mood.
He’d actually woken feeling hopeful, a rare occasion of late. The house had been quiet and because of the holiday his phone and email had been, as well.
He and Sam had gone to the grocery the previous day and bought a random assortment of food to make their Thanksgiving feast. Despite his company’s financial backing of several trendy restaurants around Boston, Dylan couldn’t cook worth a damn. But instant potatoes weren’t exactly high on the culinary challenge scale.
When Sam hadn’t made an appearance by ten, he’d started to get concerned. Much to the teen’s irritation, Dylan had implemented a policy of electronic devices charging in the kitchen. If not for that, Sam probably would have spent all his time behind a closed bedroom door.
But the kid always came down as soon as he woke to check in on social media. The constant worry over monitoring Sam’s online activities and the negotiations around screen time made Dylan feel old. And like a real parent, which terrified both him and Sam.
He’d checked the charging station in the corner of the counter and realized Sam’s phone was missing, which had sent him rushing up the stairs to bang on the kid’s door.
Sam hadn’t answered and when Dylan finally opened the door, he found the room empty. Panic had pounded through him. He didn’t think the boy would run away, but it was an ever-present fear in the back of Dylan’s mind given how often he’d considered the option when he’d been a teenager.
When he checked the app that tracked the location of Sam’s phone, he’d been shocked to see it show up at Niall Reed’s gallery downtown. Sam hadn’t seemed the least bit interested in a community service project and despite what he’d told the principal, Dylan hadn’t pushed the idea. He could handle working with Carrie on the silly winter festival. He figured it would be a way to showcase how his larger vision for the town would benefit everyone more than relying on small-scale tourism events.
Sam made Dylan vulnerable, and he had no intention of showing that side of himself to Carrie. Hell, he hated to admit he even had a vulnerable side.
But now he approached the local landmark with a strange mix of anticipation and dread. Although much of downtown Magnolia remained the same from when he was a kid, Carrie and her sisters had transformed the gallery from a tacky shrine celebrating Niall’s ego to a warm and welcoming studio, complete with bright colors, plush rugs and lots of crafty-looking signs with quotes about following your bliss and being grateful for a variety of things, including coffee and wine o’clock. Whatever that was.
He still couldn’t understand why she was wasting her time teaching frivolous sip-and-paint classes in the evening or working at the high school instead of focusing on her art.
He’d bought most of her paintings when he’d come to Magnolia in the fall and seen them through the window of the gallery. He’d recognized the work she’d done during their time together a decade ago. He hadn’t been able to resist them, but he’d made sure to have his assistant arrange payment so that Carrie hadn’t realized he was the buyer until he’d shown up at her show.
Was she making new art now?
Although the rest of the block appeared dark with the stores closed for Thanksgiving, the gallery windows glowed warmly with light.
Both Sam and Carrie looked up from the drafting table where they sat next to each other as he stormed in. Neither spoke as they stared at him. How was it that he once again felt like the outsider?
“You scared the crap out of me,” he told the boy. “What the hell were you thinking leaving without telling me?”
The boy rolled his eyes like he had a master’s degree in the gesture. “You were in the shower, so I wasn’t going to risk seeing your saggy butt. I like my corneas just how they are, man.”
That earned a burst of laughter from Carrie, but what irritated Dylan was the way his heart seemed to loosen and sigh in response, even though she was laughing at him.
“You could have left a note.” He crossed his arms over his chest and did his best to look intimidating. He also tried his best not to worry whether his butt was actually sagging. Of course it wasn’t true. Dylan was in the best shape of his life and knew the kid teased him just to get a reaction. “Or texted