Chapter 12
Mack helps me clean up after dinner,
"You mind if I take a look at his cell phone?" Mack says, drying his hands on a towel.
I give a hummed "Mm-hmm" as a response because something about those big hands in my worn-soft kitchen towel fried my brain for half a second.
This guy fries my brain every half-hour, though. I don't think anyone could blame me--it's like having a movie star in your kitchen. It's bizarre.
I’m torn between trying not to look at him and needing to stare at his arms, his hands, his abs, his stupidly perfect face.
What I really want to do is put a bag over his head so he can't see me and just oogle him for a good half an hour.
I think that would be enough to get it out of my system; then I could stop being so weird around him.
We head to the dining room and I grab a notepad and a couple of pens. Mack punches in the code to the phone and starts scrolling, opening apps and shutting them down.
"I'm looking at everything because it's crazy how many apps have a messaging function," he says. "I have an app from my drycleaner's and I can message back and forth with them if I want."
"You do a lot of dry-cleaning, do you?" I look pointedly at his faded t-shirt.
He just laughs. "I have a few suits and button downs for when fancy clients come into work."
"Huh."
It's all I can do not to mentally dress him in a suit in my mind. That's the difference between men and women, I guess--men imagine us naked and we imagine them in tailored tuxes. Or ratty jeans and t-shirts, changing our oil.
“I'm looking for anything that might tell us where he went, or why he left.”
“I yelled at him,” I finally blurt, my shoulders slumping with the admission. “A couple days before Alex left, I yelled at him.”
I don’t know what I’m expecting. For Mack to frown at me like I’m a terrible person, maybe. At the very least, for him to be pissed that I hadn’t told him the whole truth until now.
I mean, isn’t this a classic twist you always see on those police procedurals? That someone in the family of the missing person hasn’t told the police everything they need to know? I love those kind of shows; really, I should have known better.
Instead, Mack gently says, “Tell me about it.”
I run my hand through my thick wavy hair, agitated. “It was after his parole officer came by.” I press my lips together, a million thoughts rolling through my head. Of course, in typical Gabriella style, the wrong one pops out. “That guy’s an asshole.”
“How so?”
I flap my hands. “It doesn’t matter. Really. The point is, I came home on my lunch break to be here for the visit. Alex didn’t have the keys to my house. If I hadn’t come home, he might have been in violation of his parole.”
A crease appears between his eyebrows. “Why did he need the keys to your house.”
“Because the entire property is subject to search.”
Mack frowns. “Ok. So you yelled at Alex?”
I nod. “After the parole officer left, I lost my shit. I rarely do that, honest. I know it doesn’t do any good.
When people yell, Alex is too wound up to take in whatever information they’re trying to impart.
But the thought that Alex could get sent back to prison--and not a good one, like he was in, but a really bad one--sent me over the edge. ” I frown.
“Certainly the parole officer doesn’t have to search your house.”
I huff a humorless laugh. “You don’t know this guy.”
Mack makes a little thoughtful humming noise.
“It wasn’t just that, though,” I say. “I should have held my temper. Truthfully, I think I was taking it out on him that my house has to get searched at all. Sometimes it feels like Alex isn’t the only one on parole.”
“I get that. It’s a huge change, a huge pain in the butt.”
“I'm worried that’s why he left.” I twist the pen in my fingers. “What if this is all my fault somehow?”
“Did you trash your brother’s apartment?”
“Of course not.”
“I didn't think so. And I don't think for a second that you yelling at Alex was why he left.”
I didn’t realize how much I needed to hear that from someone else. I’d been telling myself that every since Alex left, but I needed someone else to say it.
Mack says, “He stayed for two more days. And despite what you worry, I'm sure your brother knows that you love him. Right?”
“Yeah,” I begrudgingly admit. “He knows.”
"Ok," he says, punching up the main texting app on Alex's phone. "Then let's see what it really was."