Chapter 4

Ipaced down the long corridor at Raleigh Durham International Airport, clutching my phone tightly to my ear as it rang, and rang, and rang some more, trying very hard not to scream when it clicked over to voicemail.

"Abby," I said, fear lacing every syllable. "It's Hugh. Again. Please call me the second you get this. I got a call from the hospital, and I… I just need to know you're okay. Please be okay."

I ended the call and immediately sent her a text as well.

Hugh

If I don't hear from you soon I'm going to assume that the hospital was downplaying your injuries. Call me!

Cursing under my breath, I called her fiancé.

As soon as Dex answered, I asked, "Have you heard anything?"

"No." His voice was strained. "The hospital won't tell me anything since we're not married yet. They'll only talk to family. Sandy—she's the high school principal—said the group was on their way home from the Thanksgiving parade when they ran into some bad weather. The bus driver lost control and hit a guardrail. All the students, the other teacher chaperones, and the driver are fine. But I guess when the bus crashed, Abby was leaning out of her seat to talk to the driver and was…" His voice broke a little. "Thrown."

I shoved a hand through my hair and resumed pacing. "They said her injuries aren't life-threatening, she's stable with a good prognosis, and the doctor will reach out with more information when he's able. The hospital is slammed with accidents caused by the weather. I tried calling Abby directly, but she's not picking up or responding to my texts."

"Mine either," Dex said. "That's what has me more worried than anything. When she's not teaching, Abby's always glued to her phone."

"I'm at the airport in Raleigh, trying to catch a flight." I glanced back at the gate. The boarding screen still showed no standby seats available for the flight to Newark. "So far, no luck."

"Same. That damn winter storm snarled everything up, and they've got nothing going out of Detroit for at least another day. I'm kicking myself that I didn't just stay home or insist she come out here with me. But she was worried about the ticket costs with the wedding, and she had a chance to make a little money by being a chaperone, so—" He cut himself off with a sigh. "I just want to know that she's okay." His voice wobbled, and I could hear his desperation.

It was obvious how much he loved Abby and how worried he was. He was a good man who'd be a great husband, and I was happy for them… if slightly jealous at how easily love seemed to come to them.

Ironically, I'd introduced the pair. I'd been in a serious relationship—or what I'd thought was a serious relationship—with Dex's brother Jared at the time, and the way Dex and Jared's huge, loving family had immediately opened their arms to Abby and me had felt like a dream come true. That was partly why it had taken me longer than it should have to realize Jared didn't have the same dream. Two years into our relationship, he'd admitted he didn't plan to settle down with one person long-term, ever. Information that would have been a whole lot more useful before I'd begun planning my future around him.

Water under the bridge, I reminded myself. Abby got her happily ever after, and that meant the world to me. Even if I was still searching for mine.

I took a deep breath and tried to pull it together for Dex's sake. "Abby's going to be okay," I told him, trying to believe the words myself. "She's got too many college recs to write for her students to stay stuck in a hospital for long."

He snorted. "That's true. No way she'd let those kids down."

"Never," I agreed. "Hopefully, a seat will open up on this flight, and I'll be at the hospital in a few hours. Otherwise, I'll let you know when I hear from the doctor."

I ended the call and blew out a long breath, trying to ward off my panic by grounding myself in my surroundings. Whoever came up with that coping mechanism hadn't spent any time in an airport on Thanksgiving Day.

The boarding gates to my right were half-full at best, thanks to the holiday… except for the gate where the passengers for the flight to Newark were assembled, where every single seat was occupied. A woman in a large hat argued stridently with the gate attendant, possibly about the giant, plastic-wrapped turkey she was carrying like a toddler. The sign next to the gate still showed no availability on the standby list, but that didn't stop an elderly man from complaining loudly that he needed to make it to New York in time for the Black Friday sales. To my left, a young girl attempted to play "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" on a wooden recorder while her little brother ate only the orange MMs out of a bag. Their mother had brilliantly brought a giant pair of noise-canceling headphones and was happily bopping her head to happy mom music of unknown origin.

Without thinking about it, I opened my phone's camera app, ready to capture the scene and send it to Oscar just for the fun of hearing his snarky commentary on the chaos, but I forced myself to stop at the last minute.

You're not doing that with Oscar anymore, remember?

Making the choice to cut down on my communication with Oscar earlier this month had been even harder than I'd expected, which only showed how necessary it was. Somehow, over the past three months, our all-day text conversations had gone from being a fun diversion to a habit and then to an addiction. I'd gone from being surprised and pleased to see his name appear on my notifications to being wildly disappointed when it didn't. Our virtual friendship had become a little too real.

Oscar had drawn clear boundaries back when we'd first embarked on this text friendship experiment. Hell, he'd strung barbed wire at the edge of the friendship cliff and hung an enormous flashing sign that spelled out DO NOT FALL FOR ME.

If he had any idea how close I'd come to taking that plunge over the past few weeks, he'd be horrified.

You are on a mission to find The One,he'd told me in one of his first texts. If I'm in your bed, you'll be too busy to keep looking for him. But the truth was, having Oscar in my phone wasn't any safer. Not when he was so fucking gorgeous in his mirror selfies with Frank, so wry and funny in every story he told, so sweet beneath his hedgehog prickles. Not when he was so entirely averse to the very idea of romance that falling for him would definitely, no question, mean I was falling alone.

Four dates and he's already taking you home to meet the parents? Oscar had demanded when I'd told him I was invited to North Carolina. I don't like it. What's his angle? Is he pregnant? Are you the father? I refuse to attend your shotgun wedding.

It's romantic, I'd insisted, instinctive annoyance at Oscar's attitude making me ignore all my own misgivings about the situation, all the red flags flapping in the breeze.

It's desperate,he'd countered.

But, I'd pressed, still pretending to myself that we were talking about the guy I was dating and not about Oscar himself, haven't you ever just known from the very beginning that someone was different? Special? And that you'd do whatever it took to be with them?

The dots by Oscar's name had swirled for a long time—long enough for my racing heart to pound out the first few notes of a wedding march—and then they'd stopped.

No, he'd written.

And that had been that.

I'd only sent him a handful of texts since then, none at all in the last few days, and the fact that Oscar had been absolutely correct about the North Carolina trip being a shitshow from the moment we'd arrived yesterday had only reinforced my decision. I needed to focus on finding a guy with actual romantic potential, on growing my photography business and my social media followers, on repairing things in my own life, like?—

My phone buzzed with a text from Oscar, as if I'd conjured it into existence. My heart jolted, and I immediately clicked on it. It was a photo of Frank in a tiny black top hat, facing off against a pine cone decorated as a turkey.

Oscar

I think Frank finally met his soulmate. Who knew he was into the whole strong, silent type?

Oscar

Happy Thanksgiving, Hugh.

It was his use of my name that struck me hardest. It felt so… personal. Intimate somehow. I scrolled back to our last exchange, except it hadn't even been an exchange at all. He'd texted a picture of himself in a heather-gray T-shirt, with Frank curled up in a ball on his shoulder. I'd saved the image but forced myself not to reply. I hadn't texted him in days, and still he'd reached out to wish me a happy Thanksgiving.

Suddenly, I didn't just want him. I needed him. I was stranded alone in North Carolina with my sister hurt in New Jersey, and I needed someone familiar to keep me from spiraling and imagining the worst-case scenarios.

Before I could talk myself out of it, I clicked the phone icon at the top of the text chain.

Oscar's voice, when he answered seconds later, was smooth and cultured and achingly familiar, despite our time apart. "Hugh? To what do I owe the pleasure?"

After all these months without talking to him, his voice was like a hit of a very powerful drug. I felt a kind of frantic energy churning through my blood.

"Hi. Hey. I, uh, I know calling is breaking the rules…"

"What's wrong?" he asked immediately.

I opened my mouth, then shut it, not quite sure how to respond to that. Had we really spent enough time texting for him to know something was wrong?

Through the phone, I heard china clink, then someone tittered loudly. "Hang on," Oscar muttered. After murmuring something I couldn't hear, he came back, this time with faint traffic noises in the background. I remembered vaguely he was spending the holiday weekend in the city with his mom, but I was hazy on the details. Oscar rarely discussed his family. "Sorry about that. What's going on?"

"No, I'm the one who's sorry," I began. "You must be at dinner. I didn't even think?—"

I broke off in frustration when the airport PA system began announcing the last call for a flight.

"Where are you?" Oscar demanded. "What's happening?"

"I'm in Raleigh, remember? At the airport. Trying to get home as soon as possible."

When Oscar spoke again, his voice was lower and more dangerous than I'd ever heard it. "Where's J-bro? What did he do?"

"Who?"

"Your… date. The one you were spending the weekend with."

"You mean Perry?"

Oscar paused. "Perry? Are you sure?"

I couldn't hold back a soft snort. "Pretty sure, yeah. That's what his ex-boyfriend was moaning when I caught Perry going down on him in his mother's pantry before breakfast."

"Oh, babe," Oscar sighed. "Fuck. No wonder you're upset."

I shut my eyes at the endearment. Not a single part of me believed he'd said it in anything other than a friendly way, but still, the sweetness of that single syllable, the caring and understanding in it, slid through me like warm whiskey. God, I'd missed that. I'd missed him.

"I don't care about Perry," I said, surprised to realize it was true. "I'm upset because… you remember my sister, Abby?"

"Yes, of course."

"She's been in an accident. She's at Beth Israel in Newark. All they'll tell me is that she's stable and she's going to be okay, but I still haven't talked to her yet, and all the damn flights out of this place are full for some reason, and I can't get home to see her for myself, and I'm just—" My breath hitched. "I'm worried."

There was a pause on the other end, and I immediately began to second-guess myself. Just because Oscar was important enough to me to be the person I wanted to talk to in a crisis didn't mean I was that important to him. He had his own life. His friends. His… hookups.

And I was interrupting.

"I'm sorry, I shouldn't have?—"

"I'm sending a plane."

I blinked, completely stunned. I wasn't even sure what to say to that. Then, a horrifying thought entered my head. "That's not why I called you," I said, feeling slightly panicky that he might think that's why I'd reached out to him in the first place.

"I know," he said simply.

But did he? Given his wealth, he had to have scores of men throwing themselves at him just for his money. I didn't want him to think of me the way. "I'm serious, Oscar. I appreciate your offer, I do, but you know I can't accept that."

He tsked dismissively. "You can and you will."

"Oscar—"

"It's Abby, Hugh." His voice grew gentler. "She means everything to you, and she needs you, and you need to know she's okay. Let me help."

My throat grew tight, my eyes suddenly blurring. Oscar had a reputation as a playboy, as an eccentric, as a man about town. But to me, this seemed like the real Oscar: someone caring with a big generous heart. He knew that Abby was all I had left in the world.

Before I had a chance to respond, he said, "Ah, here we are. Lesya has it all sorted. Apparently, one of my pilots has a colleague in your area who can bring you up on a reciprocal flight. You're to meet him in General Aviation."

I stared at the crowd massing around the gate for the Newark flight. The TV screen over the desk still showed no availability for standby. Getting back home would be impossible unless I took Oscar up on his offer.

"Uh… okay. I'm headed there now."

He let out a soft breath, like he'd been worried I would turn him down. "Good. Text me when you make it, okay? I like to know you're safe."

"Thank you," I told him.

He made another dismissive noise.

"No, I mean it. Thank you," I repeated. I wasn't sure I could say it enough. "Truly. Thank you."

"You're truly welcome?—"

"And I'm sorry."

"For what?" Oscar seemed genuinely baffled.

"Because I…" Couldn't get over my own disappointment, so like a shitty, selfish friend, I made you pay the price. "Because I didn't wish you a happy Thanksgiving, and I should have. So Happy Thanksgiving, Oscar. Your friendship is something I'm very grateful for."

"Uh. Okay. I… I value our friendship too?"

Oscar sounded so uncharacteristically befuddled I chuckled. "Of course you do. Because I've changed your outlook on life through the power of Shonda Rhimes."

He snorted. "I assure you, that's not why." He hesitated for a second, then added, "Look, Perry's an asshole if he couldn't see that you're amazing. You're witty, and sexy as fuck, and kind. And even though I might grumble and be concerned about how you just fling yourself into love at the drop of a hat, I… I also think it's very brave to go after what you want. And it's possibly one of my favorite things about you. So." He cleared his throat. "My car's here. See you soon."

He disconnected, and I stared at my phone blankly for a long moment, hoping it would offer some explanation for what had just happened. Then, his last words replayed in my head. What the hell did he mean by see you soon?