“Tell us about Thea’s childhood,” Malcolm said.

The bacon turned to a rock in Gavin’s stomach. “She doesn’t like to talk about it. She always used to change the subject when I would try to get her to talk.”

“So it was a bad childhood?” Yan prodded.

“Her dad’s an asshole, and her mom is a classic narcissist. They got divorced when Thea was ten. She and her sister had to live with their grandma for a few years because neither parent wanted them.”

“Didn’t want them? What does that mean?” Del asked.

“Her father remarried pretty quickly after the divorce, and his new wife didn’t want the girls to live with them, and her mom was just too selfish to want the responsibility.” Gavin ate a quick bite. “I found out last night that her dad is getting remarried again for, like, the fourth time in a couple of weeks.”

The guys all met one another’s gazes with a stunned expression. Del spoke. “You didn’t know this?”

“No.”

“When did Thea find out?”

“Not sure. She found out that he was getting a divorce from his third wife last spring, but I think the wedding invitation only arrived in the past couple of weeks while I’ve been gone.”

Del leaned forward. “How does Thea feel about it?”

“She’s not going to the wedding, if that’s what you mean.”

“Did she say why?”

Gavin tried to recall that part of the conversation from last night. “She said there’s no point because he’s just going to cheat on this one and leave her too.”

The guys stared at him.

He blinked. “What?”

Mack snorted. “You are some kind of stupid.”

“You think her dad’s wedding has something to do with Thea letting me move home?”

Del smacked the back of his head. “No, dumbass. It has something to do with her kicking you out in the first place.”

Gavin opened his mouth to protest but then shut it. He couldn’t argue without revealing the embarrassing truth about what actually led to him leaving.

“And not wanting you to say I love you?” Yan continued. “Of course she doesn’t trust those words, Gavin. When has she ever been shown that love is reliable, that it can last, that it can be trusted?”

“Words don’t matter, Gavin,” Mack said, uncharacteristically sober. “Actions do. And if she’s skittish from her childhood, then it doesn’t matter how many times you say the words to her. You made her doubt your love when you left.”

“Just like her father,” Del said pointedly.

“She kicked me out,” Gavin growled.

“Maybe it was a test,” Yan said.

Gavin swiveled his head to stare at his teammate. “A test,” he repeated.

“Maybe she wanted to see what you would do if she told you to leave. Would you fight for her, or would you just walk away? You walked away, so . . .”

Gavin’s breakfast began to rot in his stomach.

Mack snorted. “There it is. There’s the lightbulb.”

He was too sick to his stomach to take the bait. Love isn’t enough. Was Irena right?

“Look,” Malcolm said calmly, “we never said this was going to be easy. In fact, you need to be prepared for Thea to make this as hard as possible. She’s going to resist you at every step at first.”

“She already is.”

“Which is why you’d better have done some more reading,” Del said.

He sighed. “I read some last night.”

“And?” Del prodded. “Anything stand out to you?”

Gavin glanced around the restaurant. He gave a one-shouldered shrug. “I don’t know. Maybe.”

“Read it to us.”

“Here?”

“Unless you want to wait until Easter to save your marriage,” Yan said.

Gavin looked around again. A few people were still staring, but most of the other diners were absorbed in their own meals and conversations. Gavin dug into his coat pocket and pulled out the book. He splayed his hand wide on the cover so no one could see what it was.

Flipping to his current page, he read the paragraph he’d underlined last night. “‘More than anything, she feared that she would awaken some morning and realize her entire life had passed her by,’” he read. “‘That at some point, she had become less than. Less than w-w-what she used to imagine. Less than w-wh-what she used to hope for. Nothing more than a silent accessory to a man. Nothing more than her own mother, a passive face at a glittering table.’”

Gavin set the book down and waited for something smart-assy from Mack. Instead, he heard silence. Glancing up, he found all of them staring. “What?”

“You tell us, bro,” Del said. “Why did that stand out to you?”

Gavin felt hot. He shouldn’t have read it out loud. He should have chosen some stupid-ass, meaningless paragraph just to satisfy them. He knew exactly why it stood out to him. Because at some point during their three-year marriage, Thea had changed into her own version of less than. Gone was the carefree, impulsive woman he’d fallen in love with—the woman who would wake up at all hours of the night to paint, the woman who once kissed him so passionately in his car that they’d ended up in his back seat down a dark road, the woman who once handcuffed herself to a bulldozer to protest the removal of a century-old tree, the woman who picked fights with him just for the makeup sex.

And the worst part was, he’d been so preoccupied with his career that he hadn’t noticed the changes in her until it was too late. Until the night it happened, when it had been so long since they’d picked a meaningless fight with each other that the real one was too big to come back from. “Y’all need anything else?” The waitress appeared out of nowhere. Gavin jumped in his chair. The book fumbled in his hands and fell, cover up, in his eggs.

“Oh, I love that author,” the waitress gushed.

Gavin grabbed the book, wiped it with a napkin, and started to stammer. “Present for my w-w-wife,” he said.

The waitress raised a single eyebrow and smacked down the check. “Whatever floats your boat, honey. I won’t tell.”

She sauntered off, and Gavin dropped his elbows on the table. He dragged his fingers through his hair and stared at the cover of the book. Lord Smugness was too busy ogling Irena’s cleavage to offer advice.

But maybe he already had.

“And if I refuse to do your bidding?”

He took a deep breath and played his last card . . .

Gavin surged to his feet. Lord Boob Man wasn’t the only one with another card to play. He dropped thirty bucks on the table and shrugged on his coat.

“Dude, where are you going?” Mack said.

“To up the ante.”

“Excuse me?” Del said.

“I have some conditions of my own.”

“Hey!” Mack yelled as he stormed off. “Can I have the rest of your bacon?”

CHAPTER NINE

The street outside the girls’ school was at a dead stop in a pre-holiday traffic jam. Even with the extra twenty minutes Thea had built in for just that reason, she was still barely on time when she finally found a parking spot and jogged inside to pick up the girls. Preschoolers had to be picked up inside, rather than by the bus loop like older kids. And on days like this, it seemed nearly every kid in school was being picked up instead of taking the bus home.

Thea’s heart smiled, as it always did, at the sight of the girls sitting side by side on the bench next to the main office. Their little mouths moved at a rapid pace, chattering to each other about something Thea couldn’t hear over the shouts of other children, the conversations of other parents, and the general after-school chaos that vibrated through the hallways. Their connection was so strong—best friends already. They would always have each other, even if the rest of the world let them down.

After waiting to be buzzed in to the locked inner door by the school secretary, Thea strode in with a thank-you wave to the office staff. The girls jumped up at the sight of her, both extending colored-paper crafts.

“We made turkeys,” Amelia said.

“Nice job!” Thea adjusted Ava’s backpack, which had slipped down to her elbows. “Ready to go home?”

They ran ahead without answering. Thea reminded them to walk but couldn’t fault them their excitement. Kids were always squirrely the day before a holiday break. The thrill and anticipation of a holiday, of a day off, of a fun family tradition, made it hard to sit still.

Of course, it didn’t take long for Thea and Liv to realize their holidays looked a lot different than other kids’ in their classes. They’d spent one Thanksgiving hunched over TV dinners because their mother had taken the passive-aggressive tactic of refusing to cook a holiday meal to punish their father for some thing or another. Her parents never actually fought. They preferred the tense prison of silence.

Thea caught up with the girls on the sidewalk and took each of their hands. Their fingers were cold in hers, and Thea wished she’d thought to send gloves with the girls that morning. It was unseasonably chilly for this part of Tennessee.

“So guess what?” she said, unlocking her Subaru in the parking lot.

“What?” Ava asked, waiting to climb into her booster seat.

Thea bent through the back door to help her with the harness before rounding to the other side to repeat the process with Amelia. Then she looked at both girls with as big a smile as she could muster.

“There’s a surprise waiting for you at home,” she said.

“What is it?” Amelia asked breathlessly.

“Is it a kitten?” Ava asked.

“Nope, not a kitten.” Thea shut Amelia’s door and went around to the driver’s side. As soon as she got in, the girls picked up the guessing game again.

“Is it a hedgehog?” Amelia asked.

“Nope.” Thea started the car and eased out of her parking spot into the slow-moving traffic.