My chest caved in, and a wave of nausea rolled in my stomach.
There it was.
The moment I’d been waiting so long for.
The words I’d prayed so many times I’d never hear. And then, years later, the ones that I prayed would finally allow me to let go.
“Is it him?” I asked without actually feeling anything.
Porter got close again, hovering without touching me.
My mom reached out, tears pouring from her eyes.
Tom’s face contorted as if I’d asked him to shoot me.
And I stood there, pleading for someone to finally end my nightmare.
“We don’t have a cause of death or positive ID yet, but—” Out of his back pocket, Tom produced a photo and lifted it my way.
I slapped a hand over my mouth, and the ground rumbled beneath my feet. The past roared to life even as I clung to the present. I would have recognized that pacifier clip anywhere. It had been last seen clipped to the front of my son’s shirt. I’d had it custom made for him before I’d even known he was a boy. Call it mother’s intuition or whatever, but I’d felt it in my bones.
He had been my son.
And, now, he was gone.
A dark, guilt-ridden part of my soul died as I stared at the picture of that blue-and-white-polka-dot ribbon, the pacifier he had once suckled still connected to the end, five letters monogrammed in thick block font to form what I now knew was the most painful word in the English language.
Lucas.
And then, suddenly, even though I’d had ten years of warning, the world finally stopped.
* * *
I had no idea what was in that picture, but it wasn’t hard to follow the bouncing ball, though it was impossible to grasp the reality of it all.
Her son was dead. They’d found his body, which had been buried for God only knew how long while she’d spent ten years living and breathing but buried right alongside him.
He wasn’t even my child and the pain was damn near crippling. I couldn’t imagine the hurricane blowing inside her.
When she stumbled on weak legs, colliding with my chest, I couldn’t gather her in my arms fast enough. Turning her, I supported her weight. Her back arched as she curved her front against mine. Her heart raced and her chest heaved as the unfathomable devoured her. And, through it all, I did the only thing I could. I held her tight, waiting for her to explode and cursing the moment when her guttural cries would tear through the room like a tornado of devastation, leveling us all.
I would have given anything to carry her back to the bedroom. To hit rewind and go back to when she had been peacefully sleeping at my side. Her breathing even. Her heart slow. Her body languid. Her mind still. The scars on her soul temporarily forgotten.
The truth was I could hold her until my arms fell off, but I couldn’t make this better for her. Part of her had been missing long before I’d met her, but the grieving process was just getting started, and there was absolutely nothing I could do to soften that blow.
But that didn’t mean I wasn’t going to try.
She didn’t scream.
She didn’t cry.
She didn’t wail or shake her fist at the heavens.
She didn’t even move.
“I’m here,” I mumbled into the top of her hair, repeatedly kissing the side of her face. “I’ll stop with you. It’s just me and you, Charlotte.”
She didn’t respond. Honestly, I wasn’t even sure she was breathing anymore.
She was still.
Utterly. Completely. Eerily so.
“Honey.” Her mom appeared beside us.
My muscles tensed as my body screamed in objection, but when Charlotte pivoted in her direction, I let her go.
Charlotte didn’t move into her mother’s open arms.
Stepping away from us both, she stated, “I need coffee.” And then, robotically, she tilted her head back to catch my gaze. “You want some?”
Calm. Cool. Collected.
Not a tear in sight. Steady hands. Square shoulders.
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
It wasn’t just her face anymore. Her whole aura was blank. Not even I could find the emotion hidden within.
It was worse than the cries I’d expected because it was the first time since I’d met Charlotte that I realized there wasn’t even enough of her left to explode.
“Charlotte,” I rasped. “Come back, sweetheart.”
But I didn’t mean physically. She was gone, and it scared the hell out of me.
Reaching out to catch her hand, I tangled our fingers together, desperately trying to get a read on her. She didn’t grip it tight with anxiety. Nor did she give it a sweet squeeze. But, worst of all, she didn’t even pull it away in an attempt to hide.
She just held it, limp and loose.
Physically there but mentally and emotionally a million miles away.
I moved closer, worry ricocheting inside me, and whispered, “Let’s go sit in the darkness.”
She offered me a reassuring smile so fake that it appeared as though it were made of plastic. “Let’s stay in the light today, Porter.”
I searched her face. “I don’t know where you are right now, but I promise you this isn’t the light. Let me in. I’ll come with you, wherever you want to go. I’m there.”
After pulling her hand from mine, she rested her palms on my chest. Then, keeping her gaze down, she absently traced the seam at the neck of my T-shirt. “I’ve been waiting a long time to know where my baby was. Now, I know. This is as close to the light as I’m ever going to get.”
The breath rushing from my lungs felt as though I’d been hit with a sledgehammer.
She had a point. A sad, depressing, tragic point. But a point nonetheless.
I held her empty gaze, searching for a glimmer of the woman I’d been falling in love with over the last month, but if she was in there, I couldn’t be sure.
Unfortunately, she didn’t give me long to look. Spinning, she briskly headed for the kitchen.
“Charlotte, let me get the coffee,” her mom said, following after her.
I stood frozen, unable to move.
Everyone reacted different to tragedy. I knew this firsthand. Hell, I’d fought a pond one time.
But this was different, and I had no fucking idea what to do.
Did I give her space?
Did I follow her and insist she talk to me?
Did I carry her to the bedroom, close the blinds, and force her into the darkness confessional with me?
If I stuck with the rules, my only option was to wait for her to come to me, but that felt like the impossible.
But, if I broke them, I risked breaking her too.
I watched her over the bar as she plundered around her small kitchen. Her mother frantically tried to stop her, but Charlotte ignored her pleas and went about gathering coffee, retrieving mugs from the cabinet, filling the carafe with water, and then pouring it into the machine. Her face was emotionless, and her movements were smooth, not at all jerky or rough with distress. She was on autopilot.
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.”