I loved my best friend. So much. “I will.”
Hanna didn’t say anything after I hung up with Addie. And I was thankful for that. Had I tried to speak, I was worried I’d crack. And right now, not knowing what I would be up against with Gavin, I knew I needed to save all the strength I could.
Exactly forty-five minutes later, after dropping my sister off at my apartment, I pulled up to Gavin’s river house, breathing a huge sigh of relief at the sight of his Suburban. On the other side of his truck, I saw another car. An unfamiliar one.
A shot of unease prickled my skin as I walked by it. Who was here with him? Who else knew his secret? Another woman, perhaps?
“Shut up, Kenna.” I mumbled under my breath, yanking down the bottom of my T-shirt. Gavin was not Paul.
With a trembling hand, I opened the screen door and knocked three times.
A minute later, feet sounded on the other side, followed by the scuffle of a lock. Then the door opened, revealing an unfamiliar, older woman.
“Who are you?” I barked, claws out, ready to…to…to do whatever an emotional pregnant girlfriend did during situations like this.
The woman blinked, wrinkles lining her forehead and around her eyes. She wore her hair short and curled and was dressed in brown slacks and a cream-colored blouse.
She smiled up at me, her shoulders relaxing, her brown eyes warm. “You’re real, then.”
Eyes narrowed, I watched as she stepped back to let me inside. Instead of asking what her silly riddle meant, I asked the inevitable, no time to waste. “Where’s Gavin?”
“Asleep on the couch. It’s been a rough day for him.”
I scowled at her back, hackles up. Regardless, I let her lead me in, hating that she seemed so at ease there. In the end, my concern over Gavin outweighed my jealousy by a million and a half miles.
Inside, the lanterns were all lit. I also noted that the fireplace was hooked up, the damp room warmed by the wood. But what tugged at my heart the most was a pale-faced Gavin on the couch, curled up under a blanket, fast asleep.
My eyes blurred at the sight of him. It was one of the most bittersweet moments of my life. He was okay, alive and breathing, yet the fear of what had put him there terrified me.
Silently, the woman sat on the coffee table behind me, the tiled surface creaking under her weight. I almost yelled at her to get off—Gavin had worked hard on that piece of furniture, damn it—but I managed to keep it together. Somehow. Whoever she was, this woman must have meant something to Gavin if she was there.
“He asked for something to help him forget. I gave him a Valium. That’s why he’s asleep now.”
I blinked, taken aback by her words. “Forget what?”
“What he saw today.” Sadness filled her eyes as she looked his way once more.
I swallowed hard, a hand to my belly. “What happened?”
“I’ll let him tell you that when he wakes. He’s been out for a few hours now.” She cleared her throat and stood. “Follow me out? Now that you’re here, I’m comfortable leaving him.”
“Sure.” Still uneasy about her relationship with my boyfriend, I leaned over and kissed Gavin’s temple, my nose buried in his soft hair. It reminded me of Chloe’s in a way, and I had to fight the urge to run my hands through it.
Just in front of the kitchen door, the nameless lady and I faced off. She assessed me, her eyes quickly zeroing in on my stomach. A small crease formed in between her eyes, but it didn’t last long before our gazes met again.
“Who are you?” I finally asked, folding my arms. She was making me uncomfortable.
“My name is Heidi.”
“Heidi…” I blinked, remembering that name. “Wait. As in Gavin’s foster mother?”
She nodded. “I’m his psychiatrist as well.”
“You’re kidding, right?” Gavin’s foster mother was his psychiatrist? What the hell?
“I’m not kidding.” She grabbed a coat that was slung over the back of a folding chair, then slipped it on.
“Isn’t that…wrong?”
“A conflict of interest, you mean?”
“Yeah.” I waited for her to say April Fools in the middle of May, but it never came.
“Perhaps. But I’ve never treated him any differently than my other patients. After he came back from the Middle East, I was the one who encouraged him to seek therapy from a psychologist. When that was not enough, he came to me, asking for medicine. Now I help with both.”
As a nurse, I found the entire situation to be strange. Typically, a patient did not go to family members for doctors. There again, Gavin trusted almost no one, so if he thought he needed help when simple therapy wasn’t working, I was glad he had her.
“A man like Gavin may always need medicine.” She paused, pulling her hair out from under the neck of her coat. “But he needs love and trust far more than anything else.”
I nodded, looking to the floor, feeling her truth, deep inside.
I was the woman who could give Gavin that love. And he could be that for me too. Neither of us was perfect, but perfect was never what I strove for.
“I love him.” It was the first time I’d admitted it out loud to someone other than Gavin. And it felt amazing.
A small smile graced her lips. When her eyes met mine again, they were glistening with tears. “Very good. Because he loves you too.” She moved forward, hugging me against her chest. I let out an oomph of surprise, but the hug didn’t hurt.
A painful lump lodged itself in my throat as she held me, and tears burned the corner of my eyes. I wiped them away, nodding against her, wondering if this was where I was meant to be all along.
The fact that Gavin had told this woman about me did something to me. Made me feel things I’d been avoiding for so long. Happiness. Hope. Contentment too. It’s obvious Heidi loved Gavin like a son, and, well…
I breathed a heavy sigh, touching my stomach once more as the revelation hit me—harder than it had all month. It was a struggle to keep it together, especially having concluded what I suddenly realized.
I wanted to run back into the room and wake Gavin, tell him what I was feeling—what I’d been feeling since the wedding but couldn’t find it in me to express. I’d worried it wouldn’t last. That I was only caught up in the emotions. But now I knew the truth.
I wouldn’t—couldn’t—abandon him and this baby, no matter how scared I was.
Maybe I was a hypocrite for being so adamantly against children, only to suddenly want it all because of one man. But if I truly thought about it, the reasons why I’d never wanted them all stemmed back to one thing.
My mother and father. My life growing up.
Bottom line? I wasn’t my parents. I knew that now. Gavin had been telling me that from the beginning. But the more time I spent with Hanna, the more I realized I liked being a person someone could love and count on.
I was McKenna Brewer.
The girl in love with Gavin St. James.
And I wanted us to become the parents we never had.
Once Heidi let me go and told me to take care of myself—and Gavin—I shut the door behind her and locked it, leaning back against the wood with another sigh.
“Kenna?” Gavin’s voice cracked from the other room. I looked up, finding him just outside the makeshift kitchen. I moved in, not hesitating to comfort. To hug. To kiss.
“Hey,” I whispered, raising a hand to cup his warm cheek as I approached. “You should go rest some more.”
He shook his head, leaning into my palm. There, he shut his eyes and a sense of peace seemed to run through him. “I love you.”
I smiled sadly, hating how he’d had to go through what he had. “I love you too.”
“Hmm.” He turned and kissed my palm, inhaling on a nod. It was as if those three simple words were all he ever needed to hear
. But I knew they weren’t. Things couldn’t be that simple. We needed to talk—about today, his foster mom, and, most of all, my decision.
Taking him by the hand, I led Gavin back onto the porch, pulling the blanket up before he sat. He sunk into the cushions, urging me to follow. So I did. There was no place else I wanted to be.
Next to him, I put my head on his shoulder, letting this normalcy run through me. He and I together, this house, where memories would be made.
I’m not sure when it happened, exactly—when I’d realized how much he meant to me. Whether it was the night he carried me to bed, or the night we talked on the phone, or even the night he bought me new dishes. I loved how sweet he was to Collin’s daughter, and how he spoke to my sister not as a victim, but as a human being. I loved him not only as my boyfriend, but also as the father of my child.
Before I could ask him about what happened today, he began to speak.
“I lost it at work again today.”
“What happened?” I feared the worst. Another fight, perhaps? Either way, it didn’t matter. If Gavin lost his job, I’d support him.
“I saw him.”
“Saw who?” I took his hand in mine.
“My uncle.” I shut my eyes as he paused, trying to keep my breathing even. “He was involved in a pileup on the interstate outside Arlo. I…” He took a heavy breath, the heat of it blowing over my hair. To show him how much I wanted to help, I squeezed his hand and simply waited for him to continue.
“He isn’t dead. He didn’t move away either. The fucker wasn’t in jail anymore, Kenna. He was there in that damn truck, and my partner… The guy was treating him. And I couldn’t say shit, but I wanted to. I wanted to kill him. I imagined it in my mind. I wouldn’t, but…he did that to me. He put me in that mind-set. And I hate him. So. Fucking. Much.”
With a heavy sigh, I stroked his stomach, trying to figure out what to say as his body shook against mine. “Did he see you?”
“Yeah. He saw me, all right.”
I winced at his bitter tone, wishing I could take his pain away. When he suffered, so did I. We were a package deal.
“Did he say anything to you?”
“No. The fucker didn’t even seem to remember who I was. I haven’t seen him since I was ten years old, but I knew him,” he growled. “He was so damn happy, Kenna. And yet, here I am, hours later, letting him fuck with me all over again.”
“Stop it right there, St. James.” Quickly, I straddled his lap, needing him to see my face for what I was about to say. With his face between my hands, I told him the biggest truth in the world. “You are not letting him fuck with you. You’re fighting back against that horrible man. Everything you’ve done since that time in your life has been like a middle finger shoved in his face, a loud screw-you. You get me?” I didn’t wait for him to answer. There wasn’t room for his self-doubt. Not anymore. “And whether you know it or not, you’ve made me so damn proud. So proud.”
Tears filled my eyes—tears always filled my eyes anymore, it seemed. But I wasn’t going to stop them. Apparently, pregnant me was an emotional hot mess. What could I say other than embrace the bad to find the good.
“Me and your friends, who are your family… We love you so much, Gavin. And we will always be there for you, no matter what happens.” I stabbed him in the chest with my finger, watching his throat bob as he swallowed.
“I’m never going to be normal.”
I rolled my eyes and huffed, pinching him slightly in the ribs. “You think I care?” He grunted. “If you were this so-called normal dude, then I wouldn’t be here.”
“Yeah?” His mouth lifted on one side.
“Hell yeah.”
He wrapped his arms around my waist and hugged me close, relaxing at the same time. “I’m gonna make the shittiest dad.” His voice cracked with emotion, ripping me apart.
Slowly, I leaned back and kissed his forehead as I spoke. “Then I guess it’s a good thing that this baby is going to have an incredibly shitty mom to go along with it.”
Gavin pulled away and quickly blinked up at me, his mouth opening and closing in shock. All the darkness I’d seen in his eyes suddenly seemed to vanish at my words. It was a sight to behold, really. And though I knew I wasn’t some sort of healer, nor did I have a magical vagina to instantly put this broken man back together, I’d at least like to say I was special enough to serve as semi-calm to his raging storm.
As Gavin was to me.
Or maybe we were both just really good at distracting each other.
“So, you…” he murmured.
I dropped my hands to his chest, flattening one palm over his heart. “Now’s not the time to get wordless on me.”
Gavin lifted both hands and covered the backs of mine. “The baby, Kenna…”
I nodded, never surer of anything in my life. “Let’s do this.”
Smiling wide, he dropped his forehead to mine, his entire face lighting up. “I didn’t want to let you go,” he said, pulling back to search my face again. “But I would have. I just…I need you to know that.”
“You don’t have to make that decision anymore.” This time, my hands shook as I pulled one of his down to press it flat against my stomach. “Because we’re in this together. Fuck our pasts.”
“Yeah?” He smiled, eyes nearly twinkling.
“Absolutely, St. James.”
Chapter 29
McKenna
Gavin’s phone rang three times before I finally rolled over to grab it off the floor. I didn’t bother checking the time or even opening my eyes, because I knew it was early. Too early to be up on a Saturday.
He barely stirred behind me, likely exhausted from the emotional upheaval of yesterday. I’m not sure how we’d managed to sleep on the tiny sofa all night, but I wasn’t going to complain. After yesterday, I’d decided I never wanted to be apart from him again. When it came to Gavin and me, I wasn’t about to be reckless with another decision.
“What?” I groaned, thoroughly annoyed with whoever the hell had the audacity to wake me after an all-night marathon of sex.
“Where is he?” barked Collin, the forever dickhead.
I rolled my eyes. “Hello to you too, asshole.”
Collin chuckled on the other end, which had my heart steadying a bit. Early-morning calls usually meant something bad was happening.
I’d called them all the night before, assuring them that Gavin was good, safe, and with me. Max didn’t question it. Collin grunted out a good, and Addie told me he was lucky to have me.
Really though, I was the lucky one.
“Need to talk to him.”
Gavin stirred at my side, fingers grazing my hip. I shuddered, wondering if there was such a thing as too much sex while pregnant. That’s one rule I’d be okay with breaking.
“There is this English word that most people use when they want something. Have you heard of it? Because you may think you can order my best friend around, but you can’t sit there and—”
“Please,” Collin groaned. “Lemme talk to my best friend.”
I smiled at the small success, adding in a tiny fist bump. “Just so you know, for future reference and all, if you’d learn to use your manners more often than—”
“Addie’s pregnant!” he shouted through the phone.
I froze.
“Now. I’m gonna need you all over here so we can talk about some shit.”
My eyes widened, and I shot up off the couch, already grabbing my discarded clothes. “Let me talk to her.”
Collin groaned. “You wanna talk to her, you call her on your own phone.” In the background, I could hear someone’s voice. Max, maybe? I couldn’t tell.
“What’s wrong?” Gavin sat up beside me, one hand along my lower back, the other reaching up as he stretched. His hair looked deliciously tousled, as if fin
gers had been run through it all night. My fingers, to be precise.
I mouthed, Addie’s pregnant.
He stopped mid-stretch, reaching for his phone.
I rolled my eyes and stood, pressing my free hand against my naked hip. If he wanted the phone, he’d have to come get it.
His eyes did a long, slow swoop of my body, grinning when he reached my mouth again.
“Eyes up here, buddy.” I winked, not minding at all. If he wanted to look at my naked body, so be it.
Smirking, he stood from the couch, his erection very noticeable. I licked my lips, ignoring Collin’s voice as he hollered in my ear. Gavin in clothes was heavenly, but a naked Gavin was a dream come true.
With a smirk, Gavin reached down, giving himself a long, slow stroke with one hand, then grabbing his phone with the other. “Can’t talk, Colly,” he grumbled, only to hang up and toss the phone onto the table a second later. “That’s what I wanted the phone for.”
“Someone’s grumpy in the morning.” I giggled, palming his chest, loving the way his hand bumped my thigh as he continued to stroke his beautiful erection.
“Not grumpy. Just needy.”
With a grin, I dropped to my knees before him, eyes up. “Poor baby. Guess I’ll just have to take better care of you.”
Then I pulled him to my mouth.
* * *
Gavin
After the best blow job of my life, Kenna and I got in the makeshift shower I’d created outside my river house, which led to me getting her off with my finger, only to bring her back in and make love to her on the shitty couch that was fast turning into the best couch ever.
Then we talked a little as we dressed and got ready to leave. About what had happened yesterday with my uncle, then a little about my foster mom. Kenna had suggested I take some more time off work, that she could help support me until I felt ready to go back. But that wouldn’t happen. I loved my job. And knowing everything was falling into place for her and me, I finally had a reason to keep my head on straight.
After that, Kenna called to check up on her sister, while I gathered up some things to take back to my place and wash—like the blankets we’d used all night. The same blankets we’d dried our naked bodies off with after our outhouse shower.
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