My gaze strayed to the path that led down to the dock. Had the police gone down there? Since they had Heath and we were all there, basically just waiting to be arrested, I hoped they hadn’t felt the need to poke around.
Though something told me that when Vincent cleaned a crime scene, he did it thoroughly.
Tori’s car was parked by the front door, and the moment the driver stopped, all three of us scrambled to get out. Rowe was halfway up the steps when the front door opened, and Tori appeared in the doorway.
Our little blond boy, still in the snuggly pajamas I’d dressed him in last night, held tight to her hand.
“See, buddy?” she said with the brightest of smiles. “I told you they’d be home any minute now.”
Rowe stumbled up the last few steps and fell to the floor at Ripley’s feet, pulling him onto his lap. Ripley wrapped his arms around Rowe’s head, and Rowe buried his face in his son’s neck, his shoulders shaking with emotion. “Thank God,” he mumbled over and over.
I hugged Tori hard, hating that I could feel her bones when I did. “Thank you.”
She stepped back and nodded.
Ripley wriggled in Rowe’s grasp, his arms reached out to me. “Mommy.”
Rowe jerked back in surprise, and Liam blinked as well. Obviously neither of them had heard him call me that last night.
But I had.
And now I wrapped him in my arms and relished the sound of the word on his sweet mouth. “Hey, my boy. How’re you doing? I’m sorry about last night.”
“I was scared.”
I clutched him tighter. “You know what? So was I. But we’re all together now, and that is never going to happen again, okay? Liam is going to make sure of it.”
Liam leaned in and ruffled his hair affectionately. “It’s a promise, Rip.”
“Tori said we could have pancakes with chocolate on them for breakfast.”
I raised one eyebrow. “Did she? Let’s go make them then, huh?”
He smiled, and I was relieved to see it. I carried him inside, and all five of us made the pancakes together, heaping in cocoa powder and chocolate chips and then serving them up with ice cream and gooey syrup. We carried our plates to the outside picnic table, placing them all down in the center of the circle and then taking up the seats around it. Tori sat next to Liam, with Rowe on her other side, Ripley and me opposite her. Ripley kept staring up at me with big eyes and asking questions, his butt scooted so close to me our thighs touched.
Every time I looked at Tori, her grin was wide.
The hollowed-out version of her I’d spoken to in the clinic was gone, and my best friend was back.
“Motherhood suits you,” she commented casually.
“I think so, too.”
My heart swelled every time Ripley did anything. Ate all his pancakes? Pride flushed through me. Used his manners? Another rush. It didn’t even matter that I wasn’t the one who’d taught them to him. He was mine. I wanted the world, and especially my best friend, to love him like I did.
At the sound of an engine on the driveway, all five of us glanced up. A tremor of fear pulsed through me, and Rowe looked down at Ripley.
“Hey, buddy, why don’t you take your pancakes inside and watch cartoons. You can turn the TV up as loud as you want.”
Ripley scurried off with the grin of a kid who’d just been told he was allowed to do something naughty. I watched until he disappeared into the house and then turned back to the engine sound growing closer. “Who is it?”
Rowe’s fingers gripped the tabletop. “Nobody panic. At least we know it’s not Zye. It’s probably a delivery driver.”
I prayed with all my heart that he was right.
We all breathed a sigh of relief when I recognized the black sedan. “Oh. It’s just Will.”
Liam and Rowe both went back to their pancakes, but Tori had completely frozen.
I reached across the table and squeezed the hand she’d left hanging in midair. “Tor? You okay?”
She shook her head. “What’s he doing here? Did you call him?”
I frowned and glanced over my shoulder at the car bumping over the track through the clearing. “No. Didn’t you message him?”
I would have assumed that had been the first thing she’d done once she’d left the hospital. Though things obviously weren’t good with them. He’d accused her of something horrible. She’d cheated. Theirs wasn’t exactly the rosiest of relationships right now, both of them at fault in different ways.
Will’s car came to a screeching halt in the driveway, haphazardly parked on an angle. His door opened, and from inside the car, Isaac’s cries were heartbreaking.
Tori’s face crumpled at the sound.
But they seemed to have no effect on Will. He stumbled out of the car, his gaze glued on Tori.
“Hey, Will…” Rowe’s voice died off at the expression on the other man’s face.
Something was very wrong. Will’s normal, reserved but friendly demeanor, was nowhere to be found. An icy coolness emanated from him that I’d never seen before. Isaac’s screams from the back seat intensified, but Will acted like he didn’t even hear them.
The fact he was completely ignoring his obviously distressed child set off alarm bells in my head.
Tori put a hand on Rowe’s shoulder, using it as leverage to stand. “Is Isaac okay? He—”
Will’s gaze narrowed on the spot Tori touched Rowe. “What the hell is going on here?”
I blinked at the harshness of the question. And at the fact he’d dropped the word hell so casually. It was barely a curse for most, but one that Will took very seriously. I’d never heard the man utter even a whisper of the word.
Tori stopped in her tracks, too, her mouth open. “Don’t talk like that. That’s not you.”
But he wasn’t done. He stalked the distance between the car and where Tori stood and glared down at her. “I got a call from Saint Paul of God this morning saying you were missing, so I’m out of my mind with worry, but of course, you’re here. I should have known.”
Rowe, Liam, and I all glanced at each other awkwardly. I wasn’t sure if we should stay where we were while they argued or if we should try to get up and leave them to have some privacy.