28. Noah
NOAH
“Ihave to go. Can you finish putting the desk together?” It’s more of a command than a question.
Jeremy just stares up at me from sitting cross-legged on the floor.
“Where the fuck are you going?” he demands.
“I have to go find Willow.”
“What? Why?”
“I think she’s going back to our hometown.”
I struggle to throw my sweatshirt on, then my jacket.
About five minutes ago, she posted a photo on Instagram.
It was a long, empty road ahead of her. A road I’m very familiar with, Lakeshore Rd.
The snow was falling, and there were no other cars around.
Below is a caption that, to most, would just seem like poetry, but to me it was a sign she remembered something.
Never alone with my thoughts.
The nightmares are always there.
“Why would she go back? Is the old house still there?”
“It is. No one lives in it. It’s been empty since she was there, but I know she’s going there.”
“How?”
I pull out my phone and show him the photo. He takes my phone and zooms in on the large brown sign off in the distance.
LAKE PORT STATE PARK
“You fucked with her mind, dude,” he finally says as he hands me back my phone.
“What do you mean?”
“You not only gave her the specific flowers she loved as a kid, but fucking fifteen bouquets of them. What if she’s been perfectly fine going through her life?
What if she’s kept those memories tightly sealed away in a bottle in the back of her mind, and you just went in with a sledgehammer and smashed the bottle to pieces. ”
“I didn’t…Jeremy, I need her to remember me.”
“Why? Why can’t you just be happy with her now? Start over, make a new life with her. Stop focusing on the fucking past.”
“I told you, there’s something she needs to do. And to do it, she’s going to have to remember the past. Every fucking thing.”
He shakes his head at me before walking toward the door.
“You know I’ve always been on your side, Cuz. Through everything, good or bad. But this…You’re fucking with her head. That much is obvious. Why else would she go back there?”
“She’ll be fine. She’s strong.”
“You don’t know that, Noah. She just got back into your fucking life. How do you know she’s strong? She could be fragile, so close to fucking shattering, and you are causing the cracks to spread. You’re going to break her.”
She won’t break. I know she won’t. My little rabbit is a survivor. She’s going to face the demon of her past, and I’ll be right there with her as I watch her destroy him.
“I have to go.”
“Noah…”
Jeremy grabs onto the arm of my jacket before quickly letting go.
“Don’t do something you’ll regret. If you push her too fast…”
“I won’t. I promise.”
He just nods at me before turning back to the desk and cracking his neck.
“Well…I guess I’ll be here building her desk. I still don’t see why we couldn’t just use one of the other ones from the storage area.”
“Because she deserves more than a used desk that probably has someone’s chewed-up gum smeared on the bottom.”
“Nasty. Remind me to check under my desk later. I don’t want gum getting in Veronica’s hair.”
“So you guys are a thing now?”
“Nah. She’s fun, but she’s not into anything serious. She reminded me of that again last night after you left.”
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Another reason I need to make sure my desk really is clean. She can make quite a mess.”
“Gross. I’ll text you when I get up there.”
I step out into the hall, but I can hear him quickly rush out after me.
“What are you going to do?” Jeremy asks.
“I’m just going to watch and make sure nothing happens to her. I won’t let her know I’m there unless I need to.”
He silently nods as if he doesn’t believe me, but it’s true.
I don’t intend on stepping out of the shadows just yet.
I want to watch my little rabbit and see what she does when she’s faced with the truth of her past. Has she really remembered all this time, or will seeing the house cause everything to come flooding back?
Fuck. This is going to be the longest drive of my life.
I pull out my phone and dial one of my favorite people. The one who’s been helping me search for Willow since I met him five years ago.
“The fuck you want, Anderson?” Monty groans from the other end of the line.
“Who shoved a stick up your ass?” I ask as I put the car in reverse, then drive away, speeding out of the parking garage.
“No one…Fuck,” he hisses.
“Am I interrupting something?”
A low moan slips through the phone.
“Jesus, Monty. You could’ve just let me go to voicemail so you could finish.”
“Nah. This heathen likes an audience. Don’t you, slut?”
Her obscene moans come through louder as a smack echoes across the phone line.
“Anyway, what’s up, Boss?”
“I need to get a trace on a phone right now, and also, can you hack it so I can access it?”
“Uhh…Yeah. Give me just a second.”
I think he meant to put the phone on mute before setting it down, but he didn’t. I’m stuck listening to the sounds of him fucking whatever woman was lured into his bed this week. I have to pull the phone away from my face as she comes, screaming his name.
Montgomery Sanderson is by far one of the most brilliant men I’ve ever represented in court.
I didn’t even have to try with his case.
He literally showed up in my office five years ago with all the papers I’d need to win his case, and said he just needed my pretty face to get him cleared of all charges. All twenty-two of them.
Sure enough, the case was dropped due to negligence and misconduct regarding the illegal collection of evidence.
The fucking people who staked out his house cut the main feed for his cameras, but never thought to bring a jammer.
They were caught breaking and entering, falsifying a search warrant, and one of them was even caught planting evidence. Idiots.
“Fuck. Sorry, man. It was too fucking good to stop,” he chuckles. I can hear the sound of a lighter flicking before taps on a keyboard. “Okay, boss. Gimme that number.”