Room at the Inn

At the mansion, Carson paused before closing the passenger door. “Thanks for the lift. I’ll call you sometime if this—if everything works out.”

“I’d like that.”

He climbed the back steps and watched the red eyes of Leo’s taillights brighten then disappear as his oldest, best friend pulled out of the driveway.

Probably not the ass, after all. More like his guardian angel.

In the mudroom, he leaned his backpack against the wall and hung up his coat and hat, ignoring the instinct that told him to drop them all on the floor and rush to her. He didn’t even know where to find her, or what to say when he did. He didn’t know anything.

The kitchen was quiet and dark.

“Julie?” he called, walking toward the front of the house. “You up, Jules?”

Quickly, he searched all the downstairs rooms, but she wasn’t around. It was late, nearly ten o’clock. She usually didn’t go to bed this early, and he couldn’t imagine she would have on Christmas Eve. She would be angry, defiantly going about her life, talking to her guests, hardening her heart against him.

He’d blown his last shot with her—he was sure of it. She’d given him everything this time, taken him into her home and her bed. Julie had held nothing back, and he’d not only left her again, he’d done it with no honest acknowledgment of what they had between them. No explanation, no real good-bye.

He hadn’t even given her a Christmas present. He’d bought her a set of silicone pot holders from Bruce at the hardware store, but when he’d gone to set them on the countertop, it had struck him what a singularly small and petty present they were. Here, they seemed to say. These will keep you from setting the kitchen on fire while I’m gone.

So, in the end, he’d left without a gesture of any kind. Just a hug and a kiss on the forehead, and a promise to be back in a few months.

He might as well have punched her.

He found two people in the library, neither of them Julie. He didn’t stop to talk. There was no way he could concentrate enough to be polite.

Carson took the steps two at a time, all the way up to the attic, propelled by an urgency that seemed to come from outside him. He ascended so fast, his vision went gray at the edges. “Julie?”

The apartment was empty.

The darkness pressed down on his chest, pushing through him with a fast, cold pressure that forced him to brace his hands on his knees and suck in deep breaths, one after another.

She wasn’t here.

It hit him hard—so hard he tried to laugh, except his lungs wouldn’t work.

He was such an idiot.

He’d thought his father was trying to trap him, that Julie would entice him away from his real life. He’d thought this dark feeling was something optional that he could detach and leave behind, that he could be ruthless about sentiment because he didn’t need it.

Carson had been wrong about everything.

This was panic. Pure, black, dense panic at Julie’s absence and the unraveling of all his plans and everything he thought he understood.

Panic like he hadn’t felt in sixteen years, since he stood over her unconscious body in a hospital bed and saw that he could lose her, too. He could lose everyone.

He loved her. He’d loved her forever.

And he needed her to be here, safe where he’d left her, even though he didn’t remotely deserve it.

He had to find her, and he had to do it now.

But not looking like this. She’d made a stern face at the travel clothes he put on for the airplane. The clothes belonged to a different man—one he needed to leave behind.

Carson quickly unbuttoned his shirt and stripped it off. Dropped his pants and then remembered to unlace his shoes a few seconds too late and ended up hopping twice on one foot, awkwardly, before he came crashing to the ground.

He gave up and lay down so he could bang the back of his head into the wood floor a few times.

All these years, he’d been running away from death. He was afraid to lose her, so he’d left her.