I Want to Hold Your Hand (30 page)

“That’s true,” Hannah said.

“Now tell me, Hannah,” Molly said, “what can we do to help you for next weekend?”

“We’re going to need a ton of food.” Hannah was never sure what they went through more of during a Sultans weekend—food or beer, so she always had plenty of both on hand.

“
That
we can help with, right Charley?”

“Yeah, sure,” Charley said, pouting a bit after failing to break Ella. Hannah knew she’d keep at it until she got the info she wanted. That was Charley.

In the other room, she heard Wade say good-bye to their grandfather. Hannah went into the dining room to stop him before he could leave. She drew her brother into the hallway. “How are things going?”

“I got an e-mail from Mia last night, letting me know she can’t meet me anymore.” The utter devastation on his face broke her heart.

“Oh no. Did she say why?”

He shook his head. “I’m so afraid he found out about our friendship and now . . . The thought of what she might be going through kills me. I don’t know what to do. I feel like I’m losing my mind.”

“Please don’t do anything crazy, Wade, or put yourself in jeopardy when you have no idea what’s really going on there.”

“I can’t just sit here and do nothing.”

“That might be the best way to keep her safe.”

“I don’t know.” He ran his fingers through his hair, which was loose today. “I’m going to take a hike on the mountain and burn off some of this energy.”

“That’s a good idea. Will you call me if I can do anything or even if you just need to talk?”

“I will.” He hugged her. “Thanks, Han.”

Shortly after Wade left, Nolan slid an arm around her waist. “Everything okay?”

She nodded even though she was desperately worried about her brother and what he might do to ensure the woman he cared about was safe.

“Wade seemed worked up about something.”

“Maybe a little.” She glanced up at him. “Are you ready to go?”

“Whenever you are.”

As they were saying good-bye and thank you to her parents, she heard her dad say, “Take good care of my little girl.”

“I fully intend to,” Nolan replied as he shook hands with her dad.

Touched by his love and concern, Hannah hugged her dad, who held on tighter than usual. Her parents had suffered right along with her when she lost Caleb. They’d loved him, and they’d worried endlessly over her. She knew it was a relief to them to see her moving forward with her life and spending time with a man they liked and respected.

“You survived,” she said to Nolan when they were back in his truck.

“Just barely,” he said with a teasing grin. “Everyone was really nice. No one asked anything inappropriate, which was shocking.”

“I didn’t get so lucky.”

“I knew it! Your sisters were grilling you, right? What did you tell them?”

“Nothing. Much.”

“
Hannah . . .
”

“I didn’t give them any details.”

He busted up laughing. “And yet somehow you gave them the full picture.”

“I did no such thing.”

“Whatever. I know how you Abbotts roll.”

“Does it bother you that everyone knows we’ve been, well, fooling around?”

“If I had my druthers, no one would know but you and me, but I get that’s not the world we live in. There aren’t many secrets in Butler or in the Abbott family.”

Hannah thought of what Wade was going through with Mia, that Hunter had feelings for Megan, that Ella might be interested in a man none of them knew. “We have our share of secrets.”

“Apparently, you and me and what we’re up to isn’t going to be one of them.”

“That one’s harder to keep.”

“I’m looking forward to when our relationship is no longer in the headlines.”

“How long do you think that’ll take?”

“A while probably,” he said with a sigh. “The people in this town don’t fool around when it comes to gossip—and they’re all extremely protective of you.”

“Good thing I picked the right guy to spend time with. At least they’ve got nothing bad they can say about you. Everyone loves you.”

“I guess we’ll find out for sure, won’t we?”

They headed around the mountain, past the entrance to the sugaring facility that Colton ran and north to the outer limits of Butler, where Gavin’s logging company was headquartered. He lived in a log cabin on the property adjacent to the sawmill he’d built four years ago. Hannah hadn’t been up here in a long time, but at first glance she could see the business had grown tremendously.

She felt a surge of pride for what Gavin had accomplished, much of it fueled by relentless grief and the need to pour all that emotion into something productive. Her recently satisfied stomach turned with worry about how this visit might go. The thought of being at odds with Gavin or his parents was unimaginable.

As Nolan parked his truck next to Gavin’s, he said, “Relax, honey. It’s going to be fine.”

Hannah wished she could be so certain. She got out of the truck and wiped her suddenly sweaty palms on her jeans. As they walked to Gavin’s front door, she felt Nolan’s hand on the small of her back guiding her and took comfort from his solid presence by her side.

She knocked on the door and waited anxiously until Gavin appeared wearing only a pair of faded jeans. As always, the sight of him was a stark reminder of the husband she’d lost, and it took a moment to recover her bearings. “Hey, Gav,” she said. “Could we come in for a minute?”

Without a word, he pushed open the screen door to admit them.

Nolan squeezed her shoulder as he followed her inside to Gavin’s cozy home, which boasted a big-screen TV set to a Boston Red Sox preseason game.

Gavin went to the fridge, got a beer and cracked it open. “Want one?”

“No, thanks,” Hannah said.

“I wouldn’t mind a beer,” Nolan said.

Gavin gave the one he’d opened to Nolan and got another for himself.

Hannah sat next to Nolan at the bar. Gavin stayed in the kitchen, facing them, drinking his beer and waiting for one of them to say something.

Nerves fluttered in her belly as she tried to think of what to say.

“I heard you came by the garage yesterday,” Nolan said.

Hannah was grateful to him for the opening salvo.

“Uh-huh.”

“I assume your parents told you Hannah and I are seeing each other.”

He kept his expression unreadable when he said, “Right.”

Hannah couldn’t bear to remain silent any longer. “Gavin—”

“Don’t, Hannah. Please don’t say anything. Whatever it is, I don’t want to hear it.” He put down his bottle with a loud thunk. “No, wait. That’s not true. I’d like to know why you didn’t tell me yourself when I saw you the other day.”

Thrown by Gavin’s angry outburst, she said, “I should have. I don’t know why I didn’t. My only excuse is that it’s still new, and I wasn’t exactly ready to talk about it yet. With anyone.”

“You saw fit to tell my parents.”

“Because I didn’t want them to hear it through the grapevine.”

“But it was okay that I did? It was okay that I was at the diner and heard you two had been there and were getting rather cozy? Can you imagine what it was like to hear that from someone I barely know when I had just seen you?”

“I’m sorry,” Hannah said softly as tears formed. “I never meant to hurt you.”

“We should’ve told you,” Nolan said.

“How long have you been interested in my brother’s wife? When he was alive, too?”

“No! God no. You know how I felt about him.”

“Yeah, I do, which is why I find this so unbelievable.”

“Why, Gavin?” Hannah asked, feeling desperate to make him understand. “Why is it so unbelievable that I would have feelings for an old friend, and he would have them for me?”

“What I find unbelievable is that this only happened recently.”

Hannah stared at him, stunned by the implication. “I, um . . . I have to go.” Blinded by tears, she got up and rushed out the door.

CHAPTER 21

The army chaplain came three days ago. I still have no words . . .

—From the diary of Hannah Abbott Guthrie, age twenty-eight

“S
eriously?
” Nolan said after Hannah ran out of there. “You’re honestly accusing her of fooling around behind Caleb’s back?”

“How do I know what to believe?”

“You disappoint me, Gavin. We’ve been friends a long time, and I know you’ve been to hell and back. That’s the only reason I’m not going to drop you on your ass for saying something like that to her.”

“Go ahead and give it your best shot.”

Nolan’s hands rolled into fists he kept planted at his sides so he wouldn’t be tempted to flatten a man he’d always considered a friend. “It’s taken her all this time to get to the point where she’d even consider being with someone else. If you’ve undone all that progress with your thoughtless comments, I’ll never forgive you. You owe her an apology, and until she gets it, I have nothing to say to you.”

He was almost to the door when Gavin called out his name. His better judgment told him to keep going. Instead he bowed to the bonds of decades-long friendship, turned and raised a brow in inquiry.

“Have you given any thought at all to what he’d say about you banging his wife?”

Infuriated by Gavin’s word choice, Nolan fought to keep the rage out of his voice. “Yeah, Gav. I’ve given it a lot of thought and a few sleepless nights, too. I think about him all the time, and I wish more than I wish for anything in this life that he hadn’t died. But he did, and the rest of us are left to do the best we can with the hand we were dealt. I love her, but I never touched her until very recently. Believe what you will, but that’s the God’s honest truth. And after her faithful devotion to your brother, Hannah deserves a whole lot more than the pile of shit she just got from you.”

Fuming and panic-stricken about what must be going through Hannah’s mind, Nolan let the screen door slam behind him. He went outside to find her sitting in his truck, staring straight ahead without so much as blinking. Anxious to get her out of there, he got into the truck and left dust in his wake as he floored the accelerator. When they reached the main road, he stopped long enough to reach across Hannah for the seatbelt, which he fastened around her.

That’s when he noticed her hands trembling in her lap as unshed tears brightened her eyes.

Motherfucker
, he thought, shocked and horrified by Gavin’s extremely out-of-character behavior. In his heart, Nolan believed that Gavin knew she’d been faithful to Caleb. His accusations were coming from a place of deep, unrelenting grief, but that didn’t give him the right to disrespect Hannah the way he had.

“Talk to me, baby,” he said, reaching for her freezing-cold hand. All he could think about was how happy and carefree she’d been for most of the weekend. He’d loved seeing her that way, and the thought of her brother-in-law’s bad behavior undoing all that progress infuriated him. “He’s just spouting off. He didn’t mean that. You know he didn’t.”

A sob escaped through her tightly clenched lips, and a flood of tears spilled down her face.

Nolan pulled the truck to the side of the road, unclipped both their seatbelts and lifted her into his lap.

She fought him at first, but he kept his arms banded tight around her, giving her no choice but to lean on him as her heartbroken sobs filled the cab of his truck.

“That was a shitty thing for him to say, and he knows it. He’s hurting at the thought of you moving on without Caleb, and he has a right to those feelings, but he has no right at all to take it out on you.”

“I never looked at another man for the entire twelve years I was with him,” she said, hiccupping on her sobs, “or for the seven years since he died. For nineteen years, he was the only one.”

“I know, baby. I know, and so does Gavin. If he doesn’t already feel like shit for inferring otherwise, he will before long, and you’ll hear from him. If I know him at all, and I know him as well as I know anyone, you’ll hear from him.”

“That he could even
think
that, let alone say it . . .”

“I know.” Nolan regretted that he hadn’t dropped Gavin on his ass when he had the chance. It was the least of what he deserved.

“I always thought he was one of my closest friends,” Hannah said. “We’ve been through hell together.”

Another thought occurred to Nolan that had his mind reeling with implications. “Is there any chance that he might’ve, you know, held out hope that you might one day be interested in him?”

“
What?
No! God no. There’s never been anything like that between us. We were always just friends.”

“Maybe as far as you were concerned.”

“I can’t get my head around that possibility. It’s so far outside my comfort zone it’s not even conceivable.”

“It might explain why he behaved the way he did.”

“No,” she said, whimpering as new tears wet her face and spilled onto his coat. With only her heartbroken sniffles to break the long silence, she finally raised her head from his chest. “I’d like to go home now, please.”