Hitched (28 page)

“What’s going on?” Concern finally overrode his shock.

“Dad’s gone.” She looked like she was equally pissed and worried.

“What do you mean gone?”

“He left town. With Sophie.”

“Sophie? Josh’s mom? Are they…involved?” Okay, that could be a little awkward for Allie.

“I don’t know!” She paced a few steps, then turned back to him. “I don’t know anything. Charlie just said they were gone. He doesn’t even know for how long. And apparently Josh took off after the wedding.” Now she looked more pissed.

Um, yeah, actually Gavin knew that. Hayley had told him that Josh had left shortly after the wedding fiasco. Telling Allie her fiancé had run off with his ex might not be a good move at the moment. Telling Allie he’d known about that all along would definitely not be a good move at the moment. Shit.

She ran a hand over her forehead. “I assumed he was there with Dad, making sure things were okay. And now Josh is back in town, but Dad’s gone. Now…I don’t know. No one’s really making sure anything’s okay.”

“Your brothers are there.”

“I told you that they’re
not
holding things together,” she said. “I have to go.”

Fuck.

Promise Harbor. How could such a small place—relatively speaking—so far away cause him so many problems?

“Allie, you don’t have to go. They’ll figure it out. They need to learn to cope without you.”

She focused on him with a frown. “Why? Why do they need to learn to cope without me?”

“Because…” he suddenly felt like maybe he needed to proceed with caution here, “…you’re not there.”

“Which is why I need to
go
.”

“But…” Okay, he was about to sound like a jackass. He figured knowing that made it slightly better. Slightly. Maybe. “You’re here. With me.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Yes. At the moment.”

At the moment. That sounded a lot less permanent than he wanted it to. He gritted his teeth, then said, “When are you going to let go of them?”

She sucked in a quick breath, her eyes going wide. Several seconds passed with no sound. Then she said, “Let go of them?”

He knew he should just shut up. If he didn’t, they were going to fight. But this had been the elephant in the room since she’d gotten here. He’d even talked about marrying her without talking about this directly.

He couldn’t shut up.

He wanted her. She wanted him. Life here was good and good
for
her. God knew, having her here with him was what he needed more than anything.

He couldn’t just shut up and let her leave. If what he was going to say made it hard for her to choose, then good. He didn’t want it to be easy. Unless she chose him, of course.

“They’re not your responsibility, Al. They’re your family. They’re your dad and your brothers—your life isn’t supposed to revolve around them. If you go home to them, you’re giving up what you really want and need. You shouldn’t have to do that. You have a right to a happy, fulfilling life.”

“What am I giving up if I go home to them?” she asked, her voice gruff. She was holding herself stiffly, her arms crossed tightly across her stomach.

He knew that she knew what his answer was going to be, but she was going to make him say it.

“Me.”

“Because if I go home, we’re done, right?” she asked.

“My life is here,” he said stubbornly, sounding like an ass but seemingly unable to help it.

Yes, he had bad feelings about his hometown. He kept in touch with his mom, heard from his brothers at times, but he didn’t expect to reconcile with his father. His past, for better or worse, was in Promise Harbor, but his future was…somewhere else. He’d accepted that a long time ago.

But even more, he was concerned about Allie going home. If it was a visit, if it was a few days, maybe even a few weeks, that was different. But she wouldn’t be able to leave Promise Harbor again. Or rather, she wouldn’t
choose
to leave again. They would
need
her so much, purely out of habit, that she wouldn’t be able to cut the strings.

Her time in Alaska with him had, however, proven that she needed to get away from there. She was healthier in just the few days she’d been here than she had been in over a year. Her skin had a faint tan from her long walks outside, she’d put on a little weight, and her skin, hair and eyes shone from eating well and sleeping deep and long. And—if he did say so himself—the great sex couldn’t be hurting anything either.

She was happy. She was relaxed. She felt good. She wasn’t running on empty physically and emotionally here.

Two days ago, she had finally let herself sit down and just be. Once she realized it wasn’t anything to be afraid of, she’d found sitting still was quite conducive to reading and watching movies, and—since she did love cooking and Lydia had yet to concede her spot in the kitchen—she’d gotten hooked on the Food Network. She’d also mastered eight of the twelve levels in the video game she’d “borrowed” from Lydia’s stash.

Lydia was just so happy to not have her underfoot that she didn’t make noise about Allie using her stuff—much.

Bend was good for her. Promise Harbor wasn’t. How could he let her just go back without a fight?

Allie hadn’t said anything and Gavin stepped forward. “I love you, Allie.”

She bit her bottom lip. And didn’t say she loved him too.

“I want you to stay,” Gavin went on. “This is where you belong. You’re happy here.
We’re
happy here. Marry me.”

“And if I stay,” she finally said. “I’ll feel guilty every single day. Is that what you want?”

“Guilty about what? Making your dad and brothers do things for themselves for a change?”

She was clearly fighting tears and it hurt to watch her hurt like that. But he had to do it.

“You don’t understand,” she argued. “My dad needs help, Gavin. His…injury… He can’t…”

Gavin frowned. “Injury?”

She sighed. “He was in a motorcycle accident when I was seventeen. He has a mild brain injury. He has trouble remembering things and making appointments and…stuff.”

Gavin’s frown deepened. Mr. Ralston had been a teacher at the high school until their junior year in high school. Gavin had never had him for class, but knew that he’d been well-liked. Gavin remembered the accident, and he knew there had been some injuries that had resulted in Mr. Ralston no longer being able to teach full time, but Gavin had assumed that the trauma had been physical only. No one in town ever talked about any other issues—and in Promise Harbor that was incredible. “I didn’t know about that.” But it made
a lot
of sense.

“I know. I…we…tried to keep it pretty private. Mom was obsessive about covering things up for him. The school—and the town—thought he quit teaching so he could help the Brewsters with their business and the Brewsters helped protect him too.”

“Including Josh. And you.”

She nodded.

Of course.

Gavin shoved his hand through his hand. “Dammit, Allie.” He looked into her eyes. She looked worried and sad and frustrated. And in the midst of being pissed at her, he still wanted to hug her and make it okay. “You don’t think that’s something I might have wanted to know?” he asked, feeling his gut knot. “This is a big part of your life. It explains a lot of things. Why wouldn’t you tell me?”

She met his frown with one of her own. “We didn’t do the serious stuff, Gavin. We didn’t talk about our families. It was all just fun and good times. Remember?”

He did and he suddenly wanted to throw something. Fuck. It was all backfiring. He’d done those things because he loved her, because he didn’t want to see her hurting or sad. But what it had done was engrain in her the idea that that was all he had to give. And it was all his fault.

“That’s why you always had to be there?” he asked.

She nodded. “My mom took care of things, but she took on so much that I felt like I had to be there when I could to take some of the load.”

Gavin felt his chest tighten. God, she’d been there for all of them. How could he…

Despair swept over him and he felt like he was being suffocated. He clenched his fists and worked on breathing. Despair because he couldn’t keep her.

He couldn’t make her stay. In fact, he should probably encourage her to go. It was the right thing, in many ways. If she stayed, her mind and heart would be four thousand miles away in Promise Harbor anyway.

Did he want to live that way? Knowing that her life with him made her feel guilty?

“My dad’s basically alone, Gavin,” she said. Her tone had lost its intensity. Now she just sounded…tired. “If Josh isn’t looking out for him and I’m not there, there’s really no one. My brothers are too wrapped up and honestly…” she took a deep breath, “…it’s not all their fault. Mom and I kept things from them too. We’ve covered Dad’s deficits up for so long, I doubt my brothers really understand there are problems.”

“Is he in danger?” Gavin asked. “I’ll call Hayley.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and sniffed. “I don’t think so, but…I don’t know.” She pulled in a long breath. “No, he’s safe. He won’t wander off or have a car accident or burn the house down. Not stuff like that.”

She seemed to be trying to calm herself. “He’ll just forget stuff. Not take care of himself. If I’m not there to cook dinner, he’ll think about making something for dinner but not remember all the ingredients to use. So he’ll try to find it in a cookbook, but he won’t remember which one so he’ll pull them all out. He’ll look through them and get distracted looking at other recipes and the whole thing will take him so long that he’ll completely miss dinnertime. Then he’ll finally be so frustrated and hungry he’ll just eat a can of soup and go to bed.

“Oh,” she added, “and he won’t put any of the cookbooks away. They’ll stay spread out on the dining room table for days. He’ll also not think about doing any laundry until he has no clothes left. Then he’ll go to work in some old ratty thing he pulls out of his drawers and embarrass himself.”

She stopped and pressed her lips together, hugging herself. “That’s what I really hate—the idea that he might embarrass himself. Forget a meeting or not pay a bill or not remember to pick someone up when he promised to.” She rubbed her forehead. “And I hate talking about him like this. None of it’s intentional. He has damage to the part of his brain that helps him remember things and organize and plan.”

Gavin was watching her, literally aching all over.

Fuck. She had to go.

Even if it weren’t for her dad—and he obviously needed her—she would never really settle here. She’d always be torn, always think she needed to be there.

He couldn’t keep her like that.

He cleared his throat. “I’ll call Major. He can fly you home as soon as he’s free.”

“I can get a flight—”

“Major can get you there sooner and easier,” Gavin cut her off. He was also going to call Hayley and have her check on Owen and Sophie’s trip. She’d make it seem casual, but she could dig up the details, he was sure.

“I, um…” She licked her lips and looked at him. “I don’t know what to say. I…”

“You have to go.”

She didn’t answer right away, but finally she nodded. “Yeah.”

“I get it. I understand. Hell, Allie,” he shoved his hand through his hair, “I would have understood all along if you’d told me.”

“We didn’t do that.”

She’d said the same thing before and it pissed Gavin off more each time.

“Yeah, I know,” he snapped. “We had some fun, but none of this. I know.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said quietly.

“How can I be hurt by this?” he asked, actually asking himself the same question. How could he actually be
mad
at her here? “It’s not like you’re going home to marry some other guy.”

He’d meant it as a joke, but as he heard the words out loud, his chest tightened again. Maybe she wasn’t going home to get married, but at some point in the future another guy would come along, another Josh, and he’d help her out, take some of her burden, and she’d decide that it was pretty great to have someone on her side like that, and when he asked her to marry him—because, of course, he would—she’d say yes.

Fuck.

Could he live with that? Could he keep himself out of
that
church and
that
wedding?

Only if he cut himself off again. Only if he didn’t hear or see or know anything about her and her life.

“I’ll call Major.” He stepped around her, careful not to touch her—because he knew he’d never stop—and went to find a phone as far away from her as he could get.

Three hours later, Allie was on her way to the Bend airport to get in his plane. Major had agreed to pick her up since they were going the same way. Which worked out great for Gavin because he’d rather cut off his arm than say good-bye to her at another airport. He’d done that more times than any man should have to say good-bye to the woman he loved.

In fact, he hadn’t said good-bye to her at all this time.

It was the asshole way out, but he was okay with that at the moment.