by Heather Gray
Gavin kept his eyes smartly locked onto the pavement in front of him. Avery, yet again a victim to Eli’s perfect timing, was choking on her water. Eli sat back in his seat, popped his earbuds into place, and winked at Gavin in the rearview mirror.
A smile started to stretch across Gavin’s mouth, but he schooled his features as soon as Avery looked his way. He didn’t think she was ready yet to know how much he agreed with young Eli.
Chapter Fourteen
Altus, OK
December 24, 8:00 p.m.
“Altus looks like a nice town,” Avery said as they drove through. “It might be interesting to visit here sometime. In the daylight. When it’s not the middle of winter.”
Gavin let her make conversation. It wasn’t something she volunteered to do often. In fact, up to that point, he’d noticed she’d primarily gotten talkative when she was embarrassed or uncomfortable.
“We are passing straight on through,” he said. “We’ve got about another ninety minutes, two hours tops, before we get to Nowhere.”
“I haven’t seen any signs for it. Have you?”
He shook his head. “Must not be big enough to warrant listing on a highway sign.”
“I want to get to Nowhere, get a hotel room, fall into a big soft comfy bed, and order room service.”
“On Mitchell’s dime, of course,” he said. “Or at Corporate’s expense, actually. I hope they’re the ones who end up footing the bill.”
Avery twisted around to better see him, “Have you heard back from him? Did he reply to any of your texts?”
Gavin shook his head. “I lost cell service again and haven’t regained it. If he’s texted me, I haven’t gotten them yet. Have you heard from him?”
Realizing her phone had been unusually silent, Avery took it out and frowned. “Dead battery. I forgot to charge it when we stopped at the hotel earlier.”
“What about you, Eli?” Gavin asked. “Any cell service?”
Eli gazed blankly at his phone then shrugged. “I charged my MP3 player at the hotel but forgot to charge my phone. I’ve got the DC-powered charger for it, and the same one fits Mom’s phone.”
“Yeah,” Avery said, “but with our portable defroster plugged in there, we can’t charge the phone.”
“Oh well,” Gavin said. “It won’t hurt him too much to stew. We’ll call him as soon as we get there.”
Altus was in their rearview mirror by the time Eli said, “Hey guys, do you think we can stop? I could use a restroom.”
Exasperated, Avery circled toward him and said, “We just passed through a town. Why didn’t you say anything then?”
“I didn’t have to go then.”
Two minutes passed.
“I really need to go. Pull over, and I’ll find a bush.”
Gavin chuckled at the mortified look on Avery’s face. If it weren’t for his presence, he was pretty sure the teen would be getting a lecture on timing. For the dozenth time. Then again, Gavin had to wonder if his very presence was part of what was motivating Eli to push the limits with his mom.
As the car came to a stop, Eli bolted from his seat, flashlight in hand.
“I’m so sorry,” Avery said.
“No problem,” he replied. “We all have to go sometime. All in all, Eli’s been a great traveling companion. I haven’t heard him complain. Despite everything that’s happened. And he hasn’t once asked if we’re there yet, which makes him tops in my book.”
After a couple heartbeats, he heard Avery mutter, “Great.”
Gavin peered at her. “What’s the problem?”
With a deep inhale and exhale, she said, “Now I have to go.”
By the time Avery fished the toilet paper out from its hiding spot in the back seat, Eli had returned.
It was dark out but not quite pitch-black yet. “Come on,” Gavin said to Eli. “Let’s go take a look at the other side of the road.”
“Why?” the teen asked, looking puzzled as he pushed his hands deeper into his jacket’s pockets.
“Come with me, and don’t argue about it.”
“Okay,” Eli said, “but mostly because Mom is frantically waving me in your direction.”
When they got to the opposite side of the road, Gavin told him, “Your mom needs to go, too, but there’s not much in the way of shrubs or trees on this stretch of the road. So you and I will enjoy the scenery over here until your mom’s ready for us to go back over there,” he said, pointing in the general direction of the hatchback.
“Huh.” Looking around, Eli said, “I never would have thought of that.”
Gavin shrugged, “Someday you’ll reach the point where, no matter what you’re doing, you’ll wonder if it’s going to work for a girl or how one would feel about it.”
“You should ask her out on a date when we get back to Albuquerque, you know.”
He took a quick peek at Eli but couldn’t make out much more than the shadow of his face in the early winter night. “Why do you think so?”
Eli held out a hand and began ticking off fingers. “You laugh at her corny jokes. You don’t ignore me. You handle stress pretty well.” Then he paused and said, “Trust me, there’s a lot of stress where my mom’s concerned. Especially if she doesn’t get her coffee.” Going back to his fingers, he said, “You understand her work. Her voice gets all fuzzy when she talks to you.”
Gavin adjusted his scarf and said, “I’ll take it under advisement.” The boy’s words made him feel as if he could take on the world, and he was pretty sure he wasn’t doing a good job of hiding that fact from Eli.
“Besides,” the younger man added, “I’m going to leave for college someday. Who knows where I’ll go or what I’ll do after that.”
“I understand,” Gavin replied.
“Maybe you do, maybe you don’t,” Eli said cryptically. “The thing is, I don’t want her to be alone. She needs someone in her life. She won’t admit it, and maybe she doesn’t even realize it, but it’s true.”
He heard Avery’s call from across the road and wheeled around, a feeling of lightness in his chest and limbs. Huh. Dating advice from Eli. And I think I like it.
The two of them took their first step onto the road when a car came out of nowhere, followed by the screaming sound of metal tearing against metal.
Gavin instinctively reached out his arm and threw Eli behind him until the sound stopped. A quick look told him the boy was fine. Then he took off running across the road. “Avery!”
He found her in the snow on the other side of the car. She was dazed but didn’t appear hurt. “Are you okay? Did you get hit?”
She shook her head then winced. “I saw the headlights a second before it hit. I jumped back to avoid it, but I tripped and fell. I think I hit my head.”
Gavin pulled his hands out of his gloves and tenderly felt her head. He could tell where a knot was forming, but the area didn’t feel wet or sticky. “I think you got a good bump, but it doesn’t appear to have broken any skin. It might be a good idea to see a doctor to make sure you didn’t get a concussion.”
Eli joined them then. “Everyone okay?”
“I’m fine,” Avery said, pushing to her feet. “Did the driver stop?”
“He’s long gone,” the teen said, shaking his head.
“We were all the way over in the emergency lane, weren’t we?” Avery asked.
Nodding, Eli said, “I took another look. We’re off the road, but with the snow everywhere and this fog descending, the driver might not have noticed the white car sitting there. I’ll bet he’d have seen the Zeon.”
Avery rolled her eyes then winced again. “You’re never going to let it go, are you?”
“Not on your life,” the boy said as though nothing was wrong.
Gavin peeked at Eli, wondering why the boy wasn’t asking how his mom was doing. That’s when he saw it. Eli was white as a sheet, and his hands were trembling. He was masking it in his voice, but the kid was undeniably worried about his mom.
> “Eli, stay here with your mom. She got a bump on the head, but she’s fine. I’m going to take a look at the car.” Then he gently pushed Avery back down into a sitting position and whispered in her ear, “He needs to know you’re okay.”
Stepping away, he went to the car and circled around it a couple times. He let out a low whistle and said, “We should report this to the highway patrol, but since none of us have working phones…”
“Is it drivable?” Avery asked. “We can’t stay out here on the side of the road through the night.”
Eli said, “Maybe if we lit a bunch of those roadside flares, someone would stop to help us.”
Gavin tried to open the driver’s side door, but it wouldn’t budge. He climbed in through the passenger side and settled into the driver’s seat, worried that the car might not start. When the engine engaged without a problem, he left it idling and climbed back out.
“The car’s pretty scraped up on the driver’s side, and that door won’t even open. The engine sounds a little rough, too, but it’s running, so I say let’s pile back into it and get as far away from here as we can.
Eli and Avery stood, with the teen putting his arm around his mom’s shoulders to help guide her to the car. “I’m not an invalid, you know. It’s nothing but a bump on the head.”
Gavin could hear the teen’s words as he answered back, “Humor me.”
Once they were all settled into the car and belted in place, Gavin checked his mirrors and pulled out onto the road. “I can’t believe I never saw it coming. I’m still not even sure what kind of car it was. There’s no way I’ll be able to identity it when we’re able to file a report.”
“It was blue,” Eli said.
“No,” Avery countered. “Green.”
Gavin thought it had been black but couldn’t stop himself from having a little fun. “I was going to say yellow.”
They’d made it less than half a mile down the road when Avery said, “You should get up to the speed limit so no one comes up too fast on our rear bumper.”
“We don’t have a rear bumper, so no problem there!” Eli’s voice was far too cheerful.
What kind of fool idea was it to raise this boy to find the humor in troubled times?
Frowning, Gavin said, “I think the sideswipe did more damage than I’d realized.” As he accelerated, the car began to vibrate more and more.
“Did you check the tires? Maybe we have a flat?” Eli asked.
Gavin shook his head, “I checked the tires. They’re all fine. I think we’ve lost a cylinder.”
“How do you lose a cylinder?” Avery asked with skepticism. “Should we go back for it?”
“Not literally,” he replied. “I think one of the cylinders is damaged. Something happened so it’s not working properly.”
“And you know this how?” came from Avery.
“It happened to a car my mom had once,” he replied.
“Did her car get hit, too?” Eli asked.
Shaking his head, Gavin said, “No. Something inside the engine got loose and damaged it. I’m not sure if the sideswipe could have done this or if this is a problem that might have already been building up, and the sideswipe just knocked something around to finalize the problem.”
“Does it even matter what caused it at this point?” Avery asked.
Gavin sighed, bringing the car back down to a slower speed with less vibrating. Thirty-five miles per hour was going to make the last two hours of the drive stretch out into more than four. “Probably not,” he answered, “but I was trying to decide if I should add this to my mental list of grievances against the car. It doesn’t seem fair at this point to have a problem we can’t blame on the car.”
Avery shook her head and said, “This might go down in the record books as the worst Christmas trip ever.”
“It’s all about perspective,” Eli said. “I’m kind of having fun wondering what’s going to go wrong next. Although I could have done without the last one.”
Gavin studied Avery for a moment before asking, “Are you doing okay?”
She nodded gingerly and said, “I’m fine. I’m pretty certain there’s no concussion. I don’t have any blurred vision or muddled thinking. At least not that I can tell,” she added with a smirk. “A good-sized headache for sure, but that’s all.”
Thinking he might have to force the issue when they got somewhere with an urgent care center or emergency room, Gavin let it go.
“On the bright side,” he said instead, “the car that hit us must have done some good, too. The headlights are now a lot brighter.”
Avery chuckled softly. “Now we can better see how we’re in the middle of nowhere. Yay.”
“Nah,” Eli said. “We’re not in the middle yet. We haven’t even reached the city limits. This must be the outskirts of Nowhere.”
Chapter Fifteen
Hobart, OK
December 24, 9:30 p.m.
By the time they passed through Hobart, everyone in town appeared to be fast asleep. Avery imagined all the little kids tucked into their beds and waiting for Christmas morning. “This is a quaint little town.”
“And then it was gone,” Gavin said.
Sure enough, the town of Hobart had passed them by before he’d even finished his sentence.
“The sign when we entered said the population was less than four thousand,” Gavin added.
“But did you see that main street? It reminded me of a small town my grandma used to live in when she was alive.”
With a mock groan, he said, “You’re going to want to take this trip again someday, aren’t you?”
Avery beamed and said, “On a weekend. In my own car. During the summer.”
Gavin shook his head and said, “You’re a glutton, that’s for sure.”
“I can’t help it. I’m naturally curious.”
“Let me guess,” he said. “You want to know if the events of this trip can be duplicated.”
She reached forward toward the dashboard and stretched. Her shoulders were starting to tighten up, no doubt from the fall she’d taken at their last stop. “Admit it,” she eventually said. “If we take another trip on this road, and it ends up as dismal as this one has been, I’ll be able to write a whole series of articles on the worst road ever traveled.”
“Even if the circumstances never duplicate, I think you’ve still got enough material for at least a couple articles about travel disasters. You could spin them so they’re about travel preparedness, the things people should plan for ahead of time.”
“Like we did?” she asked.
Gavin glanced over, and she saw the humor lighting his coffee brown eyes from within. Her breath caught in her chest as she drank in what she saw there. His gaze returned to the road far too quickly. She savored the memory of that look and how it made her feel. It had been a long time since she’d let someone get close enough to look at her in that way… and for it to have an effect on her.
She turned to face the dark road ahead and reached over to turn on the radio. Surfing through the channels, she searched for one playing a familiar song. Once she settled on a station, she snuggled into the passenger seat and pulled her jacket in around her. Avery needed some time to think.
The last time I had this strong a reaction to a guy, I ended up pregnant. Gavin wasn’t so much a guy as he was a man, a far cry from… And I’m not a girl anymore, either. This is different.
In the years since college, Avery hadn’t dated anyone seriously. In fact, she’d hardly dated at all. Her role as Mom had taken precedence over everything else. With a child to provide for, she’d worked hard. Between Eli and her job, all her time had been consumed. Her energy, too.
Letting someone get close enough to hurt her – or her son – had been the farthest thing from her mind. At first it was because of the way she’d been stung by Eli’s father. Then it became a matter of survival. Single parenthood had been hard, and she’d poured everything she’d had into making sure her son had felt th
e lack of father as little as possible.
Gavin had been spot-on. Eli was good kid. Her job wasn’t over, not by a long shot. Maybe, though, she’d finally reached a place where she could take a step back. Am I ready to let someone into my life? Into our lives?
Having been raised by a single mom, Gavin would understand the risks better than most. He would know the balance she wanted, the kind that would allow both her son and the man in her life to share the limelight. She wouldn’t be willing to make Eli less important so the person she was dating could feel more important.
“I’m hungry.” Eli’s voice intruded into her thoughts.
Avery smiled to herself. Face it. Eli would never allow himself to be made less important.
“You’ve got the snack bag. Surely there’s something good to eat in there. After all, you’re the one who packed it.”
Eli rummaged around in the back seat for a while. “Yeah, about that,” he eventually said.
Any other day, Avery would have been put on the alert by Eli’s voice. She would have felt the hair on the back of her neck rise as she waited for the other shoe of Eli’s conversation to drop. Too many things, however, had gone wrong in the last day-and-a-half. There wasn’t much Eli could say at present that would bother her.
“I might have forgotten the bag with snacks back at the hotel.”
Avery swiveled in her seat to take a look at her son. “You might have?”
He blushed. “I sort of totally forgot it.”
She threw her head back and laughed, which ended up hurting more than she’d expected it to. Eli gawked at her as if she’d told him to dissect a live rodent that had gone swimming in toxic guano. She could see Gavin smirking as he continued driving at a snail’s pace.
“Oh, Eli. I wish this trip had gone so smoothly that a misplaced bag of food could bother me. Alas, that isn’t even annoying enough to be a blip on the disaster radar.”