Jack.
Twenty
Thoughts consume me. Depleted in a heartbreaking sob, I cry into my pillow. Overwhelming emotions crash down, devouring me whole. I’ve waited all my life for him to be found, and now he’s here. Can it be him—my lost boy?
Loud taps pound the door. Muffled voices hum in the depths of my mental break. The collision of relief and fear swirls in the dark, seeking out the light. Years of not knowing—of hurting—searching. A weight pushes down on the mattress, the scent of summer rain saturating me as a warm body curls behind me, large, powerful. Jack. All the loneliness, the broken pieces of my shattered soul, wield together in an upsurge of deep yearning. “How can this be?” I croak, drowning, sinking to the bottom of the ocean.
“I found you,” he breathes into my hair. And just like that, he’s diving into the depths, pulling me to the surface.
“Lizzy, what the hell is going on?” Charlotte calls from my doorway. “Do you want me to call the police?”
“No,” I rasp. “No. It’s okay, Char. Leave us.” She hesitant, but finally closes the door.
Heat spreads up my back, my soul reconnecting, fusing to its mate, all the nerve-endings awakening. “Why didn’t you tell me it was you?”
“You needed time.” He clutches me so tight, afraid this is just a dream. Turning to face him, our breathing accelerates, eyes devouring every inch of the other’s face, soaking in the years of changes, the freckles. “Aquila's,” I murmur, stroking the pad of my finger down his nose.
Taking my hands in his, he places them against his chest. “What does that mean?”
“It’s a constellation, the eagle that carried Zeus’s thunderbolt.” Frowning, I add, “It’s also supposedly the eagle who kidnapped a son of Troy to serve the gods.” My stomach dips. “I’m sorry he took you.” Acid churns my insides, a fresh wave of tears searing down my cheeks.
“Don’t. It was never your fault. We were kids,” he urges, clasping my face.
“How did you find me?” I sniffle.
With tender fingers, he moves hair crusted with blood from my forehead, grimacing at the cut there. “Should we get that looked at?”
“No.” I grasp his hand and move it away from the wound. “How did you find me?”
“Would you believe me if I said fate?”
Yes… No…
“Thinking about you became so prominent in my mind, I wasn’t sure if you were just an illusion I’d created in my loneliness or if I was really standing in front of the coffee shop looking in at the girl who’d haunted my dreams for so long. Beautiful. Strong. Mine,” he breathes. Eyes focused on my mouth, the pad of his thumb caresses over my bottom lip, sending a rush of blood pulsing between my legs. “The pane of glass acting as yet another barrier between us, stopping me from reaching out for you and never letting go.”
“Why didn’t you come in—tell me?”
“I was scared you wouldn’t remember me, recognize any glimmer of the boy I once was. I’d dreamed of that moment, played it out over and over, but never had the strength to see it through. But he forced my hand, and now our past has become our present.” My heart thunders. “There was a girl killed who brought me here. Only…she wasn’t important enough to make waves, so not everyone knows about her.” The street worker?
“That’s why I came here.”
“Why do you think this can’t be Willis?”
Breathing heavily, a storm brews within his eyes. “You have to understand, Willis was evil. He was a father by biology only. Everything that makes a man human—empathy, love—was not something he possessed.”
“What did he do to you?”
The turmoil in his green eyes is so vivid, I can see every speck of color there. Summer turning to autumn. Autumn turning to winter. His scent wraps around me, offering comfort despite him needing it himself.
“He didn’t stop, Lizzy.” Dark lashes fan his cheeks as his eyes flutter closed.
“What do you mean?”
Grinding his jaw, the pulse in his neck flickers. “He moved around so much, no one connected the murders, but he never stopped. Decades of women…until…”
“Until?” I urge, so hungry for answers.
“When I was ten years old, I witnessed two women murdered. He tried to make me participate. When I refused, he locked me in a room with a girl…a dead girl.”
Oh my god. I reach for him, grasping his cheek.
“It was your face I held on to. Everything else is like sand in the desert, layers upon layers. I’m not sure what’s real and what’s not, but I remembered you, always you.”
My hands begin to shake. I fist them as I sit up so he can’t see the terror snaking its way through my body. “How many?” I ask, scared to death of the answer.
“How many what?” He leans up on an elbow. Roused hair lays upheaved over his scalp.
“How many women? How many murders did you know about?” Something inside me screams, seeking truths I can’t find. His brow knits. His eyes drop to the mattress, then back up. Focusing on my hair, he picks up a lock and curls it, the crusted blood coming away on his fingers. “Too many, Liz.”
I squeeze my eyes closed. “Tell me how many.”
Silence hangs, the air thickening, pulsing, screaming. I don’t remember a time when darkness wasn’t part of my life. I want to be free of it, but that will never happen if I don’t know all the pain, all the victims. Healing is having knowledge.
With the sound of a million shards of glass shattering, he tells me, “Thirteen I know about, more I don’t.”
My hands clench and a rogue tear leaks free. Shadows dance in my mind, the monster crawling inside me, tainting my existence. I don’t feel like me. It’s like I’m living someone else’s life. I’m numb. “Including the new murders?” I choke out.
His mouth twists,
