27. Gavin
GAVIN
The front door flings open. Jack and I, and most dangerously, Harrison, are on our feet in a flash.
But it’s Phil. He’s standing inside the doorway, face red, jaw clenched, keys still in hand like he hasn’t decided whether he’s staying or storming back out.
Parker’s mom glances up from where she’s helping Lyra unwrap a fortune cookie. Harrison is braced, ready for anything. Jack’s in the living room, staring Phil down. The air sharpens. Parker freezes mid-laugh and sets her drink down, her back going stiff.
I step between her and Phil. “Let’s talk,” I say, nodding toward the sliding glass door. “Outside.”
Phil glares at me. “I’ve got some things to say?—”
“And you can say them to me,” I cut in smoothly, keeping my voice low and level. “Not in front of the kids.”
He hesitates, nostrils flaring. Then, reluctantly, he follows me out onto the balcony. It’s cooler out here. Quiet, except for the faint hum of street noise and the soft thud of a basketball a few houses down. I shut the door behind us, keeping my hand on the knob.
“Go ahead,” I say.
Phil turns on me like a man who’s rehearsed this confrontation for days. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
“That’s a long list. Narrow it down.”
“Don’t. No jokes. Not now. Not with this.”
I nod once. “Be more specific about your grievance, please.”
“You know exactly what I mean. You waltz into my sister’s life like it’s a goddamn rom-com, drag your two best friends with you, and then let her get railroaded by Vivian like none of it’s your responsibility?—”
“I never said it wasn’t.”
“She’s threatening to buy their building, Gavin. Did you know that? Your mother is putting Parker, the kids, and my mom on the street.”
I go still. My mouth tastes like bile. I haven’t answered my mother’s calls in days. I thought that was the end of it. I thought my silence was a message. But apparently, Vivian’s resorted to her usual tactic—escalation by overreach. “I didn’t know. I didn’t think she’d stoop this low.”
Phil laughs, sharp and cold. “This is Vivian we’re talking about. She always goes lower.”
I don’t have a good answer. Only a boiling sense of disbelief. “She’ll back off. We’ll make sure of it.”
“She won’t,” Phil snaps. “She’s not playing checkers. She’s playing chess with a fucking flamethrower.”
“She’s playing desperate ,” I reply. “And desperation’s sloppy. It makes mistakes.”
Phil crosses his arms. “So what’s the plan?”
I meet his eyes. “We take care of our own. No one in your family is going to go without again. Ever.”
He holds my stare a beat too long, like he’s trying to figure out whether I mean it. “How the fuck can I trust you to handle this, Gavin? After all the lies?—”
“Necessary lies.”
His hands fist. “It was necessary to lie to me? We’ve been best friends since prep school. Does that mean nothing to you?”
“It means everything to me, and that’s why I lied.” I sigh at myself. “It’s why we all lied. Because we knew how you felt about this. You went around telling all of us that she’s off-limits, and…we couldn’t stop ourselves.”
He spits, “ Chose not to stop yourselves.”
“You’re right. We made a choice. And we will keep making that choice every day for the rest of our lives, if she lets us.”
He exhales loudly out his nose, but his hands relax. Possibly a good sign. “You care about her that much?”
“More, but I thought you didn’t want to hear about that.”
He turns and grips the railing. Looks like he might get tetanus from holding it. This place needs a ton of work. But then Phil says, “I hate this.”
At least he didn’t say, “I hate you.”
“Come back in,” I say, nodding toward the door.
“We’re just having dinner. The kids are laughing.
Your mom is doling out advice no one asked for, but everyone is grateful for.
” I laugh to myself. “It’s like being with a real family, like all the ones I saw on TV when we were kids. I always wanted that.”
He swallows as the tension in his shoulders drops. “I know you did, Gav.”
“Let’s go in. You can yell at us later. Or never. But not tonight. At least not in front of the kids. Okay?”
He exhales. “Fine. But if I see you sneaking off to touch my sister under the table, I’m flipping it.”
I smirk. “Wouldn’t dream of it.”
The door clicks shut behind us, and for the first time since he walked in, it feels like the night might not burn down after all.
The table’s already covered when we walk back in—boxes stacked two deep, sauce packets scattered like confetti, little white cartons crowding each other for space.
Lyra’s perched on a kitchen chair, legs swinging, chewing on something with too much enthusiasm for it to be anything but dumplings.
Levi’s already on his second helping of lo mein, wielding chopsticks with alarming precision for a six-year-old.
Jack’s got his sleeves rolled up, fielding questions about crab rangoon like it’s a board meeting. Parker’s mom is laughing at something Harrison said. Parker catches my eye as I close the door behind Phil, and it’s all there in her face—relief that turns my rib cage into something fragile.
Phil hovers near the wall like he hasn’t decided whether this is a dinner or an ambush. He nods to his mom, then to Parker, and finally takes the empty chair at the far end of the table. It’s subtle, but I see it—the shift.
We pass boxes back and forth. Someone finds the fried rice.
Jack discovers the egg rolls. Parker insists on feeding me a bite of sesame chicken with a look that dares me to say no, and I don’t.
I lean forward, meet her halfway, and take the bite off her chopsticks while Lyra fake-gags in the background.
“Gross,” she announces, dramatically pushing away her plate. “Grown-ups are always kissing and stealing food.”
“Someday you’ll like both,” Parker says, biting back a laugh.
“Nope,” Lyra says. “I’m going to marry a girl who doesn’t steal my noodles.”
“Good luck finding one,” Jack says, grinning.
Phil eyes us all carefully, not eating yet, but watching. Measuring.
It’s Parker’s mom who starts the next thread of conversation. She’s halfway through a spring roll when she says, “You know, I always wanted a little place on the beach.”
Parker raises an eyebrow. “Since when?”
“Since forever,” her mom replies, sipping from a glass of water. “Something quiet. A porch swing. A breeze that doesn’t smell like exhaust.”
Levi perks up. “With sand?”
Lyra immediately says, “Can we get a dog?”
Phil mutters, “Oh god, please no.” The room breaks into laughter, and even Phil cracks half a smile.
Harrison leans in. “What would you name the dog?”
“Pineapple,” Lyra says, absolutely serious.
“Perfect,” Jack says. “Unquestionably perfect.”
For a while, it’s like this—conversation flowing easily, food passed without hesitation, Parker brushing her hand across mine whenever she reaches for another dumpling. Phil stays quiet, but I watch him watch her. Watch us.
I see it happen gradually. His eyes track the way Jack talks to Lyra like she’s already the smartest person in the room.
And to be sure, she clearly is. I suspect Levi could give her a run for her money, but he’s too quiet to prove it.
The way Harrison leans down to help Levi tie his shoelace when he comes back from the hallway, like it’s the most natural thing in the world.
The way Parker keeps touching all three of us without even realizing—casual, unguarded, like she knows we’re hers.
Phil isn’t smiling. But he isn’t scowling either. That’s progress.
By the time Parker’s mom brings out ice cream, there’s laughter spilling into every corner of the apartment. It’s a family. And I have no urge to run away from it.
The kids are halfway through their second tiny bowl of ice cream when Phil finally speaks. “I didn’t come here to give speeches.”
Parker quietly says, “I’m glad for that. But you never did mention why you came.”
Part of me wants him to tell her about Vivian’s plan to buy the building. God knows I don’t want to be the one to tell her. But I also don’t want that stress put on her or her mom or the kids.
Phil glances at Parker, then at the kids, and finally at the three of us.
“I’ve been angry. I still am, maybe. I’ve known you all since high school.
I’ve worked alongside you, defended you, told everyone I knew how brilliant you were.
And then I find out—like this—that you’re all…
dating my little sister.” Pretty sure he cleaned that up instead of saying fucking in front of the kids.
Parker groans quietly. “Can we not phrase it like that?”
Phil ignores her. “It’s a lot. I’m still not convinced it’s not a train wreck waiting to happen.”
“We understand,” I tell him.
Phil cuts a look at me. “Do you?”
“Yes.”
He looks back down at the table for a moment, drumming his fingers against the edge.
Then, slowly, he exhales. “But…this fits. With you. All of you. I watched the way Lyra curled up in Jack’s lap like she’s known him for years.
The way Levi talks to Harrison like he’s the only adult who understands cartoons.
The way my mom—my mom—smiled like she’s already planning where you’ll all sit at Thanksgiving. ”
He leans forward now, resting his forearms on the table.
“I don’t like it.” He pauses. “But this isn’t about me.
And if this is what makes Parker happy—if this is what’s good for those kids—then it’s not my job to like it.
Yeah, I don’t get it. And other people aren’t going to get it either.
But screw it. Make this work and prove the world wrong about this family. ”
He says “family” like it’s a challenge. Like we’re all in this now, for better or worse. It’s a relief, not only for me. Parker’s mom raises her glass in a silent toast.
Jack grins, wide and wolfish. “We can work with that.”
Phil mutters something under his breath and grabs another fortune cookie like he didn’t just drop the biggest moment of the night and pretend it was nothing.
But Parker’s smile? It tells me everything. Her brother didn’t just tolerate us tonight. He joined the table.
Soon the kids are in pajamas and pretending to sleep on the living room floor.
Parker’s mom has claimed the guest room, promising to wake up early and make pancakes.
Phil made a big deal about needing to “grab a drink with someone not entangled in a four-gy or whatever the hell this is,” but I caught the way he hugged his mom before he left.
His arms held a little tighter. His goodbye lingered a little longer.
Jack and Harrison are in the kitchen, finishing up dishes and pretending they aren’t both quietly eavesdropping through the open balcony door.
The lights outside are soft, and the quiet hum of traffic from a few blocks over filters in with the breeze.
The air smells like night and leftovers and something so warm I don’t have a name for it.
Parker and I are standing out here, side by side, leaning on the railing. Fingers crossed about the tetanus.
She’s barefoot. Her hair’s pulled into a loose braid, and she’s wearing a soft long-sleeve shirt with tiny holes in the sleeve cuffs where her thumbs always find their way through.
And I can’t stop looking at her.
“I thought you might leave,” she says softly. “After all of this.”
“I wanted to.”
That earns me a glance, but I don’t let her sit in it too long.
“Not because I didn’t want you. Because I didn’t think I could handle it. The weight of wanting more than I thought I deserved.”
She turns toward me, curious now. “What do you mean? Deserved?”
Jack is raw and loud and emotional. Harrison is quiet and stoic, until he’s not. I’m the strategist. The one who smooths edges and keeps secrets in the name of control. But not tonight.
It’s time to tell her just how fucked up I am about this stuff. She deserves to be able to walk away, if this is too much for her.
“I thought my father left me,” I begin. “I thought he walked out on us. On me. I spent my entire life resenting him. Every time I lost something, or failed, or felt like I wasn’t enough—I put it on him.
And then Vivian…she blamed everything on him.
She built that belief into something permanent.
So, when I was a kid, I had no reason to think otherwise. ”
Parker steps closer, her hand slipping into mine. “But that’s what he did. Everyone knows that.”
My jaw tightens. “Everyone knows what Vivian wants them to know.”
The slightest gasp escapes her lips. “What did she do?”
“I went to see him after everything with Vivian broke. I wanted answers. Closure. Whatever people are supposed to chase after when they feel cracked open.”
“And?”
“He never left me,” I say, throat tightening. “He stayed away because I asked him to. When I was a kid and angry and certain, I told him to never contact me again. And he listened.”
She exhales, soft and slow.
“I blamed him for years,” I whisper. “I thought he’d abandoned me when really…I pushed him away. And he respected that. Even though it hurt him.”
She squeezes my hand.
“I have siblings,” I rasp. “A sister who plays piano. A little brother who once tried to eat a LEGO. Another sister in college. A family I never got to know because I was too angry to see past the story I’d been sold by my mother.
She did this. All of it. She’s the one who had an affair that sparked their divorce.
My father met Odette long after Vivian’s affairs, when they were already separated.
He wasn’t some cheating bastard, like she always said. That was her.”
“Oh, wow,” she says.
“And tonight, sitting in your kitchen, watching your mother smile and your kids talk about cartoons and watching Phil almost laugh even though he’s upset…
I realized something.” I turn to face her fully.
“Family isn’t just the people who raise you.
It’s the ones you choose. The ones who choose you back.
I missed out on the first half of that lesson, but I’m not going to miss the second. ”
She’s quiet for a beat, eyes shining.
“I want to build a life with you, Parker. I want the whole chaotic, messy, miracle of it. You. The kids. This odd, beautiful life we’ve fallen into.”
Her hand touches my face, soft and warm and steady. “I want that too.”
“And it’s scary.”
She laughs. “Yeah, it is.”
I laugh a little too, and the tension in my chest finally gives. “Then let’s be terrified together.”
She leans up and kisses me. When she pulls back, she presses her forehead to mine and smiles. “Come inside,” she says. “We have a family to put to bed.”
And just like that, I’m home.