Chapter Twenty-Five
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“Didn’t I tell you Ivy is incredible?” Teagan said as she took another cracker and piece of cheese from the platter between them on the living room coffee table. She’d come over to Gavin and Tristan’s place not long after Autumn and Carly had arrived back in Crimson Point. To keep her company, lend moral support, and probably to make sure Autumn felt safe.
It was working. Without her, Autumn was sure she would have gone crazy being alone for so long after all that had happened today. Talking about everything—well, not everything —with Teagan had helped a lot in terms of decompression.
Autumn nodded and swallowed the sip of wine. She’d already had two glasses to settle her nerves, but anxiety continued to grind away in the pit of her stomach. Waiting to find out what Gavin would say was taking its toll. “You did, and she definitely is. I have no idea how she accessed all those feeds so fast. I need to meet her before Carly and I leave, to thank her in person.”
Teagan tossed her dark hair over one shoulder. “I’ll invite her over tomorrow.” Her deep brown eyes lit with interest. “I mean, unless you think you’ll be busy doing other stuff. Or...some one .”
Autumn gave a nervous laugh and leaned back against the sofa cushion, letting out a deep breath. “You should have seen the boys out there today. Especially Gavin.”
“I can imagine. They’re all protective of Carly.”
“Yes, but especially Gavin.” He’d plunged into danger to find Carly without hesitation, and Autumn was convinced he would have done it whether his brothers followed him or not. She was convinced from the look he’d given her that the news had taken his protectiveness to a whole new level. A father’s instinct to save his child.
“Gavin give you a timeframe of when he’ll be here?” Teagan asked as she got up to carry the empty platter to the kitchen.
He had texted not long ago to say he was coming over without specifying a time. “No. He’s probably got a lot of things to tie up first.”
Teagan came back into the living room. “Deck just texted to say he’s on his way home now, so I would imagine the twins have both wrapped up everything too.”
She’d no sooner said it than they both heard a key turning the front door lock.
“That’s my cue,” Teagan said, pausing to hug Autumn. “Call or message me if you need anything, okay? I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”
“Thanks. And thanks for coming over.” She was amazed her voice worked at all given how tight her throat was all of a sudden.
“Yeah, of course. Anytime.”
Autumn sat back down on the sofa to wait, her pulse thudded in her ears, stomach muscles tight as she awaited the confrontation she’d been dreading from the moment she’d read that email.
She heard Teagan’s and Decker’s murmured voices in the entry, then the front door shut. A few moments later, Gavin appeared in the threshold to the living room.
Her heart clenched at the sight of him. Tall and built and still as gorgeous as ever despite his bruised and swollen right eye and the cut on his lower lip. His auburn hair was damp as if he’d just showered.
“Hey,” he said quietly, watching her, maintaining his distance as though he wasn’t sure of his welcome. But she was equally wary, not knowing what to expect from him. Thankfully he didn’t seem angry anymore, which was a huge relief.
A bit of the tension in her stomach eased. “Hi. How’re you feeling?”
“Fine.” He glanced over his right shoulder, down the hall. “Carly asleep?”
“Yes, she was worn right out after she ate and showered. I had to carry her to bed.”
He nodded, faced her once again and finally entered the room, coming over to the couch and lowering himself onto the end of the sectional next to where she was seated. His sexy, masculine presence had her heart knocking against her ribs. She met that vivid green stare, her hands tightening on her knees.
She had loved him most of her life. Couldn’t bear to lose him now that he knew the truth.
“I talked to my parents,” she said, the spike in anxiety making her stall and delay the inevitable as long as possible.
“That’s good. I’m sure they would have been worried otherwise.”
“I’m pretty sure they would have been on the first flight here in the morning if I hadn’t called. I told them we’re both fine and we’ll still be flying home in a couple days. And they don’t know, by the way. About Carly.”
He nodded but didn’t say anything else, watching her. It was impossible to forget what it had felt like to be held in those strong arms.
She wanted to crawl into his lap right now so badly and wrap her arms around him, snuggle up and kiss every mark on his face and body and know that he still loved and wanted her. That he didn’t blame her for what had happened.
He’d sustained every single mark on him to rescue and protect Carly, and that made her love him even more.
He leaned back against the cushion, his stiff movements telling her he was in more pain than he was letting on.
“Are you hurt?” she asked in concern.
He shook his head. “Few bumps and bruises. I’m good. How’re you doing?”
“Good now. But...it’s been a day.” She gave him a sardonic smile that made the edges of his lips twitch.
“It’s been memorable.”
The heavy silence that followed pulled her insides into a hard knot and set all her nerves on edge. She had never seen Gavin this quiet and contained, his stare boring into her with an intensity that made her heart hammer.
The unbearable tension grew until she couldn’t take it a moment longer. There was no avoiding this. Might as well get down to it. “So. What do you want to know?” He must have lots of questions, and she would answer every one she could.
“You’re sure she’s mine.”
He phrased it as a statement, not a question or an accusation, but she flushed automatically anyway, defensiveness rising hard and fast. “Yes.”
“We used a condom.”
“Apparently not properly.”
He frowned slightly. “What do you mean?”
Her cheeks grew hot, reminding her why she’d never wanted to talk about this with him before. “It was my first time. I’d never put one on anybody before, so I might have done it wrong, and I didn’t check after to see if it had broken. Did you?”
“No. It was my first time too.”
She stared at him for a moment. “It was?”
He frowned. “Yeah.”
“I thought... I mean, I’d heard that you...”
“No. And I can’t believe you believed the rumors.”
Of course she had. Even back then Gavin had been sexy as hell, with most of the girls in their class falling all over themselves to get his attention. She couldn’t believe she’d been his first. “Well, then... There’s our answer. Neither one of us knew what we were doing. Either it leaked, or it broke. I’m not sure. But it failed.”
He seemed to weigh her words. “And the timing lines up?”
She licked her lips, reminded herself to be patient. He wasn’t calling her a liar or accusing her of anything by asking the question. He didn’t know any of this because she’d never explained it to him before. Had never thought to.
“I had a light period soon after, about two weeks or so. I didn’t think anything of it at the time since I was never all that regular, but it was probably implantation bleeding. And as far as proof goes...”
She retrieved her laptop from the coffee table and clicked on the tab she’d loaded when she’d put Carly to bed. “Carly’s been working on bits and pieces of the family tree assignment for her seventh-grade capstone project over the past couple months. She’s always been curious about who her father was, but I didn’t have much information to give her. So when she asked me if she could have her DNA analyzed to find out more about his side, I said okay. I got the email about the results the morning we flew here.”
Gavin sat up slowly and leaned forward to look at the screen as she turned it toward him.
“His surname didn’t come up anywhere in the results or when I searched for it in the database. So then I clicked on DNA matches, and...” She hit the button and waited for it to load, watching his face.
She knew the moment the results populated because of the flare of surprise in his eyes. “Marley.”
“Yes. She must have done a DNA test with this same company. And as you can see, she’s a twenty-five-percent match with Carly, meaning she’s her biological aunt. You’re welcome to do a test yourself to confirm, but... The science says she’s yours.”
He leaned back again, his gaze shifting to her. There was a warm light in his eyes now, and his voice was gentle. “Does Carly know?”
“No.” She gave a humorless laugh. “And I don’t know how I’m going to tell her, especially after what she’s just been through.”
“We’ll tell her together.” He shook his head. “I hate that you faced all of it by yourself at that age. Being pregnant, giving birth, raising her on your own. And damn, I can’t tell you how many times I cursed whoever her father was.” Another head shake. “Turns out it was me.”
That gave her pause because she hadn’t expected the admissions. It seemed like he believed her and had accepted that he was Carly’s biological father. The knot in her gut eased a little more. “Okay, we’ll tell her together.” This was all good news. Better than she’d dared hope for. But how did he feel about it? It was so unlike him that she couldn’t get a read on him. He was masking everything from her. Why? “Is there anything else you want to know?”
“Yeah.” He seemed to weigh his words.
“Just say it.”
“Okay. The guy you hooked up with after I left. The one you thought was Carly’s father.” The hurt was there in his eyes again. “Who was he?”
“No one important. I never saw him again because he lived in another state. I tried to contact him initially after I found out I was pregnant, but he never responded. I decided then and there that I wasn’t interested in chasing him down.” She shrugged. “I wouldn’t have wanted to share her with him anyway.”
Gavin held her gaze, his expression weirdly calm. “I was your first, and you waited until the night before I shipped out. Why?”
She’d dreaded the question for the past thirteen years. It was time to be honest about it. “Because I knew everything was about to change. Because I knew that was all I could have of you.”
“Bullshit.” Anger flashed in his eyes—or was that regret? “I tried to talk to you about it after, and every time you shut me down.”
“Yes, because you were away living a brand new life that didn’t include me.”
“You think I would have abandoned you?” He sounded almost insulted.
“Gavin.” She shook her head sadly, all the years of hurt, of hiding her feelings and regret swirling between them like ghosts. “Even if we’d both known the truth back then, can you honestly say you would have been ready for us? At eighteen right after you’d enlisted in the Marines?”
His jaw tensed, annoyance burning in his eyes. “No,” he finally admitted in a gruff voice.
“No,” she agreed. “If you’d known, you would have done the honorable thing and tried to make it work with us throughout your military commitments and deployments because of our history and because you cared about me. But you weren’t in love with me back then, and you know it. So it never would have worked. You would have wound up resenting Carly and me in the end, and broken my heart for a second time.”
His jaw worked, but he didn’t argue. “You’re saying you were in love with me back then?”
There was no point in denying it. “Yes.”
Confusion flickered across his face. “Then why him? If you loved me, why go to someone else less than a week after I shipped out?”
She expelled a breath. Baring her soul to him right now made her feel hideously vulnerable, but she had to tell him everything if they were going to work through this for Carly’s sake. “I was heartbroken after you left and worried sick that my dad was going to die from cancer. I met him at a friend’s party a few days later. I was drunk and lonely, missing you, scared, and... He reminded me of you. And I was eighteen.”
There it was, in all its pathetic honesty. She had gotten drunk and slept with a total stranger less than a week after Gavin had left because he’d looked a little like him. And worse still, she had pretended he was Gavin the whole time.
Gavin expelled a hard breath. “And you thought he was the one because...”
“We didn’t use anything.” It was totally unlike her. It had been incredibly stupid and irresponsible, and she had always regretted it. Being drunk was no excuse. “That’s why I was convinced it was him and never questioned it.”
Gavin didn’t respond. Just watched her with that penetrating, X-ray stare that made her insides quiver.
She averted her gaze. “Look, the point is, I didn’t know the truth until the other day either, so I’m just as surprised as you. I realize you weren’t expecting this, and you made it clear at the beach that you don’t want to be a father. But I want you to know I don’t expect any—”
“Stop. Just stop.” He reached out for her hand. Gripped it tight.
She looked at him again as she tried to rein in the torrent of emotions swirling inside. Her breath caught at the look on his face. His expression was no longer distant.
There was pure fire in his eyes, heat and determination and raw hunger. Her heart stuttered.
“That was then. Things are different now,” he said in a low voice that made her insides flip.
She swallowed, heart tripping all over itself, hope and an answering wave of heat suffusing her. “Because of Carly?”
“Because that little girl is mine.” His voice dropped, a mix of desire and tenderness in his eyes that turned her inside out. “And, sweetness, so are you.”