Crave (The Gibson Boys 3)

They do. Jabbering back and forth, they trot after me like puppies until we’re standing in the kitchen.

Walker tugs open the refrigerator door. “Didn’t I leave this beer here like a year ago?” He jerks one out and pops the top.

“Probably.” I watch him take a long drink. “Guess it’s a good thing it didn’t get thrown out.”

That’s all it takes for Hadley’s face to float through my mind. I hear her laugh. Smell her perfume. Feel my spirits sink.

Lance pulls out a chair and sits. “So, Mariah and I aren’t eloping.”

“Am I supposed to be surprised by that?” I ask as Walker and I sit too. “There was no way Nana was letting that shit slide.”

“You actually asked her?” Walker takes another drink. “That’s ballsy.”

“I think it was more ballsy not to,” Lance says. “Besides, I’m kind of glad she said no.”

I raise a brow.

Lance’s eyes dodge mine. “I can’t say I’m all that upset at having to see her in a dress and have the honeymoon and all that. I’m kind of looking forward to it.”

“You’re both turning into pussies. You know that?” Walker deadpans.

“Come on, Walk,” Lance says. “You’ve never thought about watching Sienna walk down an aisle? Never? Not once?”

Walker lifts the beer again. We sit quietly as if Lance proposed some profound idea that requires loads of thought. He didn’t. But I still find myself envisioning Hadley wearing white with Cross by her side, walking her down a church aisle.

For a moment, everything feels right. I like it. Too much. So much that I get to my feet and scour the refrigerator for another beer.

“Don’t worry about Sienna and me,” Walker says as I sit again with a cold one of my own. “Let’s worry about dipshit over there.” He tips his bottle my way. “What’s going on with you?”

“Nothing.” I down half the bottle.

“You letting her leave?” Lance asks. “I heard her tell Nana she was leaving soon.”

I down the rest before standing. Flexing my fingers to relieve some of the pressure in my joints, I look at Lance. “I can’t stop her from doing what she wants.”

“No,” he says. “But you could let her do what she wants by asking her to stay.”

“I can’t,” I almost hiss.

“You fucking can too,” Lance fires back.

My blood pressure spikes because this motherfucker just doesn’t get it. No one gets it. They would if I told them the truth. Hell, if they knew the truth, they’d probably be disappointed in me too.

I can only imagine their faces, the two men who are my two role models in life, two good as fuck guys who have some internal compass I lack, if I told them what they don’t know.

That her dad left the week before she turned eighteen for Reno with a note written on the back of a grocery receipt as a goodbye. I was nowhere to be found when she broke down because I thought it was a good idea to get hammered the night before and pass out in a hayloft on the other side of Merom after running from the police for speeding about thirty miles over the limit.

That she discovered she was pregnant the next week—the same day I was fired for missing too many days of work.

That I couldn’t pull myself together fast enough to make her think having a baby with me would be better than living with giving our child up for adoption.

I’m a joke of a man. All I’ve managed to do with my life is fail the only girl I’ll ever love in the worst of ways over and over again.

“Maybe I could make her stay,” I say, my voice eerily calm. “But I won’t.”

“And why the fuck not?” Walker asks.

I glare at him. “Sometimes life isn’t about what makes you feel good. Sometimes it’s about what makes you able to live with yourself.”

“Explain to me how, if you really love her, you can live without her,” Lance says. “Because I don’t get it.”

“Maybe it’s really hard to look in her eyes and see my failures, all right? Maybe I’m a pussy, like Walker says, and I can’t stand to think what a bitch I am every time I fucking see her. How I’m responsible for the worst part of her life. How she’ll never be whole because of fucking me!” My breath comes out so hard, so hot, my nostrils flare. “How her life will be a constant state of fucked up because I can’t be a fucking adult, all right? I mean, I own a goddamn bar. I’m begging an asshole in a suit to trust me enough to loan me a basic fucking loan so I can start another business I have no business running.”

I throw my hands in the air. “I mean, for fuck’s sake, guys. I’ll never be able to take care of her—not like I should. Not like she deserves.”