If there was one thing that didn’t exist in the Collins family, it was a secret. So Gavin appreciated that neither Padraig nor Aaron appeared to have told anyone else about his mom’s release.
For the past few nights, he’d lain awake trying to imagine seeing her again, playing it out in his mind. He’d had years to consider their reunion, but as he’d grown older, the visions of it continually changed. When he was fifteen, all he’d wanted was to see her again, to go home. However, as more time passed, as he’d grown closer to Oliver, Sean, Lauren, and Chad, he’d started to see his childhood in a different light, and the anger, resentment, and guilt associated with those memories ate at him like cancer.
Right now, Gavin was torn between telling her off or… He swallowed heavily. He was terrified he’d revert to type and do what he’d always done.
Forgive her.
Give her a chance to make things up to him.
Reassume the caregiver role.
Gavin had never been able to hold on to his anger toward her, even after the most brutal of the beatings. Instead, she would shed what he now believed were crocodile tears, blame her anger on her loneliness or sadness, remind him he was all she had, and somehow, she’d always find a way to convince him the beating would never have happened if he hadn’t done X, Y, or Z.
And in the end, because Gavin hated to see her cry, he’d tell her it was okay. Then, because he’d wanted the peaceful times to last, he’d go out of his way to take care of her, cooking meals, cleaning the apartment, stealing money and food.
Sometimes, he struggled to mesh the Gavin he’d been growing up with the man the Collins family had raised him to be. None of them, not even Oliver, knew about the things he’d done to survive…or the things he might have done.
The night he’d run away from his mother after she’d sliced his arm with the knife, he’d been stopped by their creepy landlord and handed an eviction notice. The fucking asshole had insinuated he would look the other way on the late rent if Gavin blew him. Gavin had shoved the guy away, but he’d woken up in a cold sweat too many nights in the ensuing months, wondering if he would have gone through with it if the cops hadn’t been called and his mom committed.
He couldn’t believe how all of the shit going down around him had felt normal at the time.
Now, he was disgusted by it, even though deep inside, he knew he’d had no choice.
No. That was wrong.
He’d had a choice—he could have confided in his social worker or teachers, but he hadn’t. Because in his young mind, there wasn’t anything better on the other side.
Better the devil you knew and all that.
What was he going to say to his mom now? Too many times he’d played it out, imagined that this time, he would be able to unload every single hate-filled emotion on her, that he’d finally be able to tell her just how much she’d hurt him.
But he was terrified of unleashing all of that, of taking the lid off a fury he’d spent all of his life keeping bottled up.
He wouldn’t be like his mother. He couldn’t spew horrible things, couldn’t inflict that much pain on someone he…
Fuck. Someone he loved.
How could he love her? How could he still love her after everything?
If he never saw her, he’d never have to risk losing sight of the man he’d become without her in his life.
So yeah…it would be a hell of a lot easier if the reunion never happened.
“You sure you’re okay?” Erin asked, and he realized he’d let the silence between them linger a little too long.
He nodded, hoping she didn’t see through the lie. Gavin hadn’t told Oliver about his mother’s release from the psychiatric hospital. It had been on the tip of his tongue to do so all week, but every time he opened his mouth to say it, he couldn’t do it. Probably because his emotions were all over the fucking scale and he didn’t know what to say.
As for Erin, well…he’d never said anything to her about his past or his mother other than she was gone forever, letting her assume his mom was dead.
Since the subject of his mother came up so infrequently, it really hadn’t been an issue.
Until now.
“I’m sure. Just tired.”
The two of them walked to the living room. Erin claimed her usual spot on the couch she shared with Oliver, while Gavin took the recliner. “Since you’re not in a chatty mood, I think we should talk about me. Because as you know, everything about me is fascinating.”
Gavin laughed, perfectly aware of why Oliver was so head over heels in love with her. Erin was genuinely fun to be with. She’d taken to calling him her best gay friend, while Oliver was her best boyfriend, and Layla, her best cousin friend. Erin liked to tease them, saying that she had so many best friends because she was, in her own words, “a goddamned national treasure.”
And because she wasn’t wrong, he, Oliver, and Layla always let the joke stand.
“Okay, so let’s dive in here,” he said. “What part of the Erin saga haven’t we covered tonight, because I can’t imagine there’s much we’ve missed? You barely came up for air at dinner.”
Erin had entertained him and Oliver at dinner with a recounting of her rather exciting workday in the E.R. Apparently three men had all been transported to the hospital, bloodied and bruised after an argument over a football game turned violent. The EMTs who’d responded to the call had erroneously believed the fight to be over, so when it erupted again in the waiting room, it had taken two
