Chapter 10 #2
Paul’s fist clenches hard enough for his knuckles to pale, and inside me, something hot and vicious unfurls.
Every message sounds like effort physically pains him.
He was going to drive up here. Maybe. If the car cooperated. If it wasn’t too inconvenient. If she came back on her own first and saved him the trouble.
Lennon said she didn’t want him back.
Good.
Good.
Because if it were me, if I were the one she’d left, the one she was driving three thousand miles away from, I wouldn’t text. I wouldn’t send twelve messages into a silence she was clearly maintaining on purpose and then complain that she wasn’t being mature about it.
I’d drive without stopping.
I’d walk if I had to.
Crawl.
And I will ask Jasper to read me twenty books. I will make Ridge explain it again from the beginning, slower, and I will sit in Paul Bennett’s house and listen to whatever they need to tell me, for however long it takes, because she is somewhere I can’t reach her yet.
Yet is the only part of that sentence that matters.
I’ll get to you, Lemon.
“What the fuck is he talking about?” Ridge wheels sharply toward me, and his footrest catches my shin.
“Ow.”
“Do you know anything about that voicemail?”
I shake my head. “No.”
“Check the voicemails,” Paul says immediately.
Ridge glances at him. “Oh, look at that. Privacy is having a rough night, huh?” he mutters, already opening the voicemail tab.
There’s only one recent voice message from Spencer, and I watch as Ridge presses play, then we listen to three straight minutes of pure fucking torture.
Voices fill the room, talking about Lennon like she isn’t soft, bright, and kind in a way that makes people feel safer, standing next to her.
Halfway through, I realize they’re at her mother’s funeral, and something inside me goes cold. These people had the opportunity to be there for Lennon in her darkest hour. Instead, they made fun of her behind her back.
Too emotional.
Too much.
Not fun anymore.
Beside me, Ridge goes frighteningly motionless, one hand tightening slowly around the phone until his knuckles whiten. Paul has taken his glasses off again, but this time he isn’t rubbing his eyes.
He’s standing there holding them.
“You know I was never with her because of looks,” I hear Spencer say, and something in my chest snaps so hard I physically feel it. My eyes fly instinctively toward Lennon in the bed.
At her blonde waves spread across the pillow.
Her long lashes.
Her plush cheeks.
Her cute nose.
The glittery lemon-yellow nails resting against the blanket.
Beautiful.
She’s so goddamn beautiful it physically hurts to look at her sometimes.
And that asshole said that about her?
The voicemail keeps going.
“She is fun and kind, the motherly type. I can see her as the mother of my kids.”
Beside me, Ridge lets out a disbelieving laugh that sounds genuinely murderous.
The voicemail ends abruptly, and silence crashes into the room afterward.
Then Ridge says very softly, “I’m going to kill him.”
“That would be illegal,” Paul says calmly without looking away from Lennon.
A beat passes.
“But I understand the impulse.”
Again. Same.
Ridge looks at the phone with an expression that could strip paint, and then starts typing.
“What are you…” I start.
“Texting him back.” His thumb moves.
“Ridge.” Paul’s voice is very controlled. “Give me the phone.”
“In a second.” Tap. Tap. “Done.”
He holds the phone out toward Paul.
“What did you say?” I ask carefully.
“Something along the lines of she’s with me now, lose the number.” Ridge shrugs one shoulder. “I may have called him an idiot and blocked him for good measure.”
“Ridge,” Paul starts again.
“She is my tether,” Ridge says flatly to the room, cutting off whatever Paul was building toward. “She’s mine, and I don’t let anyone talk shit about what is mine.”
Paul shoots him a glare.
“Oh, don’t look at me like that, Bennett,” Ridge huffs out. “We agreed we’re figuring out how to get her back before we start fighting over her again. Right now it’s us versus Boston Ken, not us versus each other.”
“And I’m supposed to simply accept you calling her yours?” Paul asks sharply. “She is my soulmate.”
Ridge scoffs, but Paul keeps going, “I dreamed about her for five years before I knew her name. I have been certain of exactly one thing in my life, and it’s her.”
My eyes drift back toward Lennon.
To the nose I’ve been smoothing out so many times without thinking about it, like it was always going to end up under my thumb.
“I don’t know what a tether is,” I say quietly. “And I don’t really believe in soulmates.”
Both of them look at me.
“So. I don’t have a word for what that makes her.
But she’s the person I want to tell things to first. The person I look for in every room now without realizing I’m doing it.
She makes everything quieter in my head somehow.
” I swallow once. “And if she’s hurt, I hurt. If she’s gone, everything feels wrong.”
I stare at the soft curve of her cheek against the pillow.
“She belongs with me,” I finish softly.
Nobody says anything for a moment, then Ridge makes a sound that is almost a laugh. Not cruel or mocking, but startled.
“Look at that,” he says. “Lennon’s baby boy has a spine.”
“Shut up, Ridge,” Paul says immediately.
“No, seriously.” He’s pointing a lollipop at me. When did he get a lollipop? “The Shaw boy was out here blushing because Lennon looked at him for too long a few days ago, and now he’s claiming territory. Character development.”
Heat crawls up my neck instantly. “I’m not claiming territory.”
“You literally just said she belongs to you.”
“I said with. Not to.”
That shuts Ridge up.
“Huh,” he says after a moment. “Okay. That’s actually—”
“Don’t,” I cut him off.
He almost smiles but then puts the lollipop between his teeth.
Paul is watching me, but I ignore him and glance back toward Lennon. “There’s something else.”
“Of course, there is,” Ridge mutters.
Paul folds his arms. “Something else?”
I hesitate. This is going to sound insane. Considering the current topic, it is an impressive achievement.
“My brother.”
“Jasper.” Paul nods.
“Yeah. He’s…” How do I describe Jasper to people who don’t know him? “He’s eighteen, and he cried once when a crystal broke and blamed Mercury retrograde for our toaster catching fire.”
“The toaster caught fire?” Ridge asks.
“That’s not the point.”
“Which toaster?” Paul asks. “The one at the inn?”
“Also not the point.” I push past both of them. “He reads charts. Birth charts. Astrology. And he does Tarot readings and all that. He’s been doing it for Lennon since she arrived.”
“I’m afraid to ask.” Paul sighs.
I rub the back of my neck. “He said she has three parallel romantic connections happening simultaneously. Which he said is…” I make a vague gesture. “Rare doesn’t cover it, apparently.”
“Three.” Ridge turns the lollipop slowly between his teeth.
“Parallel.” Paul is doing the glasses-pinch thing again.
“Simultaneously,” I confirm. “Yeah.”
“You’re telling me,” Ridge says slowly. “Your cryptid little brother astrologically confirmed the soulmate-tether-belonging-with-situation.”
“I hate that sentence,” Paul mutters.
Ridge narrows his eyes slightly. “What exactly did he say?”
“He…” I grimace. “Would like to have your moon signs.”
“How would I even know what my moon sign is?” Paul sighs again, somehow even deeper than before.
I shrug. “We’d need to ask him.”
“You know what?” Ridge leans back in his chair slowly. “Sure. Fuck it. At this point, I’ll give the astrology child my blood type if it gets Lennon back.”
A laugh escapes me before I can stop it.
Paul looks deeply offended by the entire conversation. “I am not participating in astrological profiling.”
“You literally show people how to get lucid in their subconsciousness for a living,” Ridge points out.
“That is science.”
“Sure it is.”
Paul opens his mouth, then closes it again when Lennon shifts faintly in the bed beside us. Every head snaps toward her instantly.
The movement is tiny.
Barely anything.
Her finger twitches once against the blanket before stilling again, but the room changes anyway. Hope floods through it so suddenly it almost hurts.
Then Lennon settles again.
Still asleep.
Still gone.
Behind me, Ridge exhales slowly.
“All right,” he says quietly without taking his eyes off her. “Somebody text the zodiac kid.”