Kismet (2 page)

“If I start kissing you now, Tuck, I won’t be able to stop myself until I’ve done a well and thorough job of it,” he rasped. “And I won’t have you putting any blame on me for missing that plane.”

He rubbed his hands down Tucker’s shoulders where he had been grasping him, then took a step back. Tucker pulled in a big gulp of air, trying to slow his pounding heart. The convention was an event that could potentially increase his business profits by a wide and sorely needed margin. So even though he wanted so desperately to stay and get to know Cal on a much deeper and a hell of a lot more
intimate
level, he knew he’d regret not getting on that plane to Boston. Looking away from him with a resigned sigh, Tucker turned and began making his way to the exit.

“I’ll text you as soon as I land,” he promised, walking backward so Cal could see the sincerity on his face.

Cal’s lazy sideways smile was back in place, and he gave Tucker a little salute. “You better, kid.”

And with that Tucker turned and ran, tugging his phone from his back pocket to see he only had five minutes to make his flight. The worry of missing his plane suddenly drove his hurried movements and he rushed through the expansive airport, dodging and ducking by the people crowding the various concourses and walkways with as many apologies as he could mutter out on his race to his designated terminal. Nobody seemed to be moving fast enough, and eventually he broke into a full-out sprint, hoping the desperate look on his face would be enough to move the crowd around him; apparently it was. People jumped out of his way with barely a word of protest.

Gasping for breath, Tucker rounded a corner and finally saw his flight’s gate. An attendant was standing at the door to the jet bridge and was just about to close it off as he ran toward her.

“Wait! I’m here!” he shouted, startling everyone in the vicinity, including and most especially the woman at the door. She jumped back, her chestnut-brown ponytail whipping to the side when she spun around with eyes so wide they nearly bugged out of her head.

Tucker fished in his back pocket for his boarding pass with one hand and held tightly to his phone with the other as he ran on legs that burned from exertion, berating himself for being so damn out of shape. Struggling to pull his ticket free from the confines of his jeans with a breathless groan of frustration, he was finally able to tug it out with a forceful jerk of his arm. But his forward momentum, combined with the awkward twisting motion of his wrist, sent him tripping over his own feet.

He sucked in a sharp breath as he stumbled but was thankfully able to right himself at the last minute without flying to the ground in an embarrassing sprawl of limbs. His phone, however, was not so lucky, and it slipped right out of his hand and soared across the mostly empty gatehouse.

Watching with horrified and nauseating disbelief as it flew end over end, Tucker stopped dead in his tracks, not even having time to utter out a curse or make a grab for it. The open room fell utterly silent, as if everyone there were collectively holding their breath before the impact. And then the phone, thin and fragile and holding Tucker’s entire goddamn life inside it, hit the corner of the attendant’s booth with such violent force it shattered apart instantly. Tucker’s heart felt like it was shattering right alongside it.

Walking up to the mangled plastic and glass slowly, Tucker prayed it could be salvaged, prayed out of all the information stored inside that Cal’s number, the most valuable thing of all, would not be lost. He knelt down and picked up the phone gingerly, cradling it to his chest like a beloved but injured pet. The screen was spiderwebbed with hundreds of intricate cracks and remained black no matter how many times he tried pushing the power button. Prying open the bent back cover showed him the memory card now wore a fatal hairline fracture right across the center, and his breath hitched in his chest, knowing then he had lost everything; the few short minutes since Cal had entered his number in the phone would not have been enough time for the new contact to be synched to Tucker’s online cloud service and it was most certainly gone forever.

He thought for one wild moment about running back the way he had come to see if Cal was still in the coffee shop, just to have him write his number down on a napkin or his hand or
something
so he could at least call him when he received a replacement phone. He might have time to make it. But before Tucker could even try to turn around, a light touch on his shoulder brought him crashing back to reality.

Glancing to the side, he saw the attendant, Carla, as her badge stated, looking up at him with a concerned expression. “I am so sorry, sir, but if you are boarding this flight, I will need to see your ticket information immediately, or the plane will leave without you.”

Tucker pressed his mouth into a thin, hard line and scooped his boarding pass up off the floor where he had dropped it when he nearly fell. He handed the ticket to Carla without a word, adjusting his bags on his shoulder as he waited for her to clear him, then silently made his way down the long jet bridge to the plane, feeling numb and defeated and heartbroken over a man he had only known for two hours.

H
EAVING
A
heavy sigh, Tucker lightly pressed the brake on his SUV when he came to a hairpin turn on the snowy and dark mountain road unfolding before him. He tried for the millionth time to shake away the memories from that day, tried to forget the whole thing had happened at all. Because even though erasing everything would mean losing his entire interaction with Cal, Tucker thought that might be something of a mercy for him. Knowing Cal was out there somewhere, a man with whom he had shared such a strong connection, but could not find no matter how hard he looked, seemed so much like a big cosmic joke. He almost wished he hadn’t stopped in the coffee shop at all that morning because then at least he could remain oblivious to the fact Cal existed. At least then he wouldn’t have to go every
single
day feeling like there was a part of him missing.

Muttering out a curse, Tucker thumped a fist down on the steering wheel, trying to get his focus back on the road. It didn’t matter anymore; it really didn’t. What was done was done, even though it hurt like hell. But no matter how often he tried reminding himself of that fact, he didn’t really feel convinced. He couldn’t just forget, and in all honesty, he didn’t want to.

An insistent chiming sound suddenly pulled Tucker’s attention from his troubled thoughts, and he looked down to his green-lit instrument panel as snow continued to pelt his windshield. A picture of a battery was displayed in a bright and startling red, and before he could even try to pull to the shoulder to investigate, the whole car went dead.

A flood of adrenaline tightened his entire body in response, and he clutched down hard on the steering wheel, trying to ease the drifting SUV out of a sudden fishtail. Snow and gravel spun out from the rear tires in twin moonlit rooster tails as the now-dead vehicle careened toward a very rickety-looking guardrail. Tucker held his breath and pulled the wheel into the turn, knowing from all his years driving in Colorado’s treacherous winter conditions that turning into the slide was what would potentially save his life, even though it seemed counterintuitive. The car still continued on its path to the rail for one anxious, terrible moment before it finally corrected and pulled up alongside the guardrail instead of plowing through it.

Tucker blew out a pent-up breath as the SUV slowed to a stop, then let his hands fall away from the steering wheel and land heavily at his sides. He sat unmoving for a moment, simply trying to catch his breath. And after his heart slowed to a more normal rate, he reached up and tried turning the key in the ignition, even knowing it wouldn’t do any good.

A solid click, then silence coming from behind the dashboard confirmed his suspicions, and he slumped back in the seat with a huff. Could nothing go right this year? Could nothing go right just this one
night
?

“Fuck!” he spat in frustration, bringing his hands up to shake the steering wheel. Strangling the hard, rubbery plastic of his utterly useless vehicle helped to relieve some of his aggravation, and after a moment of throttling, he reached his hand over to the passenger seat in the pitch-black dark of the car’s interior, finding his cell phone. It was a brand-new model, bought shortly after his devastating mishap in the airport back in September. It had all the newest technology and upgrades and was reloaded with all of his previously backed up information; it had everything in it except Cal’s number, which was really the only thing Tucker wanted.

He woke the screen and discovered there were only two and a half hours until midnight. But he wasn’t too far from the cabin, maybe only another forty-five-minute drive according to his last glance at the GPS before everything went dead. He should be able to make it by the time the countdown started if he could get one of his friends to come pick him up. Trying a few numbers proved utterly useless, though, as each one went straight to voicemail. Tucker nearly chucked the phone out the window in his irritation. Seriously?
No
one had their phones on? Or maybe it was due to the fact that no one had cell service that far up the mountain.

Stifling a groan and wrenching the door open, he jumped out into the frosty evening, needing to get away from the confining space of his car. His breath fogged out of his mouth as he glanced at his surroundings, and he pulled his woolen coat closer about himself. The persistent curtain of snow abated somewhat and the full moon, chasing in and out of the thinning patches of clouds, cast a muted and silvery glow on the forested scenery around him. It glittered off the freshly fallen snow and the thick wall of evergreens just beyond the guardrail.

There was not a sound to be heard in that near darkness except for the crunch of his boots on the snow, and he stood still for a moment, letting his eyes slip closed. He tried to cleanse his mind of all the frustration and disappointment and heartache that had piled up and crashed down on top of him over the last year, but all he could see when he closed his eyes was Cal.

Tucker looked down at the snow at his feet and shook his head, grabbing his phone out of his pocket. If he couldn’t get any of his friends to come pick him up, then he’d just call for a tow truck to come grab his car and then politely ask if they wouldn’t mind taking him up to the cabin. It all seemed like an easy enough solution, if it worked out right. And seeing how his night was going already, he figured he
maybe
had about a fifty-fifty chance of things moving in his favor.

Nodding resolutely to himself, Tucker pulled up the number for roadside assistance and placed the call. At least
that
one went through to someone who actually answered. The operator on the other end of the line let him know the closest tow company still open at the late hour was not too far from his current location and would be there momentarily. Tucker relayed his insurance information and what mile marker he was stranded at, then climbed back into the car; the heat wouldn’t work on a vehicle that had no power, but it was still warmer than standing out in the frigid air.

Tucker started pulling up search engines on his phone as he waited, much like he did every other time he had a free moment, trying to see if he could find any information about Cal online, but came up short like usual. It was as if Cal didn’t really exist at all. Tucker’s brain, that fiercely logical side, told him it was more than past time for him to still be holding out hope he’d find Cal, but his heart refused to listen. He wasn’t going to give up.

Still staring down at his phone with an engrossed intensity, Tucker was startled back to attention by the reflection of two bright headlights in his rearview mirror. He sat straight up, grasping for his wallet and insurance identification before slipping back out into the snowy dark.

The lights from the flatbed tow truck behind him were almost blinding, and he held a hand up to shield his eyes while waving with the other to let the man exiting the vehicle know he was the one who had called. The silhouette walking forward in the headlights seemed vaguely familiar to Tucker, and he squinted, trying to get a better look.

Then the moon, having been hidden behind a thin scrim of cloud, suddenly revealed itself again, blanketing everything in a shimmering light and highlighting the backlit figure coming toward where Tucker was standing.

Tucker’s heart cartwheeled in his chest and he promptly dropped his hand to his side, his mouth hanging open and slack when he saw who it was.

“Oh my God. Cal?
Callum
?” Tucker asked in disbelief, his feet breaking into a near sprint and driving him forward before he hardly even knew what was happening.

It was him, the man Tucker thought he had lost forever, the man he had fruitlessly pined over for three damn months, standing less than ten feet away from him. Tucker thought he might be dreaming or having a stroke, or maybe it was some weird combination of the two because, really, there was no earthly way this was happening right now.

Tucker pulled to a stop just before he crashed into Cal, his boots sliding in the freshly fallen snow. He looked up at him, drinking in every detail. Cal’s eyes were the exact shade of deep blue Tucker remembered, the same shade he saw in his dreams. But that was nearly where the similarities ended.

The faint wrinkles at the corners of his eyes seemed a little more pronounced, and there was a dark smattering of a few days’ of beard growth along Cal’s jaw and chin that were not there before. His hair was a little longer now too, grazing just against the collar of his tan-colored work coat. Tucker’s fingers itched to run through the thick black locks, but he let his hand fall back down to his side when he noticed Cal’s eyes did not hold any of the same awestruck excitement Tucker felt coursing through his entire body.

Tucker began second-guessing himself, and he took a step back, wrapping his arms about his middle. Was it possible Cal didn’t even remember who he was? Was he that forgettable?