The Bromance Book Club (Bromance Book Club, #1)(45)

“Your brother talked her into going to a movie.”

“Ah.” Gavin bit his lip.

“Everything OK?”

“Yeah.”

“You sure?”

Gavin cleared his throat. His dad knew instantly something wasn’t right.

“Christ, Gav. What’s wrong?”

“There’s, uh, there’s something I haven’t told you and Mom.”

“Oh, shit. Is it one of the girls? Are the girls OK?”

“The girls are fine. Just . . .”

“Are things OK with Thea?”

Fuck. He sucked in a breath and let it out. “No.”

Gavin heard the creak and snap of his father’s old recliner. Gavin could picture him standing. “Tell me what’s going on, son.”

Gavin let out another shaky breath and gave his father the basics—they’d been having trouble, had a big fight, he moved out for a couple of weeks; he was home now but things weren’t going well. He left out the most humiliating aspect, obviously.

His father let out a heavy breath. “Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t want to worry you, I guess. It’s not like you and Mom ever went through anything like this, so—”

His father’s boom of laughter caught him by surprise. “Is that what you think?”

“Well, yeah.”

“Wow. We were better at hiding it than I thought.”

Gavin sat up straighter. “Wh-wh-what are you talking about?”

“Son, you can’t be married to someone for almost thirty years without going through hell a couple of times. If you asked your mother, she’d tell you there were times when the only reason she didn’t leave me was because she couldn’t afford to raise you boys alone. And I know because she told me that to my face.”

A noise pounded in Gavin’s ears, something that sounded a lot like the crumbling of the illusion that was his childhood. “But you guys never fought.”

“Not in front of you, but we fought plenty. Still do.”

“About what?” Gavin felt like he’d just been told Santa Claus wasn’t real again.

“Hell, you name it. She gets pissed at me for walking past dirty dishes without putting them in the dishwasher, and I get pissed at her for not writing down her debit card expenses in the check register.”

Gavin snorted. “Dad, nobody uses a check register anymore.”

“Ah, Christ. Don’t you start in on me too.”

Gavin stared blankly at the dark field in front of him. He wasn’t sure if he was devastated or relieved to learn his parents weren’t perfect. “Look, Dad, I get what you’re saying but you and Mom apparently fight over stupid shit. Thea and I have bigger problems than that.”

“You really think your mother would threaten to leave me over dishes? We struggle with the big stuff too.”

Gavin scuffed his shoe in the dirt.

“Son, there’s something I never told you, but I’m going to tell you now. But you gotta let me finish before you react.”

Gavin tensed. “OK.”

“When you first told us about Thea, that you’d met a woman, we were so happy because you were happy. Finally. But when you told us just a couple of months later that she was pregnant and you were getting married? Well, we weren’t real happy.”

“Wh-what? Why?”

“I told you to let me finish.”

Gavin grumbled an apology.

“You were a sure thing for the Majors, Gav. We knew that by the time you were a senior in high school. But you were also, well, na?ve about girls, let’s just say that.”

Oh, great. Even his parents thought he was a fucking loser.

“We worried that it would make you easy pickings for some girl to take advantage of you somehow because of the money you were going to make someday.”

Swift anger stiffened his spine. “Thea isn’t like that.”

“I know, son. As soon as we met her, we knew. And you know how we knew?”

“How?”

“She didn’t ignore your stutter. She didn’t pretend it didn’t exist. All your life, you thought you needed to find a woman who would love you despite the stutter, but you should have been looking for a woman who loved you because of it, because it was part of who you are. Thea is that woman.”

Yes, she was. And Gavin was on the verge of losing her.

His father suddenly broke off, and in the background, Gavin heard the telltale squeak of his parents’ back door.

“Your mom’s home,” his father said in a hushed tone.

Shit. “Don’t tell her about Thea.”

“I won’t.” Then louder, he said, “Hey, I’m talking to Gav.”

His brother shouted something in the background that sounded a lot like you owe me. Or it could have been blow me. Either was possible.

His father came back on the line, but a moment passed before he spoke in a low voice. “Listen to me, son. Whatever you did wrong, you fight like hell to fix this with Thea, you hear me?”

“I’m trying.”

“Try harder.”

Then his own goddamn father hung up on him. He was officially batting zero lately.

With a short whistle, he urged Butter to his feet and started a slow jog back down the park path toward home. The house was dark and quiet when he walked in the front door. Butter made a beeline for his water dish and managed to slobber half of it on the floor. After wiping up the mess, Gavin walked upstairs. He needed a shower, but he found himself drifting to the door of her bedroom.