Make a Wish (Spark House #3)(92)
Twenty-Six
THIS HURTS
HARLEY
I don’t drive home. Instead, I go to Avery’s.
Normally with any kind of relationship crisis, I would go to London, but it’s after eight and she has a toddler who goes to bed at seven thirty, and I kept her up well past her bedtime last night, so I don’t want to do that to her again. She usually goes to bed at nine on nonevent evenings because she gets up at a ridiculously early hour so she can have breakfast with her husband while they watch the sun rise.
Yes, it’s as sweet as it is gag-worthy.
I use the hands-free to tell Avery I’m on my way over and that I hope that I’m not being a pain in the ass. She’s in the final months of her pregnancy, and from what I’ve witnessed, it’s wearing her down. She’s used to having full use of her body and being able to do everything, which isn’t possible when you have a basketball taking up real estate in your belly.
Thankfully, she’s awake. She buzzes me up as soon as I get to their apartment, but it’s Declan who answers the door. “Uh-oh,” he says when he gets a load of my puffy eyes and blotchy face. “Man troubles?”
“It’s that obvious?”
“Ave told me about the failed weekend getaway. Come on in.” He ushers me into the living room where Avery is sitting on the couch, a lap pad perched precariously on her belly, topped with a bowl, presumably containing a snack.
Avery frowns as soon as I enter the room. “What happened? I thought you two were okay.”
That’s all it takes for the tears to start falling again.
“I’ll give you two some privacy.” Declan thumbs over his shoulder and kisses Avery on top of the head before he disappears down the hall.
Avery pats the spot beside her. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Between blowing my nose and wiping my tears, I tell my sister about Peyton’s fall and Gavin getting angry and blaming me. And then saying his mother-in-law was right about me being a bad influence. Then I tell her about me confronting him and then breaking it off because I can’t compete with a ghost anymore. “Did I do the wrong thing?” I ask, second guessing myself.
Avery shakes her head, her smile sad. “No. You did the right thing. And I know it hurts, but the truth is, you were giving him grace as it is. He needed to hear this, and you needed to do this because you’re absolutely right, he can’t keep shutting down on you when things get tough, and you can’t compete with a ghost. And you shouldn’t have to.”
“I didn’t realize how much he was still holding on to the past. I knew he was struggling to keep boundaries with Karen, but I didn’t realize he had a hand in sabotaging his own relationships. I feel awful. I didn’t even get to say goodbye to Peyton.”
Avery moves the lap pad off her belly and puts an arm around my shoulder. “It’s harder when there’s a kid involved.”
I nod, trying to stifle a sob. “This is so much worse than before.”
“You mean when Gavin left when Peyton was a baby?”
“It was awful, but then I was only in love with Peyton and not Gavin too. But this is so much different. This isn’t just about his guilt, or letting Karen parent Peyton, or her meddling. It’s about him allowing it continue, so he can keep himself safe from the potential for more pain. He said Peyton was all he had left. And he meant of Marcie. It’s like he’s locked in the past and he won’t allow himself to move forward, and Karen is an easy excuse.” I rub my temples, trying to sort through it all, to put the pieces of the puzzle together. “And I get that it must be hard to move on from something so traumatic, but we’ve all managed to cope after the loss of our parents. And it’s been years. If he hasn’t dealt with those feelings yet, will he ever be able to?”
“I think the difference is that we’ve had each other to rely on all this time, and that’s made it a lot easier for us to process our own loss.” Avery motions between us. “But he’s had his controlling mother-in-law, who probably helped fuel his guilt train and his memory of Marcie for many years, whether intentionally or not.”
“It sure seems like it. What am I going to do?”
“Well, you have two options. You can give him a few days to cool off and hopefully come to his senses, or you can go back over there and try and force him to see that you’re right. I think the first option is probably the best, even if it’s the hardest. The second is likely to backfire, and you also wouldn’t be sticking to your guns and then this has the potential to happen again, but with significantly worse fallout. And as a woman who has dealt with really bad fallout after a relationship crisis, I can say that I would not want to invite option two if at all possible.”
“His default move is to bury his head in the sand until he’s at risk of suffocating. I can’t keep running on this hamster wheel.”
“You’re right, you can’t. And this isn’t on you to make things bet ter, Harley. He has to realize he has work to do if he wants you two to succeed as a couple. I think if you can stand your ground, then he’ll have to look critically at how he’s responding and hopefully see that his reaction did not in any way match the circumstances.”
“I wonder if Karen feels a level of guilt for welcoming someone new into their lives who isn’t their daughter, just like Gavin feels guilty for what happened to Marcie. Neither of them have had to contend with that before now. It’s complicated, and not entirely logical, but emotions rarely are.” I let my head fall back. “There are so many more layers to this than I realized.”