Late Nights & Love Lines (Single Dad Hotline #2)

33. You can’t fight destiny

33

YOU CAN’T FIGHT DESTINY

SEBASTIAN

“ W hat do you mean she didn’t come home with you?” Beck asks in a deceptively calm voice. Considering I may have blown up both of our companies, I’m taking it as a win that he hasn’t attempted to pummel me yet.

“Exactly what I said,” I bark. The boys are in bed, but Seren is still floating around the house somewhere, so we’re sitting on my deck because I don’t need her hearing this conversation. Not yet anyway. “We met with my ex-wife, I got up to take your fucking call.” I point at Beck as if it’s his fault she left. “And when I got back, Rowan was gone.”

“Did you text her? Call her? Anything?” Alexei asks. He’s pacing the length of the deck. I don’t know if it’s the prospect of losing everything or if he’s concerned for Rowan, but the man is as fierce as a caged lion.

“No, I just came home. What do you think, Alex? Of course I tried to call her.”

“What did she say?” Leo asks.

Leo, Beck, and I are all leaning forward with our elbows resting on our knees. I appreciate that they appear as upset by this as I am.

“She said to trust her.”

Beck’s phone buzzes, and he lifts it from the table. “Shit.”

“What?” we ask in unison.

“What the hell is she doing going to Coleman’s?” Beck curses again and tosses me his phone.

I click on the link, and Rowan’s face fills the screen. First with images from the gala, and then of her standing beside Jacob Coleman in the background as his father is hauled away in handcuffs.

What the fuck?

Betrayal stabs at my eyeballs. This can’t be what I’m seeing.

“Don’t let your mind run away with you,” Leo warns. “You don’t know what this means.”

“She was engaged to him,” I say through clenched teeth.

“And she said to trust her,” he reminds me.

I hold the phone high in the air for everyone to see. “Trust her? Trust this? This is…”

“A betrayal she’d never commit,” Alexei says, staring straight at me. “You know her, Seb. She’d never do that.”

“Fuck. You’re right. But what the hell is she doing there?” My vision blurs as I stare at the picture. Alexei takes the phone from my hands and tosses it back to Beck.

“You have to go get her,” Leo says, pain lacing his tone. “Don’t wait, Seb. It’ll only make it worse.”

“Leo, this isn’t the same,” Beck says gently.

“But,” Leo says, pulling at the back of his neck, “Rowan’s probably feeling overwhelmed and hurt. Pasts have a way of wrecking your future if you don’t handle them correctly.”

“She needs time,” I argue.

“I don’t agree,” Leo says, slamming his water bottle on the table. “What if your ex said something to her, something truly horrible, and it has her spiraling to a place your relationship can’t recover from? Time only makes that shit worse.”

“She runs, Leo. This is what she does when she’s overwhelmed,” I say gently.

“Because she’s never had someone choose her before, Seb. Don’t you see?”

I shake my head, but apparently Leo is just getting started.

“I married Tabby’s sister. Did you know that?” My head snaps up as confusion settles in. “It tore Tabby to fucking bits. It doesn’t matter that it was an accident, what matters is that I didn’t take accountability and step up to make it right for far too long.”

“How do you marry someone accidentally?” Alexei asks.

Leo flops down onto the sofa. “We were young and drunk. I’d moved to Vegas, but I was already missing Tabby. When her sister came to visit with the guy she was seeing, I told her I was going home to marry Tabby. Somehow, we got it in our heads that doing a trial run would ease my nerves. I was worried Tabby would say no because I’d already left her once. I practiced a proposal speech. We met a guy who told us how to get a license, we went to the chapel and talked about how Tabby would walk down the aisle, and then everything gets a little blurry. Her sister went home the next day with the guy she was with, and I thought that was that. It was supposed to be a rehearsal, but somehow, a wedding license showed up at her parents’ house a few months later.”

“Jesus, Leo,” I mutter.

“But my point is, I was too chickenshit to fight for Tabby for too many years. I left her to experience that hurt and betrayal alone. If you don’t know what’s going through Rowan’s mind, then you need to go to her before it festers and rots the foundation you’ve built. You have to get her back.”

“She’s coming back.” At the sound of my little girl’s voice, I jump to standing. I didn’t want her hearing this shit, but now she stands in the doorway with Tabby, her chin trembling with uncertainty. “She told me our dresses will arrive tomorrow and to hang them up.”

“What dresses?”

“We bought matching dresses for the talent show at camp. We picked them out when we got her gala dress. We’re going to do a song together, so she’ll be back, but her parents aren’t very nice people. I wouldn’t want to visit Mom alone, so I don’t want Rowan to visit hers by herself either. She needs us, Dad.”

My mouth is dry, and there’s an uncomfortable tightening in my chest area. She bought a dress for an event that’s nearly two months away. She was making plans and putting down roots even if she didn’t realize it.

“Wait, how do you know she’s going to her parent’s house?” Leo asks.

Seren holds up her cell phone. “She posted on Instagram. It took me forever to find her profile, and she literally has no followers, but I found her. She posts a lot of signs and nature pictures. And she just posted one of a sign that says ‘Welcome to Dover, New Hampshire,’ and she said, ‘sometimes going home is the only way to move forward.’”

A set of keys hit my chest, and I look up to see Pappy staring at me. “Looks like we’re taking a road trip, son. I’m not sure what’s running through our girl’s head right now, but she’s ours, always has been. I’m not letting those assholes hurt her again, are you?”

“No, we’re not,” Beck says, standing from his chair before I can even open my mouth and texting feverishly before lifting his head. “We can take my plane.”

“Nope. We’ll drive,” Pappy insists. “I’m not missing out on this—she means too much to me, and there’s not a chance in hell I’m getting into a tin box that hurtles through the air. It ain’t natural.”

I knew he hated to fly, but I never knew he was actually scared to. All my life I thought he wasn’t afraid of anything.

“Well, let’s go,” Alexei says, gesturing wildly toward the stairs.

“We can take my car,” Leo says. “It’ll be more comfortable.”

“It’s at least a fifteen-hour drive to New Hampshire,” I point out.

“And there’s five of us to split the drive,” Beck says, tapping away on his phone again. “It’ll give you time to work on your grovel speech.”

“What am I groveling for?” Suddenly the potential for this night to fall into varying levels of disaster keeps me rooted in place.

All four guys stare at me as if I’m the idiot. Maybe I am.

“For letting her go in the first place,” Leo mutters. Followed by a “jackass,” under his breath.

“I’ll stay with the kids,” Tabby says cheerily.

Beck holds up his phone. “Stella will come over in the morning to help.”

“What are you waiting for, Seb? Get your ass moving,” Pappy calls when he’s halfway down the stairs.

“Go, Dad.” Seren gives me a gentle nudge. I have a moment’s pause knowing that Mya is in the area, but she doesn’t know what town we live in, let alone our address, so she can wait one more day.

Wrapping my little girl in my arms, I kiss her head. I hate how mature she is but love the woman she’s growing up to be.

“I’ll call you when we get there,” I tell her, then jog down the stairs to find everyone already crammed into Leo’s Suburban.

A road trip is great in theory, not so great in practice. It’s just before five in the morning when we finally pull over to get gas. Five grown men in a Suburban in the middle of the night is not my idea of fun.

Pappy insisted on riding shotgun and immediately fell asleep. Alexei bounced his knee next to me for six straight hours. Leo whistled—loudly. And Beck sat hunched over his laptop, trying to find a way out of the mess I’ve put us all in.

“I should have talked to you about Coleman before I pulled out,” I say to Beck at the gas pump.

“You should have,” he agrees, but there’s no anger in his tone. It’s unsettling. “There’s a very good possibility of this deal falling through, and we’re past all the safeguards that protect us. If this project doesn’t move forward, we lose everything we’ve invested.”

“I know that. I won’t allow it to happen though. We still have two weeks, and we haven’t heard back from Bryer-Blaine yet. I will fix this.” Not sure how, but I will.

Beck tucks his hands into his pockets and rocks back on his heels. “It might already be done.”

The lever for the pump clicks, and I remove it from the gas tank. “What do you mean? I’ve run the numbers a hundred times. For a project this size, we need that seventh investor, and I know I’ll find one.”

He claps me on the back. “Apparently, the shotgun meeting you had with Lochlan Blaine left quite the impression. He’s requested a meeting with all of us first thing Friday morning.”

My jaw nearly comes unhinged. The Blaine family owns some of the most exclusive resorts in the world, and their empire just keeps growing. A deal with him could literally change everything.

“Rowan must have made one hell of an impression,” Beck chuckles. “He said his wife was quite the fan. Now, let’s go get your girl so we can cram for this meeting. Who knows what the hell he’ll throw at us.”

I catch Pappy’s eye as he leans out his window. “Destiny, son. Can’t fight destiny.”

“Are we sure this is the address?” Beck asks, staring out at the mile-long dirt driveway.

“They’re the only Fords listed in the town census, and the house was previously owned by Jason Ellis. This is it,” Alexei says, kicking at a rock in the road.

“This is it, all right,” Pappy grumbles. “I’ll never forget hauling ass up to that pecker and knocking him out.”

Beck and Alexei turn to me for an explanation.

“Pappy beat the shit out of her stepfather when she was a teenager for treating her badly. But we didn’t find that out until a few weeks ago.”

“He wasn’t just treating her badly. He emotionally and probably physically abused her. If she hadn’t run away and hid from me, I’d have taken her home with me that day, screw what the police said.” Pappy crosses his arms over his chest.

“Well, let’s remember, we’re here to support Rowan in whatever the hell she’s doing, not perform some sort of vigilante justice, okay?” I’m not overly concerned about Alexei or Beck, but Pappy is a loose cannon when it comes to Row.

“How long do you think we’ll have to wait?” Beck asks, lifting the binoculars to his face again. We used them when we first arrived to confirm that she hadn’t beaten us here. The guy literally packed for a spy mission.

“We probably should have confirmed she was actually coming to her parents’ house before we jumped in the car to drag her home.” Alexei chuckles. “You fall in love, and we go all caveman.”

I grunt, and he laughs harder.

“I tried to call her. Numerous times. Her phone is either dead or turned off.”

“We’re in the middle of nowhere.” Alexei shivers. “Who lives like this? We should’ve brought snacks. The next time we have a stakeout, someone needs to be in charge of snacks.”

“This isn’t a stakeout, Alex. We’re not kidnapping her.”

“Any idea what Mya could’ve said to spook her?” Beck asks, catching me off guard.

Rubbing a hand over my face, I scrub a few times before looking at him. “I honestly have no idea. Mya told me she wants to say goodbye to the kids, but she could have said anything to Rowan. When I asked her about it, she shrugged as though she had no idea.”

“Mya’s a real piece of shit,” Alexei grumbles.

“She is, but she’s my children’s mother. I won’t keep her from seeing them unless I have to. That doesn’t mean I won’t burn her world down though.”

“You’re a better man than me,” Beck mutters.

“Try calling her again,” Alexei calls from across the dirt road. He’s sitting under a giant maple tree in the shade, wearing a suit, and he looks ridiculous. “We’ve been out here for hours, and not a single car has gone by.”

“Welcome to the country, Alex.” Beck chucks a pinecone, and it hits Alexei in the head.

Alexei picks it up and whips it back in Beck’s direction.

“Boys,” Pappy chides, but the smiles on our faces grow.

Alexei’s reaching for something else to throw when a low rumble hits our ears, and we all turn to the left, then the right.

“Someone’s coming,” Beck says, pointing down the road where a plume of dust is kicking up.

The music hits us first, and I know it’s my girl. She rolls to a stop in front of her parent’s driveway with the sexiness of a pinup girl with windblown hair, rosy cheeks, and sunglasses twice the size of her face.

She’s driving a brand new bright yellow Jeep. The paper license plate and her sunshiny smile tell me she’s embracing her future.

“What the heck are you all doing here?” She pops the Jeep into park and jumps out. “Is everything okay? What’s wrong with the kids? Is it Miles? Is he sick again?”

I reach her with three long strides, grab her face in my palms, and kiss the ever-living hell out of her.