Chapter 23
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Freya’s tears shattered his heart. The anguish of her sobs tore at his soul.
He couldn’t imagine the amount of guilt she carried.
He would do anything to protect her from this devastation, but there was nothing he could do.
It had happened, and there was no bringing her childhood friend back.
No way to turn back the clock. So he did the only thing he could. He held her as she cried.
He smoothed his hand up and down her back. No empty platitudes. No words promising everything would be okay. He simply held her as she sobbed.
After a while, her tears eased, and she sighed. “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to lose it all over you.”
He tightened his arms around her. “You have nothing to apologize for, baby. I’m so sorry about what happened.”
“They said Sarah died on impact.” She sniffed, and her next words were in a heartbreaking whisper.
“So at least she didn’t suffer. The man driving the pickup lost a leg, and the woman driving the second car that hit us ended up paralyzed from the waist down.
She was a grandma of seven driving home from vacation. ”
He closed his eyes. Holy fuck. “I’m so sorry.”
“Me too.” She was silent for a few more moments and then cleared her throat. “They deemed it an accident, but . . .”
Shaking her head, more tears spilled over, and he tightened his arms around her.
He didn’t know how much time had passed, only that her tears finally subsided.
Her breaths finally calmed. If it weren’t for her fingers feathering over his skin, tracing over a scar at the edge of his waist, he would have thought she’d fallen asleep.
After a few more moments of silence, she asked, “What’s this from?”
Sensing her need for a subject change, he followed her lead.
“Army days. Bullet wound. In the jungles of some swampy hellhole. I was lucky it was a through and through. A couple more inches inside and it would have been a different story entirely.” Both Wilson and Frazier had also been hit during that clusterfuck.
Their team had been damn lucky to get out of there in one piece.
“And this? This one looks newer.” She ran her finger over the scar that ran along the left side of his ribs.
“Because it is. About a year ago, I was driving with a client and got T-boned. Intentionally. By an asshole trying to get to my client. Driver’s side door got me.” He grimaced. “Pretty sure the steering wheel got me too.”
She frowned and peeked up at him, meeting his gaze. “Was your client okay?”
“It was a little hairy—he took her while I was out cold—but our team came together, and she was pretty kick-ass herself. In the end, it all worked out, and she was fine.”
He placed his hand over Freya’s as she traced his scar.
“But this was intentional.” He moved his hand and traced the edges of her scars.
“These? An awful, tragic accident. A deer. The rain and dark. An inexperienced driver. Alcohol. One hundred percent accident.” He saw the denial in her eyes, and when she opened her mouth to reply, he kept on talking.
“Were there some poor choices made on your part? Yes. But, baby, that doesn’t make it any less of an accident. ”
Her eyes glistened, and she swallowed. “After the accident, my brothers made me go to therapy. For years. Logically, I know it was an accident. But . . .”
His hand moved to the center of her chest. “But it’s taking longer for you to believe it here.” He traced a heart over her heart.
She nodded, and another tear slipped from her eyes and dropped to the pillow. “Yeah. I’m not sure I’ll ever forgive myself.”
Not knowing how to reply, because guilt’s a tricky bitch, he pressed a kiss to her forehead. “One day at a time, Frey. And I’m here to help you every step of the way. However you need.”
A thought tickled the back of his mind. “Those photos you got in the mail, the ones I saw . . . Those aren’t the only ones you’ve received, are they?”
Freya took a deep breath, inhaling Xander’s cedar-and-soap scent.
Like every time before, it calmed her, grounded her.
She’d already told him about the accident, and he hadn’t responded as she’d thought he would.
She’d never imagined he’d respond with kindness.
With support. With words of reassurance that she wanted desperately to believe.
She’d underestimated him, but never again. So she’d trust him with all of it.
“I got the first photos two months after the accident. December fourteenth. Sarah’s birthday.” Her breath hitched, the giant lump in her throat threatening to suffocate her. “Four photos. Three of me and Sarah, happy and smiling. One of me at her funeral, crying at her grave.”
His hand squeezed her hip, and the steady look in his brown eyes gave her the courage to keep talking.
“I didn’t think much of them until more photos arrived the following year.
They came on the anniversary of the accident and on Sarah’s birthday again.
And every year since. Even if I move, I still get a white envelope of four photos.
All the photos are different, but there are always three of me and Sarah, and one of me at the cemetery, either from her funeral or from different times I’ve visited her grave. But then . . .”
A shiver tore through her. Xander ran his hands over her arms, but they did nothing to relieve the goosebumps. “And then?”
Tingles of unease crept up her spine. “Three years ago, on the tenth anniversary of Sarah’s death, the photos changed.
There were still four, but two were photos of me and Sarah smiling into the camera, and the other two photos were of me at the cemetery after her funeral.
But my face was scratched out in them, and ‘It should have been you’ was written on one of them. It’s been like that ever since.”
She met Xander’s gaze, and the anger that flashed over his face reassured her. For so long, she’d brushed off the unease she’d felt at receiving the photos, chalking it up to guilt. When the tone of the photos had changed, she’d convinced herself she was overreacting.
“This year,” she continued, “when the anniversary came and went last month and I didn’t get any photos, I thought it was over. I thought whoever was sending the photos was done.”
Xander’s eyes narrowed. “You’d just moved to Hudson Island, right?”
She nodded. “At the beginning of October.”
“Because of the photos?”
“Kinda. I mean, it was a factor.” She shrugged.
“My old landlord was a friend of my oldest brother. The one before that was related to my youngest brother’s coworker.
And the one before that was a friend of the twins.
I wanted my move to Hudson to be a fresh start.
For the first time, I was moving somewhere that wasn’t tied to my family.
I’m twenty-nine and figured it was well past time to do it on my own, you know? ”
“It’s understandable you wanted independence,” he murmured.
“But I’d be lying if I said the photos had nothing to do with my move.
I purposely timed it so it was right before the anniversary.
Whoever the sender is finds me everywhere I go.
So I kept my new address here on Hudson pretty quiet.
I didn’t even tell my brothers. There was that snafu with my new address and the post office, so my boss allowed me to use the Pacific View as my forwarding address. ”
His eyes narrowed. “The photos you got recently were delivered to your work, right?”
“Yeah, you were there.” She sighed, defeat threatening to overtake her.
“Whoever it was didn’t forget. The package just got delayed in the post office’s mail-forwarding process.
I suppose the one positive is that they don’t have my new address since it was originally sent to my old address on Whidbey. ”
“Did you keep the other photos?”
She cringed as she nodded. “I did. They’re all in a box in my closet.
” Morbid, but true. “They’d arrive, and I’d look at them, cry, and then stuff them back into their envelopes and shove them into the box.
I tried to throw them away once, but it felt .
. . wrong.” She’d held on to them as a reminder—not that she’d ever forget—of what she’d done. Of the pain she’d caused.
“You kept them to punish yourself.”
It was like he could read her mind.
“Maybe,” she whispered before clearing her throat. “But when the photos became scary, I kept them just in case . . .”
“In case?” he prodded.
“In case something happened to me,” she admitted, her stomach twisting. “I’ve never told my brothers about the photos. If something happens to me, there’ll be the photos to let them know why.”
The wrinkle between Xander’s brow popped. “You didn’t tell your brothers? Not even the one who’s a cop?”
She shook her head. “After the accident, I pulled away from them. The photos of me and Sarah were like a kick to the face. I was too wrapped up in my grief, and then my guilt, to realize how creepy the photos of me at the cemetery were. It didn’t quite register that someone had been following me—especially the cemetery photos that were taken years later.
When the photos took a darker turn, a decade had passed.
I guess I felt stupid for not letting my brothers know earlier.
They’ve always been overprotective, and I knew if I told them, it would turn into another fight.
Another Freya-can’t-take-care-of-herself thing. ”
His lips pressed into a thin line. “Yet you kept the photos in case whoever this person is comes after you. So your brothers would know—after something happened to you—that someone wished you’d died instead of Sarah.”
She fought a wince. When he put it that way, she was a top candidate for being too stupid to live. “In a nutshell.”
“When we go back to your place, can I take the photos and show them to my team? You mentioned putting them back in their envelopes, so maybe . . . I don’t know . . . Maybe there’s a fingerprint or something they can find.”
Was that even possible? “Um, sure.”
“I can’t promise we’ll find anything, but it doesn’t hurt to check, right? Now, come here,” he murmured, pulling her close and wrapping her in his arms. When her head was resting comfortably on his chest, he ran a hand up her spine. “Tell me about Sarah. What was she like?”
For the first time since their conversation had started, the image that popped into her mind of her friend wasn’t from the car accident, of Sarah’s vacant green eyes, or of her friend lying so utterly still in her casket.
Instead, she thought of her kind best friend sitting beside her and holding her hand at her parents’ funeral.
“Sarah was the best.” The tip of Freya’s nose tickled, and her throat grew thick.
God, she missed her friend. She sniffed as a bittersweet smile lifted her lips.
“We met on the first day of first grade. My mom had dropped me off, and I was so scared. Then this blond girl with bright-green eyes came right up to me, told me her name, and asked if I wanted to be best friends . . .”