4. The Number I Didnt Save #3
Maybe that's how wounded people recognize each other before they know each other's names.
"Then you need to tell him, sweetheart," Iris says gently. "Men like Jax Rowe… they respond to blood and loyalty. You show him your scars, and maybe he'll show you his."
"Maybe," I say, though the thought of showing Jackson Rowe anything close to my real self makes my skin turn cold. "Thanks, Gran. I need to go check on Daddy."
"Be careful, Nora. The weather is turning out there."
We hang up, and the silence of the dock returns, but it's different now. The lines aren't straight anymore; they're curved, organic, and wet with twenty years of old memories.
I'm about to reach down to roll up the ruined vellum sheet when the high-pitched hum of a car engine cuts through the salt air. It's coming from the long, gravel driveway that connects our cottage to the state highway.
I perk up, my muscles tightening as I turn around on the stool.
A sleek, silver sedan rolls into view, its tires crunching slowly, almost hesitantly, over the loose gravel. It doesn't look like a local car; the paint is too clean, the windows tinted too dark for a county where everyone drives a rusted Ford or a dirty Dodge Ram.
It crawls to the edge of our turnaround circle, its engine idling with a low, expensive purr, and stops.
It just sits there. For one minute. Two minutes. Three minutes.
The driver doesn't get out, the doors stay closed, and the dark glass of the windshield reflects the gray afternoon light, making it impossible to see who is behind the wheel.
I lean forward to see the license plate, which is printed with the logo of a commercial rental agency headquartered at Bush Intercontinental Airport in Houston.
My stomach drops into a bottomless, weightless void. The ice returns, thick and suffocating, wrapping around my throat until I can't swallow.
My breath leaves me in a sharp, cold gasp, my heart slamming against my ribs wildly. My hand moves automatically, my fingers locking around my phone. I slide the camera open, my hands shaking so violently I have to press my elbows against my ribs to steady the shot. I zoom in on the rear bumper.
Stanley.
He's not just calling anymore. He's actively moving closer.
The silver car sits for one more agonizing beat, then the driver shifts into reverse. The tires spray gravel against the weeds as the sedan backs out smoothly, turning onto the Beckett road and disappearing into the gray pine curtain toward the highway.
I stand up, my knees nearly giving out beneath my weight. My fingers are white around the phone, the photo of the rental plate saved in my gallery like a piece of forensic evidence. I feel exposed out here on the water, a target pinned against the gray sky.
I turn around frantically to pack up my drafting gear, my mind screaming at me to get inside, to lock the deadbolt.
But as I turn my head toward the eastern border, a flash of movement catches the corner of my eye.
I stop and catch sight of Jax standing at the fence line.
He's on his side of the wire, his heavy boots buried in the tall, uncultivated switchgrass that separates our properties. He's wearing a dirty black t-shirt today, his massive arms bare, the skull and river tattoos dark against his skin under the overcast sky.
His hands are tucked into the pockets of his grease-stained jeans, his wide shoulders slightly slouched, but his head is up. His pale blue eyes are fixed directly on me.
I realize he's been watching the entire time. He saw the silver sedan. He saw the car idle for four minutes. He saw me take the photograph with my shaking hands.
The distance between us is fifty yards, but the air feels tight, compressed by a sudden, heavy subtext that I don't know how to read.
Did he see what I did? Does he know what that Houston car means?
Or is he just checking his boundaries, making sure the city girl doesn't try to clear his mother's trees?
I stay frozen on the edge of the dock, the wind whipping my hair across my face, my eyes locked onto his broad frame. For a second, the pain that Stanley's presence brings fractures and is replaced by that deep, electrical hum that Jax carries with him like a field.
I take a shallow breath through my nose, my fingers loosening around the phone. I start to raise my right hand, a small, tentative gesture of acknowledgment or maybe just a sign that I see him standing guard over his dirt.
But before my palm can clear my shoulder, Jax moves.
He angles his head by a fraction of an inch and turns away. He simply turns his back to the fence line and recedes into the thick, dark oak brush toward his salvage yard, his massive shadow swallowed by the trees in seconds.
But for one impossible moment before he turned, I had the strangest feeling.
Not that he was watching me.
That he was making sure I was okay.
The thought is ridiculous.
Dangerous.
I hate how much I want it to be true.
I hate it more that it felt like something I recognized.
Like a song I hadn't heard in twenty years.
Like something I'd been trying not to need.