Page 14 of What We May Be

Who, he realized, was trying to distract him. “Stop dodging.”

“Sean is back.”

Her right hand was still in his, but Trevor could’ve sworn she’d punched him in the gut. “What did you say?”

Her gaze darted past his shoulder, toward the patio, and Trevor realized he’d raised his voice. How else was he supposed to hear himself over the ringing in his ears? He lowered it when he spoke again, hissing through his teeth. “Sean has been gone for ten years.” Except for that one night after Mitch and Cal’s funeral. A night they’d didn’t talk about in earshot of anyone else. The night Trevor clearly couldn’t get out of his fucking head.

“He’s here now,” she said. “About the case.”

He snatched back his hand. “Bullshit.”

“Hey,” a voice called behind him, and they both whipped around to find Annie standing in the doorway. “Is that the oven timer going off?”

Not just ringing in his head, then.

“Shit,” Charlie cursed.

He reached the oven first, turning off the heat and blocking Charlie’s path. “Where’s he staying?”

“Trevor.”

“Where?” He needed to see this—Sean—for himself. Needed to find out what the fuck their ex was playing at because Trevor’s warning had been crystal fucking clear. Charlie did not deserve to get her heart broken again.

And neither did he.

“Where, Charlotte?”

Dark conflicted eyes held his, same as they had that morning a month ago when he’d walked out of the beach house bedroom to find Charlie huddled in the corner of the couch, wrapped in a blanket, quietly crying.

The answer then had been “The Hague.”

The answer today was “The Sand Dollar Inn.”

A whole hell of a lot closer.

* * *

The Sand Dollar Inn had seen better days. A twenty-room motor lodge, it stood at the south end of Hanover’s beachfront peninsula, one half of the U-shaped complex fronting the Atlantic Ocean, the other the Intracoastal Waterway, and the lobby, pool, and patio in the middle riding the inlet. Between the two motel wings, the pot-hole-ridden parking lot was full of cars, weekend summer travelers who were willing to overlook chipped paint and rusty gutters for spacious rooms and water views.

Trevor didn’t give a damn about the view. His sole focus was on room twelve at the end of the beachfront wing. Because of course Sean would pick the room with that number, Charlie’s favorite, and somehow manage to snag it on a busy weekend. He charged down the covered walkway from the lobby, still not believing Sean was back in Hanover. Just thinking the other man’s name made Trevor’s heart race and his blood boil, made him fist the jewelry in his hand so hard his nails dug into his palm. He needed to see for himself before he could believe the one man who should’ve never returned to Hanover had done so.

Again.

He reached the last room and rapped his knuckles against the wooden door. “Sean, if you’re in there, open up!”

When no one answered, Trevor sidestepped the door and peered inside the room through the gauzy curtains. One look at the form standing in the middle of the room and Trevor had to grasp the window frame to steady himself, anger warring with relief warring with the spark of desire that flared anytime he laid eyes on Sean Hale. And there was no denying that’s who was inside the room. Trevor would know that body anywhere. Head bowed, hand on his nape, Sean appeared to be stuck, unsure whether to answer the door or not.

Trevor didn’t give him an option. Seizing on his anger, Trevor raised his fist and pounded the door again. “Sean!” he bellowed. “Open this goddamn door right now, or I swear to God, I’ll break it down.”

“Cool it, Trev!” Sean hollered.

Trevor’s jaw clenched. He’d banished that nickname, but he’d be lying if he said a shiver didn’t race up his spine at hearing Sean shout it again. Ignoring the trill of excitement, he held firm to his anger, banging the door until Sean came unstuck. The lock clicked, the door swung open, and Trevor charged inside, shoving the jewelry against Sean’s chest. “Fuck that. And fuck you too.”

Sean gasped, and since Trevor, back to him, didn’t hear metal hit the floor, he guessed his ex was getting a good look at the items he’d forced him to catch. Two necklaces on leather bands—Sean’s with two hammered metal charms, a heart and a baseball bat; Trevor’s, a matching heart and a catcher’s mitt. Charlie’s gifts to them after they’d won the CWS. Trevor had contemplated banishing the keepsakes after Cal, that night after their police academy graduation when Sean had left the first time, had given him Sean’s necklace, along with Sean’s ring he’d proposed to him and Charlie with that morning. But Trevor hadn’t been able to part with the necklaces and Charlie, through tears that night as she’d handed him her ring, had asked him not to part with those either. He’d tucked the jewelry in a satchel in the back of a drawer until he’d recently debated whether to pack them for the move to DC. But he hadn’t wanted to upset Charlie, and he still couldn’t part with the mementos from the best period of his life. He’d left the rings at home, but the necklaces… In Sean’s hands, Trevor hoped the damn things felt more like a couple tons than a couple ounces, that Sean would understand the heavy heart Trevor had never been able to banish either.

The door clicked shut and Trevor spun. Sean pocketed the necklaces, then lifted his hands, palms out. Like he’d done that day a month ago when he’d made a promise he clearly hadn’t kept. Incensed, Trevor closed the distance between them and did the one thing Charlie had kept him from doing after the funeral. He let his right hook fly, right into Sean’s jaw.

Bending at the waist, Sean braced a hand on his knee and cradled his face with the other. “Fuck, you hit hard.”

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