Page 49 of Agony of Our Regret

“That’s not true,” Gavin jumped in.

Vince straightened and looked over my shoulder at him. “It is.”

“No, we’ve all made mistakes. I have. I’ve hurt you. I’ve hurt Ave. I’ve hurt the others.”

“But not as much as me,” Vince argued.

“There isn’t a point system. No one is keeping track but you. The only thing that matters now is what you want. You know what Ave wants. I can’t speak for the others, but I want you here. I’ve missed you. I miss my brother. It’s going to take a lot of time and effort, and I don’t think we’ll ever get back to what we once were.”

Vince froze. “You don’t?”

“No, we can’t go back.Butwe can build something better, something stronger, deeper. We can be a family.”

How was he saying exactly what I felt? I hadn’t told him or Luca, or even admitted it to myself, that I wanted us all back together. But he knew.

Vince shook his head. “I don’t deserve––”

“You do. Do the work to fix that,” Gavin pressed. “Go to therapy. Reflect. Work on yourself. Take the time to become the man Ave and I and the others know you can be, know you are. We all love you, but you can’t be a part of this if you don’t learn to love yourself.”

I wanted to jump up and kiss him for his perfect words. I couldn’t have said it better, and I was glad I didn’t try. Gavin saying it meant so much more. Vince grew teary, but he blinked the emotion away and nodded.

“I’ll do it.”

Gavin stood and hugged both of us. “Good, because I’ve missed the hell out of you, and I know our girl has too.”

Ourgirl.

I nearly burst from the single word. I wanted it to be true more than anything in the world, but it wasn’t just up to me. He was right. All six of us had a lot of work to do to get to a place where we could be together happy and healthy.

ELEVEN

I wasn’t expectingto see Gavin in the meeting room at the end of the day. Wes, Noah’s dad, added the event to my calendar and I only noticed Michael, Sky’s dad, as the other attendee.

“Hi.” I offered a small smile and sat at the conference table.

The door opened and I spun in the chair to see Luca frowning. He sat next to me and squeezed my thigh.

I stared back at him, “You were supposed to be on a mission.”

He nodded and looked at Wes, “I’m assuming that’s what this meeting is about?”

“Yes.” Wes waved to Michael. “We were notified twenty-minutes before your team was supposed to leave the mission was compromised.”

I leaned forward, “What does that mean?”

“It wasn’t safe to send out our members,” Michael explained. “A member on Gavin’s team realized the mission details had been accessed by an unauthorized user. That was enough for us to cancel.”

“We don’t know who accessed it?” Gavin asked. “Was it from inside our network?”

“That is what we’re still digging into.” Wes finally sat.

“Okay.” I glanced around the table as the nervous ball in my stomach grew. “Why are we here?”

It couldn’t be good. That was the only thing I was certain of.

“With the potential of your accident being a targeted attack,” Wes began, but I put up my hand.

“What?” I looked between Gavin and Luca. “You said you had suspicions, but I haven’t heard anything about it in weeks.”

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