Mary snorted, her laugh bubbling out of her, and Sebastian fought to keep a good grip on his temper. He wanted to fight, goddammit, he didn’t want to laugh right now. But Mary just had one of those laughs. Once she got started, you had no choice but to join in.

“You don’t understand, Ty. Whatever, sure, forty-two isn’t geriatric. And maybe if I’d met her at a bar somewhere, we could’ve left together.” He didn’t explain which her he was thinking of and neither of his friends asked him to. It was already written all over his face. “But the fact of the matter is, we’re in completely different stages of life. THAT’S what the age difference means. I’m a father. Of a kid who is old enough to ask questions. A kid who deserves stability. I was married. I’ve buried a wife, for fuck’s sake. I can’t be running around with a woman who has to Google ‘how to pay my taxes.’ A woman who is young enough to—” He cut himself off and grabbed at a hank of his hair. “She’s going to have a dozen more boyfriends before she finds the person she’s supposed to settle down with. And I’m not up for that kind of carnival ride, you know?” The air was leaving his balloon, and in its place, was nothing but deflation. He wasn’t mad. He was just bummed. Really fucking bummed. “I can’t be. I’m too old, and I have way too much at stake.”

Sebastian sat back and finally looked up at his two closest friends. He thought he’d see sympathy there, pursed lips and sad eyes. Instead he saw annoyance in one of them and frustration in the other; both of them had a fire burning. Mary leaned forward, Tyler opened his mouth—

“Daddy!”

A bell rang furiously down the hall and whatever his two friends were going to say to him had to wait. On perfect cue, his life interrupted.

CHAPTER TWELVE

SHE WASN’T PARTICULARLY paying attention or anything, but it didn’t escape Via’s notice that neither Sebastian nor Matty came to school on Monday or Tuesday. She wasn’t surprised, figuring that Matty was still under the weather and Sebastian would obviously choose to stay at home with him. But Wednesday rolled around, and it was Tyler who brought Matty to school.

Via noticed as she jogged through the school parking lot toward the front entrance, but she was so late for a classroom observation session that she hadn’t had time to do more than wave. She certainly didn’t have time to go over there and ask him where Sebastian was.

Via was racing from one appointment to the next all morning, two of which were about Sarah Tate and her father, and it wasn’t until the last fifteen minutes of her lunch break that she even got a second to think about the fact that Sebastian was MIA for the third day in a row.

She unlocked her cell phone and entered into a text strand before she exited out and called Evan instead.