Page 59 of Hold

He nodded. “I’m a cost estimator. Once I… got my head sorted out and really sat down to think about what I could do to get back here, I realized that most of my work experience—”

Thea snorted. She couldn’t help it.

Gabe acknowledged the slam. “When I had it,” he agreed, “but I was working on costs all the time. I took more classes, and my cousin took me on at his company so I could learn the rest. Then I called up Sean and begged him to take me back.”

Sean, the cousin Ben remembered, had gained his green card years ago and was a successful contractor. He’d been the source of most of Gabe’s jobs but had had his own generosity rewarded by Gabe’s late starts and mysterious disappearances.

“Sean is a saint,” Thea said, which they’d both said often back then.

“Sure and he is,” Gabe said. “But this time I came with money, and he’s given me the tiniest little piece of the company.” He put his finger and thumb about a millimeter apart. “I’m here. I’m invested. I’m not going away.”

“You’re not stayinghere,” she said.

“I know, pet,” he said. Thea wanted to find a patronizing tone in him, but there was nothing. No self-pity, no excuses, no slick storyline to persuade her. Just those light blue-gray eyes she’d once believed could see to her very core.

“All I’m asking,” he said, eyes widening, “is for the chance to talk. And maybe a cup of tea and a bite to eat?”

Thea turned her back on him and pulled the kettle to the front of the stove. She’d remembered that he drank tea at any hour of the day or night and despised microwaved water. So she’d dutifully taken the kettle out of the back of a cupboard where she’d thrown it after he’d left, and washed the dust off it, ready for just this request.

Jake scowled when it became clear his father really was staying for dinner, but he was too hungry to leave the room, and they were soon eating the baked ziti she’d made. It was comfort food for her and the boys, and Gabe also loved it. He ate about half a loaf of Italian bread with it and slathered Benji’s slice with so much butter, Benji’s eyes widened.

Thea thought fleetingly of kneeling down in the cramped bathroom space, getting told off by Liam for putting too much adhesive on the back of the tile.I should have jumped him then.

“I can swim to the pontoon now!” Benji was saying about his day camp.

“I’ll bet you’re a fish,” Gabe said, which made Benji preen. “Have you been playing much basketball?” he asked Jake.

Jake scowled. Again. “Nope,” he said. “I quit.” He said it with such relish that Thea knew, if she hadn’t already guessed, that this was precisely the reason he’d left the team.

“Ah, no, Jakey, really?”

“And it’s not Jakey, Da… Dad. Jakey was a kid you left the country to get away from.” Jake dropped his fork with a clatter and looked down and away from all of them, furious with himself for showing that he did, after all, care.

“Ah, Jacob, you’ve got the right of it there.” Gabe dared to put a hand on Jake’s forearm. Jake didn’t remove it, but he didn’t lift his head either. “But I wasn’t trying to get away fromyou.” He leaned back. His eyes met Thea’s, and he gave her the potato famine look she had to steel herself against. “I think I was running away from me.”

Jake threw off his arm, and Thea said, with a twist of sarcasm, “‘It’s not you, it’s me.’”

Gabe laughed at his own words, and Thea did too, hearing the very words she’d used on Gabe. “I know what it sounds like.”

He held Thea’s eyes, and a tumbling rush of emotions poured over her, feelings she thought she was immune to hope and pain and faith and disappointment and, worst of all, an echo of love.

“If any of you,” Gabe said, but he was talking to her, “have any thought in your heads that you did anything to make me the biggest eejit on the continent, you shouldn’t. If it takes me the rest of my life to tell you I’ve changed, I’ll do it. Swear on the Holy Bible, I will.”

He’d used that phrase endless times before, and Thea was grateful for the reminder. “Finish your dinner,” she said. “You can get to the swearing and promising later.”

Gabe looked disappointed, then repentant. Thea began getting mad at him again, which was tiring. She’d forgotten her wine.

“Jake,” Gabe began again. “What are you doing with your summer?”

Jake shrugged. “Hanging out.” So he wasn’t going to mention his job.

“Who with? Anyone from the team?”

Thea tried not to look as though she was listening. She was curious who Jake hung out with on his long absences from home too. It was one of those things she’d been meaning to follow up with him on, but she’d been too busy to do it.

“No.” Jake took a gigantic bite of bread, so his next words were muffled.

“Who?” Thea said, forgetting herself.