Vanished

By Carter Quinn

Henry Cooley has good friends and a good life. He’s secure in his job and his relationship. He and Tom, the love of his life, are about to celebrate their twenty-first anniversary as a couple. Their son, CJ, is in his second year at Cal Arts. Henry's only problems are his growing dissatisfaction with his job and the fact that Tom's parents still hate him, even after all these years. At least those are his only problems until the morning he wakes up to discover Tom has vanished.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Carter Quinn
• Release date: Sep 1, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310481710

Carter Quinn

Carter Quinn was born and raised in a very small Western Kansas town where cattle vastly outnumber humans. In the 1990’s, he read enough depressing gay fiction to give up on it. He discovered M/M in 2010 and started writing again. Now he’s told Corporate America to kiss his books. Carter lives again in that small Western Kansas town,entirely too far from his beloved Colorado Avalanche.

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Vanished

Carter Quinn

Carter Quinn Books

Copyright © 2014 by Carter Quinn.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher, addressed Attention: Permissions Coordinator, at the address below.

Carter Quinn Books

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Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

Book Layout ©2013 BookDesignTemplates.com

Cover design by Scott J. Latimer, SJL Graphics, LLC

Vanished / Carter Quinn. -- 1st ed.

ISBN 978-0-9907732-0-7

Contents

Dedication

Acknowledgements

Author’s Note

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Epilogue

About the Author

Dedication

For my Dad.

Finally, one you could have read, Pops. I’m sorry I didn’t get it done in time. Love you.

Acknowledgments

I’d like to thank my beta readers, Aniko, Kristen, Lara, Whitney, and Marie Sexton. Your feedback was invaluable.

As always, a huge thank you to Marilyn for always cheering me on, even when I’m beyond a shadow of a doubt positive that the whole thing sucks rocks.

And to you, the reader, I offer my biggest thanks. Without you, I couldn’t do the one thing I’ve wanted to do since I was ten years old.

.

Author’s Note

Some of you may know I wrote this book so that I’d have something my Dad would feel comfortable reading. Don’t get me wrong. He was always supportive of me and my writing. I didn’t encourage him to read the previous two books because, frankly, the thought of my dad reading the things Riley got up to with those other guys kinda gave me the heebie-jeebies.

I failed.

Dad passed away July 30. I didn’t complete the ugly first draft until August 8. I’d like to think it doesn’t matter that he didn’t get to read it, but it does. But what also matters is that I know he loved the concept. At least I gave him that.

What I’m trying to say is, don’t take time for granted. We all have a finite amount of it. Live, laugh, and love while you can. Dad set a great example for those who loved him. He did all three of those things as hard as he could.

I love you, Pops. Rest easy.

CHAPTER

One

I forced my eyes open to confront another Monday and immediately regretted it. I couldn’t remember why I had allowed Tom to get me tanked on wine on a Sunday night, but I was sure this hangover was going to linger longer in my memory. Every cell of my body hurt, my stomach churned, and my brain pounded against its cage with fury.

I stifled a groan, rolled onto my side and reached for my husband, finding only cool, empty sheets. Behind closed lids, I rolled my eyes and then regretted that too. Even after all the wine we’d consumed the night before, he was already out for his morning run. I would never understand how, after an evening dedicated to drinking every last fermented grape in the house, he could possibly commit to all that bouncing around—and then actually do it without hurling into the bushes. But come six o’clock every weekday morning, rain or shine, hangover or no, he set off for his run. Not that I didn’t enjoy the benefits of his dedication. Just over twenty-one years after we’d first met, Tom was still the most desirable man I knew.

I crept out of bed and cast one last, yearning glance back at it. Instead of crawling back in and sleeping away my hangover like I ached to do, I straightened the covers enough to make the bed presentable. Making it properly required more energy than I could muster.

I stumbled into the adjoining bathroom and caught sight of myself in the mirror. God, Henry, you look as bad as you feel, I grumbled. After downing a glass of water and a few pills to battle my headache, I began my morning routine: shave, shower, and then breakfast for both of us.

Friday had been incredibly hectic at work and Monday, being Monday, promised to be the same or worse. It was always that way at the end of a fiscal quarter. My team invariably spent days explaining to the brass just how so many of their supposedly brilliant decisions had caused a financial loss to the company, Excellere Global. Somehow, even with all our explanations, dire warnings, and unheeded advice, that list of bad choices grew longer each time. This quarter’s loss was the seventh consecutive and one of the largest in the company’s 117-year history, second only to the one after the financial meltdown of 2008. It was my job to fling logical explanations and recovery recommendations at the blank wall of corporate honchos and hope one of them stuck. None would. They never did.

Tom still hadn’t returned by the time I’d finished eating, which wasn’t altogether unusual for him. His architecture firm in the North Panhandle district—NoPa, for short—was close enough to our Ashbury Heights neighborhood that he could start to work later than me. Some mornings when he was back in time and wanted to get an early start on the workday, we’d enjoy the five minute walk together to the corner of Frederick & Masonic. There I would give him a kiss goodbye before dashing over to Cole & Carl to catch the N line to the Financial District, while Tom continued his walk up to Grove Street.

Some mornings he met his best friend, Jamie, and they ran Buena Vista Park together. The one time I’d gone there with him, I had been so unnerved by the recycled headstones lining the paths as rain gutters that Tom had never asked me to go there again. Most mornings he ran alone in Golden Gate Park. Occasionally he would get caught up talking to the old woman who tended the flowerbeds in the Queen Wilhelmina Tulip Garden. He probably knew more about her and her family than I did about his.

Matthew and Althea MacKinnon still hated me and my presence in Tom's life. Although they were usually on their best behavior in their son’s presence, they were passive aggressive enough to show it whenever Tom stepped out of the room. It didn’t matter to them that I had loved their only child faithfully and to the best of my ability for twenty-one years. It didn’t matter that because of that love we had adopted CJ, providing them with their only grandson. It only mattered that I wasn’t the woman they had always envisioned their son marrying. I’d long ago given up trying to win them over.

To his credit, Tom wasn’t oblivious to his parents’ behavior. He’d spoken to them repeatedly over the years. They would do better for a short period before falling back into their old habits. I tolerated it because Tom loved them and I loved him. He didn’t ask me to spend any more time around them than necessary, and I didn’t try to keep them apart. I would never make him choose between us. Thankfully, they loved CJ as much as any grandparents could.

I put Tom's breakfast in the oven and left him a note on the entry table so he’d find it as soon as he got home. I always hated leaving the house without telling him I loved him, but sometimes a note had to suffice.

Listen, Phil, I understand what you’re saying, but that’s just not the way the numbers play out. I clasped my hands behind my back to stop from clenching them into fists.