Page 67 of Forever Yours

“It gets better. She avoided me for a few more months, only admitting she knew I was here when she was caught.”

“Caught, now that’s an interesting word. Is she a criminal?”

Gabe paused and thought about how he was portraying Devlin to a stranger. To demean her character after telling her more than once that he understood where she was coming from, that he understood why she’d hidden from him and why she had a hard time opening up to people.Maybe because assholes like me do crap like this.

“No, she’s not a criminal. I’m sorry, that’s not how she is, I don’t know why I explained it like that.”

“You’ve apologized twice to me now. I feel like you’re not quite yourself.”

“No, I’m not. I haven’t been myself for weeks.”

“Women have a strange way of doing that to you, especially when love is involved.”

Gabe shouldn’t have been surprised when he heard that word come out of Joe’s mouth. He’d known he was in love with Devlin from the first time they met, and it had only deepened once they reconnected in Amber Falls. Everything he’d shown her about himself and everything he’d said to her after she’d explained her past had been chucked away when he submitted that proposal. He told her she could trust him, that she could let her defenses down when he was around. He’d gone so far as to wish he could slay her demons for her. Then what had he done? He turned into every bad seed she’d known and proved, in her mind, that all men were alike and not one was worth the hassle. Devlin was clearly still fighting her demons and he had to figure out how to get past her defenses.

God hewasan asshole for doing that to her. He broke out into a cold sweat thinking of the way he spoke to her Thursday night.

“I can see the wheels turning in your head, son,” Joe ventured.

“I’m replaying everything back. You can’t imagine how bad I feel after talking to her like that. I’m not like that. I don’t know what happened.”

Joe nodded along, quieting for a moment before speaking. “I do know a little of what you’re going through.”

Gabe was surprised. “How so?”

“Oh, I recall many years ago, right after the Vietnam war, if you must know the timeline.”

Gabe did a double take at Joe’s appearance.

“There was a girl.”

“Fitting,” Gabe murmured.

“She was the most beautiful person I’d laid my eyes on. We’d been going steady on and off in high school, but when I went to college, I decided to sow my wild oats as it were, and having a girlfriend still in high school would cramp my style.”

Gabe tried to picture a young Joe, hair long in the hippy style, wearing bell bottoms and a fringe vest, or with close-cropped hair, a skinny tie and big, black-rimmed glasses.

“Did you get as crazy as you wanted to?”

“It wasn’t for a lack of trying,” Joe admitted, “but my heart still belonged to Agatha, and the other ladies could see that plain as day. It took me a few miserable years before I realized what a mistake I made, but by then Agatha Sanderson had married Arthur Crenshaw and I’d lost out on the love of my life.”

“TheMrs. Crenshaw? The one that wins all the cook-offs?”

“The one and only.”

“I can’t picture her as the love of anyone’s life,” Gabe admitted.

“She was a spitfire back in our day. Word has it that not much has changed.”

“I live next door to her and she still is.”

“You don’t say?” Joe grew pensive and downed the last of his beer. “And how is Agatha doing?”

“Good, from what I can tell. Arthur died about five years ago and they never had any kids that I could gather,” Gabe offered.

“No, no kids for them,” Joe confirmed then smiled. “I know a few things, but lost track of her years ago.”

“I think she’s lonely. She likes to stick her nose in everybody’s business. It wouldn’t hurt to stop over there to say hi, would it?”

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