Deploy, Part One (Rawlings #1)(61)
Ex was at ease, which made it easier for Justice to believe her. Still there was something off, a missing truth.
“Rumor has it that boy is dead,” Ex said casually.
“Whose rumor? Not mine,” Justice said harshly. “Why can’t I just talk to Faith?”
Ex stepped up. “You’re out of your zip code, and the way I figure it you already got too much on your plate to be barking up this tree.” She swayed her head as an easy smile came to her. “Faith’s gone,” her eyes glistened. “She didn’t say goodbye...when you find her—tell her I said to keep runnin’.”
Justice hesitated for a second, struggling to see the half-truth but failing. “What exactly is on my plate beyond the obvious—why I want to talk to Faith?”
“Mary Souter, Sheriff’s wife...I heard she thinks Nolan killed your daddy, you covered for him, and Nolan took off.” She grinned. “Her poor son was oblivious to it all, only saw the fire start that he couldn’t stop.”
Justice stared forward in the same haze she had gotten used to masking when her father was mentioned. The stance where she told herself not to smell the gas, oil, and blood, but she always did.
“That woman is grieving awfully hard for my father,” Justice said with a sneer. “Murdock says she stays high.”
Ex nodded sagely. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said before she turned and boarded the fishing boat behind her.
***
Declan was becoming braver as the months ticked by. He always called Boon, or Skyped when he knew Boon was being ‘tutored.’—making Skype Justice’s best friend and biggest fear.
When they saw each other, words were hard to come by. It was more shy blushes, and a reach for the screen wishing she could move through it.
Justice had learned that when you’re in love with a warrior, every word, every touch is sacred. Any word could be the last. And even if it wasn’t, the man you were looking at right then could change in a beat, face a hell that would mark him—chisel its imprint on his soul forevermore.
When you loved a warrior, you soaked it all in, every glint in his eyes, the way he moved, not only what he said but also how he said it. And for days afterward you’d break it down, read between the lines, and let your mind run wild. Only to tell yourself to be strong, to get over it—to be stouter than your emotions or circumstance.
No, life didn’t stop when they were gone, but it could if you let it. If you allowed yourself to sit on a shelf and worry, let the years of your life slide by unlived, waiting.
The waiting was too hard to handle with empty hands which is why Justice filled every moment she could. She’d work an hour and a half before school, three hours after, tutoring after that point.
She helped her grandmother with the house and the volunteer work she had, and she did her best to make a few senior memories. She saw a football game or two, went to a bonfire, joined a committee here or there to fill any spare hour she had, which at the end of the week wasn’t much.
Still, late at night, her demons rose. She’d worry for Nolan, strain to think if he had told her without telling her a plan to vanish, if there was a name that they hadn’t checked. She’d worry for Declan, wonder what he was doing...and with who. Then her dad, and the ball and chain of Murdock would surface.
There were times when she just wanted to get up and run, as far and fast as she could, in any direction—just away. Long enough for her to think, to find air. So tempting.
At Christmas, Boon laid a silver bracelet with interlocking hearts on the book they were working out of. “This was in my gift box. Not my color.”
When he saw her eyes well, he jerked it away. “Well, forget that! I can’t deal with this madness.”
Justice had to flat out wrestle him to get it back. “Uncle, uncle!” he yelled when she threatened to knee him where it mattered. He dropped the bracelet in her hand, shaking his head. “What have you done to my brother?”
She met his stare.
He nodded to the gift. “He ain’t never done that before.”
“Don’t say things like that to me,” Justice said, not wanting to put it on in front of him and choosing to hide it in her coat pocket.
“Why?” Boon asked, lying back on the floor, bracing his arms behind his head, willing to take any break from the tutoring.
Boon had grown a lot over the last year. He still had the boyishness Atticus had lost over the summer but was built well, and learning to use charm to get what he wanted. Charm or not, he was still quick to shift moods and not knowing where Nolan was, having to go through a Christmas without him or Declan there had given Boon more than enough reason to look for a fight to pick.
More than once, Justice had to stop him and Murdock from going at it. As far as Boon was concerned, Justice belonged to Declan and Murdock had no right to even be in the same zip code as Justice much less walk her to class or have lunch with her. He didn’t like that so many people still thought they were a golden couple.
“Why?” he asked again. “Murdock wearing you down?”
He was, but she’d never admit it to Boon. “No,” Justice said. She couldn’t help it; she was lonely...she was jealous. She knew Declan was all but walking sex, him around all his buddies on some base, she could put two and two together and she didn’t like the solution she came up with. “I just have to think about it my way...so it won’t hurt.”