Page 45 of View With Your Heart

“Are you any different?” She finally asks. “You’ve had your baseball career, and now you have a new production company in the works. Your focus is on the same things.”

“It’s not the same thing,” I respond, but reconsider after speaking.

“You’ve been estranged from your family for years. You don’t have a wife or girlfriend and no children. What do you want, Gavin? Where’s the human connection for you?”

She puts me in my place, growing more upset as she speaks and pushes off the fence before her. “I’m going over to the bleachers.”

“Wait.” I reach out and catch her arm. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I don’t have anyone.” My eyes search her face. “I’ve kept myself separate from my family because . . . my dad just didn’t understand, and after working so hard, I didn’t want to face his disappointment. As for Zoey, or girlfriends, a wife even, I just never gave any of it a thought.”

I’d had plenty of connection to females in my life, but I know what she means, and I also know she’s the closest I’ve ever come to finding what I think I need in a companion. In a wife.

Holy shit.

I stare at her. She’s the person. She’s the one I’ve been missing. That something I’ve felt is just outside my grasp, and she’s right before me, pushing me away at every turn.

“Come to the wedding with me.”

“What?” She shakes her head at the full circle of this conversation.

“Let me spend time with you.” Give me time to prove we could be good together. “In fact, let’s go out tonight. Pizza with Gee.”

“Gavin, I already told you. I need to think of Gee.”

“And you need to think of yourself. You need to eat dinner. He needs to eat dinner, and I’d like to eat dinner with both of you.”

She laughs without the humor settling in. “Gavin, you’re being ridiculous.”

“Let this happen,” I beg. Slowly, I release her and hold up my hands.

I’ve been coming at her full steam ahead, and I need to step back. Admittedly, I want to touch her and not let go, especially when she scoops back her hair and rests her hand on the side of her neck again. It’s the same spot I sucked the other night. The spot I nipped and knew would bend her knees. She once told me I discovered that spot on her. It was there just for me, she teased.

Little did she know that spot was for her. It was a place to trigger her pleasure, and I want to please her again. I want to watch her fall apart because the woman at thirty-six does not compare to her twenty-three-year-old self. She’s just as sensual but holding back, and I want her to let loose. I want her to remember how good we were together. I want her to lower this wall she has between us.

“Theo pizza-blocked me. It’s the least you can do,” I tease, hoping to lessen the tension between us.

“Pizza-blocked?” Britton laughs, a more genuine sound this time, and I notice her visibly relaxing a little bit.

“After he went all ninja nephew, he told Gee he’d take him out for pizza, and I felt dismissed.” I pout, and Britton laughs harder. I want her to laugh more often and not be so reserved around me. My hand reaches out and swipes down her arm, and then I quickly retract it despite the energy humming under my palm. I resist as I promised I’d be good, but I accept it will be a difficult promise to keep.

Take 15

Scene: A Dark Driveway

[Britton]

Gee’s team won their game, and Gavin took us out for pizza as suggested. Gee was ecstatic to have pizza two nights in a row, and I worried once more about attachment to Gavin. He had been asking me all kinds of questions since learning the advice he passed to Gavin was actually Gavin’s originally. He wanted to know more about our friendship and why we hadn’t stayed friends. I didn’t know if it was curiosity because he’d given up his friends when we moved to Elk Lake City or if his concerns ran deeper.

Theo certainly had planted a seed, at least with me, and while I appreciated his protective stance, it was unwarranted. I am a grown adult. I can figure this out. I just need to get my heart, body, and head in alignment because they each want different things. My heart wants companionship, even if it is only short term, while my body wants all the chemistry I still have with Gavin. Of course, my head is the voice of reason, demanding I rip off the bandage and tell Gavin the truth, knowing it will decide everything for me.

As each day passes, the hole grows deeper, but I can’t find a way out. Gavin asks to take Gee fishing, and he does it before Gee, so I don’t have a good enough excuse to say no. When I arrive home from the shop on Tuesday night, I find Gee and Gavin making dinner in my house. The scene is heartwarming and heartbreaking in the same breath as it’s a vision of what I’d always hoped would happen and will never be.

“There’s a pre-wedding party tomorrow night. I swear I don’t know how many times they need to celebrate as there is still a bachelor party on Thursday and the rehearsal dinner on Friday. I’ll be so sick of them by the wedding,” Gavin teases, but he seems to be enjoying himself, reconnecting with his old friend, his brother, and even making a few new friends with the other men who have recently joined his family. Gavin told me about Tricia Carter, and I know of her because Jenna works with Tricia at the high school as they are both teachers. He also told me about Ethan’s history with Ella and how her older stepbrother is now engaged to Pam Carter. To top it off, both sisters are pregnant.

“Keep that water away from me,” Gavin jokes upon telling me, and I softly chuckle, remembering him saying how he didn’t consider having children. He clarified at some point that not having children had really been his ex-girlfriend’s decision, and he went along with it as he was busy in his own right. He didn’t add whether his mind has changed since their breakup.

He is so good with Gee, and I have a glimpse of him as a father. He would have made a great dad.

“Gavin, what did the mama pasta say to the baby pasta?” Gee says.