“So you don’t know if he left the apartment?” she pushed.
“I’m so sorry...Trent and I got a little...uh...busy, and if he left, I didn’t notice.”
“Okay, well, thank you anyway.” She frowned, then pursed her lips before trying to push them into a half-smile for Chase’s benefit. She began to walk toward the door when Chase called after her. She turned around, meeting his curious blue gaze.
“You didn’t need anything from the store?” he asked, confused.
“No, I just wanted to ask you about Garrett.”
“I’ll let you know if I see him,” he promised, and she headed back to her apartment certain he had found comfort in someone else’s arms after she kicked him out.
Well, we aren’t really together, together, so I guess I have no right to be mad. I’m the one who kept saying no strings. I’m the one who kept pushing him away.
But didn’t I have to?
What choice did I have?
The next morning her phone was still silent. She tried to call Garrett this time on her way to work. It clicked over to his voicemail immediately. Fuck. Her heart was in the bottom of her stomach by the time she parked her car at work and made her way into the building.
Scott was sitting in her office.
“What are you doing in here?” she asked him. “Get out. I have nothing to say to you.”
He stood up, his hands pressed out toward her, palm side up. “Look, I think you’re mad at the wrong person here. I am trying to help you.”
“Why did you come over the other night?” She searched his face for signs of truth. She would have no patience for lies or subterfuge.
He let out a deep sigh. “Please, can we sit down? You’re clothed now, right? I should have waited for you to get dressed and had you sit down like civilized people instead of confronting you when you were wet and naked—though it was quite a stimulating sight, if I do say so myself...”
She rolled her eyes as she took a seat. “Just cut to the chase, Scott, okay? I have a client in fifteen minutes.”
“Fine, fine,” he said, shaking his head. “Your hormones are obviously out of control, aren’t they?”
“Just state what you came here to state,” she warned him.
“Anjuli, I know you’re a smart lady—surely you know by now that I have feelings for you...right?” He looked at her with that dopey grin on his face again.
“You’re married, Scott,” she reminded him.
“I know.” His smile faded a little as he ran a hand across his bald head. “I’m not happily married, though. I think we both know that.”
“That’s not my problem,” she threw back at him.
“Isn’t it, though?” he questioned, his brows raised. “Getting to know you—well, it’s made it pretty clear how inadequate my wife is in pretty much every way. She isn’t smart like you, or caring, or such a vixen in bed. She won’t even do the deed with me anymore.”
“Still not my problem,” Anjuli insisted, her arms folded across her chest.
“I can’t get you out of my mind, Juli,” he breathed out, then buried his face in his palms. “Every waking moment, I’m consumed by thoughts of you. I just don’t know what else to do. I had to tell you; I had to hope you felt something for me too.”
“I feel a friendship and a sense of camaraderie,” she answered, “or at least I did until last night. What gives you the right to stalk the guy I’m seeing, anyway? That’s creepy as fuck, Scott.”
“I know, I know,” he agreed, nodding. “I didn’t want to—it’s just that I had a bad feeling about him. I knew something was not right, and I had to confirm my suspicions. I did some research. What I found about him is kind of scary, Juli. I don’t want you to get hurt. No matter what happens between you and me, you know I’d never want you to get hurt.”
She glanced down at her watch, noting she had only a few minutes to get to her appointment on a different floor of the hospital. She had to check on an admitted patient, a female vet who had been struggling with suicidal ideation. She was going to have to get all of this personal shit out of her mind so she could bring her A Game to the client’s bedside.
“I appreciate your concern, Scott, but I can take care of myself. Go treat your patients, and I’ll treat mine. Let’s just do our jobs, okay?” She stood up stiffly, her arms crossing again under her chest.
He stood up too. “What about your situation?”
“I told you I would take care of myself,” she hurled back at him. “And that is exactly what I intend to do.”
At 6 PM, she received a text from an unknown number:
This is Jackson Stone. I’m in WA with Garrett and our family. I think you should come out here.
The next text was an address.
Her heart nearly exploded as she read through the text again. Garrett is in Washington? What the ever-loving fuck?
She glanced over at her clock and back to her phone. Then to the photo she kept of Mishti in her graduation garb with the biggest smile ever. Then back to her phone again. It felt like the world had stopped, and her entire life hinged on her next move.
Twenty-Five
It was the most surreal thing he had ever experienced in his life.
If he had thought his unknown half-sister showing up at his door was surreal or flying to Alabama to meet his half-brother was surreal, well, those two experiences paled in surreality to what he was experiencing now. He was sitting in the living room of the Stone’s family home with his father, his half-siblings and the woman he supposed he should call his step-mother, Alison Stone.
Any outsider would have thought it was a normal family function, not the actual strange circumstances of Garrett seeing his father for the first time since he was three, or Jackson being reunited with this family after living a year as a totally different identity. He still hadn’t told them about the name change, and Garrett wasn’t sure he would. The important thing was that this family had welcomed both of their sons home with open arms.
Henry Stone had pulled his older son aside and in his gruff voice said, “I owe you pretty much the biggest apology ever. I don’t know how you could ever forgive me for leaving you all those years ago. All I can tell you is that I’m not the same man I was back then. I was a drunk and a coward. I cheated on your mom, and she said she never wanted to see me again. I didn’t think I deserved to be a father.
“Years later when I met Alison and started a family with her, I was haunted by the memory of you, that bright red hair and that silly smile you had. When my kids came out with that fiery red hair just like you, I swore I was being punished having to look at them every day and remember what I’d done to you.”
“Why didn’t you ever come around? Look me up?” Garrett asked him. “I am sure we weren’t too hard to find. I don’t think we ever even left that house.”
His father raised his hand and clamped it around his son’s shoulder. “I heard your mom got remarried. I tried to call one day...you were probably six or seven. That asshole husband of hers answered the phone. I told him I wanted to talk to your mom, and he told me to never call the house again, and that I was a sorry excuse for a man. That now he had to raise my son because I had been such a damn pussy.”
Damn pussy, the phrase brought all kinds of memories to Garrett’s mind. Clark Bowman had been a big fan of that slur. Garrett had been called that more times than he could count.
“I’m so sorry about what happened with your mom and him,” Henry said, his eyes boring into Garrett’s with a sincerity Garrett had not expected. “I read about it in the papers.”
“You let me go to foster care,” Garrett said, biting back tears. “You abandoned me again. I was an orphan as far as the state knew.”
Henry moved his hand, using it to scrub against his face and through his own beard, which was longer than his son’s and full of white and gray mixed in with the red and brown hairs. “I have wronged you, Garrett. I don’t know how many different ways I can say I’m sorry,
but whatever it takes, I want to make it up to you.”
Garrett stepped away. He had never in a million years thought he’d be having this conversation. And then the doorbell rang.
He heard commotion in the other room as Alison, or maybe it was Lilly, went to the door. He heard muffled voices, mostly women’s. “Probably the neighbor coming by,” Henry said, answering Garrett’s curious stare, then gestured for him to lead the way back into the family room where the others were.
He turned the corner to head that way but stopped in his tracks when he saw those eyes.
She gave him an uneasy smile, then extended her hand toward Mr. Stone. “I’m Dr. Anjuli Raina,” she introduced herself. “I’m Garrett’s costar in Chicago, and I helped find your son Jackson.” For as uneasy as she looked, her voice came out strong and confident.
Garrett’s heart was pounding away in his chest. He hadn’t answered her calls or texts, but he sure as hell didn’t expect her to show up in Washington. I’m sure Jackson is responsible for this, he thought.
“Well, it’s a pleasure to meet you, Dr. Raina,” Henry Stone bellowed in his deep, booming voice. “I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for bringing both of my sons back to me.” He pulled her into a bear hug, and she flashed Garrett a look of distress over Henry’s shoulder.
“Give us a minute, please,” Garrett said to his father, who nodded and went to join the others in the family room.
“Do I even want to know how you found me?” he asked, shaking his head.
“Well, Chase and Nigel didn’t know where you were...then Jackson texted me. I guess if you’re going to disappear, you have to do a better job not leaving a trace,” she said, smiling at him. “I wanted to apologize for the other night, but you wouldn’t answer me.”
“I know.” He folded his arms across his chest and looked down into her deep, dark eyes. Those eyes. Still hypnotizing him. Still making him think maybe he could heal someday and make something of himself. Still making him think he might have some goodness in him after all.
“Can we go somewhere to talk?” she asked. “Would your family mind?”
After the shock of the word “family” wore off, he answered, “No, not at all, just a sec.” He stepped into the other room and announced that he was going to take a walk with Anjuli. He led her out the back door into the Stone’s spacious yard. They lived in the country, and there was a pasture outlined by a dilapidated fence, and in the distance, the tallest evergreens he’d ever seen, all standing proudly on a steep hill overlooking a river.
There was a rundown wooden frame with rusty chains and a swing hanging down from them. “Think this will hold us?” he asked, chuckling. He gestured toward it, and that uneasy look was back on her face again, but she sat.
“I shouldn’t have asked you to leave the other night,” Anjuli said, facing him. “As soon as I cooled down, I wished you were back.”
“I’m still trying to understand why the fuck that dude was there. He really pissed me off.”
“Me too,” she agreed. “Apparently he is in love with me.” She rolled her eyes. “He’s a work friend, and he’s married. He is the one who helped me track down people who knew Jackson. But then I guess he got jealous of me being with you—”
“So he just barged in your house and kissed you?”
“Shit, you saw that? I didn’t think you did,” Anjuli fired back. “Well, now you know why I kneed him in the balls.” She laughed.
“I was so proud of you when you did that!” He grinned. “But then he said all that shit and called me a murderer and I—well, and then you screamed at me to leave. So I really didn’t know what to think.”
She reached out for his hand and laced her fingers through it. They were so cold, shivers shot up his spine. “You’re freezing, woman!” He rubbed his hands against hers, trying to generate some warmth.
“I didn’t know what to think about what he said,” she admitted. “And I suppose I could have done my own research, but I was pretty conflicted about the whole thing.”
“Anjuli, I need to tell you what happened. Come clean to you.” He squeezed her hand and waited to see what kind of reception she would give him.
“I guess we both need to come clean, then.” She took a deep breath, and for a moment, they both just sat there, letting the crisp November air circulate through their lungs. In and out, in and out, like maybe they could inhale the strength they needed to open up their hearts and let the truth fly out.
“I didn’t kill my mother,” he said, breaking the silence.
She bit her lip. “I hoped that part wasn’t true.”
“But I did kill my stepfather.”
He waited for those words to sink in, and he saw the moment they did: the shock and dismay tightened her jaw and drew her brows together with more questions than he could answer in a lifetime.
“My stepfather abused both my mother and me. More emotionally than physically,” he admitted, “but still, abuse nonetheless. And if he was drinking, then all bets were off.”
“Garrett—” She laid a hand on his thigh. “I don’t know what to say.”
“Just listen, please.” He closed his eyes to bolster his resolve. He had to get through this.
“Okay, sorry.” She squeezed his thigh for emphasis.
“One night he was so drunk that he started throwing my mom around. I guess he wanted to fuck her, and she refused him because he was so fucking drunk. And that made him even angrier.”
Garrett pinched his nostrils together at the top of his nose, as if that would ward off the headache forming in the base of his skull. “I can still hear her, ‘Clark, just go sleep it off. Leave me alone, Clark!’”
“Clark,” Anjuli murmured softly. “You said that name in your sleep sometimes...I thought you meant Clark Jones, from the show...”
He ignored that comment, deep in his own mind. These were words he had never told another living soul, and now he was freeing them from their cages buried deep inside him. “He had his gun, okay? I was sixteen, almost seventeen years old. I hated the way he treated her, not to mention the way he treated me, but she would not leave him. I think it was because my dad had left her, and she didn’t think she could get another man.
“But I had never really stood up to him before. He usually knocked me on my ass if I even talked back. He was a Marine, big, strong...but when I was almost seventeen, I was finally as tall as him, finally over six feet. I had told myself the last time he’d gone on a drunken bender that I was going to wrangle my mom away from him and just take her away. Get in my truck and get her the fuck outta there. I had my license; I had the height and strength to finally take him on.
“’Course he always told me I was a piece of shit, and my daddy didn’t want me. He caught me once with a boy, and then he started calling me a fuckin’ fag too. I got into a fight once at school, and he berated me for not standing up for myself, calling me a damn pussy. So when I heard him get the gun, and I heard my mom scream, I thought ‘This is the night. This is the night I finally show him I can stand up for my mom and myself.’”
He looked over at her, still as a statue in the rickety old swing, and she had tears streaming down her face. She looked as though his words were slicing into her, chipping away at her flesh.
“He had the gun pointed at her, and she was cowering in the corner, mumbling, trying to talk some goddamn sense into him. When I came in, she told me to leave. She told me to go back to my room. Of course, I didn’t do that. I marched right up to that big, hulking beast of a man, this monster I’d been living with since I was six years old, and I knocked that fucking gun right out of his hand.”
Anjuli gasped. “Oh my god, Garrett...” She was shaking her head, the tears still streaming as she awaited the conclusion of his story.
“The gun spun around on the floor, then we both reached for it—”
“’We both reached for the gun,’” she quoted, lyrics from Chicago. “Holy shit, Garrett...”
“Our hands were both on it, fighting over it. He raised it up toward my mom and fired it...once.”
She watched him break down right before her eyes, this tall, strong man just heaved and sobbed, throwing himself against her. She opened her arms and welcomed him as he shattered with the memories. He shuddered against her as it all tore through him, ripping him to shreds as she tried to whisper soothing words into his ears.
“You don’t have to say any more,” she said. “It’s enough...I—”
“No,” he said. “No, I need you to know.” He cleared his throat and pulled back to meet her gaze. “My mom slumped to the floor, and I didn’t miss a beat. I grabbed the gun, backed up toward her, looked him right between the eyes and fired another bullet right into his brain.
“I called 9-1-1 to report it, and the operator told me to stay on the line, but I couldn’t—I was watching them die. I ran. I didn’t know what else to do. I just ran into the woods, which were dark as fuck, and eventually the police found me. I couldn’t even tell them what had happened. For a while, they did think I’d shot them both. But after I was able to give bits and pieces of what happened, they believed me. His prints were on the gun too, and it was obvious he was drunk as fuck.”
“Oh my god, so what happened to you after that?”
“I was sent to foster care,” he explained. “And on my eighteenth birthday, I left town and never looked back. And I never told anyone what had happened that night except for the police and you, just now.”
She was shaking. She bit her lip, trying to stop her body from quivering, but she didn’t seem able to control it. Part of it was the wind, the frigid gusts blowing the swing, her hair, the branches in the woods just yards away. It was the kind of wind that cut through a body like a knife.
“Does your family know about this?” She gestured toward the house.
The Navigator (Mountains Series Book 5) Page 25