Until You (The Redemption, #1)(57)

Or get her out of my thoughts.

Or stop imagining the things I want to do to her. With her.

But she did.

And now I can’t stop myself from wondering why.

Even more so after our discussion tonight.

The light has been on in her room for some time. Normally she comes out for something to drink or those sour gummy things she likes to eat while working and that I have made sure we have a stockpile of.

But she was quiet tonight. On the walk home. At dinner. As she excused herself to finish up some work.

She was quiet and withdrawn when she had never been before.

She’s hiding.

That much is clear.

She’s hiding, and it kills me that she isn’t opening up to me, but who the hell am I to her, right?

We’re sleeping together. We’re still in that newness phase where every waking thought is wanting more of her, but with that said, there have been no promises of more. No hints at a future together. I’ll be gone at summer’s end, and she’ll still be here, so why do I think she owes it to me to tell me more? Why do I want to know so badly?

Because you want to help her, that’s why.

Your savior complex is showing again, Crew.

Is that why I took her on the walk today? Is that why I let her know I understood there was more there than a simple panic attack and a fear someone had broken into her house?

I wanted her to know she’s been seen.

But what happens when I leave Redemption Falls? I won’t be here to watch out for her. To protect her. To save her. What then?

Vivian asked me to come help her when she was in trouble. She needed me to come help. There’s a huge difference between jumping in and trying to help when you’re not asked. And Tenny hasn’t asked.

The thought has me hesitating with my knuckles an inch from her door and ready to knock.

Maybe seeing her right now isn’t the best thing for either of us. Maybe I need to put myself in check while she needs some time to process?

I take a step back, the floorboards creaking beneath my weight as I move toward the girls’ rooms. I stand between their two doors and watch them sleep. Addy is snuggled with her stuffed elephant that she swears she’s too old for and doesn’t sleep with. Paige has some kind of sleep mask on that presumably makes her feel like she’s five years older and cool.

What would you do if whatever happened to Tenny happened to one of them?

I shiver at the thought, knowing I’d be spending the rest of my days in a six-by-ten-sized cell, unapologetic for righting the wrongs I’d no doubt committed.

The funny thing is?

As I head back to my room and eventually drift off to sleep, my blood boils. All I can think about is doing the same thing to whoever hurt Tenny.





CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN


Crew




“So?”

Adele looks down and finishes jotting some notes in her notebook as I stare expectantly at the computer screen and watch her.

“So?” Her smile is placating when she looks up, her dark brown eyes meeting mine behind the red frames of her glasses. “How often are the nightmares?”

I think of the one that woke me up in a cold sweat last night. The darkness I was immersed in. The muzzle flash. Justin’s scream, a sound I hope I never hear again all around me so I didn’t know where he was or how to help him. The laughter on the other side of the door as we lay there bleeding. The smell of gunpowder mingled with the metallic smell of blood.

“Not as often as they used to be. Not as little as I’d like them to be.” It’s a non-answer, answer, but she’s used to those from me by now. I never know what’s going to keep her from clearing me and what will help, so I’ve opted to be as vague as possible at all times.

“I’ll take that as a frequently then,” she says matter of fact and makes some more notes. It’s her sigh when she looks up as she clasps her hands in front of her that I don’t like. “As you know, there is no schedule on when one recovers from a traumatic event such as the one you experienced, Crew. Each person has their own timeline. That does not make one person weaker than another because each person processes things differently. You went through something traumatic. You were trapped for quite a long time after the unspeakable happened to you and your partner.”

“What are you getting at, Doc? That I’m going to be messed up forever? That these headaches and nightmares will never go away? That you’re never going to clear me to go back to work? I’ve done everything you’ve asked of me even when I thought it was bullshit. Exposure therapy, cognitive therapy, that stress inoculation shit, medication . . .” It takes everything I have to sound calm when I’m raging inside. “I mean, can you at least give me something to go off here to know if I’m getting my life back?”

“It seems to me you have your life back.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” I snap.

“You said your girls are thriving. You’ve made a ton of headway on your uncle’s property. That you’ve been seeing a woman who makes you laugh. It sounds to me like you have your life back—at least compared to what it was when we first started meeting.”

I open my mouth and close it, unsure what to say. “That’s not fair.”

“Why? You being healthy isn’t the goal here? You being happy should be underrated? Yes, the job is important to you, Crew. But when we started, that was how you rated your happiness and contentment with life. Now it seems you’ve found a different metric, and I think it’s extremely important you realize that. Being a cop is and will always be a part of you, but it seems like it’s no longer the measure of who you are as a person.”