“Daddy,” she whispered, eyes flying back open.
Oh, shit. Please don’t puke in my face. “What, honey?”
“I have to have a kiss good-night before I fall asleep.” Then she lifted her head from the pillow and puckered her lips.
Something warm and devastating spread through Gavin’s chest. He kissed her, rolled onto his side, and tucked her under his arm. She was asleep in seconds. Gavin turned his face into her wet hair and breathed in the scent that was uniquely Ava. He’d always heard people say they’d do anything for their kids. That they’d walk to the ends of the Earth to protect them, do whatever it took to make them happy. It’s not anything a man can understand until he feels it himself, though. He wondered if his parents ever felt like this—completely slayed with love for him and his brother. Maybe that’s what his dad meant one day after the girls were born and he found Gavin staring at the girls in their NICU cribs. His father clapped him on the back and said, “Oh, son. You have no idea what you’re in for.”
Gavin had laughed along, but his father was right. Gavin had had no idea how his life would change because of them. No clue how they would literally expand the size of his heart inside his chest, sometimes to the point of pain. No clue that the fear of something happening to them could render him useless, speechless. No clue that loving them would make him love his wife even more, something he didn’t even think was possible.
And he’d almost thrown it all away. He was still throwing it away. If his father could have seen the way Gavin had been behaving, he’d shake his head in disappointment.
Behind him, Thea’s quiet voice broke the silence as she told Amelia to close her eyes and dream good dreams. A thick wall of emotion clogged his throat. A few minutes later, Amelia’s bed creaked as Thea stood. Then her petite silhouette cast a shadow over Ava’s bed. Gavin rolled his head to peer up at her. She stubbornly refused to meet his gaze as she leaned over to peer at Ava.
“She fell asleep fast,” he whispered.
Thea pressed the back of her hand to Ava’s forehead for a moment and then did the same thing to her cheeks. “Neither of them has a fever.”
Gavin had long ago stopped asking how Thea knew for sure. The best thermometer is a mother’s hand. He knew that Gran Gran–ism by heart now. And it was always proven right. Thea probably knew the girls’ normal temperatures better than her own.
With a weary sigh, she straightened. “I’m going to take a shower.”
Gavin eased onto his back, careful not to wake Ava as he removed his arm from her waist. “I’ll clean up the bathroom.”
Thea grimaced. “I forgot about that. I’ll do it since you handled the other one.”
“I got it, honey. Go take a shower.”
She blinked and stiffened at honey. “I said I’d do it,” she said, obstinately refusing to accept even the smallest olive branch.
“Christ, Thea. Can’t I even offer to help without it becoming a fight?”
Ava stirred at his sharp voice. Thea shot him a dirty look. “Fine. Clean the bathroom.”
She stomped out of the room. Gavin swallowed another blasphemy. By the time he was done with the bathroom, the shower had stopped running, but he needed a time-out before he attempted to talk to her again. He stalked to the guest room to change into running clothes. The only thing that was going to ease the tension in his muscles was the pound of the pavement and a dripping sweat.
Gavin carried the trash downstairs and threw it into the bin in the garage. Butter followed forlornly and flopped onto the kitchen floor.
“She shut you out too, huh?” Gavin crouched and scratched the dog’s ears. Butter thumped his tail and sighed. Yep. Just a couple of dudes licking their wounds after the alpha in the house let loose a vicious bark.
Gavin whistled for Butter to follow him to the front door. At the sight of Gavin reaching for his leash, Butter started bouncing on his front paws and yipping. Gavin tugged a wool skull cap over his hair, grabbed a pair of gloves, and headed out. He thought briefly about going back in to tell Thea where he was headed, but he was still just pissed enough to know they both needed some space.
Outside, the crisp air was a slap to his lungs and forced him to take his first deep breath in hours. He followed his normal route, hating life for the first ten minutes as he always did when running. Just because he was a professional athlete didn’t mean he actually enjoyed running. It was a necessary evil. But his body finally adapted to the punishing pace and fell into the zone. Tension eased from his shoulders with every stride. Butter kept pace, tail wagging, tongue flopping, and apparently forgiving him for shoving him outside earlier. At least someone forgave him.
Gavin ran for two miles until he came to one of the city recreational parks. He slowed to a walk and stopped at the baseball field nearest the parking lot. A chain-link fence encircled the diamond, and two dugouts flanked home plate. The lights over the field were dark now, but streetlamps from the parking lot illuminated the dusty infield and the worn, eroded hill of the pitcher’s mound. Gavin sat down on the cold bleachers, which, come summer, would be filled with parents and grandparents who all thought their kids were the cutest and most talented to ever play the game.
He’d spent most of his youth at fields like this, and it was at those dusty fields where people first started to notice and whisper about him for something other than his stutter. Where coaches began to gather and say, “Is that him?” Where scouts eventually began to show up in college sweatshirts to introduce themselves to his parents and watch for proof that the kid from an Ohio suburb was as good as everyone said he was.
One-in-a-million chance. That’s what they always said. It was a one-in-a-million chance that he’d get to the Majors someday. But once the dream was planted in his head, Gavin wanted nothing else. Nothing was going to stop him. He would work harder than anyone else because out there, on those grubby fields, he was more than the kid who couldn’t read aloud in class. More than the boy who was too nervous to talk to girls.
Butter flopped to the ground at Gavin’s feet with a pant. His phone vibrated in his pocket. He pulled it out and saw a text from Thea.
Did you leave?
Fuck. He should have told her. He thumbed a quick answer. I went for a run.
Seconds passed before the dancing dots indicated she was responding. Don’t lock the door when you get back. Liv won’t be home until late, and Butter will bark if she has to use her key. I’m going to bed.
The cold unspoken message was clear: Don’t even think about a good-night kiss.
He was fucking this up.
Before he could change his mind, Gavin called up his recent calls list and scrolled to find his parents’ number. His father answered on the third ring, voice heavy with sleep.
“Hey, old man,” Gavin teased. “Sleeping off the turkey?”
“Just dozing,” his dad said. “Waiting for your mom to get home.”
“Where is she?”
“Your brother talked her into going to a movie.”
“Ah.” Gavin bit his lip.
“Everything OK?”
“Yeah.”
“You sure?”
Gavin cleared his throat. His dad knew instantly something wasn’t right.
“Christ, Gav. What’s wrong?”
“There’s, uh, there’s something I haven’t told you and Mom.”
“Oh, shit. Is it one of the girls? Are the girls OK?”
“The girls are fine. Just . . .”
“Are things OK with Thea?”
Fuck. He sucked in a breath and let it out. “No.”
Gavin heard the creak and snap of his father’s old recliner. Gavin could picture him standing. “Tell me what’s going on, son.”
Gavin let out another shaky breath and gave his father the basics—they’d been having trouble, had a big fight, he moved out for a cou
ple of weeks; he was home now but things weren’t going well. He left out the most humiliating aspect, obviously.
His father let out a heavy breath. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t want to worry you, I guess. It’s not like you and Mom ever went through anything like this, so—”
His father’s boom of laughter caught him by surprise. “Is that what you think?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Wow. We were better at hiding it than I thought.”
Gavin sat up straighter. “Wh-wh-what are you talking about?”
“Son, you can’t be married to someone for almost thirty years without going through hell a couple of times. If you asked your mother, she’d tell you there were times when the only reason she didn’t leave me was because she couldn’t afford to raise you boys alone. And I know because she told me that to my face.”
A noise pounded in Gavin’s ears, something that sounded a lot like the crumbling of the illusion that was his childhood. “But you guys never fought.”
“Not in front of you, but we fought plenty. Still do.”
“About what?” Gavin felt like he’d just been told Santa Claus wasn’t real again.
“Hell, you name it. She gets pissed at me for walking past dirty dishes without putting them in the dishwasher, and I get pissed at her for not writing down her debit card expenses in the check register.”
Gavin snorted. “Dad, nobody uses a check register anymore.”
“Ah, Christ. Don’t you start in on me too.”
Gavin stared blankly at the dark field in front of him. He wasn’t sure if he was devastated or relieved to learn his parents weren’t perfect. “Look, Dad, I get what you’re saying but you and Mom apparently fight over stupid shit. Thea and I have bigger problems than that.”
“You really think your mother would threaten to leave me over dishes? We struggle with the big stuff too.”
Gavin scuffed his shoe in the dirt.
“Son, there’s something I never told you, but I’m going to tell you now. But you gotta let me finish before you react.”
Gavin tensed. “OK.”
“When you first told us about Thea, that you’d met a woman, we were so happy because you were happy. Finally. But when you told us just a couple of months later that she was pregnant and you were getting married? Well, we weren’t real happy.”
“Wh-what? Why?”
“I told you to let me finish.”
Gavin grumbled an apology.
“You were a sure thing for the Majors, Gav. We knew that by the time you were a senior in high school. But you were also, well, naïve about girls, let’s just say that.”
Oh, great. Even his parents thought he was a fucking loser.
“We worried that it would make you easy pickings for some girl to take advantage of you somehow because of the money you were going to make someday.”
Swift anger stiffened his spine. “Thea isn’t like that.”
“I know, son. As soon as we met her, we knew. And you know how we knew?”
“How?”
“She didn’t ignore your stutter. She didn’t pretend it didn’t exist. All your life, you thought you needed to find a woman who would love you despite the stutter, but you should have been looking for a woman who loved you because of it, because it was part of who you are. Thea is that woman.”
Yes, she was. And Gavin was on the verge of losing her.
His father suddenly broke off, and in the background, Gavin heard the telltale squeak of his parents’ back door.
“Your mom’s home,” his father said in a hushed tone.
Shit. “Don’t tell her about Thea.”
“I won’t.” Then louder, he said, “Hey, I’m talking to Gav.”
His brother shouted something in the background that sounded a lot like you owe me. Or it could have been blow me. Either was possible.
His father came back on the line, but a moment passed before he spoke in a low voice. “Listen to me, son. Whatever you did wrong, you fight like hell to fix this with Thea, you hear me?”
“I’m trying.”
“Try harder.”
Then his own goddamn father hung up on him. He was officially batting zero lately.
With a short whistle, he urged Butter to his feet and started a slow jog back down the park path toward home. The house was dark and quiet when he walked in the front door. Butter made a beeline for his water dish and managed to slobber half of it on the floor. After wiping up the mess, Gavin walked upstairs. He needed a shower, but he found himself drifting to the door of her bedroom.
Their bedroom.
He raised his hand to knock, fighting against the resentment that he had to request entry to his own bedroom. She didn’t answer right away, and the second-long delay was just enough to make him sweat.
“Come in,” she finally said.
The door creaked softly. The bedside lamp was the only light source, painting everything in a soft yellow glow. The room smelled like her lotion. Thea sat on the bed, back against the headboard and her computer on her lap. Her hair was wrapped in a twisty towel thing that she always wore after showers, and she’d donned one of his T-shirts as a nightgown. His heart thudded a heavy beat. What would she say if he admitted that all those times he’d sought release on the road with his own hand, he’d been picturing her just like this—warm and soft and unintentionally sexy?
Butter bounded into the room and leapt onto the bed. Little bastard actually smirked as he lay down and settled his head on Thea’s bare legs.
“I’m home,” Gavin said dumbly, his mouth suddenly dry.
She met his gaze over her laptop. “OK.”
“What are you doing?” He nodded at the computer.
“Emailing your mom about what the girls want for Christmas.”
“Right.” Seeing how he mauled her last night, it was ridiculous how nervous he was to ask if he could kiss her now. But this was different. He wasn’t sure why. It just was.
Thea finally let out a long breath and turned her attention back to her computer. Fuck it. Gavin surged forward. The sound of his feet on the carpet brought her eyes back up in what he would pretend was anticipation but was probably more likely surprise.
He waited for Thea to say something, do something. Waited for her to make the first move, to lift her face or reach for him. He begged her silently, with his eyes and his quickened breath, to do it. Because even though it was one of his conditions, it had to be her choice. He wasn’t going to force it on her.
Her nostrils flared slightly, and he could swear that her body swayed just a touch toward his. Her tongue darted out from between her plump lips and licked the bottom one. His gut clenched in response.
“Good night,” he said gruffly. And before he could talk himself out of it, he bent and brushed his lips lightly across hers.
There. Give him a gold fucking star. He’d kissed his wife.
Thea looked up at him with wide eyes. “Good night,” she murmured.
“Want me to tuck you in, or is that something you can handle yourself too?”
Thea’s eyes narrowed for a split second until she realized he was attempting to tease her. She rolled her eyes, but her lips twitched at the corners. He wanted nothing more than to kiss her again and see if he could coax another moan out of her like last night.
But he’d made this bed.
It was his own fault he didn’t get to lie in it.
He settled into the guest room, cracked open his book, and hoped Lord Know-It-All had some wisdom for fixing the mess he’d made.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The puke-opalypse was over.
The girls woke up squirrely, hungry, and begging for pancakes. Thea woke up tense, hot, and hungry for something else. Her dreams had been vivid.
> Thea tugged on a pair of leggings and followed the girls downstairs. Gavin’s door was shut, so he was either still asleep or—
Or he was already awake, showered, and making coffee when she entered the kitchen. Wow. OK.
“Daddy!” Amelia raced toward him and threw her arms around his legs.
“Morning, baby girl,” he said, resting a hand on her head. “You all better this morning?”
“I want pancakes,” she said.
“I’m sure we can make that happen.” He looked at Ava. “You want pancakes, squirt?” She nodded and hugged her duck.
Gavin looked over his shoulder and met Thea’s gaze. He lifted the corner of his mouth in a half smile, an apology emanating from his eyes. “Morning,” he said. “Coffee?”
“Um, sure.” She shuffled forward and sat at one of the barstools. A moment later he set a steaming mug in front of her.
“Want me to make the pancakes?” he asked.
“I can do it.” She raised the mug to her lips. He’d doctored it perfectly with vanilla creamer and sugar.
“I know you can,” he said calmly. “But I’m asking if you’d like a day off from it for a change.”
It was a truce. A pancake peace offering. It would be petty to keep arguing, and even though petty was her favorite mood these days, she relented. “OK. Thank you.”
Gavin smiled as if she’d just agreed to let him move back into the bedroom.
“Where’s Liv?” Thea asked as she stood.
“Basement, I guess. Haven’t seen her.”
Thea changed direction and walked to the basement door. She opened it and listened but heard nothing. She crept down the stairs, rounded the corner, and nearly burst out laughing. Liv lay prostrate across the bed, still fully clothed. Her hair spread around her head in a violent swirl.
She started to tiptoe away.
“I’m awake,” Liv muttered.
Thea turned around. “Sorry.”
Liv groaned and rolled onto her back.
“Bad night?”
“People who go to restaurants on Thanksgiving are the worst people in the world. I never want to make another pumpkin pie in my life.”
The Bromance Book Club Page 14