Chapter 73

73

JASON

I was sitting on the couch, hair still damp from a shower, finishing a bowl of ice cream, when I heard the garage door open. Daisy's head popped up and she immediately trotted to the door, waiting for her favorite human to walk in. I could relate. After a long shift, including three false alarm calls to the elementary school where they'd just had a new HVAC system installed, I was looking forward to spending some time with Zach and hearing about how the last night of tryouts had gone.

What I wasn't prepared for was the absolutely dejected look on Zach's face when he walked in. Head down and shoulders slumped, he barely acknowledged Daisy as she excitedly danced around in circles and licked his fingertips. I set aside the finished bowl of ice cream, crossed over to him, and pulled him into my arms.

"Honey, what's wrong?"

"Sarah cut us off. She wants to set boundaries or something. I don't know. I'm afraid she won't let us see Sean anymore."

Shit . I pulled him over to the couch and sat him down next to me, keeping his hand wrapped in mine. "Start at the beginning."

It took a while because his thoughts were so disjointed, and he kept hopping forward and back, telling the story out of order, but eventually, I was able to piece together what had happened. From what he said, he was right to be concerned about the possibility of Sarah cutting ties, which would be very upsetting indeed. We'd become awfully attached to that family—most especially to Sean—but really, all of them had wormed their way into our hearts. It was hard to wrap my head around the possibility of not having them in our lives anymore.

Still, I thought the best thing we could do right now was to take some time to step back and breathe. Sarah was clearly dealing with a lot, and it was entirely possible that with a little bit of space, she might come around.

"Come on. Let's get ready for bed. We can look at the situation with more clarity tomorrow." I stood and reached out a hand to him.

"I don't know if I'll be able to sleep," he said, sounding so utterly lost it nearly broke my heart. But he took my hand and stood, following me down the hall toward our— his , I reminded myself—bedroom.

He stopped in his tracks, and I turned, eyebrows raised in confusion, until he pulled his phone out of his pocket and I realized he had an incoming call. "It's Sarah," he said, then swiped to answer.

"Have you seen Sean?" Her voice was frantic and loud enough that I could hear her on the other end of the call.

His eyes shot to mine and he put her on speaker. "I dropped him off at your house, then came straight home. Is he not there?"

"I went to check in with the boys before bed, but Rusty said Sean came into their room after tryouts, then went right back out. He said he wanted to grab a snack before hopping in the shower. But he never came back upstairs, and I never saw him come into the kitchen. We searched the house, but when we started looking outside, Rusty noticed Sean's bike is gone. I've been driving around the neighborhood, but I can't find him anywhere." Her voice broke. "I don't know what to do."

"Where are you now?" I asked, jumping into the call.

"I came back home in case maybe he came back here, but there's still no sign of him. He doesn't have a phone. I can't even call him."

"You stay there, I'm going to get in my truck and drive around. And I'll call over to APD and see who's on patrol. Let them know to keep an eye out for him."

"I'll come with you." Zach's eyes were pinched with worry.

"I think it's best if you stay here in case he does manage to bike his way all the way across town."

The doorbell rang, sending Daisy into a tizzy of excitement as she raced to the front door, spinning in circles at the prospect of a visitor.

"Hang on, Sarah. Someone's here," I heard Zach say as I slid past him and made for the door.

Every cell in my body sagged in relief at the sight of the thirteen-year-old boy standing with his bike on the front porch. It must have started raining because he was drenched from head to toe, a puddle of water forming at his feet.

"He's here," I called over my shoulder. "Sean's here."

Even from across the room, I could hear Sarah's exclamation of "Thank God," but I turned my focus back to Sean, letting Zach handle the rest of the conversation with her.

"Hey, bud," I said gently. He was shifting back and forth on his feet like he might turn and make a run for it at any moment. He hadn't even acknowledged Daisy, who was excitedly licking any part of him she could get to. "You wanna come in?"

He shrugged and muttered, "Maybe I shouldn't have come here."

"Sarah's on her way," Zach said, coming up behind me and looking between the two of us. "Why don't you come inside out of the rain?"

The porch was covered, so he wasn't technically standing in the rain, but temperatures had dropped, and I could see shivers running through him.

Making a decision, I stepped out onto the porch and gently took the bike out of Sean's hand, propping it against the side of the house. "Inside you go," I said, nodding toward the entryway where Zach stood.

The boy stepped over the threshold, and I followed, closing the door behind us. Zach led him into the living room, plucking a blanket off the back of a chair and wrapping it around him. We nudged him onto the couch, and he went willingly, though he still hadn't said anything since he'd come in the door. Daisy came over and, with a small whine, climbed onto the couch and attempted to curl up in his lap, though she was too big, so only half of her fit. Sean looked down at her, running his hands through her fur in an almost absent way, still as quiet and subdued as ever.

I made eye contact with Zach, not really knowing where we should go from here. Obviously, I wanted to know what had set him off and why he'd decided to come here, but I wasn't sure if we should wait for Sarah.

The decision was made for us when she burst through the door without knocking. She made a beeline for the couch, sat on the coffee table in front of Sean, and pulled him into her arms. "You scared the shit out of me. What were you thinking, running off like that? And on your bike in the dark? In the rain? "

"It wasn't raining when I left," he muttered. I hadn't spent a lot of time around teenagers, but it was quite possibly the most gloriously stupid thing I'd ever heard one say.

Sarah reared back, glaring daggers at him. "Seriously? That's all you have to say for yourself? That it wasn't raining when you left?!"

He seemed to realize his misstep and sank even farther into the blanket.

"Okay, I think we need to take a moment and calm down. Let's give him some room to breathe."

Sarah's head snapped to Zach, and she rose to her feet. "Are you seriously telling me to calm down? This is your fault." She jabbed a finger at him for emphasis. "This is exactly why I told you we needed to set some boundaries."

"How is this my fault?" Zach fired back, sending the tension in the room skyrocketing. "He biked over here on his own. I had no idea he was even missing until you called!"

"Stop it! Stop yelling!" Sean shouted, bringing everyone in the room to a screeching halt. It was the loudest I'd ever heard him be. "It's not Zach's fault. It's not anybody's fault." Sarah sank back down onto the coffee table, giving Sean her full attention. "I don't want to be a burden anymore. You're working yourself to death, Aunt Sarah. I see how tired you are. I hear you cry sometimes."

"Oh, honey." She leaned forward and took his hand between hers. "I'm sorry you heard that, but that's been going on for a long time. Longer than the time you've been with us."

"But that's the point. It was already hard for you guys before, and now you have me too, and I just make it harder on everyone." Tears were running down his face now. I figured the kid had probably been worrying about this from the moment he moved in with them.

"That's not for you to worry about. I love you, kiddo. I'm figuring it out." She tried to brush his hair off his forehead, but he backed away out of her reach.

"By getting another job? I overheard you guys talking tonight. You're barely home as it is." He swiped at his eyes. "Zach said he wanted to help us, but you won't let him, so I thought maybe I could just come over here and…" His voice trailed off, and his eyes shifted like he'd thought better of what he was going to say. "It was a really dumb idea, but I was already almost here, and it started raining, so I just kept going."

Zach sank onto the couch next to Sean, angling his body toward him. "What were you going to do when you got here? Before you changed your mind?"

Sean blew out a breath, and he suddenly looked much younger than his thirteen years. "I thought maybe I could live here with you guys. Then Aunt Sarah could focus on her own kids, and I'd be out of the way. But then I didn't even know if you wanted kids, especially a kid my age, and I decided it was a dumb idea, but I was already almost here, like I said, so…"

I watched Zach's face as Sean spoke. Watched as his features flickered from surprise to understanding to yearning. He caught my eye and tried to school his features in a neutral expression, but it was too late. I knew he wanted a family. We both did. We'd talked about it several times since the day of the fair. But it was a future dream, something for us to work toward. Never mind that our relationship had escalated quickly and we were basically living together. We still had things to sort through. Work to do on ourselves and our relationship. I'd hoped we'd work toward marriage and then kids eventually, but we still had time for all of that.

Yet, as I watched all of this play out in real-time, I knew the idea had taken root in Zach's mind. And I couldn't deny there was a little piece of me that thought, What if ?

Sarah's reaction to the idea was quite the opposite. In the last ten minutes, she'd gone from worried to mad to compassionate concern, but as Sean had confessed his original intent in coming here, I'd seen a flash of hurt in her eyes, and then she'd gone right over the edge into white-hot fury. She tried to rein it in, to get ahold of herself, likely for Sean's sake, but she wasn't entirely successful, so when she told him through clenched teeth to go wait out in the car, he hopped up to comply.

As soon as the front door was closed, she unleashed her anger on us, though it was mostly directed at Zach. "How dare you! How fucking dare you put that idea into his head?"

"I didn't give him any ideas, I swear. I had no idea he was thinking anything like that." He put his hands in front of him in a gesture meant to placate, but it had absolutely zero effect.

She stood, and Zach did the same, both squaring off, while I stood by, helplessly trying to figure out how to de-escalate the situation. "This is what I was talking about. Blurred boundaries. You've got the kid totally confused."

She got right up in his face. "My sister left him in my care, not yours. She'd never even met you. You have no rights to him. None. In fact"—she turned and looked at me, making sure I was included in whatever she was about to say—"I want no contact from either one of you. I'll get a restraining order if I have to, but both of you just stay away from him. Stay away from all of us!"

She shoved past him and stormed out the door, leaving us staring after her in stunned silence.