“Oh, really?” Casting a quick glance at Dana, Terry chuckled. Her cheeks were the color of ripe apples, and she shook her head and backed towards the bedroom.
“I need to change. And get the heck away from this conversation.”
Terry watched her go, her heart-shaped ass swaying back and forth with each step.
“Do you want some coffee, Mr. Owens?” Laura asked as she shuffled into the tiny kitchen. Her fingers trembled opening the cabinet door, and he rushed over and caught the mug when it tumbled from her grip.
“Terry, please. I’m fine. But let me pour you a cup.”
Dark circles braced Laura’s eyes over sunken cheeks, and the woman nodded. “I’m so sorry. I took a Xanax not too long ago. It makes me shaky.”
“Spent some time on meds myself after I lost my leg,” Terry said. “Xanax knocked me out every time.” He handed Laura the mug and waited until she had both hands cupped protectively around it. “No need to apologize.”
He gestured to the couch, and Laura sank down and curled her legs up under her. “So, who are these men you work with?”
He leaned against the little wall separating the kitchen from the rest of the apartment, afraid he’d crowd Laura if he tried to sit on the couch. If he had to guess, she was easily spooked, even with the anxiety medication, and she didn’t know him from Adam. “I met Xavier when I was in the Army. He retired a few years before I did and started freelancing.”
Laura struggled not to spill her coffee as she lifted the mug to her lips. If Terry hadn’t already been committed as fuck to finding her son, seeing the pain the woman was in would have pushed him over the edge.
“Freelancing?” she asked softly.
“They help people when the police and government can’t. I can’t say much more. What they do isn’t completely…legal.”
“But y-you trust them?” She sniffled again, her brown eyes shimmering.
“With my life.” If they continued this conversation any longer, he worried Laura’s tenuous hold on her emotions wouldn’t last, so he changed the subject. “Dana talked about me?”
With a smile that brightened her entire face, Laura glanced at the closed bedroom door. “Every night. She hated leaving the way she did. Some nights, I’d catch her staring up at the stars and she’d ask me if I thought you were doing the same thing.”
The layers of armor Terry had built around his heart over the years started to fall away.
“I was. Almost every night I could for a whole year.”
“You did?” Dana’s voice cracked, and Terry turned to find her standing in the short hallway, her face freshly scrubbed, barefoot, wearing a pair of jeans and a red sweater that hugged her curves. God, she was so fucking beautiful, but it was her eyes that held him in a vise he never wanted to escape from.
“It was all I had of you, sweetheart.”
In three steps, she was in his arms, and over her shoulder, Laura got to her feet and took her coffee into the bedroom to give them some privacy.
“I was fallin’ in love with you,” Terry said in her ear. “That sounds like a line, but it isn’t. We had somethin’ special back then, and I think we could find it again.”
“Me too.” The muffled words freed his heart, and he tightened his hold on this woman he never wanted to let go.
Dana
Terry wanted a future with her. His declaration eased a small bit of the pain of going through the information she’d collected about Micah over the years.
He took pictures of her bulletin boards, zooming in on some of the handwritten notes she’d tacked up so Xavier and Zulu Team—his group—would know everything she did.
It was close to five when they finished, and when he offered to buy dinner—takeout—for the three of them, Dana handed over her keys. She didn’t want him to go home tonight, but the pull-out couch wasn’t made for two people—or even a single person as tall as Terry’s six-foot-three—and she couldn’t leave Laura alone for another night.
“I’ll go drop off the rent check,” she said, slipping her feet into a pair of Keds. “You’ll be okay for a few minutes?”
Laura frowned. “I’m not that fragile, Dana. I may be a mess, but I’m capable of staying by myself for a few hours. I manage every time you go to work. I took a Xanax before you got home, but I managed last night without one.”
Her sister’s words stung, and Dana blew out a breath. “Really?” The small smile touching the corners of Laura’s mouth surprised her.
“Really. I’d given up before you left.” Staring down at her hands clasped in her lap, Laura twisted the hem of her sweatshirt over and over again. “After that last jerk told me Micah wouldn’t be ‘a normal kid’ ever again, I lost it. But I don’t care if he’s ‘normal.’ I just want him to be safe and free. It was stupid to think we’d find him and everything would go back to the way it used to be. Even if he had run away, it’s been three years.”
