There was no answer, so she knocked again, this time harder. It was then that she noticed the gold nameplate that had displayed his name in fancy calligraphy was no longer donning the door. The bracket it slid into was there, but it was empty, and a cold chill ran down Katie’s spine as she stared blankly at it. When she knocked the third time, it was a frantic succession of raps that mimicked the rapid thumping of her heart.
Giving up on common courtesy, she fumbled with her key ring and pushed the key into the keyhole of the door handle.
It wouldn’t turn.
She jiggled the key one way, then the other, but it was no use. Her key no longer unlocked the door. Panicked, she slammed her fist against the door once more, but more from frustration than to plead with someone on the other side to open it.
Katie was pulling Jay’s name up on her caller display when a flash of movement caught her attention. Lifting her head to glance down the hall, she recognized Julia’s head poking out from the doorway of her own apartment. Mason had hung out with her sons a few times when he’d stayed with Jay. When she had tried to stay with Jay.
“Katie?”
She’d only met the woman once, but Katie could recognize a confounded expression when she saw it. “Julia, hello. Have you seen Jay?”
Julia stepped out of her apartment after murmuring to someone inside, presumably her two boys, telling them she would be right back. On her heels was Cash, Mason’s Labrador Retriever. The dog bounded from the doorway toward Katie, his tail wagging in an exaggerated arch. Julia left the door ajar and made her way toward Katie. “I haven’t seen Jay in a few days, Katie. Though, I’m not really sure why I would.”
“What do you mean?”
“Jay moved out, Katie. He doesn’t live here anymore.”
Katie stared at her woman in disbelief, her blood suddenly rushing loudly in her ears. “That doesn’t make sense.”
Julia seemed to be searching for the right words to explain, but when she failed to come up with anything, she shrugged.
“Then why do you have Cash?” Katie asked, more out of necessity than priority. She needed a moment to let her mind comprehend what Jay’s neighbor was saying. She absently gave the dog a scratch behind the ears. Seeing him, knowing he was shut up in an apartment when he’d once been so content to roam the perimeters of the farm with Mason, upset her. Her decisions were affecting everyone. Everyone.
“Jay asked me to watch him for a bit. I agreed, mostly because he seemed desperate. But, Katie, I can’t keep him here forever.”
The air had become so thin that Katie wasn’t sure she could get a decent breath of air to expand her lungs. “B-but, that doesn’t make sense,” she repeated. “None of this does.”
“You didn’t know?” Julia’s eyes were wide like she realized she’d just revealed a secret she should never have spoken aloud.
“I—no, I didn’t know.” Katie swallowed hard, giving Cash one last affectionate pat on the head. She swung her head from one side to the other, searching both ends of the hallway for some sign that this was a joke or a misunderstanding. “I have to go. Please keep Cash just for a little while longer. I promise you, I’ll be back for him. Please. Thank you, Julia.” She didn’t give the woman a chance to argue, and left her standing, dumbfounded, in the middle of the hallway.
Katie didn’t wait for the elevator. Instead, she took the stairs, two at a time, running on pure adrenaline. She glanced at the clock once she reached the bottom of the staircase. It was after ten o’clock now.
She dialed Jay’s number again, her chest heaving with exertion and fear. A gasp emitted from her throat when the call was answered, causing an elderly couple in the lobby to glance over at her curiously.
“Not so fun when people ignore your calls, now is it?”
Katie ignored his snide comment. “What the hell is going on?” she blurted out, loud enough that the attendant at the reception counter gestured for her to lower her voice. “Why am I at your apartment building right now, finding out that it isn’t actually your apartment building anymore? And where the hell are you?”
“We’re gone, Katie.”
She managed to make it just outside the entrance doors when she heard his reply, and she stopped in her tracks. “Jesus Christ, Jay, this isn’t funny!” she hissed, unable to move.
“I’ll bring him back when you agree to forget about going to court.”
“Going to court was your goddamn idea! You can’t do this!” Tears were stinging her eyes now, and a sob bubbled at the base of her throat, threatening to reveal itself.
“Just give it some thought, Katie. All you have to do is say you won’t try to take him from me, and we’ll come back. But I swear to God, Katie, no cops. And no damn Amber Alert or anything like that, like I’m some kind of goddamn criminal. He’s my son, too.”
“He’s our son!” she cried.
A hollow laugh met her ears. “Oh, now you can admit he’s ours. It’s a little late for that.”
“But you moved! You set me up! You lied...and you took Mason!” Katie was on the verge of a breakdown, her world crumbling around her in the cold darkness of the night.
“Calm down. My stuff is in storage. And you know me enough to know I won’t hurt him. I just need to see him. He fell asleep, and we’ve got some plans for tomorrow. Just trust me, all right?”
“Trust you? You took my son!”
Jay sighed loudly. “Our son, Katie. He’s fine, I promise. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
Katie began to protest, but a beep sounded in her ear.
Jay had hung up.
“God damn you!” she exclaimed, fumbling to redial his number. She held the phone to her ear, prepared to beg for her son back, but the phone didn’t ring. Instead, it went straight to voicemail, and she heard the monotone voice inviting her to leave a message.
Jay had turned off his cell phone.
He’d taken her son and left her with nothing but a choice to make. The worst part was, Jay had managed to get a twelve-hour head start into his disappearance, and Katie couldn’t even be sure which direction he’d gone.
Chapter Fourteen
Twenty-five minutes later, Katie was still sitting in her truck in the parking lot of what used to be Jay’s apartment building. She knew she needed to do something, anything, but she had no idea what that something was.
Jay had taken the only thing that truly mattered to her. Except for Chad, whom, technically, Jay had tried to take from her as well. You’re playing with fire, he’d warned her weeks ago. If only she’d listened then.
Once again, she had no one to blame but herself. The reality of it was, she had threatened to take Mason from Jay, so he’d had taken him from her instead.
Jay was right about one thing; Katie knew he wouldn’t hurt his son. And Jay was a good liar, so when Mason woke up and Katie wasn’t there to pick him up in the morning like he expected her to be, his father would have a smooth explanation and a variety of well-oiled excuses to back it all up. He could make Katie into any sort of monster he wanted, and weave any intricate web of lies he sought fit.
That might be the part that scared her the most.
Her cell phone blipped loudly, and Katie jumped, banging her hand and the phone itself on the steering wheel.
“Jesus!” she hissed. Her hands trembled so violently she fought to read the text message on the display screen. It wasn’t Jay or Mason, as she’d hoped. Jillian was trying to track her down, wondering if she was still bringing dinner home with her.
“Damn it!” Katie cursed again. She had completely forgotten her promise to bring dinner back to Chad’s apartment. She sent a text back, apologizing, and explained that she would be late so they would have to make do with whatever was already there. She hoped they weren’t angry, having waited until well after ten o’clock for her, but Katie wasn’t ready to go home and face them.
What would she say? How did you tell someone that your ex had taken your son and disappeared, purely because o
f the threats you’d wielded back in response to his own?
No, she wasn’t prepared to face that level of blame just yet.
Her phone blipped again, and she looked down at it. Chad says you weren’t there when he got back from physio. Everything okay?
So Jillian had spoken with Chad, which meant he knew she wasn’t with Jillian, and Jillian knew she wasn’t with him. And she wouldn’t have Mason with her when she came home. There would be no way to explain away the last couple of hours without telling the truth.
Mere weeks ago, Katie had been convinced that almost losing Chad in his accident was the worst thing she had ever been through. Now, the fear and helplessness that chilled the blood in her veins reminded her that, yes, things could always get worse.
And they had. So much worse than she’d ever imagined they could.
Katie leaned forward, pressing her head firmly against the steering wheel, and cried.
***
It was close to midnight when Katie turned the key and let herself into Chad’s apartment. She tried painstakingly hard to be quiet, assuming everyone would be fast asleep by now, which meant that everything she did seemed to make more noise and clatter than she expected.
“Damn it,” she muttered under her breath as she attempted to move her shoes onto the rack by the door, accidently dropping one, making a loud thud when it hit the ceramic tile.
“Katie, is that you?”
The sudden sound of another voice brought Katie upright in an instant, and she craned her neck past the kitchen island to see where it was coming from. “Elaine? I didn’t think anyone would still be up this late.”
“Hayden and I went to see Chad for an hour or so this evening, but Jillian has been asleep since after she texted you. The poor girl is knackered from all this hospital hoopla.”
Only Chad’s mother could sum up her son’s near-fatal vehicle accident as ‘hoopla’ and still sound sincere. “How is Chad? I didn’t see him after physiotherapy.” There was little use denying it. Jillian’s earlier message proved they all knew she’d left the hospital before he was done.
“Beyond frustrated, and stubborn as all get out.”
Katie couldn’t help but chuckle as she passed through the kitchen to see Elaine curled up under a throw blanket on the couch with her Sudoku book in hand. She couldn’t be certain, but something told her the woman had waited up for her.
“That sounds like him, alright.”
Katie could feel Elaine watching her, taking in her tear-stained cheeks and puffy eyes. Her tears were no longer falling, but the remnants of them remained, raw and ragged on her face.
“Is Mason still with his father?” Elaine had averted her eyes back to her puzzle book, seemingly more inclined to pretend to ponder the puzzle in front of her than question Katie about her obvious distress.
“He is,” was the only answer she could muster. Anything more would have unleashed the flood of emotion pushing heavily against her eyelids. “For another day or so.”
Elaine nodded, not looking up. The room went silent; a loaded, thick silence, one that held the weight of all the questions not asked and the answers not given. Katie idly wondered if this method of communication, or lack of, was how Elaine and her family had managed to get through watching their son’s teenage years slowly implode, and how they’d justified watching him grow into Chad Ashton through the screen of a television and the airwaves of a radio—don’t ask questions, and just pretend that everything is all right.
She watched as Elaine put her book down, the pen on top of it, and quietly rose to her feet. She reached down and turned off the table lamp without a word, and Katie lay back, stretching her legs out on the couch. Her chest tightened at the thought of all the recent nights Mason had drifted off to sleep in the same spot, curled up against her while trying desperately to stay awake and listen to the grownups talk amongst themselves. She thought Chad’s mother had padded silently into the bedroom, so when her voice came to her in the silence, Katie’s eyes snapped open.
“He’s okay, right?”
Her question, laced with a hint of worry, brought Katie back up into a sitting position. The room was dim without the muted light of the lamp, but she could see the seriousness in Elaine’s expression. For a moment, she wondered if the woman was referring to Chad, but Katie knew better. Mason’s whereabouts weighed heavily on both their minds. “Mason is okay,” she answered, hoping it was the truth.
Elaine’s eyes were locked with hers, and she seemed reluctant to say anything further, but in the end, she let out a sigh. “I may not know what’s going on, Katie, but I’m a mother, too. And I know a heartache when I see one.”
Katie stared back at her, not blinking. She feared that if she did, the cascade of tears waiting to fall would overflow and she wouldn’t be able to stop them. When she felt she’d regained enough composure to speak coherently, she’d made up her mind. “Mason is with Jay, but Jay is the reason for...for everything. At least, everything that has gone wrong. For me, and for Chad.”
Elaine resumed her seat. “He didn’t strike me as a good man when I met him, to be honest. But I could be biased, seeing as my son is the other man vying for your attention.” Even in the darkness, a hint of amusement flickered in her eyes, but she nodded, urging Katie to go on.
“Jay doesn’t want my attention anymore; he wants me to pay. Everything he does is out of spite, yet everything that’s happened is because of the underhanded and awful things he’s done!” She took a breath, feeling a weight lift from her shoulders as she blurted out her innermost thoughts. “I sound like I’m whining, like I’m blaming him. But he left me, Elaine, because he didn’t love the person I became after my dad passed away. Because he’d been seeing Liz behind my back.” She didn’t look up, afraid of the expression that might be bearing down on her. “Which, in turn, is why Liz left Chad. But in some obscene twist of fate, that short-lived affair brought Chad to my doorstep, so I guess I should thank the two of them for their hurtful choice, but all I really want to do is wring both their necks for ever hurting Chad or me like that in the first place.”
Katie chanced a glance up at Chad’s mother, and she noticed that she didn’t seem surprised at her confession. Chad had told her about Liz’s infidelity, then.
“You have every right to be upset with Jay, Katie.”
Somehow, having Elaine’s permission to be angry made her feel better. “And that’s not even the worst of it. He hired people to take pictures of Chad and I, pictures that were made out to be something they weren’t. Jay used those pictures, along with the threat of taking me to court to obtain full custody of Mason, to turn me away from Chad. And I was stupid enough to take the bait.”
“Not stupid,” Elaine said with a shake of her head. “We all make bad decisions when we’re feeling cornered and defeated.”
“We were downright toxic together by the end of it all, Elaine.” Katie’s hands rose, as though questioning why. “And yet Jay chose to threaten to take away my son, to lie to me, and to purposely aggravate and goad Chad. It was Jay that Chad had been with just before his accident, Elaine. He was looking for me.” She covered her mouth with her hand, despising the truth that came out of it. “This is all my fault.”
Elaine tilted her head, curious. “You just got finished telling me all the things Jay has done, and you somehow believe this is your fault?”
“If I hadn’t been so blind...if I hadn’t chosen to try to make things work with Jay instead of—”
“That sounds like a heck of a lot of ifs, my dear.” She smiled warmly. “A very smart man once told me that we only have two options when it comes to a problem, and neither of them is blame.”
“Then what are the two options?”
“Fix it. And if it can’t be fixed, move on.”
“Smart man,” Katie muttered. “It sounds like he handles things a little better than I do. Or, maybe his problems just aren’t big enough.”
“It was Hayden who said it, right a
fter Chad left for Nashville without looking back.”
Humiliation was a color of vivid red, and Katie wore it sheepishly. “I’m sorry.”
Chad’s mother uttered a hollow chuckle. “No apology needed, honey. I’m just saying, even the biggest problems sort themselves out eventually. Look at Chad and Hayden. It took twelve years, but they’re finally mending what was broken between them.”
“I guess miracles do happen.” Katie returned the smile.
Elaine nodded emphatically. “They do, and Chad’s been a part of quite a few of the ones I’ve witnessed, so don’t give up just yet.” Seeing Elaine wink at her made Katie’s half-hearted grin turn into laughter.
Silence ensued, and Katie thought Elaine would turn and head toward the bedroom. Once again, she surprised her with a simple question.
“I can tell you’re still not telling me everything, but from what I can gather...you and Chad’s relationship is the catalyst for all this?”
Elaine’s question wasn’t asked with even a hint of cruelty, but her easy summation of the series of events that led up till now rendered Katie speechless. It took her a moment to form a sufficient answer.
“Chad was not the catalyst for all this. From my perspective, I think Jay just didn’t like seeing me happier with Chad than he and I ever were, especially after his aff—relationship with Liz didn’t work out.” Despite her feelings about Jay’s affair with Liz, Katie tried to keep her wording as neutral as possible to avoid offending or hurting Elaine in some way. Liz, after all, had once been like a daughter to her. “I also think that I didn’t know I wanted more out of life, or could have more, until I met Chad.” In that sense, maybe Chad was the catalyst for everything that had happened.
“That’s funny. That is the same thing he told me about you.” Elaine couldn’t hide her glee, clasping her hands together on her lap.
When Worlds Collide (My Kind Of Country Book 3) Page 12