“Cruel,” Erin amended.
Gavin didn’t respond to her correction. “I’m tired,” he said.
“Tired of what?” Oliver asked.
Gavin shrugged. “Just tired. Spent most of my childhood fighting to stay with my mom, trying to get away from the foster homes and back to her because I love—loved—her.”
Erin heard the question in his voice when he tried to change the word love to past tense.
“Sometimes I wonder if I’m crazy too,” he admitted.
Oliver shook his head. “You’re not crazy.” He placed his hand on Gavin’s back and led him to the couch. The three of them sank down together, she and Oliver flanking Gavin. “Your feelings are yours, Gavin. You can love your mother, you can hate her, you can feel nothing. There’s no right or wrong, bro.”
“I think that’s my problem. I don’t know how I feel about her.”
“That’s okay too.” Erin lifted Gavin’s arm and dropped it around her shoulders so she could snuggle closer to him, wrapping her arms around his middle. Even though they were sitting hip to hip to hip, Gavin looked like a man adrift alone in the middle of the ocean.
“Actually, I think what I feel the most is guilty.”
Oliver frowned. “What the hell about?”
“She looked…sad today. I mean, she’s living in a halfway house after being locked away nine years. It’s gotta be tough for her, trying to figure out how to start her life again and I’m the only family she has.”
Erin lifted her head from Gavin’s shoulder. If there was one thing Erin loved most about Gavin, it was his giving nature. She knew all about the elderly lady from his childhood that he’d started doing chores for. Just like she’d watched him fix countless things in pretty much every Collins family member’s house. Hell, he’d tackled no less than twenty projects in her apartment over the last year. If he saw someone in need, Gavin didn’t hesitate to help.
But she could see now that incredible character trait was working against him.
“Your mom isn’t your responsibility,” she said, even as she knew the words wouldn’t land.
“That’s just it. She is. She always has been. I told you. She worked long hours, trying to support us. So I took care of the other things.”
“Like?” Oliver prodded.
“I cleaned the apartment, cooked our meals, shopped for food. I even learned how to forge her signature on her checks and took over paying the bills. She’s crap with money. When we didn’t have enough,” he swallowed heavily, “I stole it. I just don’t know how she’s going to be able to—”
“Stop,” Oliver said. “Stop right there.” Oliver squeezed Gavin’s thigh. “She’s an adult and she’ll learn. Shit, she should have learned all that stuff before now instead of foisting it off on a kid.”
Gavin sighed. “I didn’t mind doing it.”
“That’s not the point,” Oliver countered. “Why are you tired, Gavin?”
Gavin closed his eyes wearily. “I don’t know.”
“Yes, you do,” Oliver persisted.
Gavin turned his head toward Oliver, his gaze narrowed. “You gonna make me spew a bunch more bullshit psychobabble.”
Oliver chuckled. “I like it when you try to use some of Mom and Dad’s big words. It’s cute.” He placed a quick kiss on Gavin’s cheek, and Erin giggled softly.
“Asshole,” Gavin muttered, though there was no anger behind the word. Only amusement.
“Gavin,” Erin started. “You spent your whole childhood taking care of your mom, shouldering too many burdens because…” She hesitated when she realized she’d backed herself into a corner.
Gavin let her off the hook, saying the hard words for her. “Because I thought if I took care of her, if I fed her and kept the house clean, took all the stress out of her life, she wouldn’t go back to that dark place, she wouldn’t drink. She wouldn’t…hurt me.”
“Do you want her back in your life?” Erin asked.
Gavin lifted one shoulder, then fell silent. She and Oliver waited patiently, giving him time to think it through. Finally, he said, “I don’t know. I think that’s why I’m so tired. I can’t figure this out. I know she’s bad for me, but I… Jesus, she’s still my mom, you know?”
Oliver reached out and cupped Gavin’s cheek. “So stop trying to figure it out. You don’t have to come up with an answer tonight or tomorrow or even next week.”
Erin smiled, agreeing with that advice, the tension suddenly broken. They’d tackle this as a team. “It’s the holidays. Why don’t we just focus on that? Relax and enjoy being together. We can think about the rest of it later. We’ll help you sort it all out. You don’t have to do any of this alone anymore.”
“But…I told her I’d…” Gavin blew out a long breath.
“Told her what?” Erin asked.
“She wants to go out to dinner with him,” Oliver said. “Gavin agreed.”
And just like that, Erin’s stress was back and she was ready to put her foot down. “What?”
Gavin was seriously conflicted about his feelings for his mother, and after everything he’d been through, she didn’t want him to suffer a single second more if she could prevent it. She hadn’t really been joking earlier about her reasons for cutting him slack. The poor guy was on system overload.
“Whenever it happens, we’re all going,” Oliver hastened to add. “You, me, and Gavin.”
Her gaze flew to Gavin’s face to see if that was true.
Gavin nodded. “We’re all going,” he repeated. “I mean, if you—”
“I’m going.” She didn’t want him to question that for a second. Or try to cut her out.
“Then we’ve settled everything we need to settle for tonight. So how about a distraction?” Oliver suggested.
The tension in the room lifted when Gavin almost visibly shook off his sadness and gave Oliver a wicked grin. “What did you have in mind?”
“Did you start dinner yet?” Oliver asked her.
Erin
