When she’d finished filling two mugs to the brim, she hand-delivered one to me in the exact same spot she’d left me, but this time, she was standing an arm’s length away.
I took the coffee but kept my gaze trained on hers and said the only thing I could think of. “Let me in.”
She kept her eyes aimed at her cup as she swirled the creamy, brown liquid inside, muttering, “Trust me. You don’t want in on this one.”
I painfully closed my eyes and shook my head. When I opened them, I glanced over at Tom, who was standing a few feet away, watching her, his eyes narrow and assessing.
“Charlotte,” he called. “I’m gonna wait for more information before going to talk to Brady. He’s gonna want answers that I don’t have right now. You want to go with me when I do that?”
She looked up at me, but her words were for Tom. “I don’t think that would be a good idea.” Then her words were for me, and they formed the most ridiculous statement I had ever heard. “You should probably go.”
“No,” I answered firmly. Inching forward, I switched my coffee to my left hand and curled my right around the back of her neck. Then, bending at the knees, I lowered myself into her line of sight. “If you want me to leave, sweetheart, that’s one thing. I won’t like it. And it will fucking kill me. But, if that’s what you need, I’m gone. However, short of you kicking me out, I’m not going anywhere. I told you: I’d stop with you.” I gave her neck a squeeze. “Always, Charlotte.”
A wave rocked through her empty eyes, revealing the tiniest flicker of my Charlotte hiding within. Relief blasted through me.
“You want to stop?” I asked. “Pretend this isn’t happening right now?”
Her chin quivered as she nodded, her eyes filling with tears.
Using her neck, I guided her against my front, her body plastering to mine. Coffee sloshed to the floor as she looped her arms around my hips. Not even then did she cry, but she held me so tight that I thought she was trying to meld our bodies into one. Which, I had to admit, I wouldn’t have minded.
“Then we’ll stop,” I whispered before kissing the top of her head.
Her mom rushed over, taking both of our mugs. Tears streamed from her chin as she watched her daughter tightening her hold on me and her fists clutching the back of my shirt. She kissed the back of Charlotte’s head, and then looked up at me.
“I’m going to stay, but I’ll keep out of your way.”
I nodded.
Tom walked over and rubbed Charlotte’s back before giving her shoulder a squeeze. “I need to get back to work, babe. I’ll check in later.”
When Charlotte didn’t reply or acknowledge him, he dipped his chin at me, pressed a kiss to Charlotte’s mom’s temple, and headed for the door.
And then we were alone.
Well, almost. Charlotte’s mom, whose name I would later learn was Susan, got busy cleaning the already spotless apartment. Charlotte was a minimalist. There were only so many times you could rearrange the two knickknacks on the bar or dust the four framed pictures on the wall. But, true to her word, Susan stayed out of our way.
And, true to my word, I pretended that nothing had happened that morning.
Seriously, for the way my chest ached and my mind swirled, it was an Oscar-worthy performance.
Charlotte and I sat on the couch, my feet propped on her coffee table, her legs angled over mine. She didn’t own a TV, but I grabbed her laptop and put on some mind-numbing comedy I’d found on Netflix. Neither of us watched it.
Her dark browns stared off into the distance, lost in thoughts, and my blues stared at her, lost in worry.
She absently played with my fingers, weaving them together before letting go, only to start the process over again, while I lazily drew circles on her legs.
We talked occasionally, but about nothing.
She even half laughed once when I made a joke about the train wreck that was Rita and Tanner.
As the minutes turned into hours, Susan offered to make breakfast. Charlotte declined, but she accepted coffee, which she held against her chest, untouched, until it got cold. Then she discarded it.
Lunch went much the same way, only this time, she balanced a plate with a sandwich in her lap until I finally took it from her and set it on the table.
Together, we sat on that couch all day, curled up, holding each other, lost somewhere on the infinite horizon between darkness and light, delaying the inevitable.
Shortly after five in the afternoon, Charlotte drifted off to sleep and I snuck out from under her long enough to call my mom to check in on the kids and let her know I was going to be late—really late. She readily offered to stay another night, but I knew she needed to get home. She and my dad were heading out of town for their annual two-week-long anniversary trip to Maine in the morning. I’d felt guilty as hell when I’d asked her to stay the first night with the kids, but with the prospect of having no babysitter for a full fourteen days, my desperate need for time with Charlotte won out. And because my mom was, well…a saint, she’d agree before I’d fully finished asking the question. But I couldn’t ask her to make that sacrifice again.
As I watched Charlotte sleeping peacefully on the couch, knowing that a superstorm was brewing inside her but also knowing that my kids needed me at home, I once again found myself trapped between the two facets of my life.
And, suddenly, I was in that sinking car all over again, being forced to choose between two people I loved and knowing I was going to fail one of them.
Closing my eyes, I sucked in a sharp breath and tucked my phone into my back pocket.
The truth was, Charlotte wasn’t the only one on that couch pretending. I’d been doing it for years. Hell, I even pretended not to pretend when I knew I was pretending.
If I expected her to face reality, I had to do the same.
It was going to hurt. No. It was going to kill.
But maybe opening myself up, feeling it, and embracing the pain was the only way to truly let it go.
Numb wasn’t working anymore. Not for me. And definitely not for Charlotte.
It was time for it to end.
After walking over to the couch, I settled on the edge, a newfound resolve flooding my veins while dread pooled in my gut. “Wake up, sweetheart,” I whispered, brushing her hair out of her face.
Her sleepy lids flipped open, and for the briefest of seconds, they held actual warmth, her lips curling up at the sides as she unfurled from her ball and wrapped herself around me. And then, with one single blink, her face went blank. “Are you leaving?”
I smiled weakly. “I need you to go somewhere with me.”
Her eyebrows pinched together, wrinkling her forehead. “Where?”
I bent low and touched my lips to hers. “Somewhere. You up for it?”
She searched my face as she sat up, concern etched in her features. “If you need me to go with you, then, yeah, Porter, I’m up for it.”
I kissed her again, deeper and filled with apology.
“It’s gonna suck,” I mumbled against her lips.
She didn’t miss a beat before murmuring, “Hanging out with you usually does.”
Heartbroken. Grieving. Shattered. And still making jokes at my expense.
Charlotte.
My Charlotte.
I laughed. Loudly. Far more loudly than anyone should have laughed on that day. But that was exactly how I knew we were both going to be okay.
After whispered goodbyes and brief hugs, we left Susan at Charlotte’s apartment.
It was obvious she wasn’t thrilled that we were leaving, but it was also clear she liked the way Charlotte tucked herself under my arms and nuzzled in close when she was ready to go.
“We’ll be back in a little while,” I assured.
Susan nodded and took Charlotte’s face in her hands. “You need anything, you call me, okay? I’m going to be right here waiting for you.”
“Thanks, Mom,” Charlotte whispered.
“Of cour
se, baby.” Susan stepped away, her face blazing with a myriad of emotion, making it clear that her daughter did not get her ability to hide in plain sight from her mother.
Then, with my arm draped around her shoulders, her arm hooked around my hips, and her other hand resting on my stomach, we left her apartment as two shattered people for what I hoped would be the very last time.
* * *
Tom Stafford’s gut was sour as he sat behind his desk at the police station. That was the one notification he’d never wanted to make. Those were his girls. Well, Susan was more than that—she was the one woman he had every intention of keeping until he was six feet deep. That relationship had been a slow burn, grown over time. He’d been in love with that woman long before he’d even asked her on their first date.
But Charlotte was different. She was part of him. The daughter he’d never gotten to watch grow up. He hated the hand life had dealt her, but no matter what, Charlotte would always be his girl. They had a rock-solid bond forged through heartache and memories. Nothing could break that.
The case of Lucas’s disappearance had been cold since day one, but that didn’t mean Tom had stopped trying to locate that little boy. Dead end after dead end, he forged ahead, refusing to stop until he’d found him. There hadn’t been a day in the almost ten years when he hadn’t cracked that tattered case file open and tried desperately to read between the lines for any clue to the whereabouts of Lucas Boyd.
But each day reaped the same bounty: None.
The construction site where Lucas’s body had been found was only two miles from the park where he’d gone missing. The police, the FBI, and hundreds of volunteers had scoured every inch of those woods at least a dozen times over the first few days after he’d been taken. Hell, Tom had personally combed that grid at least five of those times. But, judging by the coroner’s initial assessment and the estimated age of the remains, Lucas Boyd had been in that shallow grave since day one.
Guilt settled heavily in his chest. He could have ended that nightmare for Charlotte almost a decade earlier. Only he hadn’t. And it fucking corroded his soul, knowing that.
Rocking back in his chair, he sipped off the lip of a paper cup filled with coffee so strong that he probably should have chewed it. He’d gotten the call around eleven the previous night that the badly deteriorated remains of a baby had been discovered, and he had been at the station by eleven twenty. The moment he saw the filthy baby-blue-striped onesie Lucas had last been seen wearing, his stomach had dropped.
But there were a lot of little blue-striped onesies floating around the world. It was that damn pacifier clip with the boy’s name stitched into the side that had lit Tom on fire. Fuck. For as long as he’d been searching, right then, he hated with a vengeance that it had been found. Or, more accurately, that it had ever needed to be found in the first place.
He hadn’t slept a wink in the hours that had followed. He hadn’t even gone home. Instead, he’d decided to break protocol and put his girls out of their misery once and for all. He drove straight to Susan’s house, sat in his car, waited for the day to break, and prepared to crush the heart of the woman he loved. Then he was going to be forced to ask that same woman to help him deliver the news that was going to shatter her daughter.
The only comfort he could find was knowing that he could finally give both Susan and Charlotte the closure they so desperately deserved. Though it didn’t feel anything like relief as he watched Susan fall to her knees. And definitely not when he watched Charlotte slip so deeply behind her walls that he feared she would never reemerge. But, ultimately, that closure was the only consolation he was ever going to get—unless he could find the person responsible.
Lucas was gone and there was nothing he could do to change that. But his case was far from closed.
A newfound hope had exploded within him from knowing there had to have been some kind of evidence on the body. Forensics had come a long way since he’d first joined the force over thirty years earlier. He had faith that the lab would find him something to go on. And it was that same faith that had him sitting at the station, staring at his computer screen, furiously refreshing his email in hopes the report would appear.
He’d been texting Susan all afternoon, and from what she was saying, Charlotte was still very much in denial. The silver lining being that it seemed she had finally found a man who could handle her with the care she deserved. Charlotte hadn’t shared with Tom or her mother that she and Porter had rekindled whatever connection they’d witnessed that night at The Porterhouse. But, from seeing the way she clung to him as if he could magically solve the world of hurt Tom had dropped at her feet, it was clear they had definitely rekindled something serious.
“Hey, Tom!” Charlie Boucher, his longtime partner, called in a thick New York accent, a stark contrast to the good ol’ Southern boys who made up over ninety percent of the department.
Tom turned and found him striding toward him from across the room, a manila envelope in his hand lifted in the air.
Shooting to his feet, Tom lurched toward him. “That my results?”
Charlie shrugged. “Picked ’em up at the lab. We got good news and bad. And, because the world is a seriously fucked-up place, they’re both the same thing.”
Tom snatched the envelope and tore into it, blood thundering in his ears.
Charlie dropped his ass into the chair next to Tom’s desk, kicked his feet out in front of him, and announced, “It’s not Lucas Boyd.”
* * *
“Where are we going?” I asked Porter as he drove my car down the quiet roads on the outskirts of the city.
He had the windows down, the radio off, and his hand latched onto my thigh. The warm April air whipped through the car, but I was too numb to feel it.
If I didn’t specifically think about the fact that Lucas was gone, it was really no different than any other day. He’d been gone for years. It wasn’t as if someone had snatched him from my arms that morning. Or so I’d convinced myself as the gut-wrenching pain of Tom’s announcement had buckled my knees.
I’d shut down, and it had been a conscious decision. Just as it had been the first week after Lucas had gone missing when I went back to school. I wasn’t built to handle that kind of emotional upheaval.
The emptiness was easier.
And that’s saying something because the emptiness was agonizing.
“We’re here,” Porter replied in a grim tone.
“Uh…” I glanced around at the road as he pulled onto the shoulder. And then my heart stopped when he put my car in park at the foot of a small concrete bridge that looked a lot like an overpass, but instead of a highway, it straddled the Chattahoochee River.
“This is where it started,” he said stiffly as his hand clamped down on my leg surprisingly tight, his face etched with panic. He lifted a finger and pointed out the windshield. “I watched her drive through that guardrail, not even so much as a brake light as warning.”
“Oh God,” I gasped, covering his hand with mine.
A few cars zipped past us from opposite directions, the sounds of their engines unable to drown out the tremendous ache in his whispers as he confessed, “I’ve never come back. In the three years she’s been gone, I’ve never come back here.”
“Of course not,” I breathed, squeezing his hand tight. “Why would you?”
His blue gaze cut to me. “Because this is where it started.” He pulled his hand away and opened his door, pushing it wide before finishing with, “And this is where it needs to end.”
I’d been wrong before. That was when my heart stopped.
“Porter!” I yelled, scrambling out after him, fear icing my veins. I watched in horror as he climbed the guardrail and then started down the embankment. “Porter, stop!” I screamed, slinging my leg over the hot metal, bile creeping up my throat.
And praise God, he actually listened.
Turning to face me, he looked at me like I was crazy. “What?”
“W
hat?” I screamed back at him, incredulous, the first tears of the day hitting the backs of my eyes. “What the fuck are you doing?”
“Going for a swim,” he answered—again, like I was the crazy person.
Blinking, I gave myself a minute to consider the possibility that I really was the crazy person, because absolutely nothing was making sense. After I took inventory of the situation and decided I was not, in fact, having a nervous breakdown, I asked, “Are you having a nervous breakdown?”
“Not that I’m aware of,” he replied evenly. So evenly that I figured it meant he absolutely was having a nervous breakdown.
I got my feet back on the ground on his side of the guardrail and curled a finger in his direction. “Porter, baby,” I said softly. “Come here. You’re not going for a swim. That water is gross and there are probably alligators or, at the very least, snakes,” I guessed.
He cocked his head to the side but thankfully took several steps toward me. “I know it’s gross, Charlotte. I’ve been living with that filth on me for the last three years. I’m ready to get rid of it.”
“You can’t—”
“I can,” he stated definitively. “I’m so fucking sick and tired of living with this shit. I hate her for killing herself and trying to take my kids with her. But that’s on her. I can’t change that. The only thing I can change is how I feel about what happened. I’ve spent a lot of years feeling guilty for failing her.”
My breath caught, and my throat started to burn. God, did I know that feeling.
It was the one wound that would never heal.
“Porter, you didn’t fail her.”
His lips thinned, and he nodded sadly. “I did. I really did. I should have seen it coming. I knew she’d been struggling, but I didn’t realize it had gotten that bad. We’d been dealing with Travis’s health issues for as long as I could remember, and she was always so fucking optimistic about everything, but the day they finally told us he was going to need a heart transplant, she couldn’t handle it.”
The Complete Darkest Sunrise Series Page 18