Wild Dreams: A Friends to Lovers romance (Wilder Irish Book 12)

by Mari Carr

However, Erin stood her ground and asked Gavin to give her a chance—a real chance—and to Oliver’s surprise, his friend had apologized for acting like a jerk and agreed.

  After that…things got a lot easier.

  At least for Erin and Gavin.

  They’d become such great friends that there were times when Oliver felt like the damn outsider. Not that he was complaining.

  Much.

  “Sometimes I wonder…” Erin said, pausing. She bit her lower lip, and Oliver got a sense she regretted what she’d just started to say. “Never mind.”

  “You wonder what?” he pressed.

  “I wonder if you and I had never met…if you and Gavin would have…”

  Oliver sighed. There were no secrets between him and Erin. He’d fallen for her just as quickly as her roommate Jordan fell for her flavors of the month. Layla had introduced him to her cousin shortly after Erin had landed a nursing job at Johns Hopkins in the E.R., making the move from Philly to Baltimore. Oliver had taken one look at the curvy brunette with chocolate-brown eyes and known he’d met his soulmate.

  Well…one of them.

  Erin’s hot-blooded Italian mother had met and fallen madly in love with her hard-working and hard-playing Irish husband, and the result had been Erin Cafferty. Like him, she laughed loudly and often, spoke her mind, rarely flashed her fiery temper—but when she did, watch out—and once they’d committed to this relationship, she’d been all in, holding back nothing.

  As such, she knew all about Ollie’s wild dreams, his desire to find a relationship just like that of his parents. Erin was as open-minded and adventurous as they came. Unlike the Moretti brothers, Erin had been quick to accept Layla’s relationship with both Finn and Miguel, confiding to him early on that she’d thought it was “very cool and totally hot,” and how she couldn’t imagine anything better than finding true love with not just one person but two. She’d told him she would be open to that kind of relationship if it was what he truly wanted.

  If Oliver hadn’t already fallen for her before, that would have sealed the deal for him.

  Erin had also heard all of Oliver’s “past lovers” stories, just as he’d heard hers, so she knew about his one night with Gavin and how it had ended. Why it had ended. Oliver had tried to convince her that he’d since come to realize that dream of a threesome relationship was just that…a dream.

  But every now and then, like tonight, he’d slip up and reveal more than he should, and once more, she’d be left to wonder if she truly was enough. He hated doing that to her.

  He’d let his dreams keep him and Gavin apart, so how could he expect her to believe the same wouldn’t hold true in their relationship? While he’d sworn to her that wouldn’t happen, it was clear she didn’t believe him.

  “You know Gavin and I…” He started to say hooked up, but that felt too impersonal, especially given his feelings for Gavin.

  “Slept together,” Erin finished when he stumbled. “I know that, but—”

  “But nothing. It was just one time and we both knew afterwards that…it wasn’t enough. That something was missing.”

  The truth was his night with Gavin had been fucking amazing. The only other lover he’d ever taken to bed who’d rocked his world like that was Erin. But Oliver had fucked it up when he’d misread the entire thing with Gavin, planning a future out loud for the two of them and some unknown woman.

  “Nothing was missing in Gavin’s mind,” Erin softly reminded him.

  He knew that. But it didn’t change the facts. “It wouldn’t work, Erin. I want a wife and babies.”

  “And a husband. Gavin.”

  Oliver hadn’t planned to add anything else to that list because he’d made that mistake once before. Lost someone he loved because his dreams were too big, too wild. But Erin wouldn’t let him lie. Not even to himself. Because she was right.

  He didn’t just want a wife.

  He wanted it all.

  3

  “Thanks for letting me know, Aaron.” Gavin stood at the doorway of the pub and watched Aaron Young cross the street and climb back into his police cruiser. He’d only just gotten home from work when he’d been waylaid by his foster uncle, a cop with the Baltimore police department, on the sidewalk outside.

  He’d intended to head straight upstairs to the dorm, shower, and hit the couch, but given the information he’d just gotten, he thought a beer—maybe several—sounded a lot better.

  Gavin walked to the bar, claiming a stool, suddenly feeling very tired. He’d actually come home from work in a good mood, feeling almost chipper as he recalled Friendsgiving and how he’d been invited to put one of Grandma Sunday’s ornaments on the tree. For a kid who’d grown up with fuck all in terms of family traditions—unless he counted his mother’s dark days and the beatings—being included in that one had made him feel like a man who’d won a billion-dollar lottery.

  Padraig came over and pointed to the Guinness tap.

  Gavin nodded. He’d lived in the apartment upstairs for a few years now, which meant Padraig had gotten damn good at knowing what drink he needed when. Padraig slid the full pint glass in front of him.

  Gavin sighed, lifted it, and took a long swig. Then he noticed Emmy looking up from her computer. He caught her eye and nodded by way of hello. “Missed you the other night at Friendsgiving, Emmy,” he said.

  She smiled and pointed to her computer. “Facing the deadline from hell. Wrote until the wee hours that night. Still not done.”

  “Told her I’m going to put her on a daily word count regime so she doesn’t get this behind again.” Padraig pretended to crack a whip. “Write, wench, write!” he joked.

  Emmy rolled her eyes and pointed to her empty glass. “Wine, barkeep, wine!”

  He topped her glass up, then returned to Gavin when Emmy looked back at her computer screen, her fingers flying over the keys once more. Gavin couldn’t begin to understand how Emmy, a romance writer, was able to concentrate in the loud bar, but she swore the place had become her muse, feeding her stories.

  “Was that Aaron I saw you talking to outside?” Padraig asked.

  “Yeah. He, uh, had some news for me.”

  Padraig studied his face but didn’t ask what news. He was giving Gavin the chance to decide if he wanted to share or not. Padraig’s quiet nature was what made him a very good bartender…and friend. Ever since turning twenty-one, Gavin had found himself sitting at this bar many a night, just because he enjoyed talking to Padraig.

  Gavin had very few confidantes because he found it difficult to share things about himself and his past. Oliver had been the first person he’d opened up to, and then slowly, over time, he’d felt safe revealing more of himself to Sean, Lauren, and Chad.

  Lately, he’d been thinking he would like to talk to Erin about his childhood. Erin was the first “girl” friend he’d ever had, as he’d always preferred the company of guys. Sometimes he wondered if that was because his experience with females was pretty much limited to his mother, and God knew he didn’t talk to her about…anything. Not unless he wanted it used against him.

  The main problem with confiding in Erin was that when the subject of him and Oliver being foster brothers had initially come up, he’d made some comment about his mother being gone for good—which Erin had misinterpreted as she was dead—and he hadn’t corrected her because it was still hard for him to talk about…fuck…anything personal.

  Gavin had decided to let Erin continue to believe what she did because with his mother locked away, he could pretend he’d always been a part of the Collins family and had something resembling a normal life.

  What a joke.

  Gavin had stopped trying to get his mom out of the hospital near the end of his first year with the Collins family. Prior to that, he’d been determined to “save her,” convinced that it was his job to take care of her, that she couldn’t make it on her own without him. Primarily because his mother had always told him she couldn’t. And he’d believed her.
<
br />   While logically, he knew he’d only been a kid when he suffered the worst of his mother’s abuse, it was still hard for him—as a man—to admit to ever being so weak, so helpless, so manipulated.

  The problem was, his mom hadn’t always been horrible. When she was lucid, she tried. Tried to hold down a job, to pay the bills, to be a good mother. Or, well…maybe it was better to say she just tried to be a mother.

  Yeah. The fact she was out was bad. Really bad.

  His feelings for his mother were—and always had been—a jumble, something he’d never managed to sort out in any way that made sense to him. If she’d just been a mean drunk, it would have been easier to explain away her abuse, but it wasn’t the alcohol—or just the alcohol—that drove her actions. And then there were those days when she’d been nice to him.

  He’d known this day was coming. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to admit it to himself, but he’d known. She’d always been there, in the back of his mind.

  Unbeknownst to everyone—Oliver included—when he’d gotten his driver’s license, Gavin had begun making two trips to the psychiatric hospital a year, once on his mother’s birthday and again on Christmas Eve. He would drop off a package, usually containing nothing more than some snacks, magazines, books, stuff like that for her. He never included a card and he never gave it to her personally, unwilling to face her.

  “You okay, Gavin?” Padraig asked when the silence lasted too long.

  Over the years, Padraig had been slowly indoctrinated into Gavin’s small group of confidantes. And Gavin now realized he’d eschewed the trip upstairs because he wanted to talk to Padraig as much as he wanted the beer.

  “It was about my mother.”

  “Okay.” Padraig frowned, looking concerned. His compassion—something the entire Collins family seemed to have in spades—went a long way toward soothing the burn of the scab Aaron had just ripped off. “What about her?”

  From Padraig’s dark tone, it was apparent the bartender was ready to step in as the first line of defense if Gavin asked.

  “She’s out.” It was just two words, but damn if they didn’t cut through Gavin sharper than any knife could.

  “Fuck,” Padraig muttered.

  “Yeah.”

  Gavin took another sip of beer and stretched his neck muscles, trying to loosen the knots in his shoulders that tightened the second Aaron had told him his mother had been released from the state mental hospital that morning.

  Jesus.

  Five minutes after getting the news and he was wound up tighter than a spring.

  While Aaron didn’t know as much about Gavin’s childhood as Oliver and Padraig, he’d known the reason why Gavin had been placed with Sean, Lauren, and Chad. Cops tended to know all the details when one of their own was hurt.

  “You think she’ll try to contact you?”

  Gavin shrugged. “I have no idea what she’ll do. I haven’t seen or spoken to my mother since I was fifteen.”

  Not that he hadn’t tried to contact her during his first year with the Collins family. He’d escaped his bedroom countless times, sometimes hitching rides, sometimes stealing money from his foster family to pay cab fare to the hospital. He was turned away every single time, and then Sean, Lauren, or Chad—after a call from the security guard—would come pick him up and bring him back home.

  The last time he’d seen his mom, he had come home to find the shitty apartment he shared with her filled with cops and EMTs and, unsurprisingly, his social worker, Margie.

  He’d run out of the house an hour or so earlier—chased out was probably more accurate—when he had come home from school to discover his mother in the midst of one of her rages.

  She’d pulled a knife on him, something she had never done before. Even now, Gavin could recall the guilt he’d felt for month afterwards, blaming himself for her use of a weapon.

  After all, he’d been the one who’d thought the fact he’d grown several inches taller and put on some serious muscle weight, thanks to his strength-training class at school, should serve as a deterrent to her beatings. So the last time she’d backhanded him, a few months prior to that night, he’d gotten cocky and told her that was the last time she threw a punch that he didn’t return.

  In her rage, she’d decided to prove to him she would always be top dog—hence the weapon. He’d walked in after school and she’d launched into one of her tirades, his attention drawn to the empty bottle of gin laying on the floor. She’d screamed at him, called him a piece of shit and a bastard and a whole host of other things he’d heard a million times before when she was deep in the grips of the alcohol or her depressed rages.

  Then she’d picked up a knife he hadn’t noticed, from the end table, and gotten one good slice in his shoulder before he managed to swing his bookbag at her, knocking the weapon out of her hands. While she’d lunged to grab it, he’d run out of the apartment, deciding to make himself scarce until she passed out. He’d only managed to stay away an hour or so because the wound on his arm wouldn’t stop bleeding and he had needed proper bandages.

  His world had been blown to bits when he’d arrived home to discover the shit had hit the fan. Margie pulled him aside to say one of the neighbors had called the police about their fight. Two cops came to check out the disturbance, and his mother had stabbed one of them in the arm several times before his partner could pull her off.

  Gavin had been taken to the hospital where they’d put ten stitches in his arm, then he’d spent that night in a group home. The next morning, Margie had delivered him to Sean, Chad, and Lauren’s house.

  His mother had been committed to the state psychiatric hospital. In addition to her alcohol addiction and depression, his mother had been diagnosed with antisocial personality disorder, which had given her defense attorney a way to keep her out of prison.

  “Given what you’ve said about her, I’m surprised they let her out,” Padraig said.

  Gavin wished he was. But he should have known his luck wouldn’t last. “She’s a sociopath and a drunk, but I guess they couldn’t hold her forever. Even though it would be better for everyone if they would.”

  Not everyone…just him.

  There must have been more malevolence in his tone than he’d intended, because Emmy’s gaze lifted from her laptop, her brows rose in surprise.

  He never lost his temper, refusing to unleash his anger on others around him. He wouldn’t be his mother.

  “Sorry, Emmy,” he murmured.

  She smiled. “I’m sorry for eavesdropping. Bad habit.”

  Padraig snorted. “Never heard you admit to that before.”

  She narrowed her eyes at him. “I was talking to Gavin. Not you.”

  “Pot, meet kettle,” Gavin teased, grateful to have the chance to change the subject.

  Padraig and Emmy laughed and acknowledged they were both accomplished eavesdroppers.

  Gavin sighed. He needed time to wrap his head around the fact his mom was out. Though Lauren had offered to take him to visit his mom after he turned eighteen, Gavin had refused, unwilling to face her again after so many years. He figured the biannual gifts were enough, a simple way of appeasing the guilt he felt over abandoning her.

  For the last couple of years, all he’d felt in regards to his mom was the guilt tied to his hope that he’d never have to see her again, never have to face her anger over him leaving her alone for so long.

  Nine years hadn’t been long enough to sort out his emotions for the woman, and now…fuck. Now he was going to have to face the demons—well, the demon—of his past. Because he didn’t doubt for a second, she was going to find him, whether he wanted to be found or not.

  Emmy went back to typing and Padraig studied his face for a moment. “If you need to talk…” he offered.

  Gavin smiled. “I appreciate that, but…”

  “Not tonight?”

  Gavin shook his head. “I gotta figure some shit out first.”

  “Alrighty then. New subject. Where’s the rest
of your gang?” Padraig asked.

  Gavin wasn’t sure he’d refer to him, Oliver, and Erin as a gang. More like a couple, plus one, but he rolled with it. “Date night.”

  “Oh, damn, that’s right. It’s Tuesday. Not sure where I lost a day this week. I keep thinking it’s Monday. Hey, Em, remind me Seamus has a vet appointment tomorrow afternoon,” Padraig called out.

  “On it,” she said without looking up.

  Gavin had always admired Padraig and Emmy’s close friendship. She’d begun hanging out at the pub a couple years earlier, claiming a spot at the end of the bar. Padraig had actually had a nameplate made for her, so that her seat was permanently reserved.

  “I swear to God that dog gets more contrary by the day,” Padraig said.

  “He’s spoiled,” Gavin pointed out. It was common knowledge to basically everyone in the family that no dog had ever been more loved.

  “Blame Mia for that. I’m pretty sure if I’d asked her, she would have said Seamus was her soul mate and the two of them were just doing me a favor, letting me live in their apartment. You know, I’m still finding unopened dog toys that she bought for him stuffed in random, weird places. It’s like she was determined to make sure she remained Seamus’s favorite forever. Because damn if that dog doesn’t know when it’s a present from Mia.” Padraig chuckled as he shook his head.

  Gavin laughed. “Mia was awesome, and she did love that dog.”

  Padraig nodded, still smiling, and it occurred to Gavin that lately whenever Mia’s name came up, the sadness that used to pervade Padraig’s face was no longer there. He was able to talk about his late wife with happiness, to remember her without drifting to a dark place.

  Then Gavin realized Emmy wasn’t typing anymore. Instead, she was looking at Padraig. And the sadness that was missing from the bartender’s face was written all over hers.

  The Collins family placed bets on everything under the sun, but the one thing none of them seemed willing to wager on was when Emmy would come clean and tell Padraig how she felt. It felt too personal, too raw. Too…serious to be made light of.