Tangled Up In You (Rogue #1)

Chapter 92

92

GAVIN

G avin was vaguely aware that both he and Sophie were forging ahead in their relationship without looking back. It started at dinner where they banded together in opposition to Jackson’s date for the night: Colette. The pairing was awkward, both because it felt wrong for her to be with someone other than Conor, and because she was in an especially combative mood, drinking too much and goading Gavin when she sensed his disapproval of her presence. He and Sophie instinctively used the drama of Colette’s unexpected presence to pivot away from all the things they should have been talking about. He had told her he didn’t want to go backwards, and that was true, but at the same time, he knew they had unfinished business. It was just easier to ignore it and focus on the fact that they finally had something positive to celebrate.

They spent the next several days cocooned together, not working through the past but envisioning their future. They talked baby non-stop, imagining life with a newborn girl or boy and wondering how soon they should try for a sibling. They debated the advantages of finding out the sex as opposed to letting it be a surprise. They spent hours brainstorming names, coming up with separate categories for traditional, contemporary, American, and Irish options. They agreed that the model Martin had set of having Celia and the kids travel with the band on tour until the kids were preschool age was a good one. Gavin went out to the stores on Abbot Kinney to pick up lunch and came back with the tiniest pair of Converse either had ever seen. They were fully immersed in planning for parenthood, gratefully latching onto it as a way to leave behind all the damage they had done to their relationship.

But all that came to an abrupt halt the morning Conor called. Gavin heard a phone buzzing and didn’t know if it was his or Sophie’s. He reached into the folds of a soft blanket on the sofa just as she did.

“I think it’s mine,” she said. As she pulled it free, he saw Conor’s photo and name on the screen. “Oh.” She turned away as she answered.

He sat stone-still as he listened to her side of the conversation.

“Hi,” she said. “Yes, I’m okay. Everything’s fine. Yes. He’s really happy. We are happy. Making lots of plans for the little one. Uh-huh. Okay, I’ll tell him. Bye.”

Gavin waited a full thirty-seconds for her to explain, but she simply started folding the blanket they had cuddled under together that morning while having coffee and pastries.

“Conor, yeah?” he finally said.

“Yes.”

“You told him about the baby?”

He saw her stiffen. She wouldn’t look at him.

“Yeah.”

“Why would you tell another man before me?” He tried to keep his voice level, though the urgency was difficult to mask.

“I, um, just because he was there. He’s been there for me, Gavin.”

“He has always been very concerned for your well-being.”

Sophie sat with him now. “And he’s the one who told me I should come out here to see you.” She put her arm around his neck. “And now look,” she said with a smile.

He accepted a kiss from her reluctantly, unable to keep images from flashing through his mind. The particular way Conor would gaze at Sophie in those rare moments when his usually controlled manner was undone, like in that famous tabloid photo. The time when the two of them shared a night out in New York, and then when he found them embracing in the lobby of the Four Seasons in Paris. The way he inserted himself into their relationship by standing up for Sophie, like over that SI cover, and more recently when he declared he should have been the one to marry her.

Unable to help himself, he pulled away and examined his wife. His beautiful, long-suffering, pregnant wife who had just days ago admitted she was not innocent.

“Conor’s in love with you.”

Everything about her reaction—the slowly fading smile, the concern bordering on fear filling her eyes—told him he was right.

“Fucking hell.” He leaned forward, elbows on knees and head in his hands. “And what are you guilty of?” he mumbled.

“What?”

He straightened up and looked at her. “You said you weren’t innocent.” Why was he asking this question? Why wasn’t he letting it go, like she had let Sammy-the-Stripper go? Because he wasn’t someone who let things go. Jesus, he’d been stuck on the unanswered questions of his mother’s abandonment of him for over twenty years.

“I thought you wanted to move forward? Not look back?”

The physical reaction he had to her clear desire not to answer the question distracted him for a moment. It felt like a hundred pounds of sand slowly moving through his body and weighing him down. To combat it, he stood and pulled her with him, to better look at her in the pale winter light coming through the windows.

“Tell me,” he said, feeling the blood drain from his face in anticipation.

She hesitated, obviously debating whether he would drop this or not. But she knew him better than anyone, so she finally said in a small voice, “It was just one time and it will never happen again.”

“You slept with someone else?” he asked.

Tears filled her eyes as she ever so slightly inclined her head.

“Who?”

“Can’t we leave it at that? You had your one time and I had mine?”

He shook his head. “Tell me who, Sophie.”

“It’s not even important, Gavin, because it doesn’t change what I want. I want to be with you. I choose to be with you.”

Her argument went unheard, as all he wanted to know was who she’d let touch her in a way only he ever had. And who she had touched in return.

“You tell me who!” he shouted. She flinched and crossed her arms over her chest, but this defensive reaction didn’t move him either. He grabbed her firmly—too firmly—by her shoulders. “I need to know,” he said.

“No, you don’t. We can just move on and?—”

“There’s no moving on from this unless you tell me who it was.”

She stared into his eyes for a long moment. “Conor,” she whispered.

It was what he’d expected her to say. Of course that was who it would be. The answer was there all along and he had refused to entertain it. Yet it still hit him as a shocking blow. He released his grip on her and stepped back several feet, looking away.

“Don’t,” she said, going to him. “Please, baby, don’t pull away from me now.”

“Get away,” he told her, brushing off her attempt to touch him.

“Talk to me. Please.”

The betrayal took his breath away for a moment. “And it had to be Conor, why? It had to be my best fucking friend since I was seven years old?”

“I’m sorry,” she said.

“Why? Wasn’t it any good, Sophie?”

“Don’t do that,” she begged.

The regret and sadness was plain on her face but it did nothing to change things. All he wanted was to strike back against this treachery, to unload some of his pain onto her.

He moved to her aggressively, backing her up against the wall. “Tell me you didn’t like it,” he said, his face close to hers. “Tell me you didn’t like the way he fucked you.”

She turned her face away from him and shut her eyes as the tears fell down her cheeks.

“When was this, anyway?”

“What?”

“When was this wonderful union between you two? And exactly how pregnant are you, again?”

She looked at him with cold eyes now. “I would never lie to you about something like this. It’s your baby.”

“Convince me,” he replied. “Tell me when you fucked him.”

“Two weeks ago,” she replied numbly.

He nodded and then turned away from her.

“And what of all the other times you two went off together?” he asked.

“It was just this one time,” she said.

“And I’m supposed to trust you on that?” he asked with a weak laugh.

“The same way I trust you.”

He looked at her sharply. “Nice try, darlin’, but it is not the same. It’s not equal. Whether you believe it or not, I did not fuck that stripper. So, don’t you dare try to say we’ve done the same thing.”

“I’m so sorry, Gavin. I felt alone, like you had given up on us, and I?—”

“And so you decided fucking my best friend would make it all right?”

“Stop saying ‘fuck.’ It wasn’t like that. It?—”

“Good job destroying anything we ever had.”

“You can’t blame me for everything.”

“No, not everything.” He felt so weak, so ready to give into the temptations of cocaine he thought he had left behind. It would not only take the edge off his pain, but also give him an excuse to go off the fucking rails while he was at it.

“I’ve only ever wanted to be with you. My whole life,” she said, and let out a sob, “my whole life has been about you.”

Now he was the one who couldn’t look at her. He wanted out of this place. Away from her. “I gotta go. I can’t stay here with you,” he said, shaking his head. “I need to figure this out. Alone. And don’t go following me.”

All he needed was to find his passport. He’d go straight to the airport to avoid the temptation of ingesting a snow bomb like he had on the way to LA. By wrapping the cocaine in a small wad of toilet paper and swallowing it, the high could be prolonged and there was no worry about carrying drugs on a plane. The resulting euphoria and pretense of control was exactly what he wanted at this moment, but he’d have to resist that easy way out.

He looked at his wife, saw his own devastation mirrored on her face, and he hesitated.

“Just—take care of the baby,” he said, then turned and walked away.