Tangled Up In You: A Rogue Series Novel

by Lara Ward Cosio

  Sitting down on the burnt orange colored living room sofa, she sent Gavin a simple text: “I’m here at the Venice house. Please come home.”

  ~

  As soon as Sophie heard the garage door open, she went downstairs to meet Gavin in the foyer. It felt like hours before he opened the door to let himself in, and in that time her anxiety built until her body trembled. She didn’t know how it would feel to see Gavin after all these weeks, not just because he had left their home in order to “get well” and hadn’t returned once he was better, but because of what had happened with Conor. Would he somehow know she had been with another man? Then, of course, there was the baby. As well as she knew him, she couldn’t envision his reaction to this unexpected pregnancy.

  When he stepped into the foyer, all the conflicting thoughts melted away. She was relieved to see that he looked remarkably healthy, especially compared to the last time she saw him. His eyes were clear and he had his usual few days’ worth of beard growth. The navy blue long-sleeve O’Neil tee-shirt and jeans he wore with flip flops made him look like a handsome beach bum. Most of all, however, it was the broad smile on his face that made her feel at ease.

  “Darlin,” he said, “I’m so glad you came.” He pulled her into his arms, kissed her cheek and lips, and held her for a long moment. “Let me look at you.” Taking a step back, he looked her up and down.

  “Do I look different?” she asked.

  “You’re gorgeous as always.”

  “You look really good, baby. Like your old self.”

  He nodded. “I feel good.”

  “So, I—”

  “Are you hungry? You must be. We’re walking over to Abbot Kinney to meet Jackie for dinner. He should be getting us the table now, so we’d better run.”

  She hadn’t expected to have company on the night of their reunion. “Wait, Gavin. I don’t want to go out to dinner with Jackson. I want—I need to talk to you.”

  “Well, it would be rude to cancel now. He drove all the way out here from the Hills. Let’s talk as we walk, yeah?”

  She was too dumbfounded to argue as he led her out of the house. To get to the restaurant, they would walk along the canal and down busy South Venice Boulevard until they reached boutique and restaurant-laden Abbot Kinney Boulevard. It was less than a mile away and meant she had limited time to say anything of importance to him. She wondered if this was his aim, if he had wanted a buffer between them. If he really was ready to end their marriage, but yet not eager to say the necessary words, this would be a good strategy.

  While still on the canal, with the relative quiet, she took his hand and forced him to stop walking. The water was aglow in patches where nearby houses had their shades open and lights on. Colorful canoes and kayaks were tied up near some of the homes but otherwise they were alone.

  “Gavin, wait a second, okay?”

  He turned to her expectantly.

  “I, um, I came here, I came all the way here to see you—”

  “And here I am,” he said with a smile.

  “Were you planning on coming home?”

  “Yes, of course. I’ve just been in a good place here. You know that. I haven’t done any coke in more than three weeks. I didn’t want to ruin the streak.”

  She grimaced. “And coming home would do that?”

  “Let’s talk later, darlin’. I don’t want to leave Jackie waiting. He’s been great, by the way. Really helped me stay on the straight and narrow, if you can believe that.”

  “Can’t you call him and say we’re not up for dinner?”

  He pulled on her hand. “We’re almost there. Let’s just have a nice meal.”

  “Gavin, I’m pregnant.”

  He stopped and turned to her, incredulous. “Say that again?”

  She repeated the news, adding, “It’s a total surprise, I know. I must have missed my pill, got off schedule, and well, we’re going to have a baby.”

  He looked away and took a deep breath. “A baby,” he murmured on the exhale.

  “I know the timing is terrible. And look, I get that you were moving in a completely different direction. I’m not trying to force anything here with this. I just thought you should know.”

  “You thought I should know?” he asked with confusion, turning back to her.

  “It’s obvious you’re done with us, that you’ve been done. I finally get it.” She tried to keep her voice steady and her eyes dry. “But, this is still something good we made,” she said, touching her belly, “and we can be parents even if we’re not together.”

  Shaking his head, he said, “I don’t get it. I don’t get what you’re saying. I’m not done with us, for fuck’s sake. I’ve been out here working so hard to get clean so that there can be an us.”

  “How can you say that? How can you expect me to believe that when you’ve pulled so far away from me—even after you got clean?”

  An older woman with two long gray braids was walking a terrier down the path, and Gavin used her as an excuse to keep quiet until she had passed.

  “Sophie, I only stayed away because I didn’t know how to face you again,” he told her urgently. “I’m so fucking ashamed of what I became, of how I let you down. I’ve got your words burned into my heart about how I made you weak and selfish just so I could have you by my miserable fucking side. The fact that I did that kills me. And I’ve been trying to get my nerve up to earn your forgiveness, to be the man you deserve. I didn’t want to go back until I was sure I could make things right.”

  Now tears filled her eyes and she didn’t try to blink them back. “Why didn’t you tell me that?” she asked in a whisper.

  He smiled weakly. “I didn’t think you’d believe me. I’ve broken your trust in so many ways. I’ve hurt you. I’ve hurt you so much. And I’m so sorry for that.” He reached out and cupped her cheek, rubbing her tears dry with his thumb.

  Though she deserved his apologies, it didn’t seem fair to her that he was taking all the blame for wrongdoing. “Gavin, I’m not innocent. I—”

  Before she could continue, he dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around her waist. He pressed his face to her belly.

  “I don’t deserve it, but I’m asking to start again. Let me try to be what you need for once. I want to be a parent with you, a father to this child.”

  “Baby, get up. Please. You have to know that I have regrets, too.” All the guilt she should have had about Conor before came rushing to her now. She had her own apologies and requests for forgiveness to make, only he didn’t know it.

  He shook his head against her. “I just want to move forward, darlin’. Don’t let’s go backwards.”

  She tried to pull him up but he was holding fast to her, so she went to her knees with him and wrapped her arms around his neck, sinking heavily into him so that he faltered for a moment. Her relief at hearing him say this was so great that she discarded all the other issues they had. It was selective denial in favor of hope for a new, better future.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-ONE

  Dinner with Jackson had been highly charged due to his chosen date for the occasion, Colette. The pairing was awkward. Colette added fuel to the fire when she drank too much and goaded Gavin when she sensed his disapproval of her presence. The evening also carried the weight of Gavin and Sophie’s revelations to each other, which they had kept to themselves. They were relieved to say goodnight and go home.

  They spent the next several days cocooned together, not working through the past but envisioning their future. They talked baby non-stop, imagining life with a newborn girl or boy and wondering how soon they should try for a sibling. They debated the advantages of finding out the sex as opposed to letting it be a surprise. They spent hours brainstorming names, coming up with separate categories for traditional, contemporary, American, and Irish options. They agreed that the model Martin had set of having Celia and the kids travel with the band on tour until the kids were preschool age was a good one. Gavin went out to the stores on Abbot Kin
ney to pick up lunch and came back with the tiniest pair of Converse either had ever seen. They were fully immersed in planning for parenthood, gratefully latching onto it as a way to pivot away from all the damage they had done to their relationship.

  This fantasy world was disrupted the morning Conor called. Gavin heard a phone buzzing and didn’t know if it was his or Sophie’s. He reached into the folds of a soft blanket on the sofa just as she did.

  “I think it’s mine,” she said. As she pulled it free, he saw Conor’s photo and name on the screen. “Oh.” She turned away as she answered.

  Gavin sat stone-still as he listened to her side of the conversation.

  “Hi,” she said. “Yes, I’m okay. Everything’s fine. Yes. He’s really happy. We are happy. Making lots of plans for the little one. Uh huh. Okay, I’ll tell him. Bye.”

  Gavin waited a full thirty seconds for her to explain, but she simply started folding the blanket they had cuddled under together that morning while having coffee and pastries.

  “Conor, yeah?” he finally said.

  “Yes.”

  “You told him about the baby?”

  He saw her stiffen. She wouldn’t look at him.

  “Yeah.”

  “Why would you tell another man before me?” He tried to keep his voice level, though the urgency was difficult to mask.

  “I, um, just because he was there. He’s been there for me, Gavin.”

  “He has always been very concerned for your well-being.”

  Sophie sat with him now. “And he’s the one who told me I should come out here to see you.” She put her arm around his neck. “And now look,” she said with a smile.

  He accepted a kiss from her reluctantly, unable to keep images from flashing through his mind. The particular way Conor would gaze at Sophie in those rare moments when his usually controlled manner was undone, like in that famous tabloid photo. The time when the two shared a night out in New York, and then when he found them embracing in the lobby of the Four Seasons in Paris. The way he inserted himself into their relationship by standing up for Sophie, like over that SI cover, and more recently when he declared he should have been the one to marry her.

  Unable to help himself, Gavin pulled away and examined his wife. His beautiful, long-suffering, pregnant wife who had just days ago admitted she was not innocent.

  “Conor’s in love with you.”

  Everything about her reaction—the slowly fading smile, the concern bordering on fear filling her eyes—told him he was right.

  “Fucking hell.” He leaned forward, elbows on knees and head in his hands. “And what are you guilty of?” he mumbled.

  “What?”

  He straightened up and looked at her. “You said you weren’t innocent.” Why was he asking this question? Why wasn’t he letting it go, like she had let Sammy-the-Stripper go? Because he wasn’t someone who let things go. Jesus, he’d been stuck on the unanswered questions of his mother’s abandonment of him for over twenty years.

  “I thought you wanted to move forward? Not look back?”

  The physical reaction he had to her clear desire not to answer the question distracted him for a moment. It felt like a hundred pounds of sand slowly moving through his body and weighing him down. To combat it, he stood up and pulled her with him, to better look at her in the pale winter light coming through the windows.

  “Tell me,” he said, feeling the blood drain from his face in anticipation.

  She hesitated, obviously debating whether he would drop this or not. But she knew him better than anyone, so she finally said in a small voice, “It was just one time and it will never happen again.”

  “You slept with someone else?” he asked.

  Tears filled her eyes as she ever so slightly inclined her head.

  “Who?”

  “Can’t we leave it at that? You had your one time and I had mine?”

  He shook his head. “Tell me who, Sophie.”

  “It’s not even important, Gavin, because it doesn’t change what I want. I want to be with you. I choose to be with you.”

  Her argument went unheard as all he wanted to know was who she let touch her in a way only he had ever done. And who had she touched in return?

  “You tell me who!” he shouted. She flinched and crossed her arms over her chest, but this defensive reaction didn’t move him either. He grabbed her firmly—too firmly—by her shoulders. “I need to know,” he said.

  “No, you don’t. We can just move on and—”

  “There’s no moving on from this unless you tell me who it was.”

  She stared into his eyes for a long moment. “Conor,” she whispered.

  It was what he expected her to say. Of course, that’s who it would be. The answer was there all along and he had refused to entertain it. Yet, it still hit him as a shocking blow. He released his grip on her and stepped back several feet, looking away.

  “Don’t,” she said, going to him. “Please, baby, don’t pull away from me now.”

  “Get away,” he told her, brushing off her attempt to touch him.

  “Talk to me. Please.”

  The betrayal took his breath away for a moment. “And it had to be Conor, why? It had to be my best fucking friend since I was seven years old?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Why? Wasn’t it any good, Sophie?”

  “Don’t do that,” she begged.

  The regret and sadness was plain on her face but it did nothing to change things. All he wanted was to strike back against this treachery, to unload some of his pain onto her.

  He moved to her aggressively, backing her up against the wall. “Tell me you didn’t like it,” he said, his face close to hers. “Tell me you didn’t like the way he fucked you.”

  She turned her face away from him and shut her eyes as the tears fell down her cheeks.

  “When was this, anyway?”

  “What?”

  “When was this wonderful union between you two? And exactly how pregnant are you, again?”

  She looked at him with cold eyes now. “I would never lie to you about something like this. It’s your baby.”

  “Convince me,” he replied. “Tell me when you fucked him.”

  “Two weeks ago,” she replied numbly.

  He nodded and then turned away from her.

  “And what of all the other times you two went off together?” he asked.

  “It was just this one time,” she said.

  “And I’m supposed to trust you on that?” he asked with a weak laugh.

  “The same way I trust you.”

  He looked at her sharply. “Nice try, darlin’, but it is not the same. It’s not equal. You can’t tell me that it’s no different.”

  “I’m so sorry, Gavin. I felt alone, like you had given up on us, and I—”

  “And so you decided fucking my best friend would make it all right?”

  “Stop saying ‘fuck.’ It wasn’t like that. It—”

  “Good job destroying anything we ever had.”

  “You can’t blame me for everything.”

  “No, not everything.” He felt so weak, so ready to give into the temptations of cocaine he thought he had left behind. It would not only take the edge off his pain, but give him an excuse to go off the fucking rails while he was at it.

  “I’ve only ever wanted to be with you. My whole life,” she said and let out a sob, “my whole life has been about you.”

  Now he was the one who couldn’t look at her. He wanted out of this place. Away from her. “I gotta go. I can’t stay here with you,” he said, shaking his head. “I need to figure this out. Alone. And don’t go following me.”

  All he needed was to find his passport. He’d go straight to the airport to avoid the temptation of ingesting a snow bomb like he had on the way to LA. By wrapping the cocaine in a small wad of toilet paper and swallowing it, the high could be prolonged and there was no worry about carrying drugs on a plane. The resulting eu
phoria and pretense of control was exactly what he wanted at this moment, but he’d have to resist that easy way out.

  He looked at his wife, saw his own devastation mirrored on her face, and he hesitated.

  “Just take care of the baby,” he said before turning and walking away.

  CHAPTER SEVENTY-TWO

  It didn’t take Shay long to get to the coffee house Gavin suggested when he had called. Finding adequate parking for his white Audi R8 was a more time-consuming endeavor, though he eventually found a lot with an attendant. Kaph on Drury Street wasn’t far from Dublin Castle, which, despite the intimation of royalty, was now primarily used for government offices and conference facilities. He bypassed the first floor of the café and went straight up the stairs where he found Gavin alone and waiting for him at a large, desk-like table. This area didn’t have the bright and open feel of the main level, but the aroma of fresh coffee and pastries wafted up and the strains of the Pixies could be heard, making the private area comfortable.

  “Thanks for coming, mate,” Gavin said.

  “Sure, Gav.” Shay sat opposite him.

  “I took the liberty of ordering you their specialty.”

  Shay looked down at the ceramic mug. It was filled with a milky green liquid, a decorative leaf drawn into the light foam.

  “What the fuck is this?”

  Gavin laughed. “They call it a Matcha green tea latte. Try it.”

  Shay eyed the drink suspiciously before taking a tentative sip. “Ah, it’s not half bad.” He took another drink. “And how are you getting on, then?”

  “Listen, I want to apologize for all the shite I’ve put you through,” Gavin started.

  “What shite would that be?” Shay asked. Gavin had always gotten off easy with things, but for once, Shay wasn’t feeling inclined to forgive and forget. “Not returning my calls or texts? Not showing up to half a dozen band meetings? Not following through on any fucking thing for months now?”