Chapter 19
CHAPTER NINETEEN
THORNE
I pour Leaf into his bed—almost literally. He’s smiling and happy, but completely boneless and mostly unconscious. He half passed out on the dance floor, and that was the moment I knew it was time for me to get him home.
Once upon a time, this would have pissed me off beyond all reason. When I was younger and had a more black-and-white view of right and wrong, I would always end up the DD and looking after a bunch of friends, barely over twenty-one, who were making asses of themselves in front of women at the bar.
None of that was my scene, and at the time, I thought it was watching over sloppy drunks that pissed me off. Now I realize that back then, I just wasn’t where I wanted to be, and I was hiding a huge piece of myself and what I wanted.
Tonight felt like I was reclaiming everything the younger me had always wanted.
Leaf stayed close, touched me a lot, wasn’t ashamed to be with me.
He pulled me into his little bubble of friends who communicated with me easily and without looking at me like I was shit on the bottom of a shoe for not being able to follow along.
And the way he smiled at me. The way he trusted me to take care of him when he let go?
The way he looked at me with his huge eyes after I cracked and said the three words I’d promised myself I wouldn’t blurt out until I was ready?
Taking a deep breath, I pull my hearing aids out and set them in the charging case before making sure Leaf’s at the edge of the bed with a trash can beside him in case he needs to heave everything up.
I press my hand to his chest to make sure his breathing is even and steady, and then I drop to my knees and push a few locks of sweaty hair from his forehead.
His eyelids twitch, then flutter open. His pupils are huge, and I’m not sure he’s really seeing me.
And then he smiles.
“Oh. Hi.”
I’m mostly reading his lips at this point. His voice is so soft, but it’s easy. Everything with him—even the weird, complicated parts—is so simple.
“Hi.”
He reaches up and traces a single finger down my nose, then over my lips. “Hi.”
I laugh, the sound rumbling against the back of my throat. “You said that already.”
“Mm.” He touches my lips again. “So pretty.”
No one has ever called me pretty. Not ever. Not once. It makes heat rise along the back of my neck. “So are you.”
He laughs and shakes his head. “Noooo. I’m a mess. A big, weird…you know?” I’ve missed part of what he said when he turned his face toward the wall, but I’m not going to ask him to repeat all the self-deprecating shit he just said about himself.
“Do you remember earlier? At the club?” I ask, pulling his chin toward me.
He blinks at me. “Mm. Robbie. Gummies…”
“A lot of booze,” I say. I’m hedging around the question I want to ask. Did he remember what I said?
He laughs. “So many drinks.” He sits halfway up with a gasp. “Too many?”
I ease him back down, grabbing his hands and kissing over his knuckles. “You needed tonight. It’s okay. I had a good time.”
His breathing evens out again, and he rolls his head back over to look at me. “Why aren’t you in bed?”
“I’m not tired yet.” I smooth hair back from his forehead again, feeling that familiar ache in my chest. The ache that tells me I’ve irrevocably fallen for this man. I swallow heavily. Am I really going to say those words again? I should wait until he’s sober. But he’s staring at me.
Leaf. My boyfriend, who hadn’t shied away from those words when I said them earlier tonight. Who grinned and leaned into me like me saying it was a gift.
“Do you remember me telling you that I love you?”
He blinks at me. Then blinks again, his eyelids heavier this time. His mouth opens, and I hold my breath, and I wait. But his words don’t come—whatever they might have been. His chest rises and falls steadily.
He’s asleep again.
Just my fucking luck, but it’s probably better this way. Whatever this means, whatever we’re going to talk about, it needs to be when we’re both fully aware. And I’m okay with that. I have been patient all my life, and I can be patient just a bit longer.
If it’s for him.
I’m no stranger to long bouts of insomnia, and being at Leaf’s is nicer than pacing my cold apartment in Portland or Matias’s rental on the edge of town. Leaf’s not downstairs with me, but I still feel his presence in the house as I start to wander around.
I’ve never had such unrestricted access to a possible crime scene before, and it feels freeing in a way that I didn’t expect to enjoy. I’ve always been a man of rigid rules and regulations, but rebelling against protocol has given me a hunger for more.
Going into private investigating is starting to have more and more appeal as I move from room to room, unearthing boxes and opening random drawers of papers that haven’t been touched in decades.
The whole house feels like a weird mash-up of Leaf’s things and an untouched time capsule of Lynda.
There are things I can tell about her immediately.
She didn’t like to throw stuff away. She was a big collector of paperwork—every single cabinet and drawer Leaf isn’t using is full of receipts and work orders.
She liked to crochet, or she knew someone who did, because there are a ton of handmade doilies and afghans littered around the house.
She liked penguins and lions based on the dusty figurines I find on shelves, and it doesn’t seem like she was really into her family. She left behind some photos—a young man I’m pretty sure is her son, the cousin who inspired Leaf to go into interpreting. But very few of them are hanging up.
Most of them are in boxes.
And that’s where I find my next bit of evidence.
It’s an old container that was once see-through, but age has made the plastic opaque.
This one, for whatever reason, isn’t sealed.
Inside are what look like old elementary school art projects—a snowman made of cotton balls, a turkey from the shape of a hand with poorly cut out feathers, a couple of Popsicle stick figures with glued-on googly eyes.
And underneath that is a plain manila folder with slightly stained edges. Something about that makes my hackles rise. I pull it from the pile, and when I flip it open, I find a collection of Polaroid photos.
The first few are of the farm—some chickens, the orchard, a spot where men were digging. I assume that was for the silo because I can see the barn in the background. And underneath that are Polaroids of people.
People that don’t look like Leaf or Lynda or her son.
The first couple seem somewhat modern—maybe taken sometime in the mid-nineties.
Two women and one man stand in the photos.
The women look somewhere in their mid to late twenties, with radar dish bangs and very straight hair.
They’re white, one of them has freckles, and they both have blue eyes.
My gaze falls on the man. He has light hair in a bowl cut, which is parted on the side. He also has blue eyes and freckles.
Underneath those are more photos. Altogether, I count nine men and women, several from different decades if I’m right about the clothes. They all look happy. Normal. Smiling and unafraid.
But something tells me they were not her friends.
My heart skips around my chest as I set them all back in the folder and lay it on the table. This is better than the box of shoes. This is something I can use to look up missing persons.
Fuck, I’m going to have to call this in.
I might be able to drag my feet for a few more days, but any longer and I could be in trouble for withholding evidence.
I take the folder with me and walk back into the dining room, popping open the box of shoes and setting it inside there.
It’s a good enough collection bin for now.
As I turn, my eye catches on the door that I’d noticed the first time I’d come to Leaf’s. It leads to the cellar, and he couldn’t ever get it open. It had triggered warning bells in me back then, and now I feel it even worse.
I hesitate, then turn the handle. It twists, but the door itself won’t budge. I lean in, squinting until I realize the door is sealed. When I pry at the edges, I notice it’s shut with a lot more than glue. I’m fairly sure it’s cement.
Christ. There’s no way I’m going to be able to get in there without demolishing the wall, and I don’t have the resources. But when I do bring in people who will have them, it means Leaf’s house is going to be destroyed. They’re going to tear this place open from top to bottom.
There will be rubble left behind. A frame he can rebuild on if he’s lucky, but I have a feeling they’re going to rip up foundation if they have to.
I need to talk to him about it. It can wait until morning, though not much longer than that. But I won’t let him go through this alone. I can’t. There’s not a chance in hell I’m going to walk away while his life is, once again, turned upside down.
Stepping away from the cellar door, I head outside, stopping by the front porch railing. It’s in terrible need of repair. This entire house is. I don’t know what kind of money Leaf has—if he was left any when his aunt died or if most of that went to her son.
But maybe I can help. I’ve been single almost all my life, married to my job. I never went on vacation, I’m still driving the car I bought for myself after my first big promotion, and I never bothered to decorate my apartment with anything besides the bare necessities.
I have money.
And soon enough, I’ll have time.
I can make a home for us—if Leaf would want that. If my I love you is received and accepted. All I want is a chance to do this right.
With him.
It’s fast, but it’s really hard to give a shit because the whole thing feels so right. It feels—