“Don’t touch it, darlin’. Let’s just go inside. Mitch is gonna come up here to take care of it.”
“Wh-Who left it?”
“I can’t say. We’ll figure it out though. I promise.”
The sight of the flower made me retreat into myself. Beau reassured me they’d figure out why the flower was there and made sure I knew he was there if I needed him.
Shaking and unable to breathe, I headed to the bedroom and curled up under the blankets. What would have happened if I’d worried more about the gifts I’d received back then? I’d thought it was all harmless, but it wasn’t. Each one was strategically left by Bee to drive me a little crazy and to stoke the fires of jealousy in Xavier.
I crawled deep under the covers, letting the darkness in. My tears started moments later, and my chest heaved.
Some time later, the bed dipped.
“Are ya okay, darlin’?”
“Seeing that rose, especially after being out on the lake today, it just pulled me back in time.”
“I know. I dunno who left it, no one saw anyone near the house. But you’re safe.” I pulled away from him, and he grimaced, immediately understanding what he’d done wrong. The words he’d used that sent me away from him. “I’m sorry, darlin’. I didn’t think.”
I crawled closer to him and buried my head against his lap and let him comfort me as my sorrow dragged me under again.
WHEN I WOKE the next morning, I was ready to put the incident with the rose out of my mind and try to focus on the final preparations for the wedding. Beau was still asleep, passed out on his side of the bed with one arm crossed over his face. The day was warm already, but the breeze that flowed across the lake kept it reasonable.
I headed to the kitchen, trying to decide what I wanted for breakfast.
A knock on the door stilled me. I glanced up the hall to the bedrooms and then towards the door. After a brief internal debate, I shoved aside my worry. Answering a door shouldn’t have been hard. I should have been able to do it without panic clawing at my throat. I’d overcome so much, I could overcome this too.
It’s just a fucking door.
By the time I’d reached the door and unlocked it, whoever had been there had gone.
“Is someone playin’ ding-dong ditch, darlin’?”
I spun to look at Beau who emerged from the hallway wearing nothing but his pyjama bottoms. His hair stuck up at all angles from the sleep.
“Yeah, they must—” I cut off when I saw what had been left on the doorstep. There was a box of chocolates on the small wooden porch. The same brand that had been delivered to the apartment I’d had in North Carolina. I pressed my hand over my mouth. “No.”
The word poured from me over and over as I backed away. There was no way it was a coincidence. No way it was an accident. When my back hit a wall, I slid down it as denials continued to spill from me. I wrapped my arms around myself. “He’s dead. He’s dead.”
“Fuck.” Beau issued the word, slammed the door and then rushed to my side. “It ain’t him, darlin’. He’s gone. They all are. They can’t hurt you no more.”
“Who would do this then?” I asked. “Why now?”
“We’ll get to the bottom of it. Even if I gotta call up Darnell and get him down here to look into it.”
I had no idea who that was. The name was meaningless—just like any recovery I’d done would be if all of these reminders were going to be thrust at me.
Beau must have seen the confusion on my face. “He’s the one who helped your daddy—”
He cut off, probably because of the horror twisting my mouth. I didn’t need more reminders. I was moving on, moving past it, how could I recover—how could I marry Beau—if I was constantly reminded of the things that had happened?
I thought about the months of darkness I’d faced. The hours in therapy. The battle I’d faced to be out on the track. I couldn’t go back to any of that. Couldn’t survive the war twice. “This bullshit was supposed to be over.”
Beau wrapped his arm around my shoulder and held my head against his chest. “It’s just someone playin’ a cruel trick. We’ll find out who and make ’em pay. I promise.”
After holding me until the shaking in my limbs had slowed enough that I could stand, Beau helped me over to the sofa and settled me there before pulling out his phone. A raft of angry words left him as he told whoever he’d called about the new arrival.
“Goddammit!” Beau’s curse echoed back to me from the porch. It had followed straight on from a thumping sound, as though he’d stamped his feet or jumped in place.
With my heart pounding, and my legs shaking again, I pushed myself up. Although the last thing I wanted to do was go towards the sound, I had to for Beau. If I didn’t, and something happened to him, I would never forgive myself.
“What is it?”
“Stay back.” His voice was gravelled.
Despite his instruction, I moved closer. Surrounding his feet, already scuttling away, were at least a dozen cockroaches. He held the top of the chocolate box in his hands.
His gaze found me. “I said to stay away. Ya didn’t need to see this.”
Ignoring his statement, I trailed my gaze between the box and the ground where the insects had been. “Were those . . . in there?”
He kicked the base of the box, shoving it up from the ground. “The bottom was stuck down with gum, so it came apart when I picked it up.”
I glanced around the area. Who would do this? Why?
Why now?
“Are ya okay?”
I nodded absently as the thoughts swirled around me. I wasn’t, but I didn’t want him to worry about me right then either.
“Mitch and Joe are gonna do what they can to get some cameras as close to our door as they can, and they’re gonna keep someone comin’ past regularly.”
“Why is this happening, Beau? I thought this was all behind us.”
“It’s just someone’s idea of a cruel joke. I’m sure of it.” He grabbed my shoulders and held me tight. “We’ll find out who is doin’ this.”
“Who though? Who knows what happened? Who knows about the gifts?”
His lips mashed together. “No one, far as I know. Least I ain’t told any of them.”
“And I didn’t say anything in the interviews. What if—” I swallowed to steady my voice. “What if someone else was helping Bee . . .?”
“It just don’t make no sense.” He threw the lid to one side and moved closer to me. “D’ya wanna hang in here for the day, or d’ya feel up to goin’ for a walk?”
“I don’t want to miss out on the time we can have here. But . . . I don’t know how much more of this I can take, Beau.”
“Your family are gonna be here in a few days. That’ll make things easier, won’t it?”
“Yeah. I guess.” My gaze still tracked all around the area in front of the house. Someone might have been watching us right now.
He grabbed my shoulders and carefully forced me to look at him. “I know this ain’t easy on ya, so I hafta ask this. D’ya still wanna get married? I don’t wanna force ya into anythin’ ya don’t wanna do.”
“It seems everything wants to drag me back there lately, but I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to let this win. I can’t. If I do . . . what else will I lose? I’ve lost so much already.”
“Ya won’t lose me if we don’t go through with the weddin’. Ya have to know that.”
“I want it. Besides, everyone is coming—”
“Darlin’, I don’t care about no one else. I care about what you want.”
“I want to marry you. And I think I want to go to the Kitchen for breakfast rather than finding something here because then I can show whoever it is that’s trying to fuck with me that I won’t fall back into that black hole. I won’t.”
He grinned. “Heh, there’s that fire I adore. I knew it’d be back.”
I gritted my teeth. “This is the opposite of what they want. They wanted me weak. T
hey wanted me to give up. I won’t do it anymore. I can’t. I already lost Angel. I already lost our child. How much more do I have to give up?”
“Nothin’ more, darlin’. I’ll make sure of it. I’ll keep—” He cut himself off. “I’ll keep ya sane.” He winked at me.
Beau and I dressed and then headed down to the restaurant. If someone really were trying to intimidate me, I wouldn’t let them. I couldn’t.
Once we’d finished breakfast, Beau led me back to the house. My gaze had travelled the length of the porch before I was confident that there were no more gifts left for me.
“Did ya wanna go for a walk this afternoon?” Beau asked. The smile he wore was enigmatic.
I narrowed my eyes as I considered that smile. “What is it?”
“Nothin’, I just thought you’d like to go for a walk with me later.”
“Later? Why not now?”
“We got a few things to do first.”
“Like?”
“Seating plans.”
“Ugh. I’d forgotten we needed to do that still. Can’t we just draw them from a hat?”
“Least we don’t hafta worry about your family not gettin’ along with mine.”
I brushed my hand over his bicep. “I don’t think we’ve got too many worries at all in that respect, really. I think everyone gets along with everyone. And if they don’t, they’ll have to suck it up for one afternoon.”
We spent the next hour or so going over the RSVPs and trying to work out where everyone was going to sit based on the table plan for the Kitchen.
“We can fit two people on this table,” I insisted when Beau said we might have to put Uncle Flynn and Luke a table down the other end of the space because the rest of my family was already taking up the closer tables.
“That’s our table though,” he said. “We’re supposed to have our bridal party up there.”
“What bridal party? The only person I would’ve had as my maid of honour hasn’t even said a word to me in months, and you haven’t said anything about who might be your best man. Do you even have one?”
“Well after we asked Mitch to officiate, Joe was the obvious choice.”
“I just—” I sighed. “Well, won’t it be easier to not have any bridal party?”
“If ya think it’ll be easier. But how about we leave the table open for now, and put Flynn and Luke here. Then we can move ’em on the day if ya really don’t wanna have anyone as our bridal party.”
“There you go being all reasonable again. It’s really not fair, you know.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because it makes it so much harder to argue with you.”
“Then I ain’t gonna apologise for bein’ reasonable.”
Once we had all the arrangements sorted, Beau glanced down at his phone and smiled. Then he told me to freshen up for our walk. I gave him a look that confirmed I thought he was crazy but did as he asked anyway. Maybe we were meeting up with Cassidee, Mitch, or Joe considering we’d only seen them in passing since our arrival.
I came out of the bedroom to find Beau walking a path along the patio. When I caught him, he offered me a guilty gaze.
“What are you doing?”
He gave me the lopsided smile of a kid caught with their hand in a cookie jar. “I was just checkin’.”
I didn’t need to ask what he was checking. “And?”
“Nothin’.”
“Well, thank fuck for that.”
He wrapped his arms around my waist, and we held each other. “Are ya ready for that walk?”
I let him free of my arms and took his hand instead. “Sure. Where to?”
There was something mysterious about the smile he wore.
“What’s up?” After the morning we’d had, I wanted to know.
“Nothin’, darlin’, I’m just lookin’ forward to marryin’ ya in a few days. I’m more excited now that the table settin’ is all set.”
I squeezed his hand as we headed towards the reception area in the big glass building. “I am looking forward to it too. You have to believe that.”
“Course I do. I know this ain’t easy on ya. Hopefully it’ll be easier over the next few days as more guests arrive.”
“Hopefully.”
We continued to talk about the few wedding details we knew as we wandered down towards the pier.
“Who’s that?” Beau asked, nodding in the direction of the lake.
At first, I wasn’t sure what he meant, but then I saw her.
Standing at the end of the pier, in almost the exact place Beau and I had sat the morning of his sister’s funeral, was a woman in a pink sundress. Her blonde hair whipped around her shoulders in the breeze, and for a moment I was convinced it was my Angel.
It had to be a cruel trick of the mind though, there was no reason for her to find me again. She hadn’t RSVP’d or given any indication she would be there. We hadn’t even spoken since the day she kissed me and walked out of my life.
I was so desperate for any contact with her I was willing to impose her memory over the woman leaning against the railings. It had to be Cassidee or a guest of the retreat.
While I considered the devastation that enveloped me at the knowledge it wasn’t the one I wanted to see, she turned around, and my heart stopped.
It is her!
My breath caught as I just stared at her for a heartbeat. Then, I couldn’t contain it any longer. “Angel!”
I took off towards her. I couldn’t have stopped myself from flying in her direction even if I’d wanted. It took seconds to cross the distance between us, but each one felt like it lasted more than an hour.
A smile lit her face, but even without it, she looked serene. More herself and healthier than she had the whole time she’d shared the house with Beau and me. The thought slowed my pace, and instead of flying into her arms with no abandon, I stopped less than a metre in front of her.
Her grin widened and then she said, “Hey, girlie.”
Tears flooded my eyes, stealing the vision of her standing in front of me and twisting it into a blur. Even though I needed to protect my heart against letting her in again only to be hurt when she left, I took the final steps and dragged her into my arms as a sob left my lips.
Her own sob echoed mine. “I take it you missed me?”
Instead of answering her question, another sob stole from my throat, and I held her tighter than ever. I didn’t want to let her go. I was too afraid she was going to vanish in a puff of smoke if I loosened my hold even a little.
There were so many questions I wanted the answers to. So much time to make up for. I knew the basics of where she’d been and what she had done because of Beau’s reports, but it wasn’t enough for me. News of her movements had never been enough. It never could be enough.
She turned her face into my neck, nuzzling into my hair, and I held her tighter still while we both cried. Just as my hold slackened, the thought that she was really there tugged on my heartstrings, and I tightened it again.
We stood like that for the longest time.
Despite everything that I wanted to know, there were no words that needed to be said. It was like we were communicating on a different wavelength.
Eventually, our tears dried and smiles replaced them.
Only then did we break apart, but my hands instantly found hers.
“If that’s the greeting I’m going to get, I should go away more often,” she teased.
“How long are you here for?” I asked, trying to make sure I could pack as much as I could into whatever time we had. At least, if she wanted to. It wasn’t entirely fair on Beau coming all this way together just to ignore him to spend time with Angel, but reflecting on what he’d said and done, I was certain he knew she’d be there. The fact he hadn’t come charging down beside me to question her was further proof of that.
“Just a week. I leave next Tuesday.”
That meant she was leaving on the same day as Beau and me. I wondered if it was a c
oincidence but doubted it. The more I considered Beau’s actions, the more I was certain this wasn’t a chance meeting.
“One week?”
She nodded. “And then I’m flying back home.”
I DREW MY breaths through a tight chest as I thought about Angel’s statement. “And where is home these days?”
She smoothed one hand over my hair. “It’s going to be where it’s always been. Back in Ormeau.”
My heart leapt. “You’re coming back home to Queensland?”
“I have to finish my studies sometime. It makes sense to finish it where I started it.”
I swallowed down the disappointment over the reason for her return. The selfish part of me had hoped it was because she’d realised she needed me the way I needed her. But that didn’t seem to be the case.
“Plus, I miss my girl,” she added as her gaze found the concrete between us. “I-I wanted . . . I mean, I don’t know if you—” She sighed and lifted her gaze skyward. Anywhere but on me. “If . . .” She trailed off again, and an awkward pause crept between us.
“I think we need to talk.” I indicated the ground, planning to have the rest of our conversation sitting. If she couldn’t get her words out while she was looking at me, it wasn’t going to be an easy one. Sitting side by side, we would be able to focus on the lake and not have to meet gazes as we had it.
She took the hint and found a seat, sitting behind the railing with her legs poking out over the edge of the pier. I sat beside her and stared out over the water. It was the same position Beau and I had sat in when I’d come down to sit beside him the morning of Abby’s funeral.
Twisting around, I glanced over my shoulder and found Beau standing back at the place I’d rushed away from him. He shot me a questioning look, one that asked if I was okay. I smiled and inclined my head to let him know I was. After our silent exchange, he blew me a kiss and indicated the office—no doubt letting me know he was going to check in and find out about everything he’d missed being in Australia.
Phantom (Phoebe Reede: The Untold Story #5) Page 18