Page 58 of Under Control
“I’ve got some ice time for tomorrow,” Scott said. “Who’s in?”
“I’m there,” Danny and Aidan said almost at the same time.
“I’m in the mood for some hockey,” Gavin said. “Grant? You in?”
Grant shook his head. “When I leave here, I’m heading straight home to New Hampshire for a couple days. I’ll probably hang out with my dad for a while. Put some miles on my four-wheeler. And the guy who does my Jeep is up there, and I want to talk to him about some more customizations and some paint touch-ups. Maybe new rims.”
Derek whistled, holding up his hands. “Sounds pricey. What happened to saving up for a ring?”
Grant’s jaw clenched for a few seconds before he lifted one shoulder in a half-ass shrug. “Not gonna need one now. That’s over.”
“Oh, shit.” Derek let that sink in for a few seconds. It looked like Gavin already knew, but it had to have been recent because he’d been talking about cool places to honeymoon just last week. “I’m sorry, man. I didn’t know.”
Seconds ticked by in awkward silence, but Derek wasn’t sure what to say. He wanted to be there for the guy, but he couldn’t tell if he wanted to talk about it or not. Derek hadn’t wanted to talk about the divorce when he and Amber first split, and he’d hated how often people seemed to bring it up. He’d be having a decent day and thenbam, some well-meaning person would ask him how his kids were taking the breakup.
“I don’t even know what happened,” Grant finally said. “I called her to say goodnight, like I usually do, and she said it wasn’t working out for her and she didn’t want to see me anymore.”
“Just out of nowhere?”
“Yeah. We were fine and then she wanted out and wouldn’t say why. She just kept saying it wasn’t working for her, but I could tell she’d been crying. I kept asking her what was going on and she hung up on me.”
“That sucks, kid,” Chris said. “It surprises me she’d do that to you. She didn’t seem like the type.”
“I tried to call her back and it went to voicemail, so I went to her apartment and didn’t get an answer.” Grant shook his head. “It pissed me off that she wouldn’t tell me what was going on, so I decided to give it a couple days so I could cool off and maybe she would be over whatever was making her cry. Then I’d try to talk her into changing her mind or at least telling me why.”
“That was probably the right thing to do,” Derek asked. “Cooling-off time, I mean.”
“I thought so, until I tried to call her. A recording said her number was out of service, so I went back to her apartment. I got no answer when I knocked, and then a kid from down the hall told me the lady who lived there had moved out and they hadn’t rented it yet, so nobody lived there.” He looked up then, his expression so bleak Derek felt some real concern for the guy’s state of mind. “She’s just gone.”
Derek shook his head. “That’s a shitty thing to do, man. She could at least let you know what changed.”
“I always knew she was holding back a little, but I took things slow until she started opening up and...fuck. I wanted to marry her and she didn’t give a shit enough about me to tell me why she wanted out. She just fucking ghosted.”
His face flush with anger, Grant started to walk away, but then stopped and turned around. “And you know what the worst fucking part is? I still love her. I’m worried about her. I’m worried that she held back so much because of something in her past and whatever that thing is maybe didn’tstayin her past.”
“Did you meet any of her family?” Rick asked. “Anybody you can reach out to?”
Grant shook his head. “She never said it outright and I can’t really put my finger on specific things she said, but I always got the impression she’s pretty much alone in the world.”
“I didn’t say anything because it didn’t go anywhere,” Gavin said, “but I looked around online and there’s basically nothing. And Cait has a friend with PD who was willing to ask a couple of questions off the record. The landlord said she told him she was leaving and he inspected the apartment and took the key directly from her when she was done clearing it out. Which he said happened fast and without notice, but there didn’t seem to be anything off other than that. And the only emergency contact listed on the paperwork he had was her boss, and she quit her job. And the emergency contact on her employment application was her landlord.”
“How is that even possible?” Grant demanded to nobody in particular. “How the fuck can a person not havesomebodywho knows anything about them?”
“I don’t know,” Gavin said. “That was about as far as Cait’s friend could or would go as a favor, but he said there’s not really any sense in filing a missing person report because as far as he can tell, she just up and moved. And the landlord didn’t ask where or why. It’s the kind of place with a high turnover and he doesn’t care.”
“I care.” Grant’s face was still flushed, but his voice was quiet. “I care and it doesn’t matter because she didn’t.”
“You don’t know that,” Rick said.
“I know that something happened in her life. I don’t know if it was something bad. I don’t know if it was something good. But I know that, either way, she didn’t bother to come to me about it, andthatis the bottom line.”
There wasn’t much any of them could say to that, Derek thought, because itwasthe bottom line. Grant was ready to spend the rest of his life with her, but Wren hadn’t gone to him. Whether it was something from her past she was running from or some great opportunity she was running to, if she’d been on the same page as Grant, he should have been the first person she talked to about it.
“If she wanted my help or wanted me to chase after her, she would have told me what was going on or where she was going, so I don’t want to talk about it again.” Grant was still for a moment, and then he shook his head slowly and headed for the door. “It’s over.”
They let him go, because there wasn’t anything left to say and, even if there had been, he wasn’t in the mood to hear it.
Derek felt for the kid. It was painful enough when a relationship ended, but to be on the verge of asking a woman to spend the rest of her life with him and then she ends it like that? That was plain shitty and there wasn’t a damn thing any of them could say to help him feel better.
