It's Only Love(79)

“I’ve let this go on far longer than I should have,” Bob said in the tone he used to save for his sons when they tried to step out of line, which was usually every day.

“You’ve let what go on?”

“You and your bullshit. Do you know what it did to your mother to hear you’d gotten arrested in a bar fight at thirty-four years old?”

“Do you even know why I got arrested in a bar fight?” Gavin had never spoken about the incident with either of his parents. In fact, he’d harbored a tiny hope that they hadn’t heard about it.

“Does it matter?”

“It f*cking mattered to me or it wouldn’t have happened. The guy I fought with said we wasted our time in Iraq.”

Bob blew out a deep breath, his shoulders sagging under the weight of his own grief. “I’m sorry. I would’ve hit him, too.”

“Despite what you think, I’m not out there looking for trouble.”

“And yet it keeps finding you anyway. How could you turn down Ella’s gift of the trip to the wedding? How could you do that to her, son? That girl loves you. Anyone can see that. Hell, even you have to see that.”

His heart ached so badly. It had only ever hurt that badly once before. Gavin rubbed his hand over his chest, wishing that were all it took to ease the ache. “I see it,” he said.

“Then why? Why would you do this to her?”

“I told her I couldn’t go to the wedding, and she did this anyway. I don’t know what she was hoping to accomplish.”

“She was hoping to blast your head out of your ass and get you back into the land of the living where you belong! Dylan is one of your best friends! He has been since you were in elementary school. He’s getting married. He wants you there. That’s where you ought to be. If I can see that and your mother can see it and Ella can see it, why in the name of God can’t you see it?”

“He’s not my friend. He was Caleb’s friend.”

“Oh, for f*ck’s sake, Gavin. Is that what this is about?”

Gavin had never, in all his life, heard Bob Guthrie drop the F word. That was enough to shock him so profoundly he could hardly recall the question his father had asked him. But then he remembered. “No, it’s not just that.”

“Those guys love you as much as they loved Caleb. Everyone can see that but you. Why is that?”

“He was the heart and soul. I was just along for the ride. I was always along for his ride.”

“That is so not true. You have no idea how important you were to him if you can say something so stupid. Without Gavin, there’s no Caleb. You gave him his swagger and made him into the badass he became by challenging him on every bit of bullshit that came out of his mouth from the second you could first talk. Your mother and I used to call you the ballast. You kept the ship from rolling over under the weight of his personality and his ego. You were the yin to his yang.”

Gavin had never heard these things before, and each revelation left him reeling.

“Nothing in my life has ever made me prouder than the deep friendship you two shared. You were more like twins than any twins I ever met. My very first thought upon hearing he’d been killed wasn’t for me or your mother or Hannah. It was for you. I simply couldn’t imagine one of you without the other.”

“Dad . . .” Gavin needed this to stop before he completely lost his shit. This was the last thing he could bear to face tonight after he’d already royally f*cked things up with Ella.

“I’ve watched you wither away over these last few years, becoming a man who bears no resemblance whatsoever to who he was before that day. I’ve watched you bury yourself in your work to the exclusion of your friends and even your family at times. I’ve stood by and let you do your thing because who am I to say how you’re supposed to grieve your only sibling and closest friend? But I will not stand idly by and watch you sabotage your relationship with that lovely woman because you can’t get out of your own goddamned way. I won’t let you do it.”

“Too late,” Gavin said glumly. “I’ve already done it.”

“It’s never too late.”

“This time it might be.”

“You need to go over there and fix this, Gavin. If you think you’ve suffered over Caleb, you haven’t seen suffering until you lose the woman you love forever. How’s it going to feel to know she’s out there somewhere, married to someone else, having his babies and living her life with him while you’re still here mired in your own shit, wishing for something that’s never going to happen?”

The picture his father painted of Ella happily married to someone else scared the living hell out of him. It had been his greatest fear in all the months before they got together—that she would finally meet someone she liked better than him. “You think that’s what I’m doing? Sitting here wishing Caleb would come strolling in the door like he owns the place just like he used to?”

“Something like that.”

“Well, I’m not. I know he’s dead. I know he’s not coming back. I know Homer’s dead and Hannah’s remarried and you and Mom are up to your eyeballs in the inn and everything is going along swimmingly for everyone. I get it.”

“So you’re pissed off that everyone has moved on except for you? You honestly think your mom or me or Hannah will ever truly move on and get over what happened to him? If that’s what you think, you ought to spend a few nights at home so you can see how little sleep I get since my son died because he was stupid enough to follow in my footsteps.”