Now there’s less than three hours until the application for the internship is due, I haven’t even started on the essay portion, and Gavin is dangling the juicy treat of his mysterious past in front of me like forbidden fruit.
I can bust out an essay fairly quickly. English classes have always been a strength of mine. Another twenty minutes can’t really hurt at this point.
Especially now that I have a solid internet connection to work with.
Yep, just call me Eve. I’m fully in now, and I need to know everything.
“I’ve got a few minutes,” I say lightly.
Gavin rubs his eyes. “You need to finish your application.”
I sit at the desk and put my phone face down. “It’ll take a minute for my brain to wake up.”
He doesn’t look like he believes me. I hold my breath, waiting. It’s crazy how I didn’t want anything to do with this guy last week, and now I kind of want to spend every minute with him.
Unhealthy? No comment.
Gavin sits on the edge of the worn brown sofa, and I try not to show how relieved I am. “It’s a rather convoluted story. I don’t want to bore you with the details?—”
“Bore me with them,” I say. “I love details.”
His brow furrows, but he continues. “You know I dated Blair in high school. We were together since we were fourteen, off and on. After we graduated highers, she broke up with me and went off to uni.”
“You stayed here?”
“My grandad was sick, so I put it off for a bit and stayed around. I didn’t want to miss the last few months I’d have with him.”
“Hamish?”
“Aye. He pulled through, but we didn’t think he would at the time. It wasn’t good.”
“How terrible.”
Gavin nods. “It was rough, and I felt I was needed at home. Blair returned less than a year later, eighteen and pregnant and abandoned by the guy she was seeing. It wasn’t my kid, but we were both vulnerable and got back together.”
Pregnant. Eighteen. They wereso young. My heart is racing, but I do my best to keep my face neutral. “You must have loved her a lot.”
His smile is soft, hitting me in the chest. “We became close through the last few months of her pregnancy. When Liv was born, I fell in love with that bairn. I think I stayed with Blair as long as I did partly because of her daughter, but it was no secretI cared deeply for both of them. When Blair left me and took Liv to Edinburgh without any warning at all, it broke me.”
I’m fairly skilled at managing my reactions, but this still gets me. “There were no signs?”
“I didn’t see it coming. She didn’t give me a chance to give Liv her birthday gift, to speak to her, to explain why I was suddenly missing from her life. I had no rights at all because we never married, and I wasn’t Liv’s dad. But in all the ways that counted, I had raised her.”
“How old was she?”
“Three.”
So young. My chest constricts. Just a year older than Oliver.
“That was six years ago. At the time, it was devastating. I took care of Liv, cooked for her, put her to bed while Blair worked. It killed me not knowing how she was being cared for after they left, what kind of men Blair was dating, what sort of life she was giving her daughter. I felt helpless and hopeless and fell into an unreachable depression.”
“Understandable.”
He shrugs. “It consumed me for nearly eight months, until Granny convinced me to see a counselor. My neighbor, Rhona, is my therapist, and helped me work through the trauma Blair had put me through. She taught me how to let go of the things I couldn’t control.” He pauses, looking at me for so long, I’m wondering if he’s not going to continue.
“You don’t need to tell me anything you’re not comfortable with.”
“It’s not that,” he says, and I feel like he means it.
