“Please,” I begged. Dropping to my knees, I pressed my face into his stomach. How could he feel so real when everything else was falling apart at the seams? “Don’t give up. This isn’t the end. You said you’d stay—you promised me. You promised.”
Charlie brushed the hair back from my face, fingers gentle despite their trembling, and landed the final blow. “If I loved you any less, I’d keep that promise.”
I sobbed into his shirt. “Don’t. Don’t.”
“I’m sorry to interrupt,” a voice cut in behind us. I quickly stood and turned, wiping at my face. Tate was there, shuffling from foot to foot, looking more uncomfortable than I’d ever seen him.
He held out his phone. “I just got a call from Waters—there were traces of blood found in the bed of Bobby’s truck. They’ve confirmed it’s human. DNA results won’t be available for another couple of days, but they’re going to move forward and arrest him for Janine’s murder.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
The ground slid out from beneath me.
“You can’t,” I said, shaking my head back and forth. “It’s not him. It can’t be him.”
This isn’t happening. This isn’t real. None of this is real.
“I’m so sorry, Reece.” Tate truly looked it.
I wanted to wake up in Charlie’s arms back in the lookout and find the last twenty-four hours had all been a horrible nightmare.
No one had interrupted what should’ve been a beautiful moment between us. That truck I saw belonged to a perfect stranger, and it was their life currently being flipped upside down, instead of my best friend’s.
Viola Morris had given Charlie and me an easy solution to being together. A simple incantation or ceremony, andpoof.
Everything was fixed.
Charlie could stay, and we’d be happy. Forever.
Instead… My shoulders dropped, arms limp at my sides. All of my anger and fight fled. It washed away in those last fleeting, precious moments we’d spent together, leaving me raw and exposed.
Charlie took my hand, fingers cold against mine. “I want to remember,” he said, voice scratchy.
My heart seized. “Charlie, she said it would?—”
“I’m doing this, Reece. I want to help your friend before it’s too late.”
Tate’s gaze darted between us. He nodded. “Okay. We have to do it now, though. I should already be at the station.”
Now.
Now.
Now.
It was happeningnow,and I wasn’t ready. There was so much left unsaid between us. So much life ahead of us, unlived. There was way too fucking much meaning in the way Charlie squeezed my hand before he released it.
He strode forward, confident and sure as he went with Tate back into the house.
Stumbling along, I could only follow. I refused to let him out of my sight. “Charlie,please,” I begged. “Please.”
He turned to face me and cupped my cheeks between his hands. “You’re not the only one allowed to give everything for the people you love.”
My chest cracked wide open.
“And this isn’t goodbye,” he continued, looking similarly dismantled. “I’ll try to come back before… Before that. But I need to do this for you.”
I felt like I was trapped inside a car that’d broken down across a set of railroad tracks. I could see the train quickly approaching and knew it would be the final blow to this horror of a day, but I was powerless to stop it.
