“Until you accept that Carter is going to be in my life, I can’t do that, Mom.”

Without waiting for Eva to respond, Kat hurried back up the stairway, needing to get back to Carter, to have him tell her everything would be all right. She needed him around her, needed his scent in her nose and his skin under her hands. She needed his lips on her mouth and his voice in her ear.

The hallway to reach him suddenly seemed a mile long. She rubbed at a dead ache settling above her heart and pushed the bedroom door open, pausing in the doorway, holding her breath.

Empty.

She called his name.

“Katherine, please,” her mother continued from the hallway, having followed her up the stairs.

But Kat didn’t respond. Hastily, she stormed into the en suite.

Empty.

With her heart slamming into her ribs, she dashed back into the bedroom, calling his name.

His bag was gone.

She pushed past her mother, who was still muttering words such as “amends” and “love,” and threw herself down the steps, running in a full sprint to the back door.

Cigarette. He’s having a cigarette. He promised.

“Carter?” The back door flew open, showing only a thick layer of snow across the vast gardens.

Empty.

“Kat?”

Kat spun around, almost collapsing in on herself when she saw her grandmother’s soft, concerned face. “Nana, where is he?”

She shook her head in bewilderment. “I don’t know, sweetheart. I thought he was in your room.”

“No. He isn’t there.” Kat gasped. “He promised me, Nana.”

Kat grappled for her cell phone from her pocket and burst out of the kitchen toward the front door.

“Please pick up,” she whimpered before the voice mail kicked in.

Her panic reached epic proportions when she threw open the front door to find only more cold stillness. Her breath erupted from her mouth in large gray plumes against the frigid air, while her gaze desperately sought Carter’s tall, broad form against the white.

Yet, looking through eyes releasing frightened, angry tears, all Kat could see was a single set of large footprints leading down the driveway, away from the house.

Away from her.

* * *

The screen of Kat’s cell phone lit the entire room as she pressed redial once again.

Voice mail.

She blinked heavy lids over weary, wet eyes.

She’d heard nothing from Carter for twelve hours. Not a text message and no phone call. Silence.

Her head throbbed, her heart was shattered, and her body was exhausted with worry. Every part of her body ached. The hollowness was paradoxically overwhelming.

Still, after many tears cried and hundreds of steps paced, she knew she didn’t blame Carter for any of it. How could she? She couldn’t blame him for finding a way out, an escape route. It had taken six hours, repeated hysterical calls, and numerous texts to him for her to recognize that. But she had.

Carter may have come across as impenetrable, unemotional, and indifferent, but Kat knew he was anything but. He was hopelessly open and fragile.

If anything, Kat was at fault for placing him in a situation in which he was clearly uncomfortable. She should have listened to her instincts and read the anxiety in Carter’s eyes. She’d wanted to show him he was enough, prove to herself that she could help him, that she was strong enough to support him.

She had been so selfish.

Yes, he had promised, Nana Boo said when Kat had laid her head in her lap. Yes, she had trusted him to mean it, but the truth was he hadn’t. He’d said it because she’d made him. He knew she’d needed it, and he’d given it to her. She wouldn’t have spoken to her mother if he hadn’t, and, in many ways, Kat was glad she had.

Not that it achieved much.

Rome wasn’t built in a day, after all. Their conversations after Carter had left were uncomfortably stilted and curt, but they were conversations nonetheless. Kat had seen it, clear as day, on her mother’s face: she knew it was her presence that had forced Carter to leave. And, whether she admitted it or not, a part of her had to feel responsible.

Kat rolled onto her back, clasping her phone tightly to her stomach. Glancing out of the window, she saw the snow was still coming down. She couldn’t help but agonize about where Carter was and whether or not he was safe. She’d called the airport, but their flight booking hadn’t been altered. She’d no idea whether he had taken another flight home, but something within Kat told her he hadn’t. She’d decided after packing her bag she would leave Nana Boo’s and catch her scheduled flight the following afternoon. Nana Boo, of course, had urged her to stay, telling her that Thanksgiving should be with her family, but truthfully, being in the house with her mother, after everything that’d happened, simply didn’t sit right with Kat. She’d texted Carter telling him where she would be, should he return to her, and left.

Family or not, she needed peace, quiet, time to think.

Just like Carter had.

Jesus, what he must have felt, hearing Kat’s mother say the things she had. Eva’s words had bulldozed every single piece of confidence and self-assurance Kat and Nana Boo had helped construct around Carter the previous day and night. She closed her eyes. God, she just wanted to tell him she loved him.

No matter if he never wanted anything to do with her again, Kat needed him to hear it.

She allowed herself a moment to release a few more tears. They were tears for Carter and the pain he was no doubt in. Tears of the anger she felt toward her mother for doing that to the man she loved; tears for Nana Boo and the awful situation she’d unwillingly become a part of, and tears for her father.

Jesus, how she missed him.

She was so sorry he wasn’t there.

She was so sorry for everything. So sorry and so tired.

Before she could think any more about the shitty mess she’d found herself in, blissful, quiet sleep overcame her.

* * *

There was a noise.

Nestled on the edge of Kat’s consciousness, in a place between dark and light, and reality and dreams, there was definitely a noise.

In her sleep-induced haze, Kat flung her arm out to press the alarm on the digital clock in an effort to stop the—

knock knock knock

Blinking back the sleep gluing her eyes together, Kat sat up, disoriented, slowly becoming aware of her surroundings.

Nana Boo’s favorite suite. The Drake Hotel, Chicago.

With her now-dead cell phone still clasped in her hand and her clothes warm and damp from sleep sweat, she shuffled to the edge of the bed. She flicked on the bedside lamp, drowning the room in elegant light. She listened again, frowning in frustration, wishing her brain would shake itself awake so she could focus properly.

There was nothing.

Silence.

Of course there was only silence. Why had she expected anything else?

Maybe it had been a drea—

knock knock knock

Kat lifted from the edge of the bed and made her way across the bedroom and into the large sitting room of the suite, flicking lights on as she went. Who the hell? She couldn’t remember ordering room service. Cursing herself for not noting the time, Kat dragged her feet toward the door, rubbing her face while simultaneously fixing the nest-like hair residing on her head.

knock knock knock

“Hang on a second,” Kat called sleepily. “I’m coming.”

Ignoring the peephole and muttering about the numerous locks on the door, Kat was still talking toward her feet when she finally got the thing open.

“Sorry,” she apologized, suppressing a yawn. “I was asleep. What’s the prob—”

Kat’s words died in her throat when her eyes met the tall, unexpected figure standing before her. He wasn’t even standing, in fact; he was sagging against the doorjamb with water dripping from his chin and down the sides of his tired face.