You make it run.”
Gavin barely managed a shrug, as if lifting his shoulders was too much effort.
“Tell us. Just spit out what’s going to hit the press so we can deal with it.” Whatever he was about to confess had been a festering wound poisoning his oldest brother for years.
Dropping his elbows to his knees, Gavin hunched over and stared at the floor. “I did kill Nikki, but worse, I killed my own child.”
Dex slumped into his chair, the truth hitting him. Compassion welled up. He might not have been raised with Gavin, but Dex knew him. Guilt about Dex’s rough childhood had brought Gavin to his unknown brother’s door in the first place. Thinking that he’d been even a tiny bit responsible for his own child’s death would crush him.
Gavin locked stares with Slade, then Dex. Clearly, he was braced, waiting for condemnation, rejection. Hatred.
Dex reached out and put a hand on his. He said the words he’d never said before—to either of them. “I love you, brother. We’ll get through this.”
* * * *
Gavin pulled his hand back. Of all the things Dex could have had said, this shocked him most. He turned to Slade and saw the same look of concern and compassion on his face. No anger. No horror or exclusion. They simply waited for him to tell the story.
“Did you hear what I said?” he asked incredulously.
Slade nodded. “Yes. I heard. I’m going to tell you the same thing Dex said. I love you, and I’m here for you. Just get it all out so we can deal.”
Their faces were grim, but they hadn’t walked out on him. They’d shown solidarity, offered support. Fuck. His brothers had told him that they loved him.
Dex sent him a solemn stare. “I take it Nikki was pregnant when she decided to down a bunch of pills. How is that your fault, Gavin?”
“Let me enlighten you.” He hated the nasty edge to his words.
Gavin had known this would be hard, but their seeming acceptance made it harder. What if they heard the details and decided that he was a murdering prick after all? He scrubbed his raw eyes with the heels of his hands. Then they would finally understand. None of that changed the fact he owed them the truth before the press splashed it all over the front page.
“Nikki and I had a volatile relationship, as you know. It was interesting at first. A nice diversion from all the other shit in my life. We had some hot sex. She loved to fuck, and I enjoyed obliging her. For a while, it was worth all the drama. Then she got demanding. I found myself in this constant state of making up and breaking up with her. I have to admit, the more we fought, the hotter the sex became. It was damn good. And when the former Black Oak board was trying to eat me alive, I needed the release.” He shrugged. “I got addicted to the sex and the anger. They made me forget work for a while. Our parents were dead. We didn’t have a lot of other family. You two were in college, far away…so Nikki became a fixture in my life. I never planned to marry her. I knew she was bad for me.”
“But she was there and we weren’t.” Guilt ravaged Slade’s face. He shook his head, his shoulders slumped.
“Hey, you two had to go to school,” Gavin rebuked. The last thing he needed was Slade or Dex feeling responsible. “This fiasco was all my doing. I was an adult.”
“You were twenty-two, Gavin,” Dex growled. “Most twenty-two-year-olds are drinking beer and trying to figure out where to get a job. They aren’t dealing with multi-billion-dollar companies and hostile takeovers. They aren’t trying to keep everything together.”
“Stop trying to justify this, Dex. Being young doesn’t absolve me of anything.” The liquor was wearing off. He needed more to get through this, but he felt sure his brothers would object at the moment. After he told them the rest, though, they might decide they didn’t give a damn after all and let him drink himself to death.
“You’re not fucking perfect. Don’t expect yourself to be,” Slade insisted.
“Perfect?” Gavin scoffed even as his stomach threatened to revolt. This was the part he’d dreaded. “Hell, I wasn’t even close. When I decided to break this perverse cycle Nikki and I were in, I told her we were done for good. I made the break clean. I got a new phone. I told the security at the office and the condo to keep her out. She still managed to get my number. And she’d call, leave these long messages begging me to come back because she needed me. Then she told me she was pregnant.”
“Had she ever told you that before?” Slade asked.
“She’d had a couple of scares, even though she claimed she was on the Pill. And I always used condoms with her.”