Despite her worry, Sierra smiled. One thing about Luke hadn’t changed. He was still grumpy in the mornings.
Before she could interrogate him more, Hannah’s squeal sounded on the monitor. She sounded happy, and Sierra knew she had a couple of minutes, but she suddenly wanted to see her daughter.
Climbing out of bed, she grabbed her robe and pulled the bedroom door shut behind her as she went to Hannah’s room. When she reached the crib, she found Hannah laying on her back, her eyes wide as she stared up at the mobile hanging above her.
“Hey there, pretty girl,” Sierra cooed as she reached for a fresh diaper.
Once the morning preliminaries were out of the way, and Hannah was dry and dressed, Sierra cuddled her close to her chest as they made their way through the house. From what she could tell, it was empty. She looked out on the back porch, hoping Cole might still be there – why she had no idea – but he wasn’t. When she reached the kitchen, she poked her head out into the garage to see if his truck was there. Nope.
Where did he go? And better yet, when did he go?
Knowing that Hannah was going to need her breakfast, Sierra focused on getting the bottle ready before she let her mind drift to where Cole might’ve disappeared to.
When Hannah was fed and nodding off, Sierra laid her in the small portable crib they had set up in the living room while she went in search of her cell phone. She wanted to text Cole to see where he was and make sure everything was all right. This wasn’t like him to disappear, but then again, he’d been acting a little strange the last few days. Or maybe it was longer than that and she hadn’t really noticed with everything going on. For some reason, she thought they’d made some progress since Hannah’s birth, but again, she felt as though she might not have been paying enough attention.
“Hey, baby,” Luke’s warm breath heated Sierra’s neck, and she sucked in a scream, but couldn’t keep from jumping.
“Do you know where Cole is?” she asked without preamble.
“I thought we had this conversation already,” he said as he moved to the kitchen and started a pot of coffee. Luke had never been much of a coffee drinker, but Sierra noticed he’d picked up the habit recently. With as little sleep as they seemed to be getting these days, she didn’t blame him for trying to get his energy from the same place she liked to get hers.
“I don’t consider me asking the question, and you saying, ‘don’t know’ much of a conversation. His truck isn’t here, and he never made it to bed last night.”
That seemed to catch Luke’s attention as his head jerked toward her. He didn’t say anything, but he seemed to contemplate what she was telling him. Rather than waiting for him to enlighten her, Sierra continued her search for her cell phone, in the bedroom this time.
When she returned to the kitchen, she heard Luke on the phone.
“Where the hell are you?” Well, at least he was getting right to the point. She couldn’t hear Cole’s response, but she knew that’s who Luke was talking to.
“Austin? What the fuck, Cole?”
There was a long pause and Sierra assumed Cole was talking.
“She didn’t tell me that. And neither did you, dammit.”
Another pause.
“Why didn’t you sleep in bed last night?”
Sierra honestly wished she could hear the answer to that question. It was one she was going to ask Cole personally at the first opportunity. It wasn’t ok with her for them to drift apart without talking to one another. Sure, maybe she was just as responsible as they were in making sure they were talking regularly, but with everything going on lately, she would admit she’d probably failed.
With the new club underway and Travis’ resort moving forward, they’d spent a lot of time entertaining with Samantha and Logan, as well as the Walkers. If they weren’t out together immersed in a crowd of their family and friends, they were generally off doing their own thing. Namely work. And since Hannah was born, their daughter had been everyone’s sole focus during whatever free time they found.
Oh God.
Sierra’s heart ached at the thought that Cole was drifting away from her. She suddenly remembered his request for her and Hannah to join him on this trip and her heart clenched painfully in her chest at the memory of her telling him she couldn’t.
After all they’d been through to get this far, she didn’t even want to contemplate what she would do if she lost either of them. Even she had detected the tension ever so slowly intensifying with Cole, but she had expected him to come to her when he was ready. That’s the way they worked much of the time. Both Cole and Luke used her to redirect the emotions that they both seemed overcome with. Luke and Cole were very stubborn, particularly hard headed men, and if they didn’t have to come out and admit their feelings for one another, they weren’t going to do it.