“Atticus Foxx,” he says, holding out his hand for me to shake.
“Wyn Crowne,” I say, meeting his extended hand.
He glances at Julian and asks, “So this is her?”
“Yeah. This is her.” He stands a bit closer to the stool I’ve been perched on for going on two hours now.
I don’t know how to label what we are together. Girlfriend feels too young, partner seems too soon.
“She and Lincoln have been talking about things way above my head, while I waited for you to take your sweet-ass time.”
“Ah, yes, my younger brother. Here he comes now,” Lincoln says. “I’ll introduce you to Grant, too.” But as I look to where he’s gesturing, a woman laughs next to him, loud enough that it has me trying to figure out why it has my eyes filling with tears.
I recognize it. There isn’t an accent to it, and I couldn’t describe it if someone asked me, but I know it.I know her.
My stomach lurches.
“Wyn? Everything okay?” Julian asks, his hand coming to my back.
But I ignore his question and instead ask Lincoln, “Who is that? The woman with the red hair, talking to your brother.”
“That’s my sister-in-law, Laney,” he says. “She runs most of the organized events around here, tackles anything around public relations, really.”
“Wyn?” Julian asks again as I take another step away and in the direction of her.
“How?” I whisper to myself as I think about the last time I saw her.
I run. He told me to run. I don’t know where I’m going, but I need to get away. It’s the only chance I’ll have. I know at least that much. I haven’t spoken, I haven’t had any liquids in nearly three days, my throat is so dry that the first time I open it to scream, nothing comes out. I trip over my feet, not having moved them much in so long, but I keep going. I turn down the brightly lit hallway—it’s a storage facility. This time, I scream. I scream as I run down the hallway, barefoot. I can feel the latest stitches along my side tear. Fuck, that stings.
“Help me!” I scream. And that’s when I see her, a blond woman around my size pulling down the door of her unit and rushing toward me.
“You’re okay,” she says, trying to hold me up as I finally reach her. “What happened?”
But that’s when I hear him. “We need to run, please. We need to run!”
Her hair is different—red now as opposed to the blond that I remembered. When she turns to the side, her belly is swollen and pregnant, and she looks happy. That makes my chest feel tight. She didn’t get hurt. She didn’t stop living. I knew that; the U.S. Marshal who worked my case told me as much, but she’s right there now. The person who got me out of that storage unit, killed the monster months later, and now she’s right there.
“Wyn,” Julian calls out behind me. Loud enough this time that a few people turn to look, including her. I stop and cover my mouth with my hand. If she doesn’t recognize me, then I can pull myself together, and at the very least, go talk to her afterward, but I don’t think I’ll have time for that. She smiles, finishing a laugh that she was sharing with the man to her left. He stands close to her as I stop and stare.
Her brow furrows, and a nervous smile pulls at her lips before she says, “Oh my go—” Breath catching, she takes a step toward me. I take two more toward her and nod, wordlessly answering what I’m sure she’s trying to work out. Tears fall as she takes me in, finally putting the pieces together of who I am and why I might be familiar. “You’re here.”
“Laney, what’s going on?” the man behind her asks as he stands protectively next to her.
“It’s her...the woman from the storage facility in New York. The survivor,” she tells him, wiping her tears. “I didn’t know what had happened to you afterwards, only that you were safe—” She braces her hand over her chest. “Can I hug you?”
I swat away the tears, nodding. “I’d really like that,” I say, wrapping my arms around her.
“I can’t believe you’re here,” I say again.
“Same,” she says quietly as both of us cry. She pulls back to look at me again. I look very different from the last time she saw me. I was half-naked, covered in filth and blood, screaming as I ran toward her. She holds tightly, and I do the same right back, as if we’re old friends who haven’t seen each other in a long time and not strangers who met in the most terrible of situations.
Quietly, she says just for me, “He’s gone, you know.” She pulls back, her eyes meeting mine, and in a reassuring tone says, “I watched a rickhouse on the back property here burn so hot that they couldn’t put the fire out for days.”
I nod. “I hope it hurt.” I blink away another tear.
“I can almost guarantee it did,” she says with a firm squeeze of my hand.
“Wyn?” Julian says, breaking into the moment.
