you give me another chance? I think we’re good together. You couldn’t find anyone who would love you more.”
He squeezed his forehead. “Let me think about it, okay? This is... This is a bit of a shock.”
She sniffed as she attempted a watery smile. “Okay. Yeah, of course.”
“Thank you,” he said politely, and went inside, where he set his guitar carefully to one side and slid down the door.
* * *
In elementary school, Gavin had been fascinated by the story of Hansel and Gretel. His first theft—at seven years old—had been a worn copy of it he’d stolen from the school library and hidden under his bed. He’d loved the happy ending—even though it made him sad, given his own situation—but hated the book, because he couldn’t understand how the father could miss the evil in Hansel and Gretel’s stepmother. None of the other kids who read the book or were told the story seemed to hold the father responsible, but Gavin knew the woodcutter had to have seen some sign of the stepmother’s unkindness, just as his father had witnessed the way Gavin’s stepmother, Diana, had mistreated him. Diana had claimed he was a behavioral problem, had complained about him constantly—and he had been a rambunctious boy—but he hadn’t been seriously delinquent until well after she was out of his life. That was when he’d acted out in earnest.
He should’ve been able to depend on his father to look out for him. Since his birth mother died of a heart defect when he was two, he’d had only his father to act as his protector. Had Miles cared enough, Gavin’s stepmother would never have been able to leave him at that park.
Gavin had been only six when she drove off, but he’d never forget coming out of the bathroom to find her gone. The sickening almost instant knowledge that she hadn’t left him by accident. The gut-ripping fear when the hours dragged on and she didn’t return. Or the whispering of the stranger who came across him and called the authorities.
Letting his head fall back on the door with a thud, Gavin cursed under his breath. He was still on the floor, hadn’t moved since Heather left, and it’d been almost an hour. The news she’d delivered had decimated him, opened him up to his past in a way nothing else could—probably because he was terrified of being responsible for someone else’s happiness, terrified of failing the way his father had failed with him. It required all his focus and energy just to stave off the memories that were assaulting him like machine-gun fire.
Squeezing his eyes closed, he hugged his knees to his chest and brought his head forward again. Don’t remember. That was another life, someone else’s decision. You’re an adult now, in charge of your own fate and your own happiness. That was what Aiyana had taught him. He’d been much happier after she’d come into his life. He’d quit stealing, quit getting in trouble with the law, and had eventually found an inner peace that had always eluded him before. He managed that by refusing to give a mental audience to anything that’d happened to him before the age of fourteen, which was when he started at New Horizons and was adopted a few months later by Aiyana. But now that he was finally hearing from his old man every once in a while, it was more difficult to keep those old memories bottled up. Just the sound of Miles’s voice—or that name on his caller ID—dredged up the pain.
The fact that he might be having a baby seemed to be doing the same thing. Heather seemed fairly convinced he was the father. Was she right? Or was she simply feeling as though she finally had something with which to force him to commit?
Gavin pulled the tie from his hair and let it fall. They wouldn’t know the baby’s paternity for seven months.
How would he ever wait that long?
Finally, he stopped fighting the urge and called Aiyana. He hadn’t wanted to wake her. It wasn’t the thoughtful thing to do. And he considered himself too old to need her, hadn’t had to make a call like this in years. But he knew, from experience, that she wouldn’t mind. She would do anything for him. Maybe that was why her love had had the power to redeem him, to pull him out of the darkness. “Mom?” he said as soon as he heard her sleepy hello.
“Gavin?” she replied, her voice instantly filling with fear. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. I mean...I’m not hurt.”
There was a slight pause, after which she sounded more lucid. “So what is it? Did something happen in Santa Barbara? Do you need me to come get you?”
“No. I’m at home. Safe.”
“Then...you’re drunk?”
“No.” He’d never had a drinking problem, but he had enjoyed some wild nights, especially when he was younger. Apparently, getting a call like this had triggered Aiyana’s memory of those days. “Haven’t had a drop.”
“Then what?”
“I shouldn’t have called, I guess. I’ll talk to you in the morning.”
“Wait,” she said. “I’m here whenever you need me. You know that.”
“I do. But now that I’m actually talking to you, I’m not sure I want to tell you what’s on my mind, so it’s a little crazy that I woke you up.”
“Say it, anyway,” she insisted. “We’ll work through it together, the way we always have.”
He couldn’t help smiling at how fast she came rushing to his rescue. She was an amazing woman, had saved so many lost boys. And he was extra lucky because he was one of the eight New Horizons students she’d officially adopted. “You remember Heather Fox?”
“Of course. You’ve brought her to many a Sunday dinner over here. But you told me she was with someone else now.”
“Scott Mullins.”
“That’s right. Is that what this is about? You haven’t been in a fight with him, have you? You told me you were glad Heather had moved on, that you were hoping she’d marry Scott. You—”
“I haven’t been in a fight.” He broke in to stop her before she could go any further down that road. “And I wasn’t lying when I said I was glad she’d moved on. That’s part of the problem.”
“So you’re not sad?”
“No.”
“Whew! Then what’s the rest of the problem?”
He didn’t see any way to break the news gently, so he blurted it out. “She’s pregnant.”
Silence. Then his mother said, “I see. But...what does that mean for you? Are you upset that she’s having a child with Scott?”
He could tell it was a leading statement. Aiyana was beginning to catch on to what this call was all about. “I’m upset that she might be having my child.”
“She told you it was yours?”
“She told me it might be. She doesn’t know for sure.”
“She slept with you both that close together?”
“She probably went straight to his house after I broke up with her. That next week, she tried hard to make me regret my decision, to evoke some jealousy. I saw
