Right Where We Belong (Silver Springs #4)(90)
“I can’t wait until it’s all over,” Savanna said as Gavin drove them both to his gig at a bar called Limelight in Santa Barbara on Friday night. They’d dropped the kids off at his mother’s house, since Aiyana had offered to babysit.
Gavin reached over to take Savanna’s hand. “Won’t be too much longer now.”
“What if we’re mistaken?” She turned to him with a worried expression. “What if Gordon’s innocent, like he claims? I would hate to wrong someone so terribly, especially him. I’m not in love with him anymore, haven’t been for a long time, but he is the father of my children. Hurting him means hurting them. And even if there wasn’t that connection, I don’t want to make his life any worse than it has to be. I don’t want to make anyone’s life worse than it has to be.”
“Because you have a conscience,” Gavin said. “From what the detectives are telling us, Gordon does not.”
“Do they know?” she asked.
“I can’t say they do with any certainty,” he replied. “But we’re only trying to make sure he wasn’t involved in Emma’s disappearance. You won’t be able to get information he doesn’t have, so if he didn’t do it, he’s safe.”
“That’s what I keep telling myself. But he’s been claiming all along that the police are out to get him, and there have been plenty of examples of that type of thing happening to other people in the past. I’m scared that, when it comes right down to it, I’m doing this for the wrong reasons.”
He pressed the brake as he came up on a slower-moving vehicle. He finally had his truck back. It’d been repaired and Dorothy’s insurance had paid the bill, but Dorothy had maintained the strange silence that had started the night she so briefly showed up in Silver Springs, which continued to be both a relief and a curiosity to Savanna. “How could you be doing it for the wrong reasons?”
“Keeping him in jail serves my own purposes now. Our purposes, if we continue seeing each other. I’m happier than I’ve ever been, would rather he not be free to bother me, which I know he will if he has the chance.”
“You were going to Nephi even before we started officially seeing each other, weren’t you?”
“Yes. I keep telling myself that, too. It’d just be so much easier for us if he remained behind bars. That makes me feel guilty for doing what I can to keep him there.”
“If he’s been attacking women, he deserves to be locked up. You believe he attacked the three victims he’s being charged with raping, don’t you?”
“I do. And yet...I can’t be one hundred percent. That bothers me.”
He gave her hand a squeeze. “At the end of the day, you have to be able to live with yourself, Savanna. So play it by ear when you’re with him. Weigh what the police have found against what you know of him and his character, what he says and what you think of his current behavior. That’s all you can do, right? Make an educated guess.”
“The stakes are so high. I hate to base everything on a guess. But you’re right—that’s all I can do.”
“If he gets out, we’ll deal with it as best we can.”
She offered him a smile. “Thanks for understanding.”
They fell silent, listening to the playlist on Gavin’s phone, which he’d plugged into his stereo system. But even after several minutes, Savanna seemed pensive, so Gavin turned the music low.
“Are you going to be okay tonight? Maybe, with all the stress you’re under, you would rather have stayed at home.” He’d wanted her to come with him, so he’d made the arrangements with his mother and hadn’t really probed whether she felt up for a night out. Maybe he’d assumed too much and she hadn’t spoken up because she didn’t want to disappoint him...
“I’m looking forward to seeing you perform,” she insisted. “It isn’t that. It’s Gordon, like we’ve been talking about.”
“But we’ve been dealing with Gordon all week, and you haven’t seemed quite this troubled.”
“It’s getting closer to Tuesday.” Her chest lifted and fell as she sighed. “But you’re right. That isn’t everything.”
He punched the gas pedal to get around the vehicle in front of them. “So what else is going on?”
“I hate standing in the way of you getting back with Heather if it means you won’t be able to be the father you’ve always wanted to be.”
“Don’t worry about that,” he said. “That’s my problem.”
“It’s my problem, too,” she argued. “We might be able to ignore the situation right now, but what will happen once the baby arrives? Will you be miserable? Regret getting with me?”
“No.”
“But you won’t be able to move to Nashville. Are you sure I’m worth such a sacrifice?”
He lifted her hand to his mouth so he could kiss her knuckles. “I’m more sure of it every day.”
“That’s what you say now. But what if you begin to resent me for what I’ve cost you? I’ve never met anyone like you, Gavin. I don’t want to take more than I have a right to take, don’t want to rob you of anything when you’ve been so kind and generous with me.”