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She’s going to shut you out completely, and you won’t get her back.
Despair welled up inside him like a cut in need of attention, stinging mercilessly as it rushed to the surface. With the single exception of asking Sloane to continue as her sitter, every time he tried to do his best for Bree, they ended up further and further apart. No, she didn’t make things particularly easy all the time, but she wasn’t a bad kid, either. Was he honestly that terrible a parent, just because he worried about what would happen if she grew up too fast?
Was he keeping her from growing up at all?
“Okay, Mom, help me out here.” Gavin’s whisper rasped through the post-midnight silence in the cottage, tugging its way from his lungs. “I want to do what’s right for Bree, but I don’t know what that is.”
God, this was crazy. After a few minutes of forcing his breath to shift from shaky to smooth, he scrubbed a hand over his face and ushered his thoughts into rational order. The odd recollection of old memories that he’d shuffled through in the driveway, the bittersweet pang of coming home to happy, feminine voices—he cataloged each of these things in his brain, turning them over and over.
The note in Bree’s voice just before he’d opened his eyes flickered back to his memory, winding through the corners of his brain until the emotion behind her familiar cadence plowed the breath from his chest.
Hope. Oh, God, Sloane was right. It had been hope, and even though he’d never hurt Bree on purpose, he’d pulled that hope out from under her all the same.
Gavin’s purposeful stride had him halfway down the hall before his brain registered the movement, but it didn’t matter. All the forethought in the world wasn’t going to make what he had to say any easier, and even the most eloquent speech could be shot down by a righteously indignant thirteen-year-old.
He really was a terrible parent. How could he have missed this?
“Bree?” He knocked in an awkward thump. “Hey, are you awake? It’s important.”
After an excruciating minute that felt ten times as long, she mumbled, “It’s open, but I’m not coming out.”
Undaunted, Gavin turned the knob. Bree had scrubbed her face and put on her pajamas, and she kept the book on her propped-up knees open, as if to highlight the idea that she felt intruded upon. The sparse light cast down from the bedside lamp kept her expression in the shadows, and he noticed with a sharp pang that Bree had tried to pull her hair back into a ponytail, only now it was too short to cooperate. Tawny wisps framed the angles of her cheekbones, and she swiped at them in vain.
“Hey. I was hoping maybe we could, um, talk a little.” He shuddered inwardly. Eloquent he was not.
She shrugged. “You’re mad, I’m grounded. What is there to talk about?”
“You’re not grounded. And while I’m not thrilled, I might’ve…jumped the gun on the mad thing.”
Bree’s head snapped up, and another chunk of hair feathered from her sad excuse for a ponytail. “What?”
“Got your attention with that one, huh?” He shoved his hands in his pockets. Damn, he hadn’t felt this inundated with guilt since he’d missed her solo in the fourth grade choral concert because he’d had to cover a busy holiday shift at the last minute.
“No.” She turned toward him, so slightly that it was barely perceptible. “Okay, maybe.”
It was as much of an invitation to start talking as Gavin was going to get, so he took it. “Look, before I say anything else, you need to know that first and foremost, it’s my job to make sure you’re taken care of. Sometimes that means I need to make decisions that aren’t popular with you. I’m not going to apologize for wanting to make sure you’re safe and okay.”
Bree grimaced and wrapped her arms around herself, but he held up a hand. “But I am going to apologize for yelling at you. I shouldn’t have done it, and I’m sorry.”
She examined him with a wary flick of her eyes. “It’s no big deal.”
“Itisa big deal,” Gavin argued, earning a startled glance that held his rather than dropping like the first. “Yes, I was mad, but yelling at each other doesn’t solve anything. And even though I didn’t intend to, I hurt your feelings, which isn’t okay. It’s just…” His throat tightened, but he forced his words to persevere. “There’s kind of a steep learning curve to this parenting thing, and I’m not always very good at it.”
After an interminable silence that scraped at his ears, she said, “You’re okay.”
He fought off the urge to heave an obvious sigh of relief. “So, do you think maybe the next time you need something, you could try asking yourokaybrother? If I’d known you needed school clothes, I’d have taken you to get them. It’s part of taking care of you, Bree.”
“Yeah, but some stuff is embarrassing. Like…” She dropped her eyes and mumbled something that sounded suspiciously likebuying bras,and his knees became momentarily undependable.
“Um, well, yeah.” Christ, he was wholly unequipped for this. But it was more headway than he’d made in the ten months since their mom had died, and he refused to abandon the conversation, even in the face of unmentionables on his sister. “Maybe we can let the salesperson at the store help you with that. But at least I could take you to the mall. And take care of the other things.”
“You never would’ve let me get my hair cut off.” Bree made a face, and her arms migrated from around her rib cage to cradle her hips as she shifted against her pillows to look at him fully. A quick slice of worry cut through him at the streak of pain on her freshly scrubbed features, but then it was gone.
“I wouldn’t have let you get it colored, no. But we could’ve talked about the haircut.” A wave of fresh guilt splashed through him, prompting him to boldly sit next to her on the edge of her bed. “I was a little busy being thick-headed before, so I didn’t say this, but you really do look pretty.”
Bree’s face flushed all the way to her ears, but the smile tugging at her mouth gave her away. “You’re such a dork.”
“Thank you. But I’m being serious.” He gestured to the back of her desk chair, where the sweater she’d been wearing earlier was neatly draped. Although he hated to admit it, there was nothing provocative about the stylish garment, and the deep blue color had looked becoming on her.
