Deploy, Part One (Rawlings #1)(86)

This was a promise, a symbol. It was life.

“How many are here?” she asked Bell.

“Chasen and Boon,” she said with a weak smile.

Justice was surprised, but then again she wasn’t. Those men were too loyal. She asked for them not to say a word, and they wouldn’t.

Justice nodded and Bell went to get them.

Her stare flicked to Dawson.

“I got it all, girl, swear,” Dawson said.

Justice breathed a smile as she looked down at her son.

She didn’t mean to get upset when she saw Chasen hold him, at how he marveled at how small his grandson was.

“I couldn’t decide. Not alone. So I’m giving all the names to him,” she said. “But I’m calling him Nolan.”

Chasen’s eyes welled then. “He’d like that.”

She didn’t know which he Chasen meant, and didn’t ask.

Late in the next day she called Missy, told her what she already knew, and asked her to come by. Over the next few days she saw all of Declan’s immediate family, and felt the pain they all had, but she also felt the hope. The loss of Nolan, one son, had ripped their family apart. They wanted to believe the birth of a son could help mend the broken road.

Once home, Justice had all the help she could want from Dawson and Bell, even Boon changed a diaper or two. Her watch on the mail, the clutched phone, the message boards, it was an obsession.

A month later, it was her devastation. Declan was home, and had been for a few days—almost a week— but no one, not even Providence had heard from him.

“What do I do?” she asked Dawson right as they ended their kick boxing match because Justice’s anger had turned to tears and Dawson was calling her out on it. Shaking her head saying it was too soon for Justice to be working out as fiercely as she had been—not when the issue was on the inside, not the outside.

“Fucking send him a text and say, Hey. I’m sure you’ve moved on, but if you ever come back through town say hi to your son?” Justice asked, ripping the gloves she had on off. “I can’t do this shit!” Her hands rushed through her sweaty locks as she turned away. “One second I feel guilty, and the next validated.” She glared over her shoulder. “I’m here doing this. What the f*ck is he doing and with who?”

“It’s only been a few days,” Dawson said quietly, understanding the fear but doubting it all the same. Providence told her more than once, Declan was devastatingly faithful, even if only to a memory. He was never wrong about his friends.

Justice was so unnerved because she knew Declan’s pattern and this was it—silence before he erupted in her life, which was why she was looking up her drive every five minutes with both dread and longing coiling like snakes in her gut.

In the haze of the dawn, through her fury, she did see the outline of a truck coming her way, and thought to panic until she saw it was Providence.

He stopped right by Justice, sorrow in his eyes, enough to make her want to crumble. Instead, she jutted her chin up and braced herself.

“Can you come with me,” he asked her, flicking his gaze to the yard then the house, hoping Bell was there, that she could watch little Nolan.

Justice let a trembling breath out, then nodded stiffly. She turned and rushed inside. Little Nolan was asleep, she’d just put him down before she and Dawson went through their work out.

She woke her grandmother and told her she was leaving and rushed out a list of care instructions as she pulled on her hoodie over her tank and yoga pants.

This was the first time she’d left Nolan and it was killing her. She had no idea where Providence was taking her, but she did know if Declan was at the other end of that road, it would be best for Nolan’s first impression of his parents not to be one of them screaming at each other. It didn’t matter he was only five weeks old and would never remember it—she would, Declan would.

When she came back outside and saw Dawson in the backseat of the truck, her furious grief-stricken stare caused the knots in Justice’s stomach to twist even more. Dawson had silently taken all of this harder than anyone gave her credit for, and for Justice to see the death of hope in her eyes...it said something.

Providence didn’t say a word as he pulled out of her drive then down an old country road. Miles down the road he stopped alongside flashing lights that were glowing in the dawning fog.

He put the truck in park then dipped his head before he slanted it to the side. A million dark and twisted scenarios were rushing through Justice’s mind, and they did not sit well with the empty feeling she felt.

“Tell me,” she managed to say, glancing back at Dawson who was crumbling more with each second. She had reached the point of shuddering.

Providence pressed his lips together in anger then looked forward before at her. “You know I tried. I knew from the start this was a bad deal and at the very least ya’ll needed closure,” he said as his stare flicked to his rearview mirror at Dawson.

The blush Justice was known for was so red she felt hot and cold all at once.

Providence nodded forward. “I told them to check this way, but they said they didn’t have the funds to chase an idea.”

“What?” she managed to say, still not getting what was going on but knowing no matter what, she was not going to be good with it.

“If Nolan dropped those letters off at your place, and if he didn’t want too many people to see him, then he would have taken the back roads.” He paused. “This bridge was out...”