“I was sure you’d meet someone there, someone worthy of you. I looked at my life and saw how pathetic it was. I didn’t think I’d ever be capable of giving you what you deserved so I just . . . gave up. Not just on you or us but on myself, too. I let the temptations pull me under and it took nearly killing my best friend to make me realize how bad off I actually was.”
I can hear his words and I know that if I could let them in past the lies and the pain of being in the dark for so long, they would probably help somehow. But right now it’s just too much, it’s all too much.
Gavin isn’t much of a talker and for the first time ever, I want him to return to the broody, silent version of himself so I can try to figure out how to make what has happened okay. How to make peace with the past so that I can figure out whether we have a future.
I’m one second from covering my ears like a child to keep his words out when he delivers the crushing blow to my soul.
“Ashley helped me, she represented me when no one else would. She accepted what I could give and it sort of turned into a . . . thing, I guess. But after Austin, I ended it. I swear to God, I have not touched her since. But she’s still my attorney, she’s a pretty damn good one, and she knows my case and is doing her best to get my probation ended early so that I can be a part of Leaving Amarillo—and not the anchor that weighs the band down and keeps us from playing out-of-state gigs.” He swallows hard and stares at me with that look, that please-don’t-hate-me-I’m-only-a-clueless-guy look. I frown, trying to sort my feelings in my head before I open my mouth and say something I can’t take back. “Tell me what I can do, Bluebird. What I can say or do to make it better, to keep from hurting you. Please. Whatever you want or need, I will do. Name it.”
A desperate Gavin. This is a switch. Typically it was me doing the begging and pleading and trying to push him into recognizing what we had. But now the tables have turned and I don’t know what side either of us is really on.
“I don’t know,” I say softly. “I’m just . . . there’s so much I didn’t know and this other girl in your life that I can’t compete with and honestly, I don’t think I want to even—”
He cuts my sentence short by rushing forward and taking my hands in his. The contact assaults my exposed nerves. “I ended it with no room for doubt. I told her I would get the money I owed as soon as I could and I’ve been paying her weekly from my check. She still comes around every now and then, either because she’s lonely or bored, or hell if I know, but I told her in no uncertain terms that I don’t want that in my life anymore. I’m done with that kind of life—with temporary highs and empty relationships. With using sex as currency or as just a means to an end. I want this, what you and I have, what you and I could have if I stopped getting in my own way.”
“Just . . .” I look down at our connected hands, then helplessly up at him, hating that I’m hurting him, hating that I can’t just say it’s okay. My instinct is to soothe him, to make it all better, to shine the light on the darkness within him. But this time I am lost in darkness, too, and I can’t figure out how to get either of us out. “Maybe just give me some space, okay? I need to think and I can’t think right now with everything so . . .”
The initial hurt of being asked to leave by the one person who has always wanted him to stay flickers fast across his features but he schools them quickly and nods, allowing his hands to slip from mine. The shutters he usually keeps between us slam shut in his eyes and I am on the outside once again—no longer privy to the inner workings of Gavin Garrison.
“Okay. I have to be at work tonight so I should go, anyway. But please know I would never do anything to intentionally hurt you or Dallas.” A beat later, just before walking out of my yard and maybe out of my life, he adds, “You’re all I’ve got.”
If I ever wrote a book, I think I’d call it “A View from Rock Bottom,” because that’s where I am right now.
When a knock comes at my door I’m literally lying facedown on my living room floor.