Letting Go (Thatch #1)(42)
The EMTs started parting the crowd, making their way toward us, but Jagger just tightened his grip on me until Graham said, “She thinks Ben is here.”
I felt a jolt go through Jagger’s body, and he slowly pushed me back so he could look down at me again. “Grey, you . . . you think that—what?”
“Is this who we were called for?” an EMT asked, and reached for me.
“Don’t touch me! I’m fine!”
“Grey,” Jagger and Graham said at the same time.
Tears were still falling down my cheeks, and my chest was still rising and falling too erratically, but the last thing I wanted was to be checked over by these men. Despite the body-numbing terror that had filled me when I’d seen the note and the message, I needed to see it again to know I wasn’t insane. I needed Jagger and Graham to see it to confirm my sanity.
“Ma’am, are you—”
“Please! I’m fine. I don’t . . . I don’t need help.”
The three medics looked at each other before shrugging and asking around if anyone else had been hurt in the “incident.”
Graham was busy getting people to back away from us when Jagger tilted my head back again. “Talk to me, baby.”
“There was—he left . . . I don’t know how it happened, Jag,” I cried, and pressed my forehead into his chest.
“Mrs. Reil said Grey kind of freaked after she pulled something off her car,” Graham said when he came back. “She said she tried to get Grey to talk to her because she looked like she was panicking, but Grey got in her car, and when she did, she just started screaming and wouldn’t stop. They had to pull her out of her car and she kept screaming.”
“What’d you pull off your car?” Jagger asked quietly in my ear, but fresh tears filled my eyes, and I couldn’t force anything from my mouth. “Where is it, Grey?”
I shook my head against his chest for long seconds before whimpering, “I can’t be crazy. I know what I saw.”
“Babe, look, you need to help me here. I want to help you, but I can’t if you’re not giving me anything to go on. What did you pull off your car, and where is it?”
I stepped back from him, and looked from him to Graham’s worried expression before glancing at the remaining people on the sidewalk. I didn’t want them there; I didn’t want an audience. Because if I was wrong—if I hadn’t really seen what I thought I’d seen—I didn’t want a dozen people who had known me my entire life to witness my loss of sanity. And if the letter and message were still there, I wasn’t okay with anyone else getting a glimpse of something so personal.
Taking a ragged breath, I gripped Jagger’s hand and walked slowly toward my open car door. Each step felt weighted. With each one, the dread of what might not be in there, and the fear of what I somehow knew was in there, continued to grow.
I reached down to grab my phone from the floorboard before sliding into the seat of my car. My hands shook when I saw the piece of paper lying on the passenger seat, and when I grabbed it, I turned to look at Graham and Jagger standing by the door, blocking my view of everyone on the sidewalk. Both looked worried, confused, and like they weren’t sure what to do with me.
Once I calmed my breathing enough to speak, I told them about finding the letter. Both listened closely, neither saying anything as they listened to my weak and shaky voice.
“I was only in the shop for maybe six minutes, seven tops. I hadn’t been looking outside while I was in there, so I don’t know who went past my car. But when I came out, this was tucked under my windshield wiper.” I held up the folded piece of paper, and both Jagger and Graham sent me looks of pain. They knew where my thoughts had gone when I saw the paper, but they had no idea how bad it was yet.
“It could’ve been a coin—” Graham started, but I kept talking.
“I opened it, and I thought I must have been dreaming, or someone was playing a joke on me. There was no—” I cut off on a sob. “No way this could’ve been here. I got inside my car to call you,” I said, looking at Jagger. “But when I found my phone, there was a push notification on my lock screen, and that’s when . . . that’s when . . .” I shrugged helplessly, not knowing how to continue.
I clicked the lock button on my phone and a strangled cry bubbled past my lips when I saw that the message was still there. I hadn’t imagined it. It had been real. Just as the guys began asking what had been on my phone and the paper, I handed over both, and a weighted silence seemed to fill the space of my car for a few moments before Graham erupted in curses.
Jagger’s face went completely pale, his head shaking back and forth. “Who did this?” he asked himself before turning around to yell the same thing. Holding up the vows as he glared at the people still standing on the sidewalk. “Huh? Who the f*ck pulled this shit?”
Graham was asking everyone who had been near my car, but the way he was asking was scaring people to the point where all they were able to do was shake their heads and back away from him.
The phone vibrated in my lap where Graham had dropped it, and I looked down to see a text from Janie, the notification from Ben sitting untouched below hers. My fingers felt like ice as I slid my thumb across the screen, opening up the Facebook messages. I looked at the small picture of Ben and me before glancing down at the message that had been sent to me almost thirty minutes ago, the ones before that from well over two years ago.