A Chance This Christmas(22)

She felt flattered he remembered. “No. I’m making some adjustments to the bridesmaid dresses for Kiersten’s wedding.”

He nodded, waving at a couple of skaters who called out to him as they passed. “That must be what was in the garment bag we brought home from the party.”

“Yes. We did some fittings upstairs last night while I waited for you to work your charm on our hosts.” She breathed in the crisp night air, the scent of pine not bothering her as much outdoors.

Fragrant roasted chestnuts filled the air too, a specialty of the kiosk where they’d bought the hot chocolate.

“Unfortunately, I didn’t hold up my end of the bargain so well.” Frowning, he leaned back to toss his empty cup in a bin behind them. “I’m especially disappointed in Luke, who could have made a lot of the ill will go away if he’d just greeted you normally.”

“I know you and Kiersten think he’s not holding a grudge, but from my perspective, it doesn’t seem like he wants anything to do with me.” That hurt because she’d been very forthright with Luke when they’d broken up. She’d only kept quiet about it because he’d asked her to. “I’m not sure how to approach him at this point.”

Distracted by her own thoughts and memories, it took her a moment to realize Gavin looked uncomfortable. He opened his mouth and then clamped it shut again, shifting positions beside her.

“What?” Straightening, she set her empty cup on the ground under the bench and pivoted so she faced him. “Do you know why he’s acting that way?”

Gavin huffed out a sigh. “He’s got some notion in his head that your dad told you he was leaving ahead of time. And that even though you didn’t know he was taking the money, you still kept quiet to give him time to get away.”

She remembered a tense, angry confrontation with Luke two days after he’d caught her kissing Gavin. He’d come over to her house full of indignation. Frustration. Snippets of those old accusations came back to her now. “He thinks that because I didn’t cry wolf and go running to find my dad that day, somehow that means I was complicit in his embezzlement? How could he claim to have known me well enough to propose and have thought that of me? He clearly didn’t know me at all.”

“He just thinks you might have known your dad was leaving.” Gavin made an awkward shrug, like he didn’t believe it…but sort of wondered about it.

Or was she just being prickly again?

Forcing herself not to react with the same resentment she always used to feel about that day, she remembered how hard Gavin had fought for her to be accepted around here. He’d put his own reputation on the line for her last night, and he had to live among these people. In light of that, she thought he deserved an explanation.

Bridging the space between them, she rested a hand on his knee to draw his attention.

“I swear to you, I had no idea he was going.” She tried not to think about how deeply that cut her. Under all the layers of tangled emotions from eight years ago, that underlying hurt resonated the most. “My father was a rock in my life every moment up until that day. I didn’t need to go running to him because in my heart, I knew my family—and Dad, especially—would back me no matter what.”

Gavin’s hand covered hers, a warm weight that comforted her. Anchored her from getting too lost in those emotions.

“You must have been devastated,” he said simply.

“It was awful.” She could remember returning to the house that night. Finding her mother crawling the walls, wondering why he wasn’t answering her calls. Rachel’s worries had flipped from her own romantic troubles to far bigger concerns. And maybe she felt safe sharing her real feelings with Gavin because he was probably the only person in town who didn’t see her father as a cartoon villain, but a multi-dimensional man. “I didn’t know it until that night, but he’d been on medicines to help him with depression, insomnia, impulse control…a lot of things.”

“I don’t remember reading that in the press coverage afterward.”

“My mother told the police, but she kept it private from the media because my father had never wanted her to share it. He had a difficult childhood, and he had—to use Mom’s words—a lot of demons.” She remembered her mother holding her phone for days afterward, never setting it down in case he called. “She was terrified he was having a dark episode and might do harm to himself because disappearing and stealing were so out of character.”

She stared down at where Gavin’s fingers rested on hers. Where her hand lay on his knee. She hadn’t realized until that moment how much of a burden it had been keeping her love for her father—love that even his criminal actions couldn’t fully erase—a secret. As if it was wrong to care for someone who’d made a bad choice.

“I’m sorry you and your mother went through that.” Gavin’s green eyes locked on hers and she couldn’t look away.

“It was a long time ago,” she said aloud. She had grown up since then. Changed. Matured.

She wasn’t a girl with a crush on Gavin any longer.

Although, under the canopy of white lights in this quiet spot behind the ice rink, she found it difficult to remember that.

“Was it? Because I remember it like it was yesterday.” He shifted his arm behind her, wrapping it lightly around her shoulders. Stroking her hair where it lay against her back. “Especially the part where I kissed you.”