“How the hell do you know you’ll always be there?” he raged, his voice startling birds off their branches. She could never know what Noah might do in a split second. She could never protect him from everything, which was what Matt had vowed to do the moment his son was born.
Anguish tore her face, and she opened her mouth, closed it, then finally said, “I take care of him like he’s my own child. You know that.”
“He’s not your child.” Matt couldn’t stop himself from shouting. “I’ll say when he’s ready to take off his training wheels or his water wings. Not you.”
A cloud passed over the sun, over her face, over Noah. The silence that fell at the end of Matt’s tirade was so sharp it sliced them all to ribbons.
“You’re right,” Ari finally said. “He’s not my child. I’m just the nanny.” Each word from her lips sounded more hollow. More bleak. She leaned down to Noah. “It’s time to get off the bike, sweetheart.” Once Noah had, she gave him a kiss on the cheek, then, leaving them both, she headed back up to the hill to the garage.
* * *
Ari didn’t cry as she brought the training wheels back from the garage along with a screwdriver. The horror of it all had dried up her tear ducts.
“I’m sorry. I made a mistake. You should put them back on.”
“Daddy?” Noah whimpered.
But Matt didn’t move to comfort his son, he simply screwed the wheels back into place, anchoring the bike.
How the hell do you know you’ll always be there?
Ten words. But they were more than enough to put her in her place.
He’s not your child.
God, how could she ever have forgotten? Just because she wanted Noah and Matt to be hers didn’t mean they were. All the longing in the world didn’t mean she’d ever truly belong with them. One night at a party with the Mavericks didn’t mean she was part of the family.
“But Daddy, I was real good.” Noah turned from his father to Ari. “Right, Ari?”
She couldn’t answer him. Her vocal cords were swollen too tight. All she could do was nod.
Matt ratcheted down the last screw. “I saw how well you did, but I still want the training wheels on.”
“It’s not fair!” Noah scrunched up his face and ran from both of them, tears streaming down his cheeks. “You’re not nice, Daddy!”
“I’m so sorry,” she said again, barely able to manage more than a whisper. Then she ran too, leaving Matt alone on the driveway.
As she climbed the stairs to her room, her knees seemed to creak like an old woman’s, while her dreams crashed and burned, every single hope she’d ever had completely crushed. She’d been living in La-La Land. Rosie and Chi had warned her, but she hadn’t wanted to hear them. Maybe Chi was right, maybe Matt had only searched for her brother out of guilt for sleeping with her that first time.
Oh God. Her legs wobbled, and she thought she might actually fall. She should have listened to her best friends, but she’d wanted to listen only to her heart, so she had deliberately forgotten her cardinal rule about remembering the difference between fantasy and reality.
How many times would she have to learn the lesson that she was temporary—disposable at the first sign of trouble? Just like with all her foster families. Even with her own mother, Ari hadn’t been important enough to her to get clean.
In her room, she stuffed her laptop into her backpack and her belongings into her bag. She’d become so good at leaving over the years that she could pack up in less than five minutes. She supposed the reason she hadn’t brought more things to Matt’s home had been the deep-down belief that the dream wouldn’t last. The fairy tale wouldn’t actually come true.
Not for her.
She’d wanted to surprise Matt, and it had felt like the right time for Noah to learn. But in retrospect, there was no denying that she’d been wrong in not asking permission. Matt was Noah’s father. He had the right to make the decisions, not her. And now, on top of it all, she’d turned him into the bad guy, just as Irene had done when she’d left for Paris without her son.
She’d seen the way Matt reacted the day Noah had fallen by the pool, had felt his anguish as if it were her own. He still wouldn’t let Noah swim without the water wings, yet she’d removed those training wheels without a single thought. Partly because Matt hadn’t specifically mentioned them. But mostly because she’d felt secure in the knowledge that he felt the same emotions that she did.
How could she have been so stupid as to step over his rock-solid boundary with his son?
The echo of their voices drifted up from downstairs—Noah’s still upset, Matt’s still tight with fear that his son might have been hurt.
Ari closed her eyes, trying to blot out the pain. “I’m so sorry,” she whispered again, as if he could hear her.
Hands shaking, she wrote a note, agonizing over the words, then finally left it on her bed. He would find it.
And she knew he would be relieved that she was gone.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Noah’s feet pounded out of Ari’s room a short while later, so heavily that the ceiling above Matt actually shook. He found Matt in the den where he was pretending to work. All he’d actually managed was brooding. Reeling. Trying to calm down so that he could think straight again.
“Daddy, Ari isn’t in her room.” Noah clutched a piece of paper. “Look.”
Matt’s heart was already in his throat, even before he took the note.
I’m sorry. I should have understood how you would feel. I wish you and Noah all the best. I hope you can forgive me.
He jumped up out of his chair and jogged down the hall, Noah on his heels, to check the garage. Her car was as gone as she was.
And the house suddenly felt completely empty with only him and Noah in it.
“Daddy, where’d she go?” Noah hung on his pants leg. “What’d she say in her letter?”
He hunkered down, running his hands along Noah’s arms. “Ari had to—” Damn it, he could already see what this would do to his son. “She had to leave.”
Noah’s face fell, and tears welled in his eyes. “You yelled at her and made her leave.”
He’d yelled. Just like his father. “Noah, you have to understand—”
“And I could ride the bike. I’m good!”