Chapter 10 Wren
WREN
The echo of footsteps on the linoleum floor rose above the low din of the station. I shifted my gaze to the computer screen in front of me, trying to get a read on the reflection. Man or woman? Size? Shape?
It didn’t really matter who it was, just as long as it wasn’t Holt’s broad-shouldered form. His words echoed in my head. “Just because I left doesn’t mean I stopped caring.”
That phantom rasp in my mind had anger pooling deep. He wanted to come back? Fine. He wanted to start showing his face around town? I could deal. But he did not get to tell me he cared.
People who cared didn’t vanish the moment you were well enough to leave rehab and go home.
I’d replayed those months between the shooting and Holt bolting over and over in my head.
Looking back on it, I could see that something had shifted in him.
But at the time, I’d been in too much mental and emotional pain to see it.
The deadness in his voice should’ve been my first sign. He would hold my hand and kiss my temple, but never did his mouth meet mine. He was a fierce defender, keeping away the reporters and the morbidly curious, but was never truly alone with me.
It was embarrassing now—how clear it had been that he’d wanted nothing to do with me. Yet I’d been stunned as I’d read the damn letter.
“Wren.”
I breathed a sigh of relief at the sound of Chris’s voice, then spun in my chair. “Hey.”
The planes of his face were etched with concern. “I heard what happened. You okay?”
Annoyance sparked and flickered under my skin. “Why wouldn’t I be?”
He was quiet for a moment. “The, uh, break-in call. It would make sense if it brought back memories.”
“My house wasn’t broken into. We should be worried about Jane.” And I’d make sure I went by her place sometime in the next few days to talk to her. It helped to have someone who’d been there.
The survivors of the shooting and I had formed a sort of club—the type that none of us wanted to be a member of.
Those we’d lost held honorary membership.
Five dead. Six injured. Students. Teachers.
A coach. Innocent bystanders who had gotten in the way.
Randy and Paul had made a hit list of every person they thought had ever wronged them and had ticked them off one by one.
Chris stared at me for a moment. “It’s okay to not always have it together. It’s normal. What you went through—”
“Don’t,” I bit out. “I’ve done the therapy thing. I don’t need my head shrunk by my friends, too.”
He winced, and I instantly felt like the worst kind of jerk.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”
Chris waved me off. “I get it. I just want you to know that I’m there for you if you ever need to talk. Or not talk. I’m also good with takeout and beer.”
The corner of my mouth lifted. “Only if it’s a pepperoni and pineapple from Wildfire.”
Chris’s face screwed up. “That’s just wrong, and you know it.”
“Don’t judge my culinary choices.”
“You mean your culinary crimes.”
I only grinned wider. “You’ve never even tried it.”
He shuddered. “I’ll get you your pizza crime. I’ll stick with meat lovers.”
“Fine.”
“How about tonight?”
I pulled my phone out to check my calendar and froze. In big letters was Family Dinner at the Hartleys’. I was over there at least once a month but had made these plans with Grae last week—before everything had changed.
“You got plans?” Chris prodded.
“Uh, yeah.”
“With who?”
“Grae,” I said, still staring at my phone. Maybe she’d meet me in town instead.
Chris nodded. “Later this week then. Tell G hi.”
“Yeah, sure.”
“Wren.”
My head snapped up at Lawson’s voice. Chris had left, and I hadn’t even realized it. I’d still been staring at that tiny calendar square on my phone like it was a cobra poised to strike.
I shoved my cell into my desk drawer so the damn thing couldn’t taunt me. “Can you come to my office for a minute?”
Dread pooled in my stomach. “No one else is on duty. Abel went to lunch and—”
“I’m back,” he grumbled, sliding into the cubicle next to mine. “Go talk to Lawson so he isn’t hovering over me.”
“I love you, too, Abel,” Lawson said with a chuckle.
“Holler if you need me,” I told Abel as I rose from my chair.
“Who do you think you’re talking to, missy? I was the only dispatcher on duty for almost a decade.”
His indignant response had my lips curving. “Of course. And you walked to school in four feet of snow, uphill both ways.”
“Damn straight. Now, get out of my space and let me focus.”
I shook my head and followed Lawson toward his office. But the moment we stepped inside, and he’d shut the door, any flickers of amusement fled.
“Have a seat,” Lawson said as he moved to his chair.
I worried the side of my lip as I followed his order. “Am I about to get fired?”
Lawson’s eyes flared. “I sure as hell hope not because you’re the best dispatcher I have.”
“Abel’s the best dispatcher you have.”
“He’s good in a crisis, but he’s ornery on a good day. He doesn’t have even a smidge of the empathy you do.”
I leaned back against the chair, a little of the worry draining out of me. “Abel has all the empathy in the world. He just hides it under crankiness.”
A grin pulled at Lawson’s mouth. “You may be right there. Either way, you’re my number one.”
I arched a brow. “You sure that’s not because you’ve been looking out for me basically since I was born?”
The twelve years separating him from Grae and me had meant that he was always protective, but over his younger brothers, too. He shrugged. “Maybe. But who says I can’t have favorites?”
“I have a feeling human resources might frown on that.”
“Good thing HR is Anderson, and he’s already drowning in his police work.”
I snickered. “Guess you’re safe.”
Lawson leaned back, his chair squeaking. “You okay?”
I rolled my lips over my teeth as if that would keep me from giving him the truth. “You asking as my boss or as my friend?”
“I’m asking as your surrogate big brother.”
In so many ways, that married the two. Lawson had a calm steadiness about him that made people want to leave their burdens at his feet. He had that quality that I missed in Holt so damn much—that silent assurance that nothing I told him would ever freak him out.
He didn’t see me the same way Holt had. Holt knew what I was thinking or how I was feeling before I could even find the words. But there was comfort in knowing that I could still keep the worst of my torture to myself around Lawson.
“The call rattled me. It isn’t the first one that has, and it won’t be the last. I can handle it.”
Lawson nodded. “I know you can, but you’re also allowed to take care of yourself when you get rattled. If you need to take the rest of the day, do it.”
I shook my head. “That would just make things worse. I took a walk around the block. Cleared my head. I’m good.”
“All right. How’s everything else?”
I arched a brow. “Are you digging, Chief Hartley?”
He had the decency to look a little sheepish. “I’ve been known to, time and again.” The hint of humor slipped from his face. “He’s a mess, Wren.”
My fingers curved around the arms of the chair, but I didn’t say a word.
Lawson let his statement hang heavy in the air for a moment. “I know he hurt you, but he was a kid, too. What happened to him, finding you like he did…it can twist a person up.”
“So it’s my fault he bailed?”
“Of course, not. I’m just saying there are as many sides to a story as those who’ve lived it.”
My back teeth ground together. The fact that Lawson made a perfectly reasonable point just stoked my mad.
But I breathed through it. “I get it. He was struggling. You think I don’t hate that?
But I can’t just forget that he left me when I needed him the most. That what we had wasn’t enough for him to fight through whatever bullshit was swirling in his head. ”
I met Lawson’s gaze dead-on. “He broke me, Law. Worse than that bullet. Worse than the agony of waking up after open-heart surgery. Worse than the torture of months of rehab. I can’t just magically forget that happened.”
I stared down at my phone, my gaze tracking over the text again and again.
Grae: My best friend isn’t a weak-a biznatch.
I couldn’t help the flutter of my lips. Grae had always had a foul mouth. Probably because she had four older brothers. But when Lawson’s first son was born, she’d done her best to clean up her act. The results were these ridiculous non-cussing curse words.
And she’d been using them to taunt me all afternoon. To bait me into coming tonight.
I tossed my phone into the cupholder and stared up at the house. I knew every nook and cranny of it like the back of my hand. How many times had I wished I could live here growing up? Too many to count.
And then there were the times when I’d picture it—building a house on the land that would be close enough that Kerry and Nathan would be in their grandbabies’ lives every single day. Those invisible claws dug deep, and I shoved the memories down.
I was good at that. Shoving away things that I didn’t want to look at. I was a master at it, really. But I could never burn the memories out altogether.
And we had half a lifetime of them. Grae and I had been in the same playgroup as infants.
And Kerry often told this story of two-year-old Holt toddling over, transfixed by the baby with the hazel eyes.
She said he used to stand guard over me, not letting anyone close until they proved their good intentions.
That had never changed over the years. Always my protector.
The one who picked me up when I took a tumble off my bike and tended to my skinned knees.
The one who insisted his brothers let Grae and me play whatever they were doing.
The one who decked a jerk in the third grade for making a habit of taunting me, thus getting suspended for a whole week.