MAVIS BIT HER TONGUE. She bit it hard as she drove back to Zelda’s.
In the passenger seat, Gavin sat in trained silence. He hadn’t spoken since dinner.
Unless, of course, Mavis counted the sheer amount of swearing he’d done when he’d come to. She wondered how long it had been since a fellow teammate had choked him.
She wondered how long it took other SEALs to come to ordinarily after being choked out by a teammate. The minutes she’d spent waiting for him to resurface had felt like half an eternity. She’d used it well, berating Kyle. Berating Gavin. To deaf ears, on both accounts.
Gritting her teeth, she punched the accelerator and drove faster. After he came to and Adrian took him into the other room to be sure he was all right, she’d heard an earful. Oh, yes. They’d taken turns—the family. Suffice it to say the only person at the table to decide congratulations were in order was Zelda. The rest, besides Errol, had formed their own opinion.
Kyle had seethed. “Please tell me this is just to get back at Harmony and me. Or is he taking advantage of you? You tell me if he’s taking advantage of you. I’ll—”
James had interrupted, but only to ask, “Is a relationship the best thing for him? For either of you? When I was in AA, we had a no-relations policy—”
“He seems a rather troubled sort of young man,” Charles had expressed for, it seemed, even he felt it right to intervene.
“He’s a troublemaker,” Edith told him. “Has been since he was a juvenile. I never knew why Adrian let Kyle bring him around. I’m shocked he never wound up in some home for boys. Mavis, I’d say you were well suited to each other, but you’ve never known what’s good for you. Just like your mother…”
Above all the dismay, Harmony had settled with, “What if it ends badly? He might…never come back.”
When Mavis had finally gotten Gavin to the car, her mother stopped her. “You’re not sleeping with him? I don’t think that’s a good idea. It’ll only…complicate matters.”
So, to sum up, Mavis had snapped at her mother, growled at her father, nearly screamed with frustration at her grandmother and her man-sheep, ignored her best friend entirely and thought very, very seriously about mangling her elder brother.
Mavis bore down on the steering wheel. She couldn’t forget the expression of horror on Adrian’s face as chairs upended and the table tipped. A beveled glass dish dumped the remains of the potatoes in Edith’s lap. All the china and drinkware Mavis had arranged meticulously so Adrian wouldn’t have to worry…
Mavis fought not to cut her eyes to Gavin when she heard him whistling under his breath. After several minutes, though, her brow furrowed. “What is that?”
“What?” he asked.
“That song,” she said. “What is it?”
“It’s ‘Brandy.’”
Mavis frowned at him as he began to whistle again, this time loud enough to get Prometheus’s attention from the back seat. The dog made a throaty noise that normally preceded an episode of howling. She groaned. “Dear God.”
“William.”
“William who?” she asked warily.
“William Leighton,” Gavin said thoughtfully. “I thought it would’ve been the other one. The Greenpeace dude with floppy hair and sandals. What’s his name? Fergus? Finnigan?”
“Finnian,” Mavis all but growled.
“That’s him.”
“You won’t hurt him,” Mavis stated plainly. “William. He didn’t do anything.”
“Did he put his hands on you, Frexy?”
“Yes, but so have you. And I know you don’t think it’s wrong because it wasn’t until you wouldn’t apologize for it or say that it was wrong that my brother tackled you into the table.”
Gavin fell quiet. A studious silence.
Mavis rapped the heel of her hand against the wheel. “It was a million years ago. It was brief. Harmony figured it out. She blabbed about it in front of Edith. They were the only ones who knew anything about it before tonight.”
“Why?” Gavin wanted to know. “It went on between you two for a while, didn’t it?”
“Yes,” she said, tight-lipped. She didn’t want to go down this road—the shame she felt about the way it turned out.
The itch between her shoulder blades became intolerable. She shrugged. “Look…he didn’t want anyone to know. I know he cared about me. Normally you think that caring enough about someone to be more than friends for months at a time means at least telling the people who mean the most to you about it. So I put a stop to it before I could get any more attached.”
“That’s why attachments aren’t your thing,” Gavin realized.
“I don’t know.” She made the turn onto their road. “I’m not the type who likes roses. I think sonnets are cheesy. And PDA from people like Mom and Dad and Harmony and Kyle makes me squirm to no end. But…when I’m with someone…when I care about someone that much…it matters. It matters enough that I don’t think it should be hidden. Which is why no guy’s ever met my parents.”
Gavin riddled it through quickly. “You need him to be the one to brag on you first.”
Mavis rolled past her house. Gravity pulled the car down the slope of the road to Zelda’s. She let her foot relax off the pedal.
“You were going to let me tell them.”
She saw the snatched glow of his eyes as they passed a streetlight. The low words worked their way into her chest and rooted there firmly. She looked away. “Yeah, well. I like you.” Had she not made that clear by the river?
It wasn’t until they could see the turn to Zelda’s driveway that he spoke again. “You’re right.”
“About?” she asked, pulling onto the shoulder in front of the lotus-painted mailbox.
“If William felt anything like what I do…he wouldn’t have left you guessing.”
Mavis’s hand fumbled on the shifter. She gripped it and put the car in Park. She didn’t have to touch her fingers to her throat to feel her pulse. She licked her lips. “Why didn’t you tell me about your commendation?” she asked.
He scoffed. “It’s like I said. Just a formality.”
“Gavin—”
“It should’ve been Kyle’s,” he shot off. “I didn’t earn the thing. He did. The higher-ups looked at the paperwork and saw what they wanted to see. I didn’t get to the helo the night the RPG hit. He got me there. For some reason, they decided Purple Heart wasn’t enough so now I’ve got the Silver Star and guilt. I wouldn’t have walked away alive from that op if it hadn’t been for your brother, and he walked away with nothing.”
Mavis frowned. “He doesn’t care about medals any more than you do.”
“It doesn’t matter,” he muttered, pressing his fingers over his eyes. “He’s out there still fighting for his country and his family and I’m not. But at least the higher-ups can sleep at night. I may be useless, but they know I’ve got a bunch of shiny souvenirs as company.”
Mavis hesitated only a moment. She pressed her hand to his wrist. After several seconds, his fingers folded, touching the tips of hers.
He heaved a quiet sigh before he asked, “How pissed at me are you? About tonight?”
Mavis thought about it—about everyone knowing. About the sheer amount of opinion she’d had to contend with. “Well,” she said, “you accomplished what you set out to accomplish from the beginning. It wasn’t great, the fallout or the way you went about it…”
“What can I say?” he said with a slight smirk. “I’m a man of action.”
“Why did you have to provoke him?” she wondered. “I can deal with everyone knowing about us. But why did you have to bait Kyle? If not for the fight, Mom at least would’ve walked away from the dinner unscathed.”
“Don’t you think it’s about time your parents and everybody else stopped worrying so much about what your grandmother says?” he asked.
“Yes,” she admitted. “But it’s complicated, especially for Mom. She managed to make a good life for herself. A great life. She wants Edith to acknowledge that.”
“Nobody should have that kind of power over somebody else’s life,” Gavin said.
Mavis took note of the bitterness in his voice. “Those who shape who we are aren’t easily set aside.”
“I don’t want that to make sense.”
“I know,” she said. She touched her brow to his shoulder.
His fingers wedged between hers as their palms slid into place. His lips pressed against the parting of her hair.
He might never come back… Harmony’s fears echoed endlessly in the caverns of Mavis’s head. She could deny it all she wanted, but they were fast becoming her own. She wanted him close. She’d wanted that for weeks, even when she wasn’t willing to admit it. Curiosity. Desire. Now…she could add near panic to the mix.
She could put the car back in gear, do a u-ie…take him home. Keep him close.
Or she could trust, in him and the promise he had made at the riverside.
Self-preservation wasn’t so much about getting hurt. It was concern that she might find that thing she’d never had outside of her family, and that Gavin, outside of the SEALs, had never had at all. A place, a person, that fit and the inexplicable fear that it could be taken away.
Nothing lasts forever. He’d stamped it on his body, as if he might forget.
“Is that Zelda’s Alfa Romeo?”
Through the windshield, Mavis saw the tail of a red car in the drive. “No. She keeps it in the garage.”
“Then whose is that?” he asked.
“I don’t know.” She sat up a little straighter. “Looks more like a Bentley.”
“A Bentley. You’re sure?”
“Pretty sure.” She frowned at him, suspicious at the drop in his tone. “You know someone with a red Bentley?”
“Only one.” He’d already shifted away from her. “Prometheus should go with you tonight.”
Thrown off guard, Mavis glanced back at the canine snoozing soundly on the back seat. “No. I don’t want you to be without him.”
“I’m fine,” Gavin said.
“It’s hard enough for me not to stay with you tonight,” she admitted, drawing his attention back. “But I’m not sure either of us is ready for that.”
“Don’t trust me to keep my mitts to myself?” he asked.
“I don’t trust myself not to keep mine off you,” she said. When his jaw loosened, she shrugged. “How’s that for a truth bomb?”
“Deadly.” He took his hand off the handle of the door. With it, he cupped her chin. “I’m gonna have to ask you to hold that thought.”
Mavis eyed the red Bentley. “It doesn’t look like I’ve got a choice.”
Gavin’s sigh blew across her face. She felt the tension fighting against the need—his and her own. “I’ll deal with this. Take the boy home. Let him get some rest there…”
She waited for him to say more. The tension was working its way through the duct tape and stitches. It nearly came to the surface, but he shut it in. Shut her out of whatever consequences the Bentley brought. “Don’t be a stranger,” she told him.
He let out a humorless laugh as he leaned for the door again. “I don’t know that you and I have ever been strangers, Frexy.”
So don’t start now. Mavis bit her tongue, hard, recalling that no matter how far she thought they might’ve come, there were pieces of Gavin she didn’t and might never know.
She tried not to touch her nose to the cotton of his shirt and breathe him in as he twisted around to give Prometheus a pat. She saw his ball cap on the console between them. “Here,” she said when he was done.
He donned it. “I’ll call you,” he said in an undertone, his face truly in shadow now.
She nodded without words as he opened the door. The scent of river filled the car in his absence and lingered when he closed it. She watched the streetlight shift across the line of his back. The night closed around his silhouette.
Mavis eyed the Bentley. It didn’t take much guesswork to assume who’d ridden in on that splashy horse. There was only one person who could wreak more havoc in a single night than the dysfunctional rift between Gavin and Kyle, or her dill pickle of a grandmother. As Mavis put the car in Drive, she couldn’t erase the unease that she had abandoned Gavin to his demons.
* * *
“SHE’S GONE.”
Gavin turned away from the pinpricks of red taillights fading fast in the distance and probed the inkiness of the porch. The light near the door wasn’t on, meaning Zelda must have gone to Errol’s for the night. He’d known someone was lurking there. He didn’t have to smell the luxurious Parisian perfume to know the culprit.
He kept his mouth shut as he moved to the door. The streetlights had probably revealed what had gone on in the cab as Mavis lingered. Gavin could only assume what his mother knew. So he assumed the worst and took the lone key out of his pocket. Feeling around, he found the dead bolt and slid it out of place without much trouble.
The door creaked open and Tiffany said, “You certainly know your way around the place.”
“I live here,” he stated.
“Yes,” she said, still nothing more than a ghost in the dark. “With the old lady.”
“Careful tossing words like old around,” he advised. “They might stick to you.”
Tiffany chuckled. It was a small sound, a familiar one.
The laugh of a parent should’ve been comforting. This wasn’t. Not because it was cruel, or callous. Because it was without humor. Gavin couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard Tiffany laugh, raw—from the gut. He wondered if he knew what her real laugh sounded like.
He moved over the threshold. She spoke again, closer. “Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
He blocked the way. His body against one side of the door casing and his hand on the other, arm and body barring entry into Zelda’s place of Zen. A place that had become sacred to him. “It’s not my house.”
“You have a key,” she indicated. “What? Has she banned visitors of the female variety?”
“The only thing Zelda bans is bad karma and energy.” With a flick of his wrist, he flipped the switch next to the jamb for the porch light.
Tiffany turned her eyes from the glare. Gavin studied her. The hair was a little shorter. The heels were, too. Nevertheless, she cut an impressive figure, carved by a sundress scooped lower than the average woman her age would’ve dared. She liked to think she was anything but average, which explained the Bentley. The diamonds around her neck. The chain of fools she’d left throughout the years. The endless string of lawsuits she’d set off.
Zelda would take one look at Tiffany’s aura and cry, “Begone!” The image amused Gavin so much he was moved enough to smile almost.
She spread the fingers of one hand, sending the gold bangles on her wrist flashing. “So we’re going to stand here like this?”
“Not necessarily,” he said thoughtfully. “You could leave.”
“You want me to go.”
He leaned further against the jamb. She wouldn’t leave, he knew. Not until she was satisfied. Crossing his arms, he said, “You wanna waste time on questions we both know the answers to?”
She sucked air through her nostrils. A warning sign, if he’d been interested in warning signs. He wasn’t. “Where’s what’s-his-name?” he asked, wondering how far he could still push her. “The investor guy with the jet? Did he dump you?”
“I left him,” she said tightly.
“Figures,” he said. “He might’ve been decent.”
“When it comes to men, there’s no such thing as decent. You know that.”
He scratched his chin. “Yeah, as a species, we’re deplorable. Your PI says hi, by the way.” At her scoff, he smirked. “You must’ve been desperate. You couldn’t have trawled for anything greener in the Gulf.”
“Well, once my sources informed me you were back here, I had to act fast.”
“Why’s that?” he asked. And here they came to the point.
“I pity you,” she told him. With a tilt of her head, she moved a hair closer to the dividing threshold. “You always come back looking for something you’ll never find.” Her hand lifted to the other side of the jamb he was holding. “It’s sweet and sad at the same time.”
He waited. He wanted her to say it and be done with it. Her reasons had always been the same. They’d always been a hair too close to the truth.
“Gavin, you know Fairhope is no place for somebody like you,” she summarized.
She tried to sound kind. The faux softness fell on him like a rough quilt. He fought to brush it off. “You would know,” he said, the words grating from the bottom.
After a moment, she nodded. “Yes. We’re the same, you and I.”
He shook his head automatically before he stopped himself, readjusted. Pressing back from the jamb, he stood apart from her.
“I learned a while ago that I could never make a life here,” she pointed out. “Your father, the innkeeper—they had me ostracized. I can hardly think about it now without…”
Gavin rolled his eyes. “Listen, Meryl, it’s been a long day. As much as I’d like to watch your next great performance, why don’t you go ahead and thank the Academy so we can call it a night, eh?”
“Don’t be callous like him.”
He groaned, shifting his weight in impatience. “Pot, kettle.”
“You’re a bully,” she said heatedly. “Just like him.”
“Say what you will about me,” Gavin said. His spine had grown rigid. “As for him, you have no right.”
“I have plenty of right,” she said. “Ten years of abuse gave me that right.”
He leaned toward her again, homing in on her hard features. “The man never laid a hand on you. Everybody knows now that he’s not the kind of person you made him out to be during the divorce. But you? You are the kind of mother who’d put her kid on the stand and lie to put a man of good standing away.”
“You don’t remember what it was like,” she claimed. “You were little.”
“I remember everything,” he told her. “I remember him coming in late off a narcotics case, you meeting him at the door. I remember you slapping him across the face, screaming because he’d missed another dinner. You chastised him constantly for trying to save the world and be a hero, leaving you alone.”
“You did the same,” she said. “You abandoned me. You went off to godforsaken places so you could kill people in the name of God and country. Just another thug with a gun.”
“I found purpose, Mom,” he said. “I found a calling. Something better, I think, than sitting on what was left of the Howard family fortune and casting stones at people who don’t deserve it because nothing else makes you happy.”
“And look where it’s led you,” she said, her voice rising. “Look at you, Gavin! You can’t see. You’ve lost your so-called calling. You couldn’t make it on your own so you ran back to your father. Have you found purpose here, Gavin, or just a handful of people obligated to lead you from point A to point B?”
Gavin stared.
“It’s worse now,” she went on. “You’re a veteran. You’ve got issues. Vets like you make people nervous. There’s just no telling what might set you off, what you’re capable of. It’s why you need to come to your senses and get out of this town. It’ll get to you, just like it got me. It’ll chase you off, like a coyote or worse. You’ll wind up in a lineup.”
Gavin shook his head again. Despite the night sweats and flashbacks keeping him edgy enough to confront the reality that PTSD would never not be a part of him, he wasn’t hostile or trigger-happy. “What are you suggesting?” he wanted to know.
“Come with me,” she said, gently. More gently than he knew her capable of being. “I have a place. It’s in St. Augustine. Remember that trip we took to St. Augustine? You loved the Atlantic. Those were good times between you and me. It can be like that again. Even if you can’t hold down a job, I can take care of you. We can be a family again.”
He felt the space between his brows seam tight. “You’ve ruined every relationship I’ve ever had. You tried to put space between me and Dad, me and Briar, Harmony. The Brackens. Every girl I dated in high school and college. Do you think that’s what family does to one another?”
“I wanted to protect you,” she said. “I didn’t want you to get hurt, as I’ve been.”
“The mama bear protecting her cub. That’s your excuse? I’ve spent the last decade looking over my shoulder for the PIs you hired so you’d know there was nobody close enough to me to piss you off. Because if Tiffany Howard isn’t happy, nobody is. Am I right, Jezebel?”
Her eyes had narrowed to slits. “You know,” she said, “maybe Benji’s father was right about you.”
Taken aback, Gavin stood straighter. “What about Benji’s father?”
“After the funeral,” she said. “At that little wake you and the rest of the SEALs had in his name. From what I hear, Benji’s old man drank enough beers, then started pointing fingers in your direction. He called you out for making Benji re-up. He wanted to get married, settle down. ‘A SEAL never backs down from a fight.’ That’s what you said, or something along those lines. So Benji reenlisted and wound up getting himself killed right after the wedding. Now his daughter has no daddy. What did his father call you, exactly? A warmonger?”
Gavin felt sick, all right. And blind. Blinder than he’d felt since learning to cope with his shoddy vision. He cursed inwardly as his stomach tightened into a fist and his emotions began to hammer… He swallowed, tasted bile on the back of his tongue. “How do you know about that?”
“I told you,” she said, quietly. “I have my sources.”
“Go,” he told her plainly. “I want you gone.”
“You can’t get rid of me completely,” she pointed out. “Unless, of course, you think about picking up your gun again.”
The jamb was under his fist again. The wood bit into the callouses. “You’re sick and warped, a hell of a lot more than I am.”
“You’d like to think so, wouldn’t you?” Tiffany challenged.
“He said go.”
The voice came out of the dark. Gavin peered over Tiffany’s head. Mavis materialized in black, Prometheus at her side. “No,” she said as Tiffany opened her mouth to argue. “You’ve said enough. Now you’re going to come away from there quietly so Prometheus and I can walk you to your car.”
Tiffany’s silence could have been misconstrued as shock. However, Gavin could hear the busy whir of her personal scanner trying to get a read. “I know you,” Tiffany said. “You’re the Brackens’ youngest.”
Mavis wisely chose not to answer. When Prometheus nudged her knee, she merely reached down to him.
Tiffany turned back to Gavin. He could see enough to recognize the incisive gleam on her face. He shook his head in warning. But what good had his threats ever been?
Hitching her bag onto her shoulder, she moved away from the door, as she had been told. As she descended from the porch, Gavin followed, closing the door to Zelda’s behind him.
Mavis led the way across the lawn in long strides.
Tiffany waited until they were halfway to the Bentley before speaking. “You’d be better off letting him go.”
“Excuse me?” Mavis said.
“He’ll disappoint you,” Tiffany explained. “It’s what he does.”
“Haven’t you talked yourself out already?” Mavis wondered.
“He didn’t leave all of those women he saw through the years because of me,” Tiffany told her. “I might’ve interfered once or twice. But there were others he left on his own. He was always the one to go. Don’t think because you’re close to the place he can’t seem to leave behind that he won’t leave you. Even if he doesn’t burden you in the short run, he’ll eventually abandon you like he did them.”
Gavin jumped the gun and reached the driver’s-side door of the Bentley first. He opened it wide. “Get in,” he said.
As Mavis stood by, waiting, Tiffany looked from her to him. She shook her head. “I fail to understand what you see in each other.” To Gavin she said, “Her family’s pleased about your arrangement, I assume?”
“Get in,” he said again in answer.
“Just a slip of a thing,” Tiffany said thoughtfully, tossing her bag into the passenger seat. “Usually he likes the taller ones. Blonder and skinnier, too.”
Gavin reached for Tiffany’s arm, but Mavis said, “Don’t. She’ll probably go to the police, tell them you manhandled her or something. And you wanna know what I fail to understand?” she asked Tiffany directly. “Why you can’t let him live life the way he thinks is right. Do you really believe what he needs right now is another dose of your toxins?”
“I’m his mother,” Tiffany told her. “You’re a piece of the pattern. Another temporary solution to a problem he’ll never solve. An itch he’ll scratch, then handily forget. You won’t fix him. Neither will you keep him. Do yourself a favor, sweet pea—don’t assume you’re anything close to what he needs. Trust me, you don’t need him.”
Mavis frowned at her, nonplussed. “How would you know what I need?”
“The last thing any woman needs is the burden of a man who can’t support himself, much less her. The man carries the load, right? You want to convince me you can fight your battles and his?”
“I could,” Mavis said without hitch. She shifted her stance, feet spreading, arms crossing. “And you know what, witch? I pity you.”
“You pity me?” Tiffany said with amusement.
“Yes,” Mavis said, nodding. “It’s none of my business what made you this way or why you’ve worked so hard to make things difficult for Cole and Briar. But Gavin’s your son. By not compromising on your anger, you’ve managed to turn him so far away from you that you’ll never know what it’s like to have him on your side. Good luck living with that. Not to mention, yourself.”
Gavin patted the top of the door. “Last call.” When Tiffany continued to measure Mavis, he said, “The car, Mom. Get in the car.”
“One last thing,” Tiffany asserted. To Mavis again, she said, “When it’s over, do you think he’ll ever come back here, even for Cole and Briar and Harmony, when he knows you’re here, too?”
“Do I need to count?” Gavin said. “Don’t make me count.”
“Don’t make him count,” Mavis reiterated, quiet. “Leave him now, in peace.”
“Oh, there’s no rest for the wicked,” Tiffany said, and had the gall to smile as she slipped into the driver’s seat.
“No sympathy for the devil, either,” Gavin told her, and closed the door. He stepped back only slightly to keep the tires from going over his toes.
The engine revved. Gavin heard the gears shift. The car began to roll away. He heard the whir of the driver’s window. Tiffany’s head poked out. “Good luck with your mission,” she called to Mavis.
Gavin’s jaw creaked under tension as he watched his mother’s grin disappear. He listened until he could no longer hear the Bentley.
A hand slid into the bend of his elbow. Unable to look at Mavis yet, he did his best to exhale. “I’m sorry,” he said bluntly.
“She’s…” Mavis stopped, at a loss. “I heard she was terrible, but I’ve never seen it in action.” He heard her swallow. “She’s soulless.”
Gavin moved away; Prometheus trotted after him. Gavin paced to the end of the driveway before doubling back toward her.
“You don’t believe any of that, do you?” Mavis asked. “What she said—it’s crap.”
“Not all of it,” he said. “I did leave some of those women without her help.”
“Because she spent your whole childhood planting a voice inside your head,” Mavis said vehemently. “Her voice.”
He gritted his teeth. “Believe what you want. Not everything I do leads back to her.”
“Give me an example,” she challenged.
You. Gavin bit his tongue. He’d known better than to touch Mavis, taste her. He’d known if he did, there’d be consequences for both of them. “Why did you come back? If she didn’t know before, she knows now.”
“About us?” Mavis shrugged. “What difference does it make? She can’t hurt me. I don’t care how much she tries.” She closed the space between them. “I’m not going anywhere. It’ll take a heck of a lot more than Tiffany Howard to make me budge, Gavin.”
“What about Kyle?” he asked. The night was growing darker and denser, just like the hollow feeling inside his chest. “Your mom and dad. Harmony. Your grandmother…”
“It’s my life, my choices,” she said. “You and I are together because at this point in our lives we choose each other. I won’t back down from my choice.”
Gavin wanted to look at her, pinpoint every one of her familiar features in the shadows, but his mother had already probed her enough. He looked over her head.
“Will you?” she asked. “Is this…not what you want after all?”
Okay, he didn’t just want to look at her. He wanted to touch her, reassure her with everything he was—even if that wasn’t much.
Mavis bit her lip. “I wish… I wish she could see you. The way I do.”
“Mavis,” he said, trying to stop her.
“Your mother’s a fool. A damn fool.”
“I won’t argue that,” he muttered.
Her arms twined around his waist. “Tell me you don’t believe her,” she said, down to a murmur.
He found himself skimming his palm over the silky black surface of her hair, wanting to absorb her. Her sureness.
He could be honest, with both of them. “I know it’d be better for you if I left.”
“You let me be the judge of that,” she advised.
“The moment you’re burdened by me,” he said, slowly, “I’m out of here.”
She didn’t agree. No. Instead, she raised herself to her toes.
Gavin’s eyes closed and his breath hitched as her kiss washed breathily over his lips and blew him away. He cradled the side of her head, absorbing heat and certitude. Answers cropped up inside him, bright like candles. His hand moved around to the back of her head, no more able to snuff them out than he was to convince her to walk away.