16. Gavin
SIXTEEN
GAVIN
Penny had no way of knowing, and I wasn’t going to tell her, but I’d been all but stalking her house all day, counting down the minutes until she came home from school. In the last month, she was the only person who’d distracted me from anything in my life, good or bad, and right now, a distraction was exactly what I needed.
We were waiting for Cameron to get home, and none of us had told him what happened to Ava yet. Considering he was flying home early, without full approval of his doctors because he didn’t want to spend another day in Buffalo, I was almost thankful the man couldn’t walk… much less beat the shit out of that perverted asshole who I hoped burned in hell and got what was coming to him once he was convicted and in prison.
Rage wasn’t my typical go-to emotion, more indifference, but I had no problems making an exception for Jimmy Morton.
Penny followed me into the small living area at the front of the house. It was supposed to be a formal dining room, given that the kitchen eating nook was so small, but I’d changed it to a sitting area slash office. My desk was a mess of papers and contracts and floor plans and designs for the new neighborhood. A coffee mug, half-filled with this morning’s coffee sat on my desk. Dried coffee drops ran down the edge of it. I didn’t bother cleaning any of it up, and instead, went to the chairs and flipped on the lamp that sat between them in the corner.
“I don’t have to be here,” Penny said but slunk down into one of the chairs.
“I want you here. Trust me, it’s best not to be alone with my thoughts right now.”
She brushed a condensation drop of water off her glass. “How’s everyone doing? I mean, I know this is hard, but Cameron?”
“He’s in pain, had surgery. He was supposed to stay another day before flying, but he refused. He’ll be here in a few hours.”
“Already?” Her eyes went wide with surprise.
“Yeah.” I kicked my feet up onto the fabric-covered, round ottoman I used as a coffee table. “Can’t imagine he’ll stay. He’ll need to get to Denver for follow-ups with his doctor, but my guess right now is that he’s worried about how Ava is handling his injury and wants to get back to her first.”
“And you said he doesn’t know.”
“No. She can hardly talk, so she hasn’t taken his phone calls. I’m thinking that’s what has him so worked up and needing to see her, at least partly. But shit… he’s going to lose his damn mind. Isaiah is picking him up from the airport to let him know.”
She puckered her brows and looked confused.
“Isaiah is Ava’s brother. He’s also a sheriff’s deputy.”
“And he knows Cameron?”
It was easy to forget she’d only lived here a month, considering how much time she’d spent consuming my thoughts in that time. She didn’t know everyone in town like the rest of us. “Yeah. Cam and Isaiah have been friends their whole lives—hell, we all practically grew up with them. Ava too. We figured it’d be better for Isaiah to tell him so he can take him to her parents’ house where she’s staying.”
We fell into silence then. It wasn’t comfortable, not with the conversation and the night we’d all had. I had no doubt the entire town was shaken up. Cameron’s career could be over, and his girlfriend might never be the same again.
Insane how things could shift so quickly when least expected.
“I’m sorry,” Penny finally said. “I’m really sorry about all of it. My mom…” She paused and shook her head. “Never mind.”
“No.” I dropped my feet to the floor and leaned closer. She’d mentioned her mom, and I’d been curious. Wondering why she’d said she had to raise her sister. Hell, I was finally realizing I wanted to know everything about this woman.
The good and the ugly.
“It’s nothing, and I don’t mean to make your tragedies about me. That doesn’t help.”
“Penny,” I said and reached out, settling my hand to her knee.
My body warmed ten degrees at the touch. The first time I’d truly touched her and with purpose. Her lips parted in shock, and she glanced down at my hand, then lifted her eyes back to me, biting the inside of her bottom lip. “Talk to me. I want to know.”
I also had the sudden burst of desire to never stop touching her. It’d been years. Years since I’d had such an intense desire to both know a woman and touch them. Be with them. For whatever reason, Penny was the one I wanted to explore all that with and I was running out of reasons, if I had any left in the first place, to run from it.
Penny watched me, debated. She must have decided to trust me because she leaned back in her chair and relaxed.
What she didn’t do was ask me to remove my hand from her. I gave her a light brush and pulled back, though, twisting so she knew she had my full attention.
It must have been the encouragement she needed.
“Our mom was a good mom. I want that to be clear. She worked hard, and she did her best.”
I got stuck on the first part. “Was?”
“Well, is. I mean, she’s still alive, but we don’t talk to her, Maize and I. That’s my sister. We don’t really have a relationship with her anymore.”
Odd, considering she started her story qualifying how good her mom was.
“Okay…”
Penny pushed her lips out to the side, gazing into her glass of water. I went to ask if she needed something stronger. She looked like she needed it, but the night I walked her home, she told me she didn’t drink. I’d taken that to mean excessively, or rarely, but in case she simply didn’t, I refrained.
“She got pregnant with me when she was sixteen.” She lifted her gaze, blue eyes sparkling beneath her thick and long lashes.
“I can’t exactly judge her for that,” I drawled. “She lasted a whole year longer than me.”
Penny chuckled, and a cute pink appeared on her slender throat. “Well, her family wasn’t nearly as supportive as yours was. They kicked her out. Let her pack a suitcase of clothes and that was it. From what she told me, she was on the streets two hours after she found out she was pregnant.”
“Damn… I’m sorry to hear that. Monica’s parents weren’t great, but even they weren’t that bad.” My family, on the other hand, after the initial shock, went straight into planning mode. There was a wrench in their plans for me, and we all figured out how to adapt.
I’d known then I was lucky, especially since Monica’s mom said, “Well, you can stay, but I ain’t babysitting anyone.” I hadn’t ever truly considered how horrific some teen parents were treated.
“What about the father?”
“He was some boy she later told me she’d climbed into the back of a Honda with because all her friends were getting rid of their virginity, and she felt like she had to. He claimed he never touched her, and his parents believed him. Gave her a few hundred bucks to go away. She took it, got a room in Kansas City at some place that probably rented rooms by the hour, and found a job… working at a nearby strip club.”
Oh… so that was why she didn’t want to tell the story. It wasn’t that her mom was sixteen, it was what she did after to provide.
“She took care of me,” Penny said, defensiveness building in her tone. “I was fed. She used to dance with me at home. I can remember going to her club and sitting in the changing room, and all the girls were nice, but it wasn’t the safest either. Or the most… sober … place to grow up.”
“And then she had your sister.”
“And then she had Maize, yes, and shortly after, I think, she realized she was twenty, had two kids, but she wanted a man. Someone to come in and take care of us so she didn’t have to keep doing what she was doing. I remember her saying that when I was little. It was after she brought a guy home with her from the club. He saw us and took off. Said he wanted a night with a whore not a shitty mom with kids. She’d looked at me that night, smiled, wiped mascara away from beneath her eyes, and told me she’d find someone else for us. Someone better.”
“Let me guess… she didn’t?”
Penny shook her head, a sad, soft smile on her face. “No. And when I tell you that I was raising Maize my whole life, I meant it. By the time I was Josie’s age, I was a full-time mom, getting Maize taken care of in the morning because Mom was too tired from the night before, or whatever she’d done after. By the time I got us home from school, she was barely awake and already getting ready to leave. She’d leave me piles of her tips, and I’d take Maize to the grocery store at the corner, buy us what we needed, and cook her dinner.”
“You were eight .”
Fury pulsed and boiled my blood in my veins. I couldn’t imagine. Couldn’t ever imagine treating someone like that, much less Josie. It was easy to recognize I’d had a completely different start to parenting, but that didn’t explain neglecting your kids.
And the fact Penny said her mom was a good mom?
I wasn’t touching that, but it was amazing she could sit here and tell me all of that without shame.
“Anyway, the reason I mentioned my mom was because as we grew, there were men. A lot of them. Not all of them were nice to her.” She went back to gazing at her water cup, but she didn’t see it. She wasn’t there, in my house. She was somewhere far away, back in Kansas City. “Some hurt her,” she whispered. “If she didn’t do what they wanted, or they didn’t want to leave.”
She blinked up at me. “I was thirteen, the first time I understood what was happening to her, how they were hurting her, I think.”
“And you?” I gritted out. I could barely breathe, barely see through the red streaking my vision.
“I wasn’t ever…” She shook her head. “No, Mom made sure we were safe. We never saw anything, barely ever saw the men. She protected us as much as she could. I mean that. And now I know she was a hurting, lonely woman who was searching for something, but she kept us safe from that, Gavin.”
She leaned forward this time, set down her glass, and grabbed one of my hands in both of hers. Her touch was soft and warm, and as she squeezed my hand, I exhaled.
My chest was tight. My skin burning.
“Gavin,” she whispered and shook my hand to get my attention. “Look at me.”
I listened. Stared right into her gorgeous blues. “I wasn’t hurt. Ever . And I made sure Maize wasn’t either. I told you that because I understand, at least from a distance what Ava is going through, and what you all are. I know what it’s like to have someone you love be hurt in that way, in whatever kind of way Ava was attacked. It’s painful to be powerless, to not be able to stop it, and have no way to fix it after the fact. That’s all. I wanted you to know I understand.”
“You shouldn’t have to.”
Her lips curled up at the corner, and she chuckled. “We don’t always get what we want.”
Her hand was rubbing mine now, her full, pouty lips still curved.
I leaned forward. It’d been years since I’d kissed a woman. Years since I’d felt that tentative, soft brush of warm lips against mine, the gentle brush of a tongue against mine.
In that moment, I wanted to experience it all, all over again, like it was the first time I’d ever done it.
I leaned in closer, and Penny’s lips parted. “Gavin,” she whispered.
“Shhh,” I whispered back. “Can I?”
She nodded and I leaned forward. Her warm, ragged breath skated across my lips.
“Miss Pesco! I’m done!”
I shot back like a rocket, and Penny’s face paled.
“Shit,” she rasped and jumped out of the chair.
I fell back against mine and scrubbed my hands down my face.
Shit was right.
But this time, the only thing I was upset about was that we’d been interrupted.
My parents’ house, so normally full of noise with Josie and Landon and all of us guys running around giving each other shit and laughing and throwing a few punches for the hell of it was stone silent. Ava and our mom were in the kitchen, cleaning up after the world’s most painful dinner. A dinner where anger pulsed in the air along with the sick sensation of everything right in the world being turned upside down.
Cam and Ava had sat next to each other, but where there was usually affection and teasing and no small amount of sass from Ava, there’d been silence. Distance. Their shoulders never once brushed against each other’s, and the smiles were strained and rare.
For now, I had a moment with my brother, his leg braced up on our father’s recliner, where Cam had spent the entire day and evening outside of when he’d had to move to the dinner table.
They were leaving for Denver in the morning. Cam had appointments and wanted to recover there. Ava was going with him so she could escape town for a while. News was out about Jimmy’s arrest, and the connection of Ava to our family had hit the national spotlight. We hadn’t turned on a television in twenty-four hours. At least in Denver, they had more security and privacy.
I sat down next to my brother and pulled my chair close. “She still sounds bad. How are you two doing?”
Every word Ava spoke sounded like it was being torn from her. Her throat was purple and mottled, and every single time I saw the oval marks of Jimmy’s hand at her throat I wanted to slam my fist into a wall. I could only imagine how Cameron was handling all of this.
“She’s hurting. Won’t touch me. Cringes when I get too close. And at night, I can hear her screams from the next room.”
I hadn’t realized they weren’t sharing a bed. Maybe because she was still sleeping at her parents’.
“I’m sorry, man. That has to suck.”
He turned to me, eyes lit with unmitigated, absolute fury. He scoffed. “I’m not pissed about not getting any, Gavin. I’m fucking furious this asshole damaged her and she now has to find a way to heal from it. I’m more pissed I wasted all the years I did. Had I not…”
“Don’t do that. Don’t go down that road. It’ll eat you alive.”
“Cam? You ready?” Ava stepped into the room, hands clasped gently in front of her. Ava had always been wild. A little reckless, a little brash, but she entered a room with magnetic energy that followed her. Her face was pale, making the bruising that much more noticeable and there was no excitement in her eyes. Her shoulders were hunched forward like she’d already given up.
Penny’s words from two nights ago jumped into my mind. She’d lived this, repeatedly, watching someone she loved fold into themselves.
I stood from my chair and moved it, then gathered Cameron’s crutches for him.
While he hobbled and climbed out of the recliner, grunting and moaning as he did, I stepped toward Ava.
The instinct to hug her or ruffle her hair like I always did was a habit I didn’t think about. Until her shoulders tightened and she looked away, skin paling further.
Damn . “Take care, Ava,” I said and hoped my smile was understanding and not full of the same pity and fury I felt raking across down my skin.
“Both of you, get well soon.” I turned to Ava. “Keep fighting, honey. Don’t let him win this.”
A flash brightened her eyes and lifted her lips, before it vanished. “Thanks, Gavin.”
I clasped my brother’s shoulder and gave him a firm shake. “Get that leg taken care of. Josie’s going to need someone to climb on soon and you know you’re her favorite.”
Cameron’s smirk was as arrogant as it always was. “Damn straight I am.”
I said my goodbyes, and with Penny still on my mind, the realization of what she had to deal with as a small child, taking care of a sister, and most likely a mom who was breaking in front of her by the day so vivid in my brain, I headed straight to her house.
We’d made strides the other day, let our intentions be known.
And I was tired of fighting them, avoiding them, and running from them.
This time, I was taking them.