to tear off a piece of herself.
She didn’t know how long she sat in the cold, but it was long enough for her toes to go numb. She heard the sound of feet shuffling on the pier and the whispering cadence of a couple in love. Her stomach clenched as their footfalls neared.
“Harper?” Violet put a hand on Harper’s shoulder and crouched beside her. Her hair was as black as her leather jacket and boots. “Are you okay? You must be freezing.”
Andre’s concerned face came into view, and Harper’s emotions plummeted. Was it really just a little while ago that they were celebrating together?
“I’m okay.” She tried to mask her heartache, but there was no escaping the sadness in her voice.
“Then you won’t mind if we sit with you.” Violet plunked herself down beside Harper.
Andre shrugged off his zip-up sweatshirt and draped it around Harper’s shoulders. He sat on Harper’s other side, buffering her from the wind with his thick body.
“Thank you.” She pulled the sweatshirt around herself.
They didn’t say anything for a few minutes, though she knew they wanted to.
“You know, Gavin always seemed a little unsettled to me,” Violet said casually. “But tonight he looked like a man who finally knew he was exactly where he belonged. Want to tell me why you’re here instead of giving him a birthday celebration he’ll never forget?”
“Not really,” Harper mumbled.
“Okay, that’s cool. He must have done something pretty bad.” Violet cracked her knuckles and said, “Want me to take him out for you? Bury the body in the middle of the ocean?”
Harper shook her head. “No.”
“Did you guys have a fight?” Andre asked.
Harper shrugged, tearing up again. “It wasn’t a fight.” She didn’t know what to call it. A mass heartbreak, maybe?
“Well, whatever it was, I doubt it’s worse than waking up in Ghana to find the person you just said I love you to gone without so much as a goodbye, or even a note, and then spending two years not knowing if she was alive or dead,” Andre said.
Harper looked at Violet. “You did that to him?”
“Yeah. I suck,” Violet said.
“Oh my gosh, I can’t imagine…” That was worse than not knowing about Gavin’s ex-wife.
“No, she doesn’t suck,” Andre said. “She was protecting herself from being hurt, and we’re both in better places for it. The girls didn’t tell you about everything that happened last summer?”
Harper shook her head. “Just that you guys were together before and that you showed up with Vi’s mom for Des’s wedding. I also heard that Vi sort of had a secret life none of us knew about.”
“Yup. All true, and it was a shitty thing to do. All of it.” Violet lifted apologetic eyes to Andre, who reached across Harper’s lap and touched Violet’s hand. “I won’t go into all the gory details, but three years ago we were both in Ghana for different reasons, and we fell in love. It scared the hell out of me, which we can blame on my crazy-ass mother. Andre poured his heart out to me right after I got the message from Lizza telling me Desiree needed me here at the Cape. Remember that?”
“Yes, but you never said anything about a guy, much less being in love.”
“Because I couldn’t think about Andre without falling apart,” Violet said. “The pain cut too deep, so I pretended he didn’t exist and none of it ever happened. I couldn’t afford to lose my shit when I was just getting to know the sister I had been separated from for so long. But trust me, I was a fucking mess.”
“I could never pretend not to love Gavin. I can’t even comprehend that idea, but for what it’s worth, you never seemed like a mess.”
Violet looked down at the water. “I was.”
“Violet’s messes look different from other people’s messes,” Andre explained.
“The worst part was that I didn’t realize how lying to myself affected everyone else,” Violet said with regret in her eyes. “I didn’t consider hiding that part of my life—or the new parts of my life, my new friends, my jobs—as lying. But it was. I hurt Desiree, Serena, Emery…I unknowingly hurt everyone who trusted and loved me. The mind is a tricky thing, Harper. In leaving my past behind, I convinced everyone, including myself, that I wasn’t hiding anything at all.”
Just like Gavin. “How did you guys get past that? Andre, weren’t you angry? Hurt?”
“It was the hardest thing I’ve ever gone through,” Andre said. “It would have been easier if I’d hated her, but that’s the thing about love. You don’t have a choice in the matter, and its impact on everyone is different. The feelings that terrified Violet were the same things that made me feel whole. I was devastated when she left, and I was angry when I found her again. But our love for each other hadn’t changed, and once I stepped back enough to understand why she left the way she did…” He shrugged. “How could I be mad at the woman I loved with every ounce of myself, when she was only trying to survive?”
Wasn’t that all Gavin was doing? Her mind sailed back to when she’d heard Beckett say, Harper’s a million times better than your crazy ex-wife. Gavin had said, “What?” at the same time she and his parents had. He’d sounded just as shocked and baffled by what Beckett had said as the rest of them had. That wasn’t the reaction of someone who had an ex-wife on his mind.
Harper’s pulse raced as she relived those first few seconds. Gavin’s face had
drained of all its color. When he’d realized what he’d done, he’d looked shocked and grief-stricken, utterly devastated.
“I got lucky that Andre loved me enough to deal with my baggage.” Tears glistened in Violet’s eyes.
Knowing what Violet had done to Andre didn’t make Harper want to stop being her friend any more than Gavin shutting himself off from his past made her want to stop being with him.
“We all have baggage,” Harper said.
That’s exactly what Gavin’s ex-wife is. She was a lead weight that had sucked the trust and life out of him, pulled him under so deep he’d nearly drowned. Harper had baggage, too, but Gavin had saved her from making a huge mistake and hiding the truth from the people she loved for too long.
A harsh worry trickled in. What if he was hiding other things? After seeing how devastated he was after he realized what he’d done, she didn’t think he was hiding anything else. In her heart, in her soul, she didn’t think he was. But was she giving him too much credit by trusting her instincts? What if she was wrong? What then?
She remembered what Hunter had told her about love. When they’re bummed, you’re bummed. When they’re happy, you want to do everything within your power to keep them that way. That’s love, Harper. You might not be there yet, but if you feel those things, it’s definitely worth holding on to while you figure it out.
He’d told her about the baby. Wasn’t that a harder admission than the marriage?
“I want to hold on,” she said, unbidden.
“What?” Violet asked.
Gavin’s pained explanation slammed into her. I was embarrassed and hurt. I’d been played in the worst way. What kind of a man gets played? Dad would never let that happen to him. Her breathing hitched with the memory.
Bayside Romance (Bayside Summers) Page 26