“Do you need us for anything else, because I’d like to get Charlotte home,” Drew announces.
PC Brown shuffles her papers into a pile. “No. That is all for today. The press release should be going out sometime this week or maybe next. But I’ll let you know.”
We stand, and say our goodbyes. Once outside, the fresh air feels cool on my face. I soak it in before turning to Mum. “Thank you for coming with me.”
“I’ll always be with you. I need to call your father. He should be finished with his case soon and will want to know what happened,” she tells me, then stops, taking me into her arms. “You were really brave in there.”
“Thank you,” I reply. “Go call Dad before he searches for us.”
“True.” She steps to the side to make the call.
Drew pulls me against his chest, his strong, large arms wrapping around me. “How are you feeling?”
“I’m not going to lie, it feels weird seeing him again, even if it was on a picture. I have this tightness in my stomach and for a moment back there, I thought I was going to be sick.”
“It’s from seeing his face again,” he mutters.
“What was I thinking?” I murmur. “I should have seen it. It’s all I see now. Looking at that picture, I felt revolted. With him, with myself.”
“Stop,” he demands, running his fingers through my hair. “You aren’t going to blame yourself. You can’t change what happened. No one can. But we can change the outcome by finding this fucker. He needs to pay for what he has done.”
“You aren’t just a pretty face,” I muse.
He arches his thick brow. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It means you are quite intuitive.”
“You mean I’m right,” he adds, giving me a pointed look.
I roll my eyes. “Yes. That.”
“Are you ready to go home, sweetie? Your father said he will meet us there.”
I glance at Drew and chew on my lip. “I need to go to work. I can’t go home. I’ll stew on this all day.”
“You sure?” Drew asks.
“Honey.”
I turn to Mum. “I want to go to work. If Dad still wants to see me, then we can meet him there, but I can’t keep putting my life on hold.”
Her gaze softens. “All right, sweetie. We can arrange that.”
Drew pulls open my door, letting me inside. It won’t take us long to get back to the library. The police station isn’t that far away.
As I sink into the leather seat, my mind still whirls on the picture. I’m hoping with it, we finally found him because I have so many questions. Why had he lied? Why did he hurt me? Why did he give me a fake name?
Mainly, I want to know who he is or if anything he said to me was real. I’m not even sure why it matters, but it does. They are questions which have been running around my head from the very beginning, since I found out he lied about who he was.
PC Brown had been the officer to give me the bad news. My mum had sat beside me, my dad on the other, and something inside of me broke that day. It tore me in half. I gave and I gave to everyone I came into contact with. I gave them all of me; including my love and trust. There was no in between. And that had all been torn away from me. I didn’t do it for recognition or praise. I did it because it’s who I wanted to be. I always strived to be a better person.
But that day, all I could ask myself was: what was the point? What was the point of being this person if it gave power to people like Scott who want to tear me down.
For weeks after I couldn’t even look in the mirror. I would see myself and feel so much self-loathing, it choked me. It was so deep rooted I hid it well. I felt dirty, cheap. I faked each day until one day, it hit me.
I wasn’t this person.
But that didn’t mean I wasn’t desperate for answers. It was like my subconscious needed them to heal.
Drew parks outside the library and grips my hand. “Are you sure you want to go in?”
Shaking the thoughts from my mind, I give him a nod. “I do. I have so much running through my head I need something to pull my focus away from it.”
“It might not seem like a lot right now but the police having his picture is a huge step. They’ll find him. There’s no rock he can hide under.”
He always knows what to say to me.
I also like how he doesn’t declare he’ll find him and kill him. It’s what the men in my family have threatened to do over and over. It’s a needy behaviour on my part, but I like that he’s more concerned with me than looking for him. I love Landon. He is a huge part of my life, but I see him less and less than I did before the attack. He has been spending all his free time following leads to find Scott.
“Fingers crossed.”
I push the door open and slide out. Mum does the same, her brows bunched together as she gazes down at the phone.
“Mum? You okay?”
She pastes on a smile. “Yeah, I’m just going to call Lake. She was going to pop over but somehow, the time between us leaving the police station, to now, Max has come out of work and locked her in the house.”
My eyes widen. “Locked her in?”
She reads the message and bursts out laughing. “Max said she kept making eyes at Drew so she wasn’t allowed near him.” Drew chuckles, not taking it offensively. “I’m just going to call her. I’ll be inside in a second.”
“All right, Mum.”
Drew takes my hand, leading me up to the library. “Your family are nuts.”
“But they are happy. That’s the main thing.”
“Why the fuck didn’t you tell me you were going to the police station?” Hayden yells, storming inside the library like I stole her last meal.
“Well, some people are happy,” I mumble, letting go of his hand. “Hayden, we literally went to the police station after she called. We didn’t have time.”
“You had time to pick your mum up.”
“She’s my mum,” I remind her.
Hayden’s boyfriend, Clayton, steps forward, pulling Hayden in front of him. “What she means to say is, she hopes you’re okay and it went okay at the station.”
Hayden narrows her gaze on him. “No, I fucking didn’t.”
I giggle, sobering when her glare turns my way. “I really am sorry.”
She huffs. “I know,” she replies. “How are you doing? Did it go okay?”
Clayton groans as I struggle not to laugh. “I’m okay. It was hard to see the photo but I’ll be fine.”
“Did they say—”
Seeing there are people in the library, people I speak to on a regular basis, I interrupt. “How about we not talk about that here.”
“Oh, alright,” she groans.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
DREW
Leading Charlotte over to the large table and chairs bundled together, we take a seat, Hayden and her fella following.
I quickly pull out my phone, checking my messages to make sure Landon got the gym covered whilst we were out.
He had.
Which means it won’t be long until he arrives.
“What was you doing with her?” Hayden asks, and I look up to see she is directing the question at me.