Hitched (Promise Harbor Wedding) - By Erin Nicholas Page 0,80

my brothers really understand there are problems.”

“Is he in danger?” Gavin asked. “I’ll call Hayley.”

She squeezed her eyes shut and sniffed. “I don’t think so, but…I don’t know.” She pulled in a long breath. “No, he’s safe. He won’t wander off or have a car accident or burn the house down. Not stuff like that.”

She seemed to be trying to calm herself. “He’ll just forget stuff. Not take care of himself. If I’m not there to cook dinner, he’ll think about making something for dinner but not remember all the ingredients to use. So he’ll try to find it in a cookbook, but he won’t remember which one so he’ll pull them all out. He’ll look through them and get distracted looking at other recipes and the whole thing will take him so long that he’ll completely miss dinnertime. Then he’ll finally be so frustrated and hungry he’ll just eat a can of soup and go to bed.

“Oh,” she added, “and he won’t put any of the cookbooks away. They’ll stay spread out on the dining room table for days. He’ll also not think about doing any laundry until he has no clothes left. Then he’ll go to work in some old ratty thing he pulls out of his drawers and embarrass himself.”

She stopped and pressed her lips together, hugging herself. “That’s what I really hate—the idea that he might embarrass himself. Forget a meeting or not pay a bill or not remember to pick someone up when he promised to.” She rubbed her forehead. “And I hate talking about him like this. None of it’s intentional. He has damage to the part of his brain that helps him remember things and organize and plan.”

Gavin was watching her, literally aching all over.

Fuck. She had to go.

Even if it weren’t for her dad—and he obviously needed her—she would never really settle here. She’d always be torn, always think she needed to be there.

He couldn’t keep her like that.

He cleared his throat. “I’ll call Major. He can fly you home as soon as he’s free.”

“I can get a flight—”

“Major can get you there sooner and easier,” Gavin cut her off. He was also going to call Hayley and have her check on Owen and Sophie’s trip. She’d make it seem casual, but she could dig up the details, he was sure.

“I, um…” She licked her lips and looked at him. “I don’t know what to say. I…”

“You have to go.”

She didn’t answer right away, but finally she nodded. “Yeah.”

“I get it. I understand. Hell, Allie,” he shoved his hand through his hair, “I would have understood all along if you’d told me.”

“We didn’t do that.”

She’d said the same thing before and it pissed Gavin off more each time.

“Yeah, I know,” he snapped. “We had some fun, but none of this. I know.”

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she said quietly.

“How can I be hurt by this?” he asked, actually asking himself the same question. How could he actually be mad at her here? “It’s not like you’re going home to marry some other guy.”

He’d meant it as a joke, but as he heard the words out loud, his chest tightened again. Maybe she wasn’t going home to get married, but at some point in the future another guy would come along, another Josh, and he’d help her out, take some of her burden, and she’d decide that it was pretty great to have someone on her side like that, and when he asked her to marry him—because, of course, he would—she’d say yes.

Fuck.

Could he live with that? Could he keep himself out of that church and that wedding?

Only if he cut himself off again. Only if he didn’t hear or see or know anything about her and her life.

“I’ll call Major.” He stepped around her, careful not to touch her—because he knew he’d never stop—and went to find a phone as far away from her as he could get.

Three hours later, Allie was on her way to the Bend airport to get in his plane. Major had agreed to pick her up since they were going the same way. Which worked out great for Gavin because he’d rather cut off his arm than say good-bye to her at another airport. He’d done that more times than any man should have to say good-bye to the woman he loved.

In fact, he hadn’t said good-bye to her at all this time.

It was the asshole way out, but he was okay with that at the