Page 149 of Tangled Up In You

Though she deserved his apologies, it didn’t seem fair to her that he was taking all the blame for wrongdoing. “Gavin, I’m not innocent. I?—”

Before she could continue, he dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around her waist. He pressed his face to her belly.

“I don’t deserve it, but I’m asking to start again. Let me try to be what you need for once. I want to be a parent with you, a father to this child.”

“Baby, get up. Please. You have to know that I have regrets too.” All the guilt she should have had about Conor before came rushing to her now. She had her own apologies and requests for forgiveness to make, only he didn’t know it.

He shook his head against her. “I just want to move forward, darlin’. Don’t let’s go backwards.”

She tried to pull him up but he was holding fast to her, so she went to her knees with him and wrapped her arms around his neck, sinking heavily into him so that he faltered for a moment. Her relief at hearing him say this was so great that she discarded all the other issues they had. It was selective denial in favor of hope for a new, better future.

92

GAVIN

Gavin was vaguely aware that both he and Sophie were forging ahead in their relationship without looking back. It started at dinner where they banded together in opposition to Jackson’s date for the night: Colette. The pairing was awkward, both because it felt wrong for her to be with someone other than Conor, and because she was in an especially combative mood, drinking too much and goading Gavin when she sensed his disapproval of her presence. He and Sophie instinctively used the drama of Colette’s unexpected presence to pivot away from all the things they should have been talking about. He had told her he didn’t want to go backwards, and that was true, but at the same time, he knew they had unfinished business. It was just easier to ignore it and focus on the fact that they finally had something positive to celebrate.

They spent the next several days cocooned together, not working through the past but envisioning their future. They talked baby non-stop, imagining life with a newborn girl or boy and wondering how soon they should try for a sibling. They debated the advantages of finding out the sex as opposed to letting it be a surprise. They spent hours brainstorming names, coming up with separate categories for traditional, contemporary, American, and Irish options. They agreed that the model Martin had set of having Celia and the kids travel with the band on tour until the kids were preschool age was a good one. Gavin went out to the stores on Abbot Kinney to pick up lunch and came back with the tiniest pair of Converse either had ever seen. They were fully immersed in planning for parenthood, gratefully latching onto it as a way to leave behind all the damage they had done to their relationship.

But all that came to an abrupt halt the morning Conor called. Gavin heard a phone buzzing and didn’t know if it was his or Sophie’s. He reached into the folds of a soft blanket on the sofa just as she did.

“I think it’s mine,” she said. As she pulled it free, he saw Conor’s photo and name on the screen. “Oh.” She turned away as she answered.

He sat stone-still as he listened to her side of the conversation.

“Hi,” she said. “Yes, I’m okay. Everything’s fine. Yes. He’s really happy. We are happy. Making lots of plans for the little one. Uh-huh. Okay, I’ll tell him. Bye.”

Gavin waited a full thirty-seconds for her to explain, but she simply started folding the blanket they had cuddled under together that morning while having coffee and pastries.

“Conor, yeah?” he finally said.

“Yes.”

“You told him about the baby?”

He saw her stiffen. She wouldn’t look at him.

“Yeah.”

“Why would you tell another man before me?” He tried to keep his voice level, though the urgency was difficult to mask.

“I, um, just because he was there. He’s been there for me, Gavin.”

“He has always been very concerned for your well-being.”

Sophie sat with him now. “And he’s the one who told me I should come out here to see you.” She put her arm around his neck. “And now look,” she said with a smile.

He accepted a kiss from her reluctantly, unable to keep images from flashing through his mind. The particular way Conor would gaze at Sophie in those rare moments when his usually controlled manner was undone, like in that famous tabloid photo. The time when the two of them shared a night out in New York, and then when he found them embracing in the lobby of the Four Seasons in Paris. The way he inserted himself into their relationship by standing up for Sophie, like over that SI cover, and more recently when he declared he should have been the one to marry her.

Unable to help himself, he pulled away and examined his wife. His beautiful, long-suffering, pregnant wife who had just days ago admitted she was not innocent.

“Conor’s in love with you.”

Everything about her reaction—the slowly fading smile, the concern bordering on fear filling her eyes—told him he was right.

“Fucking hell.” He leaned forward, elbows on knees and head in his hands. “And what are you guilty of?” he mumbled.

“What?”

---