Chapter 24
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR
THORNE
I haven’t seen Carlo since we were standing in the middle of an apple orchard while he was arranging for a backhoe with enough power to tear up a concrete stamp.
Now, sitting in his office, I feel like I’m about to be sentenced to death by firing squad. We’ve been sitting here a good minute and a half, and he hasn’t said a word.
“So…”
He holds up a hand and takes a breath before asking, “Do you need an interpreter?”
I blink at him. “Uh…?”
“I saw you when we were on Holloway’s property,” he says. He sits back and covers his mouth before quickly dropping his hands. “Shit. I’ve been doing that a lot, haven’t I?”
Carlo does have a very bad habit of touching his mouth and stroking his mustache when he speaks, which makes him hard to follow.
“Sometimes.”
He sighs again and rubs at his eyes before looking back at me. “I think I was fooling myself into thinking it wasn’t as serious as you said it was. I thought maybe you were exaggerating, wanting to retire early.”
I shake my head.
“I figured that out when I realized you can sign.” He lifts his hands and makes a couple of nonsense gestures. “How long have you been learning?”
“A couple years. Since that stalker case. The victim was an ASL teacher, and I ended up sticking around and taking his class after I got moved to cyber.”
Carlo licks his lips, something he does when he’s nervous. “How bad is it?”
“Not as bad as it will be,” I tell him. I don’t need to ask what he’s talking about. “I can still hear you alright now, but that probably won’t last long.”
“And then you’ll just what? Hear nothing?”
I shrug. That’s the prognosis. Profound deafness with probably a little residual hearing, which won’t be usable. But I have options. My ENT says I’m a good candidate for cochlear implants, but that’s not going to save my job. Not that I’m really interested in saving my job at this point.
I enjoyed what I did with Leaf more than I can say, and I want to keep doing something like it, but without the constraints of working for the government. I want freedom to be myself, and to love who I want, and to be Deaf if I end up wanting to be Deaf.
“Look, we’re good right now, so you’re welcome to tear me a new asshole without an interpreter,” I say.
He sighs and shakes his head. “You’ve left me a mountain of fucking paperwork and a lot of goddamn red tape. But we were able to confirm the identities of all the victims in those photos, and we’re working on ID’ing the remains we’ve found so far.”
I take a breath. “How many?”
“Three in the cellar, two buried under the concrete. We have access to a cadaver dog who’s trained to smell older remains, but they won’t be able to bring him in for a few weeks.”
Which means Leaf is here with me for longer than I was hoping. But when it’s done, it’ll be done for good.
“How much of his house is left?”
He rolls his eyes. “We’re not a fucking tornado, Thorne.
You know this. They’ve preserved as much as they can.
” When I give him a look, he sighs again.
“He’s going to need new flooring on both levels, and the attic will need to be redone.
The wall to the cellar had to come down entirely because it was sealed with cement. ”
Just like I thought it was. Well, it kind of sucks to be right.
“I’ll see what kind of assistance we can find for him,” Carlo adds.
I shake my head. I don’t think he’ll take it. “I’ll talk to him, but I wouldn’t worry about it.”
Carlo takes another slow breath, then says, “When they ask—and people are going to ask—say it happened between you two after you discovered the hand.”
I don’t need to ask about what he’s talking about this time either. “I didn’t know I was going to fall in love.”
“Considering you’ve only gone on a couple dates since I’ve known you, and only with women?” He laughs and shakes his head. “It wasn’t what I was expecting either.”
“This isn’t going to be a thing, is it?”
He scoffs. “I have a trans gay son. It’s not going to be a thing.”
Part of me wants to tell him that’s never stopped a homophobic parent before, but I can tell he’s trying, so I go easy on him.
I square my shoulders and sit forward. It’s going to be weird when I don’t have to come back here anymore.
It’ll hurt. I think my mourning period will be long.
But I don’t think I’ll miss it as much as I originally thought I would.
Leaving no longer feels like I’m being forced out.
“I think I’m ready to retire now.”
“Take a vacation,” he says.
I shake my head. “I’m not going to change my mind, Carlo.”
He gives me a look. “I know. But you have a lot of hours to burn. So…take a vacation, Thorne. A long one. A paid one. Spoil that poor bastard because I know this is fucking with his head. And when you come back, then sign your exit papers.”
Oh.
“Thank you.” I can’t hear it, but from the way it feels, I know my voice sounds a little tight.
“Ah, don’t get fucking sappy on me, alright. But, uh…if you do end up doing something wild like get married, I hope I get an invite.”
I stand up and manage a smile. “Yeah. Of course.” I start to turn, but he clears his throat, and I look back at him.
“Also, if you know anywhere around here that does ASL classes—”
“Why?”
“Seems like it might be a good thing to learn.” He lifts his hands and makes more nonsense signs. “Looks like a fun language, and it can’t hurt to have another one in my bank.”
“Will you please stop that before you sign something offensive?” His hands fall hard into his lap, and I only just manage to hold back a laugh. “I’ll send you some resources.”
“Thanks.”
I nod at him once, then shut the door behind me as I go. No one’s paying attention to me. No one seems to care. And that makes walking out the front doors and heading back to Leaf a hell of a lot easier than it might have been just six weeks ago.
The one thing I love about my apartment is that it’s high up and downtown, where there are plenty of distractions—and stuff to keep Leaf busy while I finish up the last of my work before my official vacation.
Right now though, it’s just the two of us. I’m a little fucked out and boneless, the two of us wrapped up in T-shirts and boxers. He’s leaning against the balcony railing, and I’m holding him from behind, feeling the slow rise and fall of his breath.
I was never happy here until this moment, and that is a sad realization to come to.
Leaf taps my arm and points. “What is that?”
I follow his finger. The big green Portland sign is lit up against the sky—dusk fading to darkness. “Concert hall.”
“What do they play there?”
I laugh and kiss the side of his neck. “I don’t know. A little bit of everything, I guess. I’ve never actually been.”
He turns in my arms, pressing his crotch against mine as he leans back so I can see his lips in the patio light. “How long have you lived here?”
“Don’t judge me,” I tell him, tapping him on the mouth with the tip of my finger. “Your friends all sold you out. You were barely not a hermit.”
He opens his mouth, then closes it because he has to know that’s fair. “At least I wasn’t a serial killer.”
My stomach sinks. I haven’t told him what the forensic agents found. Yet.
But I think he reads it on my face because his shoulders go tense. “How bad is it? What did they find? Please tell me it’s nothing super gross. Like…I don’t want to hear shit about her being a cannibal.”
“I don’t think she was a cannibal.” In truth, it would be hard to find evidence of that at this point. “It’s not worse than we thought. Does that help?”
His brow furrows, and he kind of answers me with an expression on his face before he does with his voice. I’m getting used to someone who spent years primarily communicating in ASL, and I find it’s so easy to read him.
I no longer feel lost.
“How bad is the house?”
That’s the question I don’t want to answer. “It’s going to need some work.”
He groans and falls into my arms. “I don’t have money for that. Fuck. I had that bag of cash my aunt left under a mattress, and technically, I can take a loan out against my 401(k), but I really, really do not want to do that.”
I tilt his head up with the tips of my fingers and kiss him soft and slow. It begins to sprinkle on us, but neither of us is in a hurry to move. “You won’t have to take a loan out. We can figure it out. Even if we have to rebuild it with our hands.”
He shakes his head. “No. If we try, Michael will come and chew up all of our wood and tools.”
Shit. I nearly forgot about Michael. “There are still those plants.”
Leaf sighs and glances off to the side.
“What?”
“Nothing, just…he kind of solved the crime? You know? So, like, is it fair to kill him?”
I burst into laughter. “He didn’t solve the crime.”
“Yeah, he did. He found the tooth. Then he found the hand. He even waved it at you. All you had was a muddy shoe before that!”
I had more than a muddy shoe, but Leaf does have a point. “I suppose we can spare him an execution. So long as he leaves your tomatoes alone.”
Leaf drops his cheek against the top of my shoulder and lets me rock him gently from side to side. “I wouldn’t count on it. But maybe we can come to an agreement.”
“A truce,” I say. Maybe Michael is willing. He literally led me to the hand, after all. Maybe he was just trying to tell Leaf something this whole time.
Or maybe I’m losing it and now anthropomorphizing a fucking groundhog the way Leaf had been doing. It’s a slippery slope, so I kiss Leaf again to distract myself.
“We’ll figure it out, okay? I’m going to sell this place—”
“Seriously?”
I lean back and meet his gaze. “I want to be with you. If you’re not ready to move in and be together full-time, I understand—”
“Whoa, let’s not be hasty. I did not say that.”
I grin. “Well, my point stands. However you want to take this—us—I want to be near you. I’m on vacation until my official retirement, and I’m ready to move. So I’ll put this place on the market and use whatever I can get out of it to buy something else. Or…invest in the farm.”
“That’s…a lot. We just met. You can’t possibly take that kind of risk on me, Thorne.”
“I can.” I cup his jaw with both hands and hold his gaze. “I want to. I’ve spent my whole life calculating every angle of every move I made. It saved me from pain sometimes, but my life was very quiet and very lonely, and I never took risks. For the first time, I want to close my eyes and jump.”
“I don’t know what to say.”
I shrug. “Just tell me you love me, then kiss me and say we’ll figure it out together.”
He groans as he grabs me by the front of the shirt, slams me into the glass door so hard I can feel it rattle, then kisses all the breath from my lungs.
“I fucking love you. So much. And we’ll figure it out together.”
I stroke another touch down his jawline with my thumbs. “Now, go inside and make a list of everything you want to see and do while I’m on vacation.”
He grins. “That could be dangerous.”
“I trust you.”
He hums and gives me a slow look up and down. “Does seeing and doing you count?”
“It can,” I tell him.
He breaks away from my touch and takes several steps inside. “Perfect,” he calls out loudly. “I have our first two weeks planned.”
I tackle him before he can make it to the couch, and he lets me. We hit cushions on the floor, and his body wraps around mine. His kisses taste like coffee and honey. And the way he holds me, it fucking feels like forever.