With anger pushing him on, Caleb headed for the interstate and never looked back.
“I need to fix this,” Snow said for the fifth time in the last half hour. She leaned forward with her elbows on her knees, her hands clutched at her scalp. Lorelei had forced her into this position when she’d cried herself into hyperventilating. “I need to make him listen to me.”
“Maybe you should give him some time,” Lorelei said as she rubbed Snow’s back. “Let him cool off and he’ll come around. He can ask any one of us if you ever cheated on him and we’ll all tell him no.”
She squeezed wads of hair in her hands. “You weren’t there the night I left. She planted that seed in his mind, and now there’s no way for me to prove she’s lying. It’s her word against mine. Either I’m lying, or his mother is lying, and who do you think he’s more likely to believe?” Sitting up, Snow took a deep breath. “Was Spencer sure that Caleb wasn’t at the apartment?”
“He checked twice.” The pity in Lorelei’s blue eyes made Snow want to cry again. “No luck at the newspaper office either.”
Snow lurched from her chair to pace her back room. Thankfully, Lorelei’s grandmother, Rosie, and her friend Pearl had been milling about and were watching the store while Lorelei stayed with Snow in the back. Once Caleb had left, she couldn’t have cared less about the store and her big sales day. All she wanted was to go find him.
“There’s no place else he could be,” Snow said. “He must have left town. He left just like I did. This is exactly what I deserve.”
“Bullshit,” Lorelei said, her voice stern. “So you screwed up. Fine. But you owned up to it, explained your reasons, and he said he understood, right?”
“He did, but—”
“No buts, Snow. Bailing is not the same as lying. If anything, it’s the most honest thing you can do. It’s a hell of a lot better than staying married for however long his parents have been and playing the martyr the whole damn time. If he pulls a disappearing act now, over what he knows deep down are nothing but lies, then he doesn’t deserve you.”
Everything Lorelei said was true, but she didn’t understand. Caleb had drawn one very clear line in the sand, and according to his mother, Snow had crossed it. And even though she knew the truth, he didn’t. That doubt would always be there.
“Do you remember how to close and open the store?” Snow asked, determination straightening her spine.
Lorelei blinked. “Sure, but what are you going to do? You can’t head for the interstate and chase him down. You don’t even know which way he went.”
“I know he isn’t going back to Louisiana, at least not yet, because his mother has already called twice looking for him. When I left Baton Rouge, I essentially headed back to the scene of the crime.”
“Las Vegas?” Lorelei asked.
“Okay, not the scene of the crime, but the place where we met.” Snow snagged her jacket from a hook on the wall. “I went back to Nashville, and that’s as good a place to start as any. My keys are up at the register with my purse. I’ll leave the store keys for you.”
Following her into the showroom, Lorelei had to use long strides to keep up. “How long are you going to be gone?”
“I haven’t thought that far ahead,” Snow said, hustling behind the counter. “If I find him today, then we’ll be back tonight. If not, I’ll keep looking.”
“Snow, this is crazy.” Lorelei caught the tiny hoop of keys Snow hurled her way. “This is the biggest shopping weekend of the year. You’re going to walk away from everything to go find your runaway husband?”
“That’s exactly what he did for me. Now it’s my turn.” When the look of confusion remained on her friend’s face, Snow said, “If Spencer took off, would you go after him?”
Lorelei took a step back. “I’m here to run the store as long as you need me. But keep me posted, okay?”
There was a reason they were friends. “Thank you,” Snow said.
As she stepped through the doorway, Lorelei yelled, “Good luck!”
Snow didn’t need luck, she needed a miracle. And if Caleb loved her as much as she believed he did, she might get one.
Without conscious thought, Caleb landed at a small bar off Division in Nashville, not far from his old Vanderbilt stomping grounds. The bar where it all started one cold New Year’s Eve night that felt like decades ago. In some ways, that was the first night of his life—when he spotted a tiny woman with big hair and sparkling eyes shuffling to stay warm on the other side of the crowd. There was a band playing on the outside stage, but once Caleb had spotted Snow, he’d lost interest in the entertainment.