Home > Crave (The Gibson Boys #3)(23)

Crave (The Gibson Boys #3)(23)
Author: Adriana Locke

“Don’t even try to act like you can forgive me,” he warns.

“We made that decision together,” I remind him. “I was eighteen. You were almost twenty. Neither of us had parents. Neither of us had a plan on what to do. We didn’t have any money. Your inheritance didn’t get released for a couple of more years. Don’t you remember that?”

“I’ll tell you what I remember. I remember loading up my truck and lying to everyone, telling them I got a job in Ohio and we’d be gone a few months. And then getting there and trying to find a place to stay and trying to see how we felt about everything and me getting two jobs in the first six, seven weeks and getting fired because I couldn’t manage my fucking temper.”

“You were a kid,” I say. “I was too. Which is why we weren’t ready to have one of our own.”

He bites his lip, unable to stay still. He paces around the hilltop, jamming his hands in his pockets and then pulling them back out. His eyes darting at everything but me.

I wish I could help him understand this from my point of view. But I know if I get too close right now, he’ll push me away.

Finally, he stops moving. “I’m sorry for doing that to you. I’ll never forgive myself for putting you in a position to have to give up the baby.”

“I didn’t have to do anything. But it was the right choice at the time, and I don’t regret it,” I say. Guilt rears its ugly head because, despite knowing it was absolutely the right choice, a part of me will always feel like I failed her. “It’s not easy to say that, but I don’t. I’ll never forgot the look in those people’s eyes when they came into that room to get her …”

My head bows as the tears come again. They don’t roll down and hit my shirt. They roll down and hit Machlan’s.

I’m pressed to him again, my cheek against his chest. My arms around his waist and his around mine. I don’t sob this time. It’s a quiet cry that comes from a different place inside my heart.

“Do you think she’ll find us one day?” I ask.

“Do you hope she does?” He rests his chin on the top of my head as I burrow into him deeper. “Sometimes I do. I want to see her face and hear her voice and see if she laughs like you or me.”

“Sometimes you don’t?” My brow pulls together.

“That’s a trick question.”

“How do you figure?”

He adjusts his arms around me. “That was the hardest day of my life.” His voice cracks, but he forces on. “As a man, as a father,” he says, tripping over the word, “I failed. I had this little version of the two of us in my arms and the best way I could protect her was to put her in another man’s …”

The tremble doesn’t come from me this time. He sniffles, clutching me for dear life.

Making it a point not to look at him, to give him space, I just hold him. “That’s how she’ll know we loved her,” I tell him quietly. “We loved her so much we made the hardest choice anyone can ever make.”

Tears run down my face. Machlan lets go with one hand to wipe his eyes.

“You didn’t walk away from me when I told you I was having a baby,” I say softly. “You didn’t pressure me to do one thing or the other.” I pull him tighter to me. “You held me when I needed held and pushed me when I needed pushed. You did the best you could, and that’s all anyone can do, Mach.”

“Sometimes I think about saying fuck it,” he says, sniffling again. “I think about saying to hell with it all and just selling everything and being done.”

“Why?” Leaning back, my fists still wrapped in his flannel, I take in his puffy eyes. “Why would you do that?”

He smiles sadly. “Because my chance is over.”

“It’s not. How can you say that?”

“What am I supposed to do, Had? Live some great life and have our daughter come back someday and be like, ‘Oh, glad you missed me’?”

“You think she expects us to have shitty lives because we couldn’t take care of her? She might be half you and as hardheaded as an ox, but she’s half me too, so she’s logical.”

The flicker at the sides of his lips raises my spirits some.

“I write her letters sometimes,” I tell him. “I tell her about how much we love her and how we’ve tried to build our lives, and we think about her all the time.”

“You tell her about me?”

“Of course.” I grin against his chest as he pulls me back into him again. “I pretend she’s an adult, and I’m giving her a peek into our life as the years go by. Maybe it’ll help her understand if she ever does come find us.”

“How do you explain us?”

“Well,” I say, clearing my throat of the emotion rising again. “I tell her the truth, without adding in how much of an asshole you can be.”

He laughs. “Thanks.”

“You’re welcome.” I want to pull away, to see his face, but there’s no way I can remove myself from his arms. “I tell her what I know—that you’re running a business. That you’re the silent force behind your family.”

“I’m the what?” He chuckles. “Silent force?”

“You are. You check on Nana. You keep Walker and Lance straight. You send Blaire flowers on every holiday because you know your father would’ve and you don’t want her to miss out.” My voice breaks. “As much as you hate to admit it, you’re there for Peck. You always have my brother’s back.”

I look up. All I can see is his profile as he gazes into the tree line. A soft smile he doesn’t know I can see plays on his lips.

“It’s true,” I say softly. “I know you think you’re a mess, and you are a lot of times, but there’s a lot of good in you, Machlan.”

He looks down and catches me watching. Rolling his eyes, he playfully shrugs me off him.

I laugh with a shrug of my own. “Anyway, that’s what I tell her in the letters.”

“Thank you for that,” he says, the easiness of the moment lost to a somberness only he and I could understand. “That’s really nice of you.”

“Well, you never know what could go in a future note,” I say, turning toward the truck.

I don’t get far. He spins me around. When I stop, I’m facing a Machlan I’ve never seen before.

There’s a levity in his features, a lightness in his eyes that seems to expand from somewhere inside him. The lines around his eyes that sort of disappear in the hazy afternoon. A dimple settles in his cheek as he narrows his eyes.

“I still don’t want to be your friend,” he says. “But I want to be something.”

“Like what?” I ask even though I’m almost too afraid to. My hopes go higher than they should, high enough that I can’t bring them back down.

He shrugs. “I don’t know. I just don’t want you to write me off or force yourself to pretend you’re in love with some joke of a guy just so you can cram me in some category and move on.”

I like this. I like it a lot.

A thousand pounds lighter, I smile the purest, realest smile his way. “Let’s just take the pressure off and figure out how to co-exist in whatever way that organically means. Deal?”

“Deal,” he says.

I extend a hand to shake. Instead of taking it, he slaps me on the ass, making me yelp, as he walks around me toward the truck.

“Hey, now,” I say, shaking a finger his way. “There won’t be any of that.”

“Just testing the waters, seeing what feels right.”

I climb in the truck and the engine roars to life. “That did not feel right.”

He pops it into drive but keeps his foot on the brake. “I beg to differ.” He revs the engine again. “Everything about that felt absolutely right.”

Before I can respond, before I can stop my heart from leaping out of my chest, he slams on the gas and throws me back in my seat.

Seventeen

Machlan

“Here you go,” I say, sliding the truck up against the sidewalk.

Hadley lifts the bag from Peaches onto her lap. She grabs the door handle but doesn’t pull the lever. Instead, she looks at me over her shoulder.

There’s usually a spark of fire there, either from being extremely annoyed or from an anger that’s burned hot for years. I’ll take what I see now over that.

A level of apprehension is evident. She doesn’t quite trust that I’m not going to say something ridiculous and piss her off. She’s right not to. But over top of that unease is a comfort that I would give my life to keep there.

The first time I saw this girl, sitting on the floor in Cross’s living room folding laundry, I knew I had just encountered someone my life would be twisted with forever. I was fifteen and couldn’t explain it. She was so pretty, so sweet, and her laughter was the last thing I heard going to sleep almost every night after that. But it was her strength, her refusal to put up with her brother’s shit or my smartass remarks, that really got me.

She never lost those things—she’s as beautiful, witty, and kind as ever. But she was missing that air about her that I love, that I stole. Seeing it now, even vaguely, I feel like I can breathe again.

The bag ruffles in her fingers. “I just wanna say one more thing.”

“What?”

“Thank you.”

The look in her eyes tells me it’s not for picking her up or buying her lunch.

“You’re welcome.”

She nods, biting her lip, and pulls on the handle.

“Hey, Had?”

“Yeah?” she asks. One leg dangles from the truck as she stills.

“Thank you too.”

She doesn’t turn around, doesn’t look my way, but she doesn’t have to. I get everything I need from how she rebounds when her feet hit the ground.

I watch her walk to the stairs and make it to the top. She sticks a key in the lock but stops short of going inside. Instead, she pivots slowly and looks at the truck. After a little wave, she disappears into the apartment.

   
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