“Sure, I made a lot of copies to put up.” She held up the small stack of flyers.
“Want some help?” West asked. He turned to me and Langston. “You two head to the bar. I’ll help her put up the rest of the flyers and then meet you there.”
I looped my arms around his neck and pulled him down for a quick kiss. “You’re a good man, West, you know that?”
“I have to be to have any hope of deserving someone like you, Juno.”
My heart clenched at his words. “We deserve each other.”
After one last quick kiss, I waved at the woman and allowed Langston to guide me down the sidewalk toward our original destination.
“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” I murmured, gaze locked on my shoes. “It can’t be a coincidence, right?”
“I don’t know. Anchor Bay is best accessible by boat, and that’s an hour’s trip. That would be a lot of fucking effort, for what?”
“For what?” I parroted. “That’s the big question if they are linked. Why at home and why here?”
“And let’s not forget the type of person missing are opposites there and here. On the trail, it’s healthy, adventurous young women, and here, it’s—” He cringed. “—the opposite.”
“Yeah.” I held up the flyer and studied the woman’s picture, loving her fire-red dyed hair. “I just can’t shake the feeling that it’s connected somehow. And what she said about it happening before, isn’t that what Jasper said to Liam and Memphis that day in the street? Caroline was trying to connect disappearances from years ago to what’s happening now. Something to do with her mom, I think.”
My brows pulled in tight as I tried to remember what the guys had mentioned about that run-in with Jasper Cain weeks ago. That was before he turned up murdered. But how could someone be connected to the missing women from two decades ago and now? That part didn’t make sense.
With a resigned sigh, knowing there was nothing I could do now, I folded up the flyer and stuck it into my back pocket. “I can’t believe we’re headed to my hometown tomorrow. And then the big shit show—I mean wedding—the next day. Did I tell you Stephanie wants me to come to her bridal shower tomorrow if we arrive in time?”
“Will you?” Langston opened a heavy wooden door and guided me through with a gentle hand pressed against my lower back.
The mixed aromas of stale beer, fried foods, and smoke permeated the air, reminding me of Dave’s back home. My heart swelled at that thought. Yes, Anchor Bay was my home now. More of a home than I’d ever had before, filled with people who truly cared about me, and it wasn’t just about Langston and West. It felt like a loving family, everyone checking in on you when you were down, stopping by when you were sick, considering you when making community plans or changes.
Yes, Anchor Bay was my home.
“What are you smiling about?” Langston asked as he helped me onto the high-top barstool before taking a seat beside me.
“Just happy. But to answer your question, I don’t know if I’ll go. It’ll be a game-time decision. The only thing we’re committed to going to is the wedding, and I like it that way. This will give us plenty of free time for me to show you around the three-block town without having to rush to get somewhere.”
“Sounds like a plan to me. The less time I’m around that asshole, the better—for his sake, anyway.” He looked over his shoulder to the bar and then back at me with a small frown. “I have to order over there.”
I shrugged. “I’ll be fine on my own, here in the middle of a crowded bar while you’re twenty feet away with a clear line of sight to where I’m sitting.”
He grumbled something under his breath about me needing the sass spanked out of me and stood. After promising several times that I wouldn’t move, he turned, making his way to the bar.
Blowing out a slow breath, I relaxed against the hardwood chair back and allowed my gaze to wander around the dive bar. Most of the tables were full of what seemed to be friends or coworkers all enjoying a drink after work, laughing and talking loudly with one another.
A couple sitting at a high-top table similar to ours caught my attention. It was like a flashback to how Eric and I used to be when we went out alone. The guy nursed a beer, several empty pint glasses littering the table in front of him, as he played on his phone while the woman stared off into space, acting like him ignoring her was okay. They both looked miserable.
Never again would I allow that, to feel so invisible and alone while sitting right next to my partner. All the hard work and active healing I’d done since moving to Anchor Bay had shown me I was a pretty amazing person. I’d started my owncompany doing website design and system programming for small businesses, took up self-defense classes with Oliver, and put myself out there with the women in the Uplift community, who welcomed me with open arms. For years I was coerced to push aside who I really was and what I wanted, but that was in the past.
One part of my new life that I absolutely didn’t expect but now cherished were the women in the Uplift community who quickly became friends I never wanted to live without. They didn’t give me the option to be a loner; instead, they showed up one day with wine and cookies. Now book club, where we drank more than read, was a night I looked forward to the moment the previous one ended.
“It’s less about my feelings toward Stephanie,” I mused when Langston returned with our drinks—beer for him, vodka soda with a lime for me, “and more that I’m done wasting time on things because it’s ‘what you’re supposed to do.’ Fuck that, right? Why should I be forced to spend hours of my life stuck in a room with a bunch of women who I don’t like, playing nice and acting like a give a fuck if Stephanie got the china she registered for?”
“People still do that shit?” Langston asked, taking a sip of his beer.
“Yeah, all to put it in a special cabinet, only to be brought out when the queen comes.”
“Gotta love a goodFriendsreference.” I whirled around with a wide smile to face West. “I’m so glad I’m obsessed with a woman who can quote movies and shows with me.”
“Obsessed, huh?”
