“Who hurt you?” I ask, trying my best to keep my tone level when all I want to do is pull her into my arms and praise God that she’s alive. That she’s safe.
That the woman I love didn’t die the day she disappeared. That her father didn’t murder her in cold blood and hide her body in a place where no one could find it. Her disappearance has been the root of nearly every nightmare I’ve had since the day she vanished.
It’s been my biggest failure. Even considering the one six years ago that ended with me nearly spending the rest of my life in an off-books prison.
Now she’s here, and I can’t help but feel a bit betrayed even though I don’t know the whole story.
Did she choose to leave without a word?
Did someone abduct her?
Is that why she’s hurt now? Did she escape and come back?
“It doesn’t matter,” she says. “But I need to leave. It’s not safe.”
“You are absolutely safe.” The idea that she’d be anything but with me here is ridiculous. I’d die before I let anything happen to her. Time may have made me a tad more cynical, but that will never change. “Did you escape someone? Are they coming for you?”
I’ll hunt them down for you.
I’ll bring them to justice.
I’ll make you safe.
“Look, I know you were attacked. You had a stab wound in your upper thigh that needed stitches, as well as a bruise on your cheekbone and defensive wounds on your hands.” I reach back and drag the chair I spent all night in closer to the bed before sitting down in it. “I just want to help, Tessa.”
Because I’m desperate, I reach for her hand, but she rips it back and crosses her arms, closing her eyes and looking away from me.
“You can help me,” she says, “by letting me go.”
“Do you really think I can do that? It’s been eighteen years, Tessa. I’ve been searching for you. Everyone thought you were dead.” That last word is vile poison on my tongue, but it’s the truth I’ve been living with for far longer than I ever thought possible.
Losing her the first time nearly killed me.
I don’t know that I’ll survive the second time around.
“Clearly I’m not dead,” she says, keeping her gaze averted. “So you can stop looking and move on.”
So. Many. Walls. Every one of them thicker than concrete. It was like that in the beginning, too. She’d been terrified of letting anyone close enough to get through, but I’d finally convinced her I wasn’t going anywhere.
And I didn’t—ever.
“What took you away from me?”
Now she turns to me, eyes shimmering with unshed tears. “I did, okay? I walked away from you because I decided that we weren’t a good fit. I just didn’t know how to tell you that. But now you know.”
Lie. Tessa’s tell has always been her bottom lip. Whenever she’s lying, it quivers ever so slightly. “That’s not the whole truth.” Still, the words are razor blades in my heart because, just like I know she’s lying, I can tell that part of it is the truth.
The question is…which part?
That she chose to leave? Or that it was because she knew we weren’t a good fit?
“If that were true, you couldn’t be bothered to call me? Leave a note? We were supposed to be getting married, Tessa.”
“I’m well aware.”
“Then why did you leave?”
She flinches at the anger in my words, and I push up from the chair to get some distance. After walking toward the only window in the hospital room, I stare out at the bright ocean.
