Hitched (Promise Harbor Wedding) - By Erin Nicholas Page 0,78

mom? Are they…involved?” Okay, that could be a little awkward for Allie.

“I don’t know!” She paced a few steps, then turned back to him. “I don’t know anything. Charlie just said they were gone. He doesn’t even know for how long. And apparently Josh took off after the wedding.” Now she looked more pissed.

Um, yeah, actually Gavin knew that. Hayley had told him that Josh had left shortly after the wedding fiasco. Telling Allie her fiancé had run off with his ex might not be a good move at the moment. Telling Allie he’d known about that all along would definitely not be a good move at the moment. Shit.

She ran a hand over her forehead. “I assumed he was there with Dad, making sure things were okay. And now Josh is back in town, but Dad’s gone. Now…I don’t know. No one’s really making sure anything’s okay.”

“Your brothers are there.”

“I told you that they’re not holding things together,” she said. “I have to go.”

Fuck.

Promise Harbor. How could such a small place—relatively speaking—so far away cause him so many problems?

“Allie, you don’t have to go. They’ll figure it out. They need to learn to cope without you.”

She focused on him with a frown. “Why? Why do they need to learn to cope without me?”

“Because…” he suddenly felt like maybe he needed to proceed with caution here, “…you’re not there.”

“Which is why I need to go.”

“But…” Okay, he was about to sound like a jackass. He figured knowing that made it slightly better. Slightly. Maybe. “You’re here. With me.”

She narrowed her eyes. “Yes. At the moment.”

At the moment. That sounded a lot less permanent than he wanted it to. He gritted his teeth, then said, “When are you going to let go of them?”

She sucked in a quick breath, her eyes going wide. Several seconds passed with no sound. Then she said, “Let go of them?”

He knew he should just shut up. If he didn’t, they were going to fight. But this had been the elephant in the room since she’d gotten here. He’d even talked about marrying her without talking about this directly.

He couldn’t shut up.

He wanted her. She wanted him. Life here was good and good for her. God knew, having her here with him was what he needed more than anything.

He couldn’t just shut up and let her leave. If what he was going to say made it hard for her to choose, then good. He didn’t want it to be easy. Unless she chose him, of course.

“They’re not your responsibility, Al. They’re your family. They’re your dad and your brothers—your life isn’t supposed to revolve around them. If you go home to them, you’re giving up what you really want and need. You shouldn’t have to do that. You have a right to a happy, fulfilling life.”

“What am I giving up if I go home to them?” she asked, her voice gruff. She was holding herself stiffly, her arms crossed tightly across her stomach.

He knew that she knew what his answer was going to be, but she was going to make him say it.

“Me.”

“Because if I go home, we’re done, right?” she asked.

“My life is here,” he said stubbornly, sounding like an ass but seemingly unable to help it.

Yes, he had bad feelings about his hometown. He kept in touch with his mom, heard from his brothers at times, but he didn’t expect to reconcile with his father. His past, for better or worse, was in Promise Harbor, but his future was…somewhere else. He’d accepted that a long time ago.

But even more, he was concerned about Allie going home. If it was a visit, if it was a few days, maybe even a few weeks, that was different. But she wouldn’t be able to leave Promise Harbor again. Or rather, she wouldn’t choose to leave again. They would need her so much, purely out of habit, that she wouldn’t be able to cut the strings.

Her time in Alaska with him had, however, proven that she needed to get away from there. She was healthier in just the few days she’d been here than she had been in over a year. Her skin had a faint tan from her long walks outside, she’d put on a little weight, and her skin, hair and eyes shone from eating well and sleeping deep and long. And—if he did say so himself—the great sex couldn’t be hurting anything either.

She was happy. She was relaxed. She felt good. She wasn’t running on