Page 112 of Perfectly Complicated
He reaches over and plucks a hair tie from the chair. I immediately recognize it.
“He didn’t want to lose it. Said it’s the only good luck charm he’s ever had.”
“My scrunchie,” I murmur. The one I wore the night we went to the arena. He slipped it around his wrist to hold it for me.
I take the scrunchie from him. “Do you know where he went?”
“He didn’t say goodbye?”
I shake my head. I don’t know what this means—what any of it means.
Brendan swallows. “He said he was leaving town for you.”
“Leaving?Why?”
“Uh…” Brendan shifts, clearly uncomfortable.
“Brendan, where is he?”
“I don’t know.”
I sink down onto the chair, still holding the note. In the distance, I can hear children laughing, parents chatting, the joy of a successful school event, while my own life falls apart.
Brendan’s brow knits. “He told me you were spending Christmas with Nick. Said it would be easier for you if he wasn’t here.”
I close my eyes. “It’s not easier. It’s unbearable.”
A pause stretches between us. “Do you want me to find out where he went?”
I nod, looking at the note for clues.
He reaches for his phone but glances at me first. “You know he’s trying to protect you, right? In the dumbest way possible.”
A half-laugh escapes me. “Yeah. Well. He forgot one thing.”
“What’s that?” Brendan asks.
“I don’t give up that easily.”
THIRTY-ONE
Janie
It’s Christmas Eve, and I should be wrapping last-minute presents for Aria, maybe baking cookies or watching holiday movies or doing anything other than obsessing over Rourke’s whereabouts.
Instead, I’ve been doing exactly what I shouldn’t: checking my phone every few minutes, hoping for a call or any information on Rourke’s location. Even the “I need to talk to you” text I sent him has gone unanswered…and all I can ask iswhy.
I tossed and turned for a few hours last night, but my mind kept circling back to where Rourke might have gone. Not knowing is the worst part—wondering if he’s spending Christmas Eve alone somewhere, thinking he did the right thing by walking away from us before Christmas.
And what pains me the most is that he thought itmightbe the right thing to just leave—that going away would somehow solve everything when all it did was splinter my heart.
Aria crawls over from her toy corner, dragging the teddy bear that Rourke gave her. I know she doesn’t understand what’s happening, but I don’t know how to explain that he’s gone. That the man who looked at her like he’d give her the world has disappeared from our lives.
I pick up Aria, cradling her against me. She immediatelysnuggles into my neck, whimpering slightly. “I miss him too, baby girl,” I whisper. “We’re going to find him in time for Christmas.”
I breathe in her baby shampoo scent one last time, trying to let it calm me the way it always has. She’s my first priority—always has been—and she deserves a father in her life who is more than a name on her birth certificate.
In the last few weeks, it’s been incredibly clear to me who that person is.Rourke.He’s been the person to show up, doing the hard and dirty work of loving us day after day without expecting anything in return. It took a long time for my heart to see that in him. And it took him leaving to make me realize he’d do anything for us.
