She let go of his hand so she could go up on tiptoe and swipe the cold tear from his cheek. Cupping the side of his face, she pulled him down for a kiss.
Her nose was chilled from the biting wind, but her lips were warm. Her lips were always warm. Just like her heart.
He could’ve gone on kissing her all damn afternoon, losing himself in her. In them. But all-too-soon she leaned back, pulling the folded map from her coat pocket.
She squinted toward the horizon. The clouds hung heavy and low, their gray bellies threatening freezing rain later in the day. “Your dad’s over there.” She pointed. “Let’s go visit him.”
They started toward the little rolling slope. But before they’d gone two steps, she turned back and called over her shoulder, “Goodbye, Tasha. For now. We’ll be back.”
After Sabrina laid her second bundle of flowers on his father’s marker and said, “Thank you, Tommy, for giving me this man. I promise to take care of him,” they made their way across the lush green grass that was just beginning to lose its luster to the waning growing season. As they turned down the little footpath that wound toward their rented car, Sabrina took a deep breath before she blew it out on a long sigh.
He tossed an arm over her shoulders and gave her a little squeeze. She had that look in her eye. The one she got when she was thinking of her brother.
And no wonder. Cemeteries had a way of making those who’d passed feel closer.
“Thinkin’ of Cooper?” he asked, even though he knew the answer. “We can make a trip to Charleston, too. Visit his grave.”
“I miss him at odd moments,” she admitted, twisting her gloved fingers together. “Inconvenient moments, it seems, when I least want to because I’m in a crowd of people. Or I’m here.” She splayed a gloved hand wide. “In this place where I should be focused on your family.”
“There’s no should about any of it,” he assured her. “No right or wrong when it comes to the how, why, and when of grief.”
Her smile was wobbly. “How did I get so lucky to find you?”
He snorted. “I’m the lucky one. I keep waitin’ for ya to come to your senses.”
“Never.” She vehemently shook her head. “If loving you is crazy, I don’t want to be sane.”
After bundling her into the passenger seat, he buckled himself into the driver’s seat and listened to the rental’s engine rumble to life. They had reservations at a B&B. And tomorrow morning, he planned to take her to the local library that’d been his refuge and the lighthouse that’d been his safe place.
Before he could put the car in gear, however, she placed a gloved hand on his forearm. “I think I would like to make a trip to Charleston to visit Cooper. I want to introduce him to you. Show him he doesn’t have to worry about me anymore.”
“Ayuh.” He nodded. That pesky lump was back in his throat because neither of them had living family to visit, so it only felt right that they made the rounds with the dead. “I want to meet him, too. Tell him how grateful I am that he rode ya to the hospital on his handlebars to get that broken arm set. It’s attached to your right hand, which is my favorite, since it’s the one that gives the best?—”
She slapped his shoulder before he could finish. “Pervert,” she grumbled, but her eyes were bright and sparkling. Then, a cloud passed over her face, as dark and heavy as the ones hanging outside the windshield.
“What is it?” he asked.
“Eddy Torres and Cooper are buried in the same cemetery.” Her upper lip curled. “Maybe I’ll find his grave and spit on it.”
He tapped his finger against the steering wheel as he thought of the pudgy, dark-eyed man. Hew had learned to identify evil by seeing past a too-slick smile or too-bright eyes. But he hadn’t needed to use his years of experience to recognize the vileness that had lived inside Eddy Torres. It’d been obvious.
“Might I suggest ya piss on it, too?” he said flatly.
She chuckled. “As long as you promise to stand lookout while I drop trou.”
“Deal.” He jerked his chin down.
As he pulled down the little lane, headed toward the front gate, she wrinkled her nose and said, “Does it make me a terrible person to hope he was terrified in his last moments?”
Hew considered his next words carefully. He could continue to keep her in the dark. Or…
He could tell her the truth and bring into the light the only secret that still remained between them.
“No, it doesn’t. And, ayuh, he was.” He waited in the silence that filled the car’s interior as his words sank in and realization dawned.
He expected her to bombard him with questions, expected her to demand the details of the night he’d pulled Eddy Torres out of his car at gunpoint before marching him to the edge of the marsh.
She did neither.
