My heart speeds up, from a rhythmic beat to a trot. “Military. Angry man. Powers of persuasion…” I swallow. “Oh dear.”
He laughs. “I found out why I was shipped off in the middle of the night. Turns out, Maria had gotten pregnant.”
I gasp, loud enough that other diners look over. “What?!”
“Mm. Maria hadn’t been feeling great in the days leading up to my final night in town. I guess she discovered her pregnancy that evening while I was waiting for her to call. Her parents told my parents, my parents went ballistic and sent me away, and while I was gone, Maria herself disappeared.”
“That’s so horrible. So…” I do the math in my head. “You said you didn’t find this out until you’d finished the military. So you were a dad for years, and you didn’t know it?”
“Right. My child would have been nearly fifteen before I was even made aware of their existence. But even then, I couldn’t find Maria. I just knew she was out there somewhere, living her life and raising our child. And in her mind, I’d probably run out on her. Deserted her like a coward.”
“But you didn’t! You were sent away.”
“I know that.” He sits back when our server brings a basket of bread and sets it down where the candle was when we arrived.
“Are we ready to order entrées?” she asks.
“Yep.” Jason grabs the last of his wine and tosses it back like a shot. “And another glass of this, please. Tonight might get messy.”
Luke
The Inevitable Blow-Up. We All Knew It Was Coming
“Hi, you’ve reached Allyson Moore. I can’t get to the phone right now, but if you leave a message, I’ll call you back as soon as I can.”
Beep.
I sit on the end of my bed with a wet towel slung over my shoulders, and sigh. “Hey, Ally. This is the…” I look at the wall, like that’ll somehow help me count. “I don’t know. The fourth… maybe the fifth time I’ve called tonight. Um… I’m trying really hard not to be that guy. The crazy, loud, overreacting-boyfriend-type, since we both know you’re not into that. But listen, I’m getting a little worried, okay? You said we could hang out tonight, but now there’s that big storm, and you’re AWOL. It’s stressing me out. If you’re tired or whatever and just don’t wanna hang, that’s cool. I mean,” Don’t say it, Luke. Don’t fucking say it. “I’m still gonna be pissed about it. I’ll sulk for a while and try to change your mind.” I said it. “But let me know anyway so I don’t have to worry.
“I’m at my apartment right now, so if you get this, feel free to come on over. I’m gonna hang for a little longer, but if I don’t get word from you soon, I’m probably gonna have to come looking. It’s storming out there, Ally. Big storm. So I’m starting to panic that you’ve slid off the road or something. I just…” I flex my hand in front of me. My forearm bulges, the veins grow bigger. “Come to me, please. Or at the very least, text and say you’re safe.” Then I sigh and say the words she refuses to return. “I love you. A lot. Let me know you’re safe.”
I bring the phone away from my ear and end the call, then checking for the hundredth time in the last two hours that my phone is not set on silent, I place it on my bed and groan. My stomach hurts, and that’s not something I’ve ever really known before. I don’t do anxiety, and I don’t do worry. But Ally has both coursing through my veins.
“Still nothing?” Emma stands at the doorway in jeans and an oversized gym hoodie that stretches halfway down her thighs. The hoodie belongs to her dad, or Rob, or hell, maybe me. But she wears it like she’s not ashamed of stealing it.
“Nothing,” I answer. “And I feel like a total punk for worrying.”
Snorting, she folds her arms and studies me with a tilted head. “It must suck to be Luke Hart, the eternal doesn’t-give-a-fuck bachelor… and now you’re all tied up over a single girl.”
“Are you trying to be a bitch?” I lift a brow and meet her eyes. “Or does it just come naturally to you?”
“Aww, are you trying to hurt my feelings?” Laughing, she meanders into my room and parks her butt right beside mine on the bed. Our thighs touch, and wrapping her arms around mine, she presses her cheek to my shoulder. “I’m not trying to be a bitch, Lukey. Promise.”
“I’m worried,” I admit, “but if I go out there looking for her, then I become the jealous boyfriend who is checking up on her. And we all know how that ends, right? I get kicked in the nuts. I lose.”
“So how about you come into the living room and watch a little TV? It’s only…” She looks at my phone and grits her teeth. “Um… ten o’clock. I mean, that’s still pretty early, really. You and Ally have gone nights before where you haven’t called or texted, right?”
“Right, but that’s because we made those plans,” I insist. “Like, Ally would tell me she’s having an early night, so we’d just say goodnight at that point, and that was the end of it. Or I’d say I’m gonna be at the gym till late, so we’d say goodnight and make plans to talk the next day.”
Em’s long, blonde hair falls forward as she tries to catch my eye. “So maybe that’s what’s happening here. Maybe she’s having an early night, and—”
“But we made plans to hang out!” I declare. Demand. I fucking vent, to release some of the worry strangling my heart. “We were gonna hang out tonight, and–”
My phone chirps, so loud and demanding that Em and I both jump. But then I dive for it, and frown at the number that flashes on my screen. I don’t know whose number it is, but I accept the call anyway.
“Hello? Hey.” I slam the phone to my ear. “Hello?”
“Luke, honey? It’s Miranda.”
“Miranda? Hey!” A surge of relief washes through my blood, but it only takes a second for that to make way for dread. “Fuck. What’s wrong?”
“Have you heard from Ally, honey?”
“Not since this afternoon.” I bound up from my bed and race to the door, only to stop and spin back. Where am I going? What am I doing? “Have you?”
“I spoke to her at a little past five,” she says. “She told me she was going out to dinner with this guy, and then she texted me with the details just in case, and I quote,” her tone lowers, “she dies and gets chopped up because she was too stupid to live.”
“Are you fuckin’—” I bite down my rage and toss my towel to the floor. I grab a hoodie, my shoes, and bolt through my apartment, dropping down at the kitchen counter to put them on. “Please tell me the name she gave you wasn’t Jason?”
Rob follows me into the kitchen, and right behind him, Emma stops. Their eyes are already sorry, like they know where this is going.
“I’m begging you, Miranda. Tell me she’s not with that guy.”
“She’s with that guy,” she murmurs. “Now, listen,” she cuts in when I bite out a “Fuck!” “I don’t want to cause trouble between you guys. This isn’t a ‘she’s cheating on you’ thing. But rather, she was mostly confident she was safe, but she still felt the need to give me the details. She said she’d only be an hour, then she was going to spend the night with you.”