15. The Stone Is Gone #2
My hand rises, entirely of its own accord, and I realize my fingers are trembling as they reach for her jawline. The contrast is ridiculous, my rough, calloused, grease-stained skin against the porcelain perfection of her face.
My thumb just grazes the edge of her chin, on the verge of cupping her jaw, the soft heat of her skin sending an electric jolt straight up my arm.
Nora lets out a soft, shaky exhale. Her eyes flutter shut for a fraction of a second, and her entire body loses its rigidity. She leans toward me, tilting her head into the slight pressure of my hand, her chest rising and falling rapidly against the space between us.
I can see the pulse jumping in the hollow of her throat. I want to pull her against me. I want to bury my face in her neck and hold her until the rest of the world burns away.
"Nora!"
Gran Iris's voice cuts through the heavy evening air.
The front door creaks open another couple of inches, and her silver head pops out. "Your father's asking for you. He needs you."
Nora's eyes snap open. She freezes, the spell breaking instantly. For one long, agonizing second, she keeps her face close to mine, her breath warm against my chin. Then, she takes a slow step back, her skin leaving my fingertips cold.
"Coming, Gran," she calls out, her voice slightly breathless.
She turns her face back to me, her blue eyes dark with an unspoken promise. She doesn't look at me like a stranger anymore. We are locked into something now, a shared orbit that neither of us can escape.
"Together," she says quietly.
I look at her, my jaw tight, my hand slowly dropping back to my side. "Together."
She gives me one last, lingering look before turning and stepping back inside the warm light of the cottage. The heavy wooden door clicks shut behind her, leaving me alone in the dark.
After watching Nora go inside, I can't bring myself to return to the workshop just yet.
My boots carry me down into the trees, following the narrow, overgrown path that leads toward the riverbank.
The moon is a thin sliver in the sky, casting long, skeletal shadows through the Spanish moss hanging from the oaks.
I walk blindly, my mind still replaying the feeling of her skin against my thumb.
I reach the edge of the property line, where the trees clear out into the small, private opening by the water.
The river laps quietly against the mud, a low, rhythmic sound that usually brings me a twisted kind of peace.
I walk toward the center of the clearing. Toward the spot where the river stone has always been.
For twenty years, a smooth, heavy gray river stone has sat embedded in the dirt right here. It was a massive piece of granite I hauled out of the deep current with my bare hands the day after we buried her. It was Margaret's marker and the only monument she had in the place she loved most.
My brow furrows, and I stop walking. In the dim moonlight, the silhouette of the clearing looks wrong. The geometry is off.
I take three fast, heavy steps forward and my heart plummets into my stomach as I realize that the stone is gone.
The smooth, heavy piece of granite that had weathered two decades of coastal storms has been forcefully moved.
In its exact place, driven deep into the dark, wet mud of my mother's clearing, is a sharp, square stake painted a glaring, artificial white.
Branded into the wood in stark, black block letters is a label:
HARGROVE DEVELOPMENT GROUP.
I stop moving entirely. My body goes completely, terrifyingly still. The blood in my veins turns to ice, then instantly erupts into a roaring, boiling heat.
Son of a bitch.
Who gave them the permission to come onto my land?
I drop to my knees. The wet mud soaks through the canvas of my work pants, but I don't feel the cold. My hands come down, my fingers pressing deep into the empty, hollowed-out depression in the dirt where the river stone used to rest.
The earth is still loose around the edges, and I realize this was done recently.
A suffocating stillness envelops my entire body. I can't breathe or blink. The world around me narrows down to the white wood of that stake and the empty hole in the mud.
I don't hear the soft rustle of the brush behind me or her footsteps. But suddenly, the scent of rain and cedarwood cuts through the smell of the river mud, and Nora is standing there. She must have come back out to find me.
Through the periphery of my vision, I see her boots stop a foot away from me. I hear the sharp, horrified intake of her breath as her eyes track the white paint of the survey stake.
"Jax..." she whispers, her voice breaking in the quiet.
I don't look up at her. More like, I can't. If I look at her right now, the violence roaring to life inside my chest will tear everything apart. I keep my hand buried in the cold mud where my mother's marker used to be.
"He touched my mother," I say.
I stand up slowly, my massive frame unfolding until I am towering over the white stake. The joints in my knees pop in the silence. I reach into my pocket, my fingers wrapping around my heavy cell phone. I pull it out and flip it open, my thumb hitting the speed dial.
I press the phone to my ear. It rings once before a rough voice answers.
"Yeah," Rafe says.
"Find him," I tell him. "I need to know if he's still here."
"Jax, what…"
"Find him," I repeat.
I snap the phone shut before he can ask another question. Rafe knows what it means when my voice goes flat. He knows what's coming.
I stand there in the center of the clearing, my chest rising and falling in slow, heavy thrusts. I can sense Nora standing directly behind my right shoulder. She doesn't speak. She doesn't try to touch me, or offer some hollow comfort.
She just stands there in the dark, her presence an anchor behind my back, matching my silence with her own.
Several long, suffocating seconds tick by, and the phone in my hand vibrates, the sharp, buzzing alert cutting through the quiet.
I flip it open to see a text from Rafe.
Got him. He's at the River Road Motel. Room 14. But Jax- Stanley has a file on Nora. Medical records. Personal history from Houston. It seems he's been building a case to completely discredit her if she pushes back.
I read the words on the glowing green screen.
The rage boiling inside me turns cold.
He didn't just come for my mother.
He's coming for Nora.
I look down at the white survey stake sticking out of the mud like a broken bone.
I reach down with one hand. My fingers wrap around the painted wood, and with one effortless jerk of my arm, I rip the stake out of the earth, tearing the roots of the grass with it.
I take two heavy strides to the edge of the riverbank and hurl the white wood out into the dark, rushing current of the water.
I watch it disappear into the blackness.
To hell with him.