Free Forever Loved (The Forever Series) by Deanna Roy Page A

had to go, so I walked.
    I hooked up with a lady or two stateside on the rare occasions I had any extra dough, but not in Tijuana, since I had no way to get there. I could have gotten normal girls for free, but I saw how clingy they got with Mario and some of the other guys. I didn’t want to feel obligated to them, for them to pin any of their hopes on me.
    Actually, I knew when I finally got back to Rosa. Finn’s birthday almost a year later. I hadn’t told anybody I’d gotten to know about my history, hell no. But Rosa I could tell. I couldn’t call her up, as I’d always just showed up at her job or her place. We had no way to contact each other.
    I’d just started at Bud’s and Mario loaned me his Yamaha. I didn’t have a license for it, but that sort of obstacle didn’t stop me in those days.
    When I got to her farmacia well ahead of closing, she was still there behind the counter.
    Seeing her again was like taking a step into my past. I wasn’t the boy I’d been when I first asked her to come up the stairs with me. But looking across those shelves at her, I could experience, for a minute, what it was like to be the old Gavin.
    She’d changed. I remembered that now, puzzle pieces falling together. Softer around the middle. Sadder, too. When she looked up at me, she wasn’t joyful the way she’d been before, but shocked. She glanced anxiously behind her at the man, as if worried he would guess who I was. I didn’t say anything but bought a bottle of perfume, letting my hand linger when she handed me the change. Then I hung out at a bar down the street until the hour came for her to lock up.
    Rosa was reluctant to see me then and wouldn’t go to her apartment. But when we got to the old hotel room, she forced a smile and put on the face that I would grow used to over the years that followed, a pretend sort of happy.
    If she’d had a baby in that time I was gone, I wouldn’t have even known.
    If it had been mine, she would have had no way to contact me about it until I showed back up again.
    Damn it. Why hadn’t she told me when I came back? We could have sorted this out.
    The phone felt cold in my hands. When I got back to Bud’s, I didn’t bother going inside. I knew exactly where I had to go.
    I fired up the Harley and headed for Interstate 5 and the border.

10: Corabelle

    My father never missed a thing.
    “You were expecting him, weren’t you?” he said, stretched out in Gavin’s chair in the corner.
    Mom sorted through their bags from the museum purchases. “Never mind that, dear. Look, I got you some things to set around the room.” She unpacked a handblown glass bowl swirled with blue and yellow and set it on the side table with the flowers. “That’s better.”
    I gritted my teeth. “Thank you.”
    Dad yawned. “Did the doctor say if you were leaving today?”
    I glanced at the clock. Two in the afternoon. “He hasn’t been by. Another staff member came in and seemed to indicate I wouldn’t be here much longer.” I picked at the sheet across my lap. Gavin’s last two texts were cryptic and short, just “At work” and “I’ll get there when I can.”
    “Was it a nurse?” Mom asked.
    My hackles rose. “No, just somebody from the hospital.”
    “Maybe we could page the doctor.” She arranged herself on a chair, tugging her knitting from a bag. Great, she was going to settle in. Maybe I could walk the halls a bit and try to place a call. Except I didn’t have anything but this breezy hospital gown. And Gavin had my keys. I was stuck.
    “He’s probably got more pressing patients than me,” I said.
    “Then they should give up your bed, send you home,” Dad said.
    The gray-mop-headed nurse popped in. “Time for a temperature check.”
    Mom stood up. “Do we know when Corabelle gets to go home?”
    The woman clicked on her iPad. “The doctor should be by soon. He’ll decide.” She sheathed a thermometer and slid it into my mouth.
    We all waited for it to beep, as if