My skin blushed as I laughed. “Fair enough. We’ll book you your own room.” I glanced at Ashe again. “Quick, call the hotel before he tries to back out.”
Ashe hurried into the kitchen, grabbing the cordless phone.
I faced Dylan. “You need to go pack.”
He stretched out his limbs, yawning, ending in a more reclined position. “But I have such big plans here that I don’t want to miss.”
“Like what?”
He adjusted the pillow behind his head. “Sleeping and flying.”
“We’re only going to be gone for three nights. You’ll have the rest of the summer to sleep and fly.”
I pushed myself off the couch, halfway through the living room when I turned around and said, “If you’re not going to pack, looks like I’ll just have to do it for you.”
“Jesus,” he groaned. “You’re as relentless as your boyfriend.”
I laughed and continued to his bedroom, finding his suitcase in his closet and unzipping it on top of his bed. “How many pairs of shorts do you want to bring?”
“All right, all right!” he yelled, followed by the sound of him getting up from the couch. “I’m coming.”
“I’m going to admit something even though I really don’t want to,” Dylan said from the top of Cadillac Mountain. He nudged my arm, making sure I was listening. “I’m happy as hell you dragged me here.”
I looked at him and smiled. “Told you.”
We’d spent the majority of our vacation in Portland, but late last night, we’d decided we wanted to do some hiking, and the boys had suggested we come here in the morning. This mountain was supposedly the most beautiful in the state, and it had taken a bit of a drive to get here, the terrain tougher than I’d ever expected to climb. But as we sat together on the peak, I was so happy we’d come.
Never in my life had I seen a sight more stunning than this.
The view was endless, the colors of the sky changing now that we were up this high. Trails were carved into the distant mountains, trees sticking up from them, like tiny stick figures when I knew they were probably as tall as houses. The rock of each ridge was a deep purple with a blend of navy and brown.
And beneath us was the bluest water I had ever seen with small islands freckling several different spots of the sea.
This was my first true hike.
My first real vacation.
The highest I’d ever been in the air.
As I sat on the ledge, my legs dangling over the side, a sense of calm moved through me.
A sensation I certainly hadn’t felt during the last month, trying to juggle the bar and studying for finals and wrapping our final play of the semester.
And spending time with the man I loved.
But that was all behind me. I had the next few months off from acting and homework and classes, and now, I could enjoy Maine, where there was silence and warmth and Ashe’s arm surrounding me.
I rested my face on his shoulder—a spot that had become a home I couldn’t get enough of.
A home much different than the one I shared with Gran.
“Thank you,” Dylan said softly from beside me. I looked at him just as he added, “I’m really glad I didn’t miss this.”
I put my hand on his arm, releasing it after I said, “Me too.”
The last two days we’d spent time at the beach in Ogunquit, renting boogie boards to ride the waves, and at night, we had gone to the bars in the Old Port after long dinners by the wharf.
But this was my favorite moment.
Where the beauty took hold and made it hard to breathe. Where the quietness was the perfect soundtrack. Where my heart sped up every time I looked in Ashe’s direction.
Like I was doing now.
He didn’t have to tell me how gorgeous it was here or how much he loved me or how happy he was that Dylan had joined us.
I saw every one of those things in his eyes.
And I nodded, telling him I agreed with each one.
Forty-One
After
Ashe
Rivera had been right; I hadn’t gotten a goddamn thing done at the office aside from moving a pile of folders from one side of my desk to the other. From the moment I had stepped through the door, it had been a fucking shitshow.
Holidays were like full moons; they made the residents of our city even crazier than normal. Phones were ringing off the hook, my desk line being one of them—witnesses suddenly remembering things they’d originally forgotten, loved ones of victims checking in for updates.
As I looked around the office, I wasn’t the only one distracted. Every detective in here was in the same situation, and as we caught eyes, I could see the stress in theirs.
It had been a wasted day, and I never should have come in.
I either needed to stop answering the phone and get some work done or get my ass home and take all the paperwork with me.
Now that I’d finished talking to the DA’s assistant, I placed the receiver down. She had kindly reminded me that she needed my notes no later than tomorrow morning, or the DA would skin me.
Needing to get started, I opened the file I’d been trying to get to since I’d had coffee with Rivera, and I picked up a pen and the notebook that I kept with me on crime scenes, where I jotted down all the details while they were still fresh in my head.
I was just in the middle of transferring the first few sections when a noise shot through the department.
One that was so fucking loud, so rattling, that it sounded like a crash of thunder had erupted through the ceiling, splitting the floor in half.
The pen dropped from my hand.
My fingers shook, my heart pounding inside my chest.
My stare lifted, looking across the unit to find the cause, but each face I came across had the same question as me.
An eerie silence took over—calls halting, all talking ceasing.
I gripped my desk, my stomach twisting into a fucking knot, as one call came through, and it went to the captain’s desk. A glass wall separated her office from the main space. I watched her pick up the phone, the expression on her face as she listened, her lips moving in response.
She set down the receiver and walked out to speak to us, every detective staring at her.
Waiting.
Her face ghostly white.
Not a single one of us shifted in our chairs or cleared our throats.
I was positive none of us were even breathing.
Because we knew.
Our training told us exactly what that noise had been.
It was just a matter of where it had come from.
The captain stilled, balancing on her heels, hands clenched in front of her. “There’s been a bombing …” She glanced around the space, swallowing before she delivered, “At Copley Square.”
That was the location of the finish line.
Where thousands of people from our city and from all over the world had congregated, watching the runners pass through.
Within a second, every detective was on their feet, hands on our guns, running for the stairwell.
Forty-Two
Kerry
I’d been such a good girl.
In my head, I told myself I would always be one.