He quirked his mouth.
My chuckle died away. “You seriously don’t believe?” I asked soberly.
“Seriously. And you do? After everything you’ve seen? Went through? You think there’s someone cruel enough to let you go through that?”
I jerked at the softness of his voice, the tenderness in it. “Maybe not exactly him.” I nodded to the man on the cross. “But something. I’ve got to believe there’s something more to this. That there’s some kind of method in the madness.”
“You’re looking for a method in the madness? You live for madness.”
I hid my response to his perception of me. “On the surface, maybe. But there’s only so much chaos even I can welcome. I need to know that there’s something more so I can live in the chaos, you know? I don’t know if I could keep on keeping on if I thought there was nothing. If we’re all just here on a chunk of rock by chance.”
Luke tilted his head. “I don’t think it’s chance.”
I trapped myself in his stare. “I know it’s not. And I need miracles, need to believe in them. I got shown one today, when I heard my niece was born with ten fingers and ten toes and beautiful green eyes,” I whispered. “And I’m holding out for another one.”
Luke squeezed my hand.
I was so surprised at the touch, and how my whole body relaxed into it. How the simple gesture made me feel safe.
“Didn’t believe in miracles,” he murmured. “Not till I saw one right in front of me. Not until I was lookin’ at the miracle right now. So I’m thinkin’ you’ve still got a few.” He paused, like he hadn’t just sucker-punched me in the chest. “He’s gonna be okay, Rosie.”
“Yeah,” I whispered.
And then we sat there, holding hands and staring at the guy who was staring woodenly back at as. I found support and strength in that chapel. Enough to get me through the worst of it and then some. Until Steg woke up cursing at nurses and demanding a cigarette.
I didn’t find salvation. No, because I loved Luke then. More than ever. That conversation, that small touch, the sitting there for hours wordlessly, that was enough to hold onto. To pretend that something on his side existed too.
A sliver of hope that the man I loved irrevocably might just love me too.
That wasn’t salvation.
That was damnation.
Luke
Present Day
Luke followed her.
He knew he fucking shouldn’t. But what else was he meant to do? Where else was he supposed to go? When she disappeared, dropped off the face of the earth, it was like his center of gravity drifted away along with her. So he was plunged into free fall. She ripped the paper fucking background of his life away and left him to deal with the emptiness.
He was fucking furious with her for that.
He was even more furious with himself.
For letting her leave. For being such a dumb fuck for half his life.
He knew what everyone thought about him. His job had been to know things. Maybe it still was now. But his job was to know things and not tell anyone but the person who was signing his paycheck, not using those things to lock people away. Using them as ammunition against those who broke the law.
A small-town cop knew a lot of things. All part of the job description.
He knew that Evan Goodall brewed moonshine in the dense part of his ten-acre property. He knew that Laura Maye had a couple of pot plants growing in her sprawling and wild garden. He knew that one of his deputies moonlighted for a security company, despite it being against the law.
He knew those things.
But he also knew that Evan Goodall was a quiet man who owned a bookstore, and that brewing that strawberry-flavored hooch was the only thing he’d ever done that was against the law. He’d never even gotten a speeding ticket.
He knew that Laura Maye might’ve smoked some of that pot herself, but mostly she baked it into brownies and took it around to those in hospice whose insurance didn’t cover enough pain relief.
He knew that his deputy was struggling to pay his daughter’s medical bills since she’d been diagnosed with leukemia.
So though he knew that most of the town considered him a hard-assed cop who took the law to the letter, he didn’t mind what they didn’t know.
They also thought they knew that he had such an intense hatred for the Sons of Templar MC that said hatred spread like a rotten root to everyone connected.
Or that maybe it didn’t mean hatred for those like Lucy and Ashley, but it was a warm indifference. With them, and with Rosie. The woman everyone thought he was kind to but didn’t notice as anything more than the kind girl whose brother epitomized everything Luke was trying to eradicate.
What they didn’t know was what Luke really saw when he looked into her hazel eyes.
What they didn’t know was how fucking hard Luke had worked to feign that warm indifference to that beautiful wild girl since the moment he’d seen a little five-year-old in all black and combat boots throw a pretend punch to her father, with crazy curls and a beautiful smile.
They didn’t know how much that day on the wharf had broken his heart, but also somehow made it uncomfortably large in his chest while he witnessed a seven-year-old girl quietly and bravely grieving the loss of the only parent she’d ever known, dry-eyed, watching the waves and clutching his hand so tightly his fingers were bruised for days.
How he’d labored not to yank her into his arms and kiss her, despite her youth, when he’d seen her threaten to blow up bullies, her protection for those weaker than her fiercer than a lion.
How he’d actually been gripping his gun with the intention to use it when he’d seen some gangly asshole with his hands and mouth all over Rosie in the back of a car.
How that night that he had to inform Laurie’s parents that their only child was murdered and brutalized in a way even he’d never known humankind was capable of, how that night he had fire running through his veins. How he’d been close to going to do… something. To exact revenge and not justice.
And then he’d seen Rosie’s car speeding past the compound where he’d nearly killed her brother and he’d followed it. That night, all he’d wanted to do was make sure his arms were her home for the rest of her life. How he’d forsake the shield at his chest to become one for her so he’d never have to see that broken women shattered by the ugliness of the world.
He’d done none of those things that had been more natural than slipping on his uniform each day. And because he didn’t do those things, it became harder and harder to slip on that uniform that had once fit so perfectly.
It became harder to face himself in the mirror as he pursued women who weren’t her, who weren’t for him, who made him ashamed beyond belief.
It became harder to chase the image of her away from the forefront of his mind.
And then, when everything had finally blown up, after all those years, she was gone. And then the image of her in his mind was the only thing he could chase.
Grasp on to memories that had seemed to fill his entire mind before. But with her absent, they scarcely filled a corner of the wasteland that was his mind.
He needed to fill that up.
To chase her.
And he intended to do that.
To the ends of the earth, if need be.