Present Day
IT’S OVER. ALL OF IT.
It’s finally over.
I can do what I’ve been waiting over a thousand days to do.
The ride across the country has been smooth. Calming, almost. As if closing the distance made time disappear. The years apart vanished, and the future emerged with a vengeance. A future I’d so tirelessly fought to protect because I knew it wasn’t guaranteed.
I lean on the railing of the lookout, taking just a second before I finish my journey back to her. I marvel at how damn big Mt. Rainer is. I’ve never seen anything like it before, and I wish it wasn’t under these circumstances that I finally saw it.
It’s kind of crazy that here I am, at thirty-three years old, seeing the Pacific Northwest for the first time. I was born and raised in Chicago, so up until this point, I’d never even known how cool this part of the country was.
“Excuse me.” A woman standing next to me wearing a wide brim hat and a fanny pack taps my shoulder. “Could you take our picture, please?”
“Sure.” I drop my foot from the railing and snap a few pictures of her family with the mountain as a background.
She scrolls through them before looking back up at me. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
“It’s really pretty, isn’t it?”
I glance back over her head at the snow-capped mountain. “It’s amazing. Never seen anything like it before.”
“First time here?”
“It is.”
Her little boy, probably about four years old, tugs on her hand. She picks him up and wipes some dirt off his nose. “We come here every year because there’s so much to do, and the kids love seeing the mountains. What brings you to Washington?”
How do I answer that? It’s too hard to explain, and I can’t find words adequate enough. I’m not just here to get my girlfriend back. I’m here to get my life back. So I throw out, “Visiting,” to placate her.
“Well, have fun.” She walks away, and I head back to my vehicle as well.
Fun.
This is not going to be fun. Nothing about what’s happened the past few years to Livvie and me has been fun.
It’s been near impossible. It’s been overwhelming. At times, even hopeless. But not anymore. Right now, it’s obtainable. It’s close… she’s so close.
When I turn the key, my blood pumps as furiously as the pistons in my 355-horsepower engine. This is it. Last stop before I get to see her again.
Touch her.
Hold her.
When I thought about this day, I was on a plane. Maybe even a chartered jet. Whatever would get me to her the fastest. I certainly wasn’t planning to take four days to drive. But I needed it. I had to regain my footing. I’ve been so close to falling for so long that I almost forgot what it was like to be upright.
So I drove two thousand miles, and in that time, I got my shit together. Because she’s been away from me for three years. One thousand and ninety-five days of feeling empty and alone. Twenty-six thousand, two hundred and eighty hours of time without her that I will never get back.
I’ve been on a tear of destruction since the moment Marco’s name fell from her lips, and I needed to tamp that shit down. I need to remember that the threat is gone, and she’s safe.
I had to prepare myself for the possibility she could still hate me. God. Her screaming those words at me was the worst thing I’d ever experienced. Seeing the sheer contempt in her eyes as she tried to grab me but kick me at the same time haunts my damn dreams.
She was rightfully pissed. It was me—my job—that put her in danger in the first place. Being a good guy turned me into a villain in her eyes. I was the reason she had to disappear from everything she’d ever known. Her picture-perfect family. Her job. Her man, who she’d told every secret, every dream, every fantasy to… She was forced to leave me.
I quickly close the distance between us and every single thing inside me tightens in anticipation. A buzzing sounds against my eardrums, echoing and making them throb. My jaw unclenches, the noise pops, and the faint ringing fades until it’s disappeared.
My GPS awards me for arriving at my destination, and I stop at the curb but refuse to jump out. My intensity will do nothing but scare her, so I force myself to take a beat.
As I sit here in my Tahoe, windows tinted and obscuring me from the outside, I remind myself the last time she saw me, I wasn’t the man she fell in love with. I was a savage. My sole focus was revenge. Elimination. Nobody, but nobody, threatens the woman I love. And I had to fix it.
I knew she wouldn’t understand why I did what I did, but it was the only option.
She needed to be safe.
And she has been.
I’m witness to it this very moment. My damn chest is so heavy I can barely breathe and a bead of sweat drips down the side of my face. The leather steering wheel beneath my fingers burns from how tightly I’m gripping it.
She’s standing on the sidewalk talking to a guy. Not the one I saw in the photos, but a different one. When she sees me for the first time, I don’t want anybody else around, so I wait… which seems like the only fucking thing I’ve been doing.
Waiting for Marco to mess up, waiting for a lead… waiting to bring my other half home so I can be whole again.
Her hair… Her beautiful, silky long hair isn’t as dark and certainly isn’t as long. It’s cut short, a sharp angle from the back of her neck to just past her chin in front with bangs that nearly cover her eyes. She’s lost weight, too. I have always loved every single thing about her, including her curves, so seeing her tiny waist pisses me off. The whole situation pisses me off.
My outgoing, beautiful saving grace. Her entire life broken by a corrupt career criminal. She may be smiling right now, but it’s not the smile I know and love. She’s not the same.
I’m not the same.
But now she needs to come back. She needs to be with me. I need her.
An entire script of dialogue scratches against my skull. Words I want to say to her. Declarations I want to make. Promises I need to keep. Yet when she tucks her short red hair behind her ear, throws her head back, and laughs, I forget how to pronounce the alphabet.
Waiting three years for her was absolute torture, but watching her, being this close and not being able to touch her or let her know I’m here, is insanity. If I was in my old Tahoe, she might recognize it sitting in front of her apartment. But during all the shit with Marco, I upgraded to have more safety features installed after someone shot at me while I was driving.
The air around me is thick. I tug at my collar even though I’m only in a white t-shirt. After taking a drink of water and tossing the empty bottle on the floor board, I finally see him starting to leave.
They hug, and he walks around to the driver’s side of his car. I left my seat belt on so something restrained me from climbing out and ripping this guy’s fuckin’ arms off his body. He gets in a Prius and drives away while she waves. Once he’s around the corner, she goes back into the apartment building.
As soon as the door closes behind her, I unclench my hands from the steering wheel. Then I release the seat belt. And then I take the keys out of the ignition.
I wait. One second. Two. Five. When I get to ten, I stop waiting.
My large strides take me inside, and a security guard holds his tattooed arms out. “Hey there. Can I help you?”
I flash my badge at him and jog to the stairs, ignoring him as he says something I don’t care to hear. I take the time to appreciate she at least has a security guard in the lobby of her building, but that’s the only second my brain allows it to be distracted from my goal.
Finding her door, I knock immediately. A lock clicks, the knob turns, and then the door opens. “Forget something, Ad—” Livvie stops talking midsentence, snapping her mouth shut so hard her teeth clatter as her skin pales.
God, she’s so beautiful.
“Hi, Butterfly.”
She becomes paralyzed. I watch as her body stiffens. Her lips barely part, and with one hand on the knob, she doesn’t even blink.
Nothing.
“Livvie, baby, you’re safe now. It’s finally over.” I take a step, close enough to get a whiff of coconuts, and it takes me back. It brings it all back. “It’s time for you to come home.”
Her eyes roll back in her head as her knees give way.
“Shit.” I reach in and grab her. Pulling her to me, I lift her into my arms, holding her close.
She’s real. This, right now, is real. I have her back in my arms.
I kick the door shut and then carry her over to her couch. She doesn’t stir, but when I sit and begin stroking her short hair, her eyes flutter.
“Livvie, baby. Wake up, sweetie.”
“Jay.” She whispers my name and tries to sit up.
“Don’t try to get up yet. Just breathe.”
Her eyes are closed, but a tear falls out, racing down the side of her face faster than my eye can track it. I lift her upper body closer while I lower mine. Probably tighter than I should, I just hold her. Burying my face in her neck, I slowly rock her back and forth and take a full breath for the first time in three years.