Perfect Fit (Serendipity's Finest 1)

They sat in silence for a few minutes, until she looked up at him. Reaching out, she touched his hair, running her fingers through the too-long strands in a motherly gesture he remembered from childhood. “You look so much like him, you know.”

He glanced away. He didn’t know. Wasn’t sure he wanted to.

“I’m sorry I didn’t keep any pictures. It was thoughtless of me, but I was young and I didn’t want Simon to think I still held a torch, you know?”

He nodded, not wanting to know the answer to that question either.

“So you want to find him?” his mother asked.

“Want to?” Mike let out a harsh laugh. “No. But I need to.”

“I’ve been in touch with him.”

The words came out so whisper soft he thought he heard wrong.

He whipped his head around and looked at his mother. “Say that again.”

“I’ve been in touch with Rex.”

Disbelief and a sense of betrayal ripped through him. When? How? “I thought he was MIA.”

His mother hung her head. “He was. And then a little while ago, he friended me on Facebook.”

“That’s why you got so upset at that family dinner. All that talk about Facebook and old flames.” He shook his head in disbelief. “What did he want?” Mike asked through clenched teeth.

“He was curious about you,” she whispered.

Pain lodged in his chest. “Too little, too late,” Mike muttered. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I couldn’t! Imagine how Simon would feel if he knew Rex was asking about his family. Especially while he’s in treatment.”

“What about me? What’s your excuse for keeping me in the dark?” he asked through the red haze of anger, hurt, and frustration that clouded his thoughts and his vision.

“This. Your anger at him. Your ambivalence about yourself. You’re so afraid you’re like him—I know you personalized that mess with Tiffany, though heaven knows that girl was a clinging vine. But now you’re home and you’re here…I didn’t want to jeopardize your peace of mind.” She closed her eyes, weariness and strain evident in her face and how she’d hunched her shoulders.

He reached out and pulled her close. “You should have told me,” he said, unable to stay furious at his mother.

“I know. Even Cara said so, but I didn’t listen.”

Mike froze. “Cara knows?”

His mother moaned. “Oh God. I’m sorry. That same night, we were talking about her parents, and I said I understood what it was like to doubt your choices. I didn’t plan on telling her, but I guess I needed someone to talk to because before I knew it, I had. And she said you should know, and I made her swear not to tell you.”

“Okay,” he said, to appease his mother.

Cara knew. He thought she understood him. Thought he could trust her in a way he’d trusted no other woman. Yet she’d sat with him at the judge’s house, listened to him say he needed to find the father he hated, and she’d known his mother was in touch with the man. And still she’d said nothing.

“Michael Marsden, don’t you dare be mad at Cara,” his mother said, shaking his shoulders. “I put her in an awful position.”

“Maybe.” But he was sleeping with the woman, revealing himself to her on all sorts of levels. She should have told him.

“Don’t worry about it,” he told his mother.

“You aren’t upset with her?”

“I’m seeing her for dinner tonight,” he said, evading the question.

“That’s not an answer.” His mother’s voice was stronger now. She’d composed herself and was back to her forceful self.