Chapter 24
CHAPTER 24
SAWYER
T he police station made me twitchy. I’d never actually been arrested for anything in my youth, but the Wayward Sons had collectively been hauled in on multiple occasions. Rios and I most often because we didn’t have fine, upstanding parents to defend us. I knew it chapped Bill Carson’s ass that he’d never been able to make anything stick to either of us. The reality was that though we’d flaunted a few rules and raised a little hell, we’d never done anything legitimately wrong. That just flew in the face of how the police chief had always seen us.
But he’d wanted to talk to Willa and me. As it had been three days, we could only presume this had something to do with the preliminary results on the body. Since the water level had dropped and the wash outs had been temporarily repaired, we’d elected to come to him before our meeting with Roland O’Shea. I hoped that wasn’t a mistake and that whatever he had to say wasn’t going to set off another anxiety attack for Willa.
She’d been fine when she’d woken after the migraine. A little shaky maybe, but given that a body who’d clearly met a violent end had been found on her property, I figured that was normal. There were no more signs of shock or lingering trauma. She hadn’t woken with nightmares, and I was finally starting to relax again.
We’d managed to get the house set more or less back to normal, taking down the hurricane panels, cleaning up the debris in the yard, hauling back out all the plants and patio furniture. Electricity and phones were back in service. There were still repairs to be made, and I’d see to those, but I didn’t expect to be able to get supplies for that just yet.
“Miss Sutter. Thank you for coming.” Bill Carson gestured toward his office with no acknowledgment to me.
I wasn’t sure if either were intended slights or not. Willa hadn’t taken my name. There hadn’t been time, even if that had been her intention. Which, of course, it wasn’t. Even if this marriage had been fully real from the get go, I wouldn’t have expected that of her. Not when that part of her legacy meant so much to her. But Carson’s failure to greet me felt pointed.
Willa tightened her grip on my hand, the only outward sign of her anxiety, and we rose to follow the chief back to his office.
“Have a seat. Can I get you a cup of coffee or something?”
This polite civility was so far from how I’d seen this man behave toward me, toward Rios and Caroline. He’d accused Rios of murder after Gwen disappeared, and when Caroline had been stalked a decade back, he’d acted like she’d brought the whole thing on herself. And here he was offering my wife coffee. I knew it was because she was a Sutter. Because, in Carson’s eyes, she mattered in a way the rest of us didn’t. Part of me was grateful she wasn’t having to bear the brunt of his shit attitude. But I was sorely tempted to push the envelope and ask for coffee myself, to see how far this solicitude would extend. Instead, I kept my mouth shut.
“No, thank you. You said you wanted to see us? Is there news about… about the body?” Willa asked.
Carson leaned a hip against his desk. “Preliminary results are back from the ME’s office. Evidence indicates the remains are of an adult white male. It’s not Gwen Busby.”
Willa’s fingers flexed in mine, and she blinked, clearly trying to absorb the news.
“Then who the hell is it?” I asked.
Carson spared me a glance. “We don’t know yet. There’s no other documented missing person from the island. The investigation is ongoing, and further forensic analysis will take a lot longer. But I wanted to tell y’all in person, before you heard it through the island grapevine.”
Out of courtesy to Willa, or because he wanted to see our reactions? Surely he didn’t think we were somehow involved?
Willa remained gracious. “Thank you. Is there any sign of how old the remains are?”
“Not yet. That’s one of the details we hope to get from the ME’s analysis, so we can narrow down the scope of our search. If either of y’all thinks of anything that might be helpful, or if you find anything else in the course of storm clean up, let me know. Otherwise, I won’t keep you.”
Willa rose. “I appreciate you telling us. Is this information to be kept confidential for purposes of the investigation?”
“No. At this point, the more people who hear, the better. Maybe somebody will think of something. Thanks for coming in.”
Dismissed. I supposed that was a good thing. If he’d believed we had something to do with it, he’d have probably asked more questions.
I stayed quiet until we got back outside. “So… not Gwen. How do you feel?”
She scooped a hand through her hair. “I hardly know. Relieved? Horrified? Both? I was so sure it was her, and now it’s not. Some other poor guy was killed and buried on my family’s property for God knows how long. It means we still don’t have answers about Gwen. I guess a part of me wants to hang onto that. To believe that, somehow, she’s still out there. Which is crazy, because if she were still alive, why wouldn’t she come home?”
I didn’t have any good answers for that. The alternatives I could think of would probably be considered worse than death. If Willa hadn’t thought of them, I wasn’t about to put those images in her brain. “I don’t know. You ready to head over to O’Shea’s office, or do you need a bite first? We could swing by the bakery for pastries.”
“No, I’d rather get it over with. If he didn’t immediately share good news over the phone, I feel like this is going to be more bad news and a strategy meeting.”
The moment I clapped eyes on Roland O’Shea, I knew she’d been right.
He waited only long enough for us to settle into chairs on the other side of his desk. “Well, things didn’t go precisely as we’d hoped. I reported your marriage to the court, and rather than seeing it as a sign of your stability, your parents are suggesting it as evidence of your impulsivity and poor judgment. They allege you were not fit to consent, and that Sawyer used your fragile emotional state following your grandparents’ deaths to manipulate you into matrimony in the name of his own financial gain.”
Outraged, Willa shot to her feet. “That’s bullshit! All of it!”
I grabbed her hand. “Wren, he knows that.” None of this surprised me. John Hollingsworth had never thought much of me.
Willa visibly struggled to rein in her temper. She didn’t lose it often, but when she did… She looked back to O’Shea. “I’m sorry. This isn’t your fault.”
“It’s perfectly all right. They’re certainly putting you through the wringer with all this. In any event, I’m afraid we’re going to have to do a little more to prove the legitimacy of your marriage.”
Mama Flo had anticipated this. Thank God Dax was already working his magic on our digital paper trail. I squeezed Willa’s hand again, and she lowered back into her chair. “We’ve got nothing to hide. What all do you need?”
We went over the evidence we could and would voluntarily produce.
“The internet is still spotty since the storm, so it’ll take some time to pull together, but we can absolutely do that. What else do you suggest?” Willa asked.
“I also recommend that Sawyer sign a post-nuptial agreement wherein he relinquishes any claim on any of your assets. I would have suggested a pre-nup in the first place had I known your intention to marry.”
That was easy. “Done. I don’t want any of your family stuff.” And that would kill off some of the speculation that I was some kind of gold digger.
“No.” There went that stubborn tilt to her chin.
“Why not? This is the easy answer.”
“Because I’m not going to dignify this insult to you by having legal paperwork drawn up to that effect. That suggests I don’t trust you. This is just one more way my father’s trying to take a dig at you, just like he always has.”
Her insult on my behalf was sweet but impractical. “Wren, I don’t give a rat’s ass what your father thinks of me. Let me sign the paperwork. I didn’t marry you for your money, so this changes nothing.”
The attorney studied her for a long moment, a nostalgic smile tipping the corners of his mouth. “You remind me so much of your mother sometimes.”
Willa blinked, taken aback. “Excuse me?”
“The younger her, before she met your father. She could be very stubborn, too.”
“You knew my mother back then?”
“Of course. We both grew up here on the island. Went to school together.” A faint trace of something that might have been sadness or disappointment flickered over his features. “She was a very different person before John.”
I could only imagine. “Willa’s got stubborn genes going back multiple generations, on both sides. But let’s talk about this.”
We went a few rounds about it, but in the end, I signed the document he’d already prepared.
As we stepped out of the office, O’Shea’s secretary hung up the phone. Her eyes gleamed with the kind of excitement that only presaged good gossip.
“That body that was found isn’t Gwen Busby.” Her cheeks colored as her gaze slid to Willa. “Sorry.”
Willa just shook her head. “We already knew. We came from the police station.”
“Did Chief Carson say who they thought it was?” O’Shea asked.
“Only that it was an adult white male, which doesn’t exactly narrow the pool much.”
The lawyer shook his head. “It’s such a damned shame. I don’t know what this world is coming to. But I’m sure the police will get to the bottom of it.”
He had more faith in Carson than I did. It wasn’t like the guy had all that much experience investigating this sort of crime.
Willa stayed quiet on the drive home. Nancy’s announcement about the body had probably gotten her thinking about all that shit again. Not until we carried our couple of bags of groceries into the kitchen did she break her silence.
“Why were you so willing to sign a post-nup?”
She was still upset about that? I set my bag on the counter. “Because I seriously don’t care what anyone thinks. I’m 1000% not after your money. Why does it bother you so much?”
Her eyes lit with something that might have been a battle light. “People have looked down on you all your life for circumstances that were beyond your control. Everything you’ve ever had, you fought and worked for yourself. You could have become bitter and angry and money hungry. You could have become all the things that they’re accusing you of being. But you didn’t. You have always been one of the kindest, most honorable men I have ever known, and I resent the hell out of them for trying to diminish you like that.”
I stared at her, this kind, big-hearted woman who somehow had so much compassion despite everything she’d been through. She saw injustices and wanted to do something about them. So few people had ever thought me worth that. My brothers. Some of their family. Mostly, I’d learned a long time ago that the opinions of small-minded people didn’t matter. But her opinion had always mattered to me. I knew how much she hated conflict, so the fact that she was ready to go to war in my name… well, I didn’t know how to describe what that meant to me. But this reaction still felt unnecessary. The thing was signed.
“I appreciate your desire to defend me. Truly, I do. But I still don’t understand. Me signing that piece of paper doesn’t change anything between us.” Yet she was acting as if it did.
“Won’t it?” There was an odd blend of challenge and quaver in her tone. “If this is the last attack they can make, doesn’t that mean that once it’s resolved, I’m safe and you’re released from your responsibility here? Is that what you want? For all this to be over?”
Fuck no, that wasn’t what I wanted. That had never been what I wanted. But a real marriage wasn’t what either of us had signed on for in the beginning. I was a means to an end, not a true match for someone like her. At least one of us needed to remember that before we slid in any deeper. Still, I wouldn’t lie to her.
“No. No, I don’t want it to be over.” Despite the circumstances, these weeks with her had been some of the best of my life. “But that was always the plan, Wren.” It was the truth, so why the hell did I feel like Roy had just torn out my guts?
She flinched as if I’d struck her, and I was deathly afraid she was about to cry. I couldn’t stand the idea that I’d caused her any kind of pain. But when she looked back at me, it was temper filling her eyes. “Because that’s what you actually want? Or is it because you don’t think you’re good enough? For me? For this? For us?”
The accusation struck me speechless. Because that was exactly what I thought.
She must’ve seen it in my face because she closed the distance between us, reaching up to cup my cheeks. I couldn’t have broken her gentle hold to save my life.
“I wish you could see yourself the way that I see you. The way you helped me see myself through your eyes. We’re better together, Sawyer. And maybe I’m just a foolish inexperienced little girl to you?—”
I shook my head, curling my fingers into fists to keep from reaching for her. “No, you’re not that. You’ve never been that.”
Her throat worked, and her fingers against my cheeks trembled, but she didn’t look away. “I know this was supposed to be temporary. I know it wasn’t supposed to be real. But it is real for me. A part of me knew it would be when I agreed to this, because I love you. I’ve always loved you. I know you care for me or you wouldn’t have offered yourself up for this lunatic scheme. I think you agreed, not only to protect me, but because it allowed us to both get out of our own way. There’s something between us. Always has been. It’s shifted and changed over the years, but it’s here . And I don’t want to watch you walk away out of some misguided sense of nobility because you don’t think you’re worthy. Because you’re everything to me.”
This was everything I’d never imagined hearing from her. Everything I’d never even let myself dream about. But even as my heart yearned to leap in with both feet, my brain argued with me. She was attracted. We’d been playing at being married for the better part of a month. It wasn’t unexpected that she’d slid into that fantasy, too. But that didn’t make it real. Not beyond the undeniable chemistry. Because how could someone like her love someone like me?
I opened my mouth.
Willa narrowed her eyes. “I swear to God, if you’re about to try to mansplain my own emotions to me, you can stop right there. I’m not going to hear it. I will never again allow anyone to tell me I don’t know my own mind. Not even you.”
Shit. Was that what I was trying to do? I never wanted to make her feel like I was trying to control or diminish her. I just didn’t know how to trust this, because I was too afraid of having the dream of it yanked away from me.
“I’m going to make this really simple for you, Sawyer. I’m not asking for a declaration of forever here. I’m asking you to give us a chance. Do you want me?”
I couldn’t give her anything but honesty in this moment. Because this was as raw and vulnerable as we’d ever been. “More than my next breath.”
She rose up, pressing her body against mine, lifting her mouth close enough that I felt the warmth of her breath as she spoke. “I’m your wife. So why don’t you finally take me?”