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CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

Laurel

My boots hammer against wet pavement as I charge across the street, water splashing up the backs of my jeans. The bus shelter gets closer with every step, and the woman standing beneath it turns at the sound of her name.

"Maggie!"

Everything inside me slams to a stop.

She's here.

She's alive.

The grainy photographs, the endless searching, the worst case scenarios that have spent six weeks renting space in my head… all of them collide with reality at once.

Her eyes widen.

Mine probably do too.

We stare at each other across a few feet of rai-soaked pavement, both looking like we've just seen a ghost.

Then I launch myself at her.

I wrap my arms around her so hard we nearly topple sideways, and the second I feel her hugging me back, I'm crying. "Maggie."

She tightens her arms around me. "Law."

The nickname hits harder than anything else.

Nobody's called me that in years.

It belongs to another version of us. Before everything became complicated. Before Ben died. Before we got so good at talking around each other that we forgot how to talk at all.

A sound escapes me that might be a laugh or another sob. At this stage, I'm not equipped to tell the difference.

"You're okay," I say, because, apparently, my brain has narrowed its entire vocabulary down to two words.

Maggie's shaking.

I don't notice until I pull back enough to see her properly.

The relief crashes straight into concern.

She's thinner than she should be. Pale. Exhausted in a way sleep alone can't fix. Dark circles sit beneath her eyes, and her hair has grown longer, falling around her face in tangled waves that look maintained by sheer luck and stubbornness.

She looks like she's been surviving.

Her gaze searches my face, frantic and disbelieving. "You found me."

Every ounce of relief I expected to hear is missing.

Fear fills the space instead.

My stomach drops. "Maggie⁠—"

"How?"

Maggie's gaze slips past me before I've finished drawing breath. Her attention sweeps the street, the bus stop, the sidewalks crowded with people hurrying through the rain. She checks everything without seeming to think about it, and the ease of the movement twists at my stomach. This isn't curiosity, it's habit.