“Hunter is missing.”
“What do you mean, missing?” Sarah asked.
Joanne had come in right behind Matt, which suddenly lent the situation a heightened level of concern. She was also obviously worried, her normal pasted-on smile for Sarah gone. Matt walked right past Sarah without another word, and straight to the spare bedroom Hunter had been staying in.
“Missing, as in not home when I came to pick him up to bring him over. His bicycle is gone, too,” Joanne said.
It sounded as though Matt were in the bedroom turning everything upside down. Shackles had followed him in the room and yipped for his attention.
“Did you call his friends?” Sarah asked.
“No, sorry, I didn’t think of that. Of course I called! His friend’s parents. Because his friends might want to cover for him. But none of them had seen Hunter.” Joanne’s eyes followed Matt as he came out of the room. “Anything?”
Matt shook his head.
“I’m sorry, but have either of you thought this could be a big misunderstanding?” Sarah wasn’t a parent, but she was well acquainted with her mother, who had overreacted to everything for years.
“It’s not a misunderstanding. He knew he was supposed to come over here today and exactly when I’d be bringing him.”
“Did you look at some of the places where he might hang out?” Sarah asked.
“We went to The Drip and the movie theater. All the fast food places within walking distance,” Matt said. “The high school track.”
“How about the lake?” Sarah asked.
“The lake?” Joanne asked. “Why would he be at the lake?”
Two sets of eyes were trained on Sarah at once. Matt’s always intelligent eyes were curious, attentive. Riveted to hers.
“I-isn’t that one of the places he usually hangs out?” Sarah tried to keep her voice even. Calm.
Hard to do when she felt like the sole target of a firing squad. She’d done nothing wrong, but a twinge of doubt slid down her spine. She should have probably told Matt about the day she’d picked up Hunter and his friend at the lake, but it hadn’t seemed important at the time. Instead it had felt like maybe Hunter had reached out to her, and she’d felt good about that simple act.
“No,” Joanne said, drawing the single word out several syllables.
Matt wasn’t speaking, his eyebrows knit together. He was waiting patiently for more. Sarah heard him loud and clear, even if he hadn’t said a single word. Tell me.
“That’s where I picked him up about a week ago. Him and his friend Megan, when her bike broke down, and they needed a ride home. Matt was on a flight at the time. He said you were at work, Joanne, and he didn’t want to bother you.”
“Megan who? Who the hell is Megan?” Joanne screeched. “There’s a girl? Why do I not know this? Did you hear that, Matt? I wonder if he already has her pregnant.”
“Calm down,” Matt spit out.
His attention became riveted to Sarah, as if they were the only two people in the room. “Why didn’t you tell me?”
“That he was with a girl? They were riding bikes together, just friends, I thought. Innocent and harmless. It didn’t seem important. And...and he asked me not to say anything.” That sounded so incredibly stupid right now. At the time it seemed a small and harmless way to bond with Hunter.
“And you listened to him,” Matt said, a flicker of anger in his eyes.
And as many times as she’d frustrated him and pissed him off, this was different. It was cold.
She fixed her eyes on Matt’s. “I think you know I have a unique experience when it comes to this kind of thing, and that’s not who Hunter is.”
“He’s a teenage boy. Other than that, you don’t know who he is.”
“Okay, maybe I don’t,” Sarah said, voice shaking. Matt was right, of course, and she hated that. “But maybe you don’t know who he is, either. You seemed convinced he’s just like you. He might look like you, but at least give him a chance before you’re judge, jury and executioner.”
But Matt simply shook his head. “He’s my responsibility, Sarah. Not yours. You know better than anyone that I’m doing my damnedest to raise him and keep him from making the huge mistakes I did. I can’t have you interfering and undermining me. Keeping important information from me. Keeping anything from me when it comes to him.”
“Matt, I—”
“No.” He pulled away, dragging a hand through his hair. “I don’t want to hear it right now.”
Joanne cleared her throat. “If you two will excuse me?”
Both Sarah and Matt turned, as if they’d almost forgotten Joanne was still in the room.
“I suggest we take a drive to the lake,” Joanne said from the front door.
Matt wouldn’t look at Sarah, and she felt the darkness of that, as if the sun had set one evening in one sudden and swift moment. Not slipped down the mountain crest slowly, but disappeared in an instant. Within seconds both he and Joanne were out the door to find their son.
Shackles, who had been following Matt from room to room, now barked at the door. Then he sat, and looked from Sarah to the door and back again. As if to ask Are you going after him, or should I?
Ha! “Neither one of us is going after him.”
Shackles whined.
Sarah ignored that and went around the house opening up all the windows. The heat wave finally gone, nights had grown noticeably cooler, and the twilight air drifted through her open windows cooling off both the house and her temper. She’d been in a lot of arguments with Matt, but this one cut the deepest. He’d made it clear that she’d disappointed him. And most of all, that she had no role or place in his life. His biggest job was that of a single father, and he didn’t need her help. Didn’t want or need it.
But worse than all that was the fact that for the first time in a long while, she’d proved she was still too anxious to be loved and wanted. Again. She’d become too needy and let her emotions rule the day. And here she thought she’d been past all that ridiculous neediness and desperation.
But no. Not fully past it. She’d been the one to promise not to fall in love, but she’d done that, too. Fallen for someone who might not be ready to share every facet of his life with her. And now she wanted to hide. Burrow deep under the bedcovers and hibernate. Some bears hibernated in the winter. Why couldn’t she hibernate the rest of this summer? Instead, she blinked the tears out of her eyes and glanced around the room, noting its physical perfection. No more nail holes in the wall. Matt had removed every one of them from her nail gun near-disaster. The walls were painted, windows framed and blinds back up in place.
In the kitchen, the new cabinet doors were up. New flooring: check. Everything in Dad’s house was as perfect as it could ever be, considering perfect was an illusion.
Even if her heart hurt, and despite his obvious flaws, she couldn’t get around the truth. She’d fallen hard for Matt. She loved the way he was so devoted to his son. Loved that he’d do anything for those he loved. Including her, at one time. But real love required tough decisions. Sacrifice. And tonight, they’d both let each other down. What’s more, Matt was right. Life with the father of a teenage boy was never going to be easy or simple. It would mean coming in second all the time. Not like he hadn’t warned her but unfortunately her heart had other ideas.
Sarah’s phone buzzed and her heart jumped, hoping it was Matt calling to apologize. Instead, she recognized the number of the Realtor she’d been speaking to for a while.
“Hi, Jenny.”
“Hey, Sarah. I dropped by the other day to put up the sign like we discussed—”
Sarah had forgotten to call her to postpone the listing for the third time. “I forgot to call you, but I’m going to need a little more time.” Like possibly forever.
“I und
erstand. That’s what your...um, your...the gentleman I ran into outside said.”
“Who, Matt?”
“Yes, Matt Conner! Thank you. That was him. I hardly recognized him and I’ve been trying to place him since that day. We went to school together, you know. A long time ago and I don’t think he knew I was alive. Anyway, I’m not sure what he has to do with any of this but he didn’t seem happy I was there.”
“Why? What did he say?”
“He said you weren’t ready, and he didn’t look too happy.”
Sarah didn’t speak for a moment. The wheels were turning, as she wondered whether she’d disappointed Matt first. He might have been under the mistaken impression that she’d recently talked to Jenny, when that had in fact been weeks ago. The message he’d received loud and clear was that nothing had changed between them. She still had plans to sell and move. But the reality was that she’d been too busy falling in love with him, as she’d promised not to do, to remember a conversation she’d had with her Realtor a while ago. Staying here had nothing to do with the house, and everything to do with Matt.
“Sarah? The listing won’t go up on the MLS for another couple of weeks, but I was in the neighborhood. I brought the sign with me so I figured I’d put it up while I was there.”
“You brought the sign?”
“Yes, we talked about this.”
Sarah needed more time. To talk to Mom. Quit her job in Fort Collins. Sell her condo. Spend more time with her art. Tell Matt she’d accidentally fallen in love with him.
“I promise to call you next week. You have my undying oath that I will never, and I do mean never sell this house through any other real estate agent. Even after your contract expires. Amen and all that.”
“But...” Jenny let the word sit alone, the sentence unfinished.
Sarah took in a deep breath. “There’s a teeny, tiny, miniscule possibility that I might not...ever...sell.”
“I thought you had to sell.”
“Yes, true. There is that. You have that going for you, so don’t give up!”
Jenny sighed. Poor woman had probably heard it all by now. Buyers backing out because the price was too high, sellers backing out because the price was too low. Greed did crazy things to people, and Sarah got that. But this wasn’t about greed. She had a real reason to stay, one grounded in reality. This was her father’s house, dammit, and it was perfect now. She just. Couldn’t. Leave. There was so much to do. She’d come here in hopes of changing her life, but never thought it would mean staying. Starting over. Never thought it would mean falling in love with a man harder than she’d ever fallen before. Which meant that she had a million reasons to stay now, and only one reason to go.
“Sarah...do you happen to know if Matt’s single?” Jenny asked.
“Yes, and he absolutely is not.”
She hung up with Jenny, then dialed Emily. “Hey, can you take me to Fort Collins tonight?”
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
MATT FORCED HIMSELF to drive calmly to the lake, not easy to do with the scene that had just played out. He gripped the steering wheel tighter as Sarah’s words played on repeat in his head.
Give him a chance before you’re judge, jury and executioner.
Had he done that? Maybe he’d been so focused on Hunter not making the same mistakes, that he’d failed to see his son. Whether or not he had, it hurt that Sarah would keep this, hell, anything from him. But then again, she already had one foot out the door. She’d proved that already. It was patently clear that all she wanted from him was physical, and that should work out fine since it was all he could give her. Too bad it wasn’t okay with him. Not okay at all.
As they approached one of the docks, Matt switched his headlights on and chose not to respond to Joanne’s incessant chatter.
But when she took a breath, he used it to say something it had taken far too long to say. “Don’t worry, we’ll find him. It will be okay.”
“I hope so. He’s been so difficult lately. Maybe it’s because of me and Chuck. Maybe I shouldn’t have—”
“No. You deserve to be happy. We both do.”
She didn’t reply and there was a long beat of silence between them.
Matt broke the silence. “I wish I’d been around more, for both of you, and I’m sorry that I wasn’t. Just because you and I were never in love doesn’t mean that we couldn’t have been better friends. For Hunter’s sake.”
“I thought we did pretty good. Better than most.”
“Maybe. You did a great job raising him. None of this is your fault. It’s called...being a teenager.”
“Yeah.” She sighed. “I guess we both know a little about that.”
His gaze scanned the horizon for any kind of figure as he drove slowly and methodically around the lakeside. It wasn’t long before he spied two lone figures walking over the crest of a hill toward them. One tall, the other markedly smaller. He’d recognize his son’s long lean form anywhere. Walking his bicycle, leaning forward like he might against a strong wind.
“Let me handle this,” Matt said to Joanne, then left the truck running and walked toward Hunter. “Everything okay?”
“Megan needs a ride home,” Hunter said.
Megan walked her bicycle, just behind Hunter. She was dressed in jeans and a Warriors T-shirt. Pale blonde hair up in a ponytail. The only exceptional note about her being the fact her face and eyes were fairly puffy as though she’d spent some time crying.
Bad breakup? Bad news? No. That was you, asshole, not your son.
“No problem.” Matt took the bike and picked it up by the handlebars. He took a moment to access the situation from Megan’s perspective. “You okay?”
She glanced up at him and gave him a crooked smile. “Yeah. Thanks for the ride, Mr. Conner. I really appreciate it. It started to get dark and Hunter didn’t want me to stay by myself.”
Matt set the bicycle down, opened up his tailgate and both he and Hunter hauled the ten-speed in. Hunter threw his own in next to it. A few minutes later they had dropped off Megan at her parents’ home in a gated community of Fortune, and Hunter hopped out of the backseat to pull her bicycle out. He walked Megan to her doorstep.
When he climbed back in the truck, a gaping silence filled the inside of Matt’s cab.
Joanne was the first to speak. “Is Megan your girlfriend? I only learned about her today when Sarah told us she’d given you two a ride from the lake.”
“I asked her not to say anything about that.” Hunter scowled.
Matt pulled out onto the quiet residential street. “And she didn’t. Until no one could find you tonight.”
Joanne swiveled in her seat to face Hunter. “What makes you think it’s okay to ask another adult to keep secrets from your own mother?”
“It’s not a secret! But if I’d told you anything about Megan, you would have freaked out. She and I were just friends.”
“Well, you don’t have to be someone’s girlfriend to get pregnant, Mister!”
“Stop.” Matt spoke through a clenched jaw, calling on every one of his steel nerves.
He’d been in far more stressful situations and he could handle this one with his damned hands tied behind his back. That’s what he told himself as he drove Joanne back to her house, along with the fact that Sarah was right and both he and Joanne had overreacted to the situation. They’d done that based on their own unpleasant experiences, without realizing that Hunter would make his own choices. Not that Hunter didn’t owe them an explanation, but Sarah had been correct in that they should have at least heard him out first.
Trust was a two-way street. He could only speak for himself, but he hadn’t trusted Hunter enough.
“I missed my flight,” Joanne went on. “So I hope you’re happy.”
“That doesn’t mea
n Hunter isn’t spending the weekend with me.” Matt spoke firmly.
He was finished being on Joanne’s time schedule. Guilt notwithstanding, he was also done being her on-call babysitter. He was beginning to want a lot more time with Hunter and weekends weren’t going to be enough.
Joanne didn’t speak for a long moment, only slid him a surprised look.
When Matt parked in front of her home, she hopped out of the truck and opened the passenger door for Hunter. “Let’s go inside and talk.”
Matt didn’t say a word. He simply stared straight ahead and waited for Hunter to make the call. He found he would be okay with either outcome, but Hunter had to know that he had options. Two parents who were there for him full time. Not one full-time and one part-time parent. Not one who stood by happy to take whatever scraps Hunter would give him of his time. Matt hoped he’d proved that he wanted to share his life with Hunter.
Hunter didn’t move and his eyes shifted between Matt and Joanne.
It killed Matt to see Hunter so obviously torn, but Matt wasn’t willing to make it easy for either one of them anymore. He wasn’t dropping back or out or running any longer. It would have to be up to Hunter to decide.
“I promise to listen this time,” Joanne said quietly from the curb. “Remember I told you that we needed to work on our communication? This is what I meant. If you’ll start being honest with me, I’ll meet you halfway.”
Pained by the vulnerability in Joanne’s voice, Matt didn’t speak. He would have to trust his son to do the right thing now, too.
“Um,” Hunter finally said. “I guess I’ll go with Mom tonight and I’ll see you tomorrow, Dad.”
“Sounds good. See you tomorrow,” Matt said. “Count on it.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
MATT DROVE THE rest of the way to Sarah’s house and it wasn’t until he pulled onto her street that he realized he’d forgotten all about dinner. The cold pizza sat in the backseat of his truck, untouched.
Sarah.
One more person he hadn’t trusted enough. Oh yeah, this was bad. So bad.
Airman to the Rescue Page 23
