Chapter 27
Chapter
Twenty-Seven
COOPER
Iset my keys down on the entry table as I stepped in through the front door. I’d left work early that day, my mind preoccupied, my heart in shambles.
I was supposed to be training a new officer in the field but decided to hand the reins over to Johnny, unable to focus.
Abby had been gone for hours now, and it was only getting harder as the minutes ticked by.
I’d always prided myself on my strength, my resilience.
My ability to compartmentalize. I’d learned long ago to separate emotions from the job, and it had served me well.
People often asked me how I managed to stay so calm and level-headed in the midst of a crisis, and I figured it was because I was good at keeping things I cared about at arm’s length.
I didn’t let anyone, or anything, get too close to my heart.
After thirty years of life, I’d finally found my weakness.
I’d discovered the one thing that could make me doubt, question, crack, and bleed.
Abby.
I would always be Abby.
Releasing a worn-out sigh, I sauntered through the living room and collapsed on the couch, digging into the cushion cracks for the remote. I stared at the blank screen, lost in the day’s events, lost in a life I thought would come to be.
Fairy tales.
Before I flipped the television on, a car pulled into my driveway, the headlights reflecting in the television screen. I turned around and faced the window, wondering if it was Kate, even though she’d been given strict orders not to drive. My sister had always had a rebel soul.
I stood from the couch and made my way over to the front window, tugging open the curtains all the way. I recognized the car.
And I definitely recognized the person stepping out of it.
It wasn’t Kate.
My heart skipped a beat.
My mouth went dry.
Abby.
I blinked a hundred times, positive I had to be seeing things.
Something had skewed my vision. Exhaustion, fatigue, grief.
Hell, maybe the water bottle I’d chugged down on the way home had been laced with a hallucinogen and this was a mirage.
Anything seemed more plausible than what I was looking at.
There was no way Abby was standing in my driveway, her knees wobbling, her bottom lip caught between her teeth, her fingers playing with the fringes of her blue blouse as she stared down at her shoes.
It wasn’t fucking possible.
I watched as she collected herself, inhaling a deep breath and fluffing out the hem of her shirt. Then she gathered her wits and began walking toward my front door.
But she spotted me.
Abby came to an abrupt stop when she did a double-take, glancing through the window. Violet eyes peered back at me. Haunted eyes.
The most beautiful eyes I’d ever seen.
I stared back at her, entranced, bewitched.
In a daze, in a dream.
She was here.
She came back for me.
Abby stood frozen on my front lawn, only a few feet away, her eyes fixed on mine through the pane of glass. She stood like that for what felt like a lifetime.
And then she held up her cell phone, wiggling her hand around and bobbing her shoulders with an air of playful defeat.
She smiled.
Abby smiled so bright, I thought my heart might implode at the sheer beauty of it. She smiled like a soul-shattering epiphany had swept right through her…and hell, maybe it had.
I hoped it had.
She ran.
She ran the rest of the way to my front door, and I ran, too, meeting her on the other side of the wood frame. I reached for the knob, pressing my forehead to the center of the door. My eyes closed. I breathed in deeply, feeling her radiating through the only barrier left between us.
It filled me with something I thought I’d lost…
Hope.
I waited, my hand curled around the doorknob, and my heart beating in my throat.
I just waited.
And then that hopeful feeling careened right through me, slamming into my chest and igniting my heart, with two little taps.
She knocked twice.