Forever Family (Forever #5)

I nodded against his neck. I honestly didn’t know if I wanted the reversal to work or not. I wanted to try to restore his ability to have children, certainly. I wanted to reach for that possibility.

But if I didn’t have to face the results, never had to be pregnant, to go through all that fear again, that might be okay. The uncertain future was easier to manage when the power to change it was no longer in our hands. We’d done our part.

“Nothing new from the private investigator today?” I asked. We’d discovered hiring someone to find Rosa and Gavin’s son was a lot cheaper than bringing on a lawyer to work the courts.

Gavin shook his head. “We know where she is, but it’s a privately guarded compound nobody can get into. They tried to deliver flowers or something. But Mexico, it’s not like here.”

“I’m sure there are places here that no one wants to send a pizza to,” I said.

“True,” he said. “I don’t know. It’s just so wild. How people can hole up somewhere and become invisible. I can’t even talk to anyone there.”

He fell silent, and I knew he was thinking about his goal to learn Spanish and talk to his son in both languages. But he hadn’t done it. Manuelito picked up English so quickly, it hadn’t been necessary, although Gavin would stew when Rosa would talk to family in Spanish just to leave him out.

“Too bad things didn’t work out with her and Mario,” I said.

“They were never going to be a couple,” Gavin said. “Mario is still a bachelor to the core. He can barely handle himself.”

“Still, if she’d settled here, things would have been different.”

Rosa wasn’t a U.S. citizen and couldn’t stay unless she married. But the relationship between her and Gavin’s friend had blazed hot and burned up fast.

“I worry about Manuel,” Gavin said, his voice catching. “What he thinks about being away so long. If he misses us.”

I closed my eyes, a tear escaping onto his shirt. I had been so against the little boy being with us at first, hard evidence of what some other woman got with Gavin that I might never have. But the boy himself was like a miracle, tender and kind. He was the best of all of us.

“Maybe we should have used the money to fight after all,” I said.

Gavin squeezed me. “We went over this so many times. Fifteen-grand retainer just to get started. And where would we be later? All the money to lawyers and nothing done. I was there. I saw it for myself. At least the investigator found her. That’s something.”

The light outside was fading, but the days were lengthening. Winter would give way to spring soon. And Manuelito had been gone four months, the whole lifetime of Jenny’s baby, Phoenix.

That reminded me. “Jenny figured out where Tina is,” I told Gavin.

He lifted his head. “Really?”

“Houston. I remembered when Jenny said it that Tina was from there. But she never talks about it.”

“Did Jenny talk to her?”

“Not yet. She saw Tina log in to that site Jenny worked on for the artist project. I think she’s going to text her at some point and threaten to go there.”

“With the baby?”

I relaxed back against Gavin’s chest. “I’m not sure.”

Surely Jenny couldn’t go. Not with Phoenix. I still had a little money from Albert, even after the surgery and the investigator fees. I should be the one. It would be the best use of it, to help out Tina.

“It should be me,” I said. “It should be anyway. I’m the one who understands. The last thing Tina needs is a baby in her face.”

Gavin shifted, making a small grunting sound of pain.

“Except,” I said, realizing what I was missing, “I need to take care of you.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he said. “I’m perfectly capable of microwaving my own 99-cent pizza.”

I had to laugh. It was true that we’d been eating pretty badly with him laid up and me stressed out.

“It’s almost spring break,” I said. “I have a week off.”

“So, go,” Gavin said. “Mario and I can be bachelors.”

I knocked my head against his collarbone. “I remember those days. Fistfights in bars?” I couldn’t bring myself to say, “And prostitutes.”

He laughed. “I might have had a little more clouded judgment then.”

“I’ll say.”

“How about if I just lie here among my pizza boxes and pine for you?” He kissed the top of my head. “You could use a little getaway, anyway. No books or papers to grade. Just pack a few things and go.”

I stared across the room at the images of Finn, and me and Gavin, and Manuelito. Tina was like family to me now. Yes, I would go fetch her.

Someone had to bring her home.





Chapter 19: Tina





It didn’t matter that people knew where I was now. I wasn’t going anywhere.