14. Gavin
FOURTEEN
GAVIN
I loved my family. My parents’ home, and even the original home that was built on our land that Dalton now lived in, were the homes I grew up in. They were familiar, full of love, and every time I stepped foot onto the land that was ingrained deep into my soul and inhaled the scent of fresh air, cattle and horses and grass and dirt and everything else that came with farm animals, my blood pressure dropped exponentially.
This was my home. The place where I grew up, running free in the dirt and learning how to ride horses, barrel race, and rope calves before I could spell Mississippi or Antarctica. The place where I went from being a terrified teenager to a dad well before I had the maturity or mental capacity to handle it. I knew how lucky I was, too. Monica’s parents had reacted the exact opposite, and to this day, whenever they saw Josie and me out in public, they crossed the street and looked the other way. It used to piss me off. They had no idea what they were missing out on, but as Josie grew, I was thankful.
They were toxic, judgmental, and overly harsh people who would never be the kind of people who could appreciate Josie’s sunshine and sweetness.
Every time I walked through my parents’ doors, I relaxed. Tonight was like any other night, except with the addition of Ava—Cameron’s girlfriend, his best friend’s little sister, and the love of his life—and her best friend Lydia.
I was certain Lydia existed solely for the purpose of being the most wild and entertaining woman in any social setting. That her flamboyant personality irritated Dalton only made her better. He couldn’t handle never being able to predict her actions or the words that would come out of her mouth, and she found joy in pushing every single one of Dalton’s buttons.
Typical for my family, we were gathered to watch my brother Cameron play in an away game in New England. Also included was Emily and her son, Landon, my brother Caleb’s new wife. He was also on an away stretch of hockey games, so Emily, now pregnant, was spending the weekend at the farm.
The home was loud, boisterous, and the tables were filled with the best food east of the Rocky Mountains, courtesy of my own mom.
On any other night, I’d be fully invested in every conversation.
Tonight, I was still thinking of those text messages. Of the fact that I spent a half-hour after I got home last night pacing, wondering if Penny would really come over and get in my face and yell at me. The excitement I felt hoping she would. The fact I’d wanted that so much, I almost stomped over to her house to force it.
The disappointment that had hit when she never showed.
Or the fact that I’d gone to bed tense, frustrated, and harder than I could ever remember in my entire life. I woke up the same, distracted all day with wondering how she was doing at school, what kind of day she was having.
How it’d taken one conversation with Bryce to get me to start thinking this way wasn’t lost on me, and it wasn’t even that.
I’d been fighting these thoughts and desires since the night I met her, however briefly. I was finally done denying it.
“I want her to be my next mommy!”
Josie’s excited shout rang through the room, silencing it.
Oh no . This was not happening. This couldn’t be. Not after last Friday…
“Oh…” Ava said, where she was sitting on the couch. Her gaze flicked to me before she lowered her voice and said something to my daughter. My daughter who’d promised she wouldn’t do this.
Josie said something about how pretty she smelled and her dresses. I got lost for a moment in how pretty Penny was too that it took me a minute to respond, to realize my daughter was standing in the living room, all eyes and attention on her as she animatedly discussed her love for Miss Pesco.
I had to end this.
“Josephine!”
She turned to me with no shame whatsoever and grinned. “Yeah, Daddy?”
Damn, she made it hard to be mad or frustrated with her when she looked at me like that. I headed her way and held out my hand for her to take. “Let’s go get dessert.”
“Already!? The game hasn’t started, and I haven’t eaten my dinner.”
Ava busted out in a laugh. I couldn’t blame her. When Josie was this cute it was difficult not to join her, but I tried my hardest.
“Just this once,” I muttered. She took off toward the dining room. I skirted around the couch and toward the table, scowling at both Ava and Emily.
“I’m not sure a cookie is going to get her mind off that one,” Ava said, smiling up at me.
If only she knew the worst of it.
“Tell me about it.”
I found Josie in the dining room double-fisting two chocolate cupcakes with mountains of frosting on top. “One.” I pointed to the one that looked like it hadn’t been licked and then wiggled my fingers. “Give me that one.”
As I pulled off the paper liner, I kept my voice cool. “I thought we agreed you weren’t going to play matchmaker anymore?”
“I know. I did promise that.”
“So what was that out there?”
Her nose scrunched up and her brows furrowed together. “You didn’t say I had to stop wanting Miss Pesco to be my new mommy. You said I couldn’t do anything to help you.”
Well, damn. She had me on that one. Good thing I’d asked for her point of view instead of jumping to outright scolding.
“All right, I get that.” I crouched down and brushed a cupcake crumb off her cheek. “You know that might not happen, though, right? Miss Pesco and I are friends, and that’s it right now.”
“If we’re all friends now, does that mean she can have dinner with us again?”
With all the thinking I’d done about her for the last forty hours, dinner was the last thing I was having with Penny.
“We’ll see, kiddo. But let us make those decisions, okay?”
“Sure.” She shrugged.
I let it go. She agreed far too quickly, but unlike the other night, I didn’t have the energy to fight her again.
“All right, kid. Make sure you get some food in you after that cupcake, okay?”
“After I eat real food, can I have another cupcake?”
I’d already let her break one of my rules. What was the harm of another? “Sure, munchkin.”
“Sweet!”
I helped Josie get food. We went back and watched the game.
The night was perfect. Ava’s family was there. Mine was mostly together. We didn’t want for anything else, and for a moment, a brief one, I wondered what it’d be like to have a woman like Penny there with me, too. I had no time to linger on that thought.
A single second after considering it, everything went to absolute complete and utter shit.
My phone was in my hand, an empty glass of whiskey next to me. Dalton was still awake with me, even though it was coming on four in the morning. My dad was sitting in his recliner, rocking slowly, staring at the blackened television screen we’d turned off hours ago.
None of us could sleep.
My brother Cameron was rushed to the hospital for emergency leg surgery after a completely shitty hit he took in the fourth quarter of his game. An hour after Isaiah had taken his sister, Ava, home, he’d called me with more news that rocked our family.
My mom went to bed, and with Josie sleeping upstairs, I was crashing there anyway. Dalton had been ready to head to his own home when Isaiah called, letting us know that on this night of all nights, Jimmy Morton, the greatest sleazeball New Haven Colorado had ever produced, broke into Ava’s home to assault her.
Fortunately, Isaiah had a bad feeling, turned back around, and stopped it before it went too far, but what did that mean?
The woman, my brother’s woman and a woman who’d grown up family to us all, was badly hurt, and my brother not only didn’t know yet, but he also had his own battle ahead of him.
“Think anyone in town would care if I walked into the police station and shot Jimmy?” Dalton asked, his own whiskey sitting next to him, untouched, which was a good thing since it wasn’t his first.
“I wouldn’t. Shit.” I leaned forward and shoved my hands through my hair and clasped my fingers together at the back of my neck. “How does this happen? It’s all so unbelievable.”
“None of it is fair or right,” my dad mumbled.
“Cameron’s going to lose his mind when he learns.”
For all we knew, he was still in surgery, and none of us had thought to get his teammate, Marlin’s phone number. He’d called Ava earlier before shitty and traumatic event number two happened, so neither of us could call him and ask how it was going.
So we waited. We drank our whiskey and sat in the dark room and waited.
“Someone’s going to need to call Lydia,” Dalton said.
Lydia Haven was Ava’s best friend and had been here earlier, too, but Isaiah had taken her home long before he’d come back to take Ava home. It was entirely possible she didn’t know anything had happened to her best friend, that was if she slept through the manhunt the police had undertaken to find Jimmy.
For the last several months she’d seemed to get a thrill out of being in Dalton’s space, flirting, teasing. I’d only seen my oldest brother show irritation with her antics.
That he even thought of her made me think it might not only be irritation he felt around her. “She’d probably like to hear it from you,” I told him.
His eyes, narrowed and dark and similar to mine, slid in my direction. “No, thanks. Just sayin’ she’ll need to be told.”
“It might help if she hears it from someone not in Ava’s family first so they don’t have to handle her initial reaction.” Lord knew they were dealing with enough and would be for quite a while.
Dalton rolled his lips together and brought his whiskey to his mouth. After a small sip, he went back to staring at the wall across from him.
I leaned back in the couch and rested my head against the back cushion right as my dad’s phone buzzed in his hand.
“It’s Cam,” he muttered, and all of us went on alert as my dad hit the speaker phone. Dad spoke first, “Cameron?”
A cough came and then a groan. “Hey, Dad.”
Relief hit me hard and fast, relieving some of the tension from my shoulders. It was Cam, scratchy throat and sounding like he was in a shit ton of pain, but it was Cameron. He was out of surgery.
“Hey, son.” Dad’s voice wobbled, and he sniffed. “Damn glad to hear from you. You make it through okay?”
Another groan and a curse came through the line, but Cameron managed a sleepy, “Yeah. I’ll fill you in later. You know where Ava is? Tried calling her and I can’t get a hold of her.”
Dad’s eyes widened and he cringed. “Probably sleeping, Cameron. She’s had a long night.”
“She all right?” There was nothing more than pain and exhaustion in his tone, nothing to set off alarm bells, but no way would Dad tell him anything now.
“She’ll be fine, son. Focus on you right now and we’ll talk tomorrow. All right?”
“Yeah, yeah… Okay. I think my meds are kickin’ in, so I’m gonna go. Tell Mom I’m good, though, okay?”
“We will. Get some rest, Cameron.”
They hung up a few seconds later and Dad sighed. “Damn. How long you think he’ll stay in Buffalo once he hears what happened tonight?”
“Even if he doesn’t, he’ll be home tomorrow,” Dalton said, and I couldn’t argue with him. Cameron wouldn’t want to be anywhere else except here or with Ava while he recovered.
“I’m going to try to head up,” I told them and shoved to my feet with a tired groan. It was the middle of the night. I was exhausted, pissed, and scared, but I still had a daughter to take care of in the morning.
There was no doubt Josie would wake up with a million questions, and I’d need to be alert enough to answer them.
I woke the next morning with my phone full of texts, from friends and coworkers and even former clients telling me they were thinking of and praying for our family, and as I read through all of them, a new text came in.
Just woke up and saw the news. Let me know if your family needs anything.
For the first time, seeing a text from Penny didn’t irritate me, and it didn’t make me want to refuse. I couldn’t. Not any longer. Life had just smacked us all across the head with the reminder that life was too damn short.
Thank you. I will. Right now we’re all still in shock. Josie won’t be in school today, fyi, but I’ll call the school.
I’ll let them know. You do what you have to.
Good. It was one less phone call I’d have to make.
Thanks, Penny.
No problem