My pace doesn’t slow down as I get closer. It doesn’t speed up either. My heart follows the same pattern, as do my lungs. In a way, I made peace with this a while ago, but standing in front of his gravestone and saying it seems important.
When I stop in front of Earl Rae Jackson’s gravestone, I look around for those dried weeds. I know they’ve been chopped up by a lawn mower or become a part of the soil by now, but I can’t help but feel that they’re still here.
My neck still burns when I think about him. Dr. Argent said it’s a phantom pain I’ll probably live with most of my life. Kind of like the scar I’ll always bear there. But while some scars can never be removed, some can.
Those ones are the ones I’m concerned about when I think of the man whose body is decaying below my feet. Those scars are the reason I’ve come here.
Earl Rae might have taken away ten years of my life. He might have permanently violated my views on safety and trust and human nature. He might have given me nightmares I’m too afraid of to talk to Dr. Argent about. He might have taken me away from the people I loved. He might have broken me so I couldn’t even remember what free felt like when I had it.
He might have taken ten years.
But he couldn’t have another minute of my life.
I glance at his gravestone for the last time.
“Good-bye,” I say, before walking away and leaving Earl Rae Jackson where he belongs.
Six feet under. Behind me.
I’VE MADE IT just in time. It’s eleven thirty on the dot, and I’ve managed to make it through an interview that’s going to be internationally streamed and say what I needed to at the cemetery.
I hadn’t been sure I was going to be able to make it today, but it wouldn’t have been right to miss the one thing I’m actually looking forward to on the first birthday I’ve celebrated in a decade.
St. Marks is always packed no matter what service is being held, but the second Sunday morning one is sometimes a standing-room-only ordeal. Thankfully, today some kind old couple notices me searching for a seat and squeezes together a little tighter and waves me over.
“Thank you,” I whisper because the choir’s lining up in the front.
“That dress is just lovely, honey.” The elderly woman pats my knee when I settle beside them. “Pretty enough to wear on a wedding day.”
I smooth my hands down it. “Well, I am in a church.”
“And there is a priest.” The woman points at the front where a familiar figure is climbing the stairs toward the altar.
Instead of going another round that could make me blush any more than I already am, I smile and turn around in my seat.
Torrin moves behind the altar, and his hands rest on the sides of it. He looks natural, at ease, like he could be having a conversation with his old soccer teammates about the upcoming game. He’s so good at this. Good at what he does and how he influences people into action.
It’s part of what makes it hard to come most of the Sundays I do. If he weren’t so great at this, it would be easy. Easy to tell him and easier to let him make his decision based on that.
It’s not easy though because if I tell him what I want to, I know what he’ll do. I know the consequences. Wouldn’t it be one of the most selfish things I could do? Taking away a person who affects so many lives because I want him to crawl into bed with me every night and hold my hand when we walk into the grocery store?
Torrin’s still in my life. We’re still friends. We still get to see each other and be around each other and call each other. Sure, we have to be careful we don’t see each other “too” much or, when we are together, get “too” close, but I still get to see him.
I already have him in my life . . . but I want more. I want everything that comes with that promise he made me one night on the sidewalk in front of our houses.
I want it . . . but I’m not ready for it—not until I finish collecting those missing pieces. And in the meantime, a city of people need him.
As Torrin starts to speak, I lean in like those extra two inches will make all the difference in the twenty feet keeping us apart. I don’t usually sit so close. I make it a point not to sit in the front row or the back row. I sit in the middle so I blend in. To the other churchgoers and to him. I never succeed though, at least with him.
He always seems to know where I am before he moves behind the altar. Today he’s giving a sermon about the pain humans can cause us but that God heals all wounds. I don’t usually listen all that closely—I come to be close to him; in the same room, sharing the same air—but today, when he talks about the physical wounds we humans can inflict on one another, he rubs that right cheek of his and pauses, practically smirking in my direction.
I roll my eyes at him, and he gets on with the sermon. This is why I come. For these kinds of moments. The ones no one else catches but mean everything to us.
The woman leans into me when Torrin takes a seat as the choir breaks into a song about redemption. “Don’t you just love Father Costigan?”
I look at him and smile. Like he can feel it, his head turns. Probably no one else can tell he’s smiling, but I can. I’ve known Torrin Costigan for what feels like my entire life.
“Yes,” I answer her. “Yes, I do.”
I’M SPENDING THE rest of my birthday right here, sitting on an old beach blanket at Westport and watching the waves spool in. The sun’s falling, but there’s still plenty of good light. My family’s off somewhere inspecting tide pools with Maisy, and I’m just . . . living. The sand between my toes, the sticky breeze on my face, the sun bouncing off my skin. I feel it all. I’m no longer a voyeur going through life without a spectrum of senses to guide me.
Eleven years ago, I was taken. One year ago, I was found. Today, I have my life back.
“Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday, dear Jade, happy birthday to you.” Torrin’s walking toward me slowly, holding a cupcake and shielding a candle from the breeze. The flame is flickering, and when it starts to go out, he slows down and waits. When it fans back to life, he starts moving again.
He’s changed from his usual Sunday attire to jeans and that same Henley he wore the first night he spent the night at my apartment. It was the last night he stayed there too, and seeing it makes me remember the way it clung to him when I tugged it off, the way it felt between my fingers.
I clear my throat in an attempt to clear the image. I’m not successful. “I thought you had to attend a church potluck tonight since you’re kind of the leader of the church and all.”
He’s watching the flame intently, but his eyes dart my way for a moment. “I said I had an urgent family emergency to attend to and got out of it.”
I scoot over when he reaches the edge of the blanket. “So you lied?”
His brows come together. “You’re as much my family as my real one is.”
That makes me smile—I share the same sentiment. “If not in title, in experience.”
As he lowers onto his knees, his eyes flicker my way. He crawls closer, still shielding the candle from the breeze trying to blow it out. “Maybe one day in title too.” Before I can figure out how to reply, he holds out the cupcake. “Make a wish.”
“It already came true.” I grin at the cupcake because it’s my favorite kind. I used to love vanilla, but now I’m more of a lemon fan.
His brows come together.
I answer his unsaid question with a shrug. “You’re here.”
His smile erases the creases of confusion. “Then make another wish.”
I squeeze my eyes together and tip my head like I have to think really, really hard about it. But I already know what I’m going to wish for. It’s what I wish for every night.
When I get ready to blow the candle out, Torrin slides around so his whole body is shielding the candle from the breeze. Leaning forward, I blow like I’m trying to blow out a barn fire. The candle goes out.
For all of five seconds.
Then it mak
es some kind of spark and sizzle sound before coming back to life. I blow it out again. When I blow it out the third time, I give him a little glare.
He only laughs and moves aside so he’s not deflecting the wind anymore. This time, the forces of nature blow out the light.
It flickers back to life though.
“It just keeps coming back. Doesn’t matter how many times you blow it out, it comes back. It lights right back up.” He holds out the cupcake for me. “I thought you’d like it.”
I take the cupcake and set it down. The candle’s still burning bright. “I love it.”
He slides the hair whipping around my face behind my ear and sits beside me. “So how does it feel to be twenty-eight?”
I give a little groan at the thought of being closer to thirty than twenty. “The last birthday I had, I turned seventeen. I like the sound of eighteen a lot more than twenty-eight.”
Torrin laughs and slides closer. When he leans back, one of his arms goes behind my back. It doesn’t touch me, but I can feel it there.
“What are you working on over there?” He leans over to get a look. “Are those sketches of me?” His brows come together. “Really, really good sketches of me?”
I pick the board and drawings back up from the blanket and pull the pencil from behind my ear. Since he’s here, I might as well try to finish them. “I don’t know about really, really good, but yeah, they’re you. I drew them before . . .” I steal a look at him before lowering the pencil to the paper. “I never got a chance to finish them though, and one of the detectives returned them to me so I could.”
“They look finished to me.”
“No. Your eyes. I could never get them right. Didn’t matter how many times I tried or different ways I drew them, I couldn’t get them right.” I bite the eraser as I examine his eyes two feet away. No wonder I could never get them right.
“You got everything else right. Why don’t you think the eyes are?” Torrin leans in and studies the sketch at the top of the stack. The one I’m already starting to adjust.
“I wasn’t just trying to get the shape right. Or the lightness of them just perfect.” I shrug as my pencil flies across the paper. “I was trying to draw them the way they are when you look at me.”
Torrin’s gaze shifts from the paper to me. “So they look different now than they did when I was looking at that piece of paper?”
I glance at him staring at me. My pencil stops moving. “Yes. You look at me differently than you look at anything else.”
His mouth starts to pull up. “I look at you different how?”
I have to glance away to concentrate on that. I study the horizon, tapping the pencil point against my cheek. “You know that feeling of something missing? You don’t know what it is exactly, you just know it’s not there? That hollow spot inside that you don’t know what to fill it with, you just know it’s empty?” When I notice him nod, I turn my head so I’m looking at him. I never want to look away. I never want him to look away, because I feel the same thing when I look at him. “That’s how you look at me. Like I’m your what’s not there. I’m what fills that hollow spot.” I lower the pencil because I don’t need to get the sketches right anymore—not when he’s right in front of me again. “That’s how you look at me.”
He leans in closer, and even though I know I shouldn’t, I tip closer too. We don’t stop moving until the breeze is whipping my hair against his cheek and tangling it in his stubble.
“I look at you like that because that’s exactly what you are. You fill all my hollow spots. You’re my what’s missing.” He lets that settle between us, letting a little more of me get tangled up in him, then he slowly leans back.
I stay where I am because I’m not ready for this moment to be over. I hold on to it until it’s floated so far away I can’t see it anymore.
“How was your day?” he asks softly, but I don’t miss the concern buried in his voice.
He’s been “concerned”—a.k.a. freaking out—ever since I told him about agreeing to the interview. I didn’t tell him about the cemetery visit though. I didn’t want him worrying about today any more than I knew he already was.
“Let’s see. It was exhausting, relieving, emotional . . . pick an adjective, and that probably sums up how today was.” When I lean back, I spread my arms behind me, crossing mine beneath his.
“So this would probably be a pretty great time for a birthday present, right?” Torrin looks at me from the side, his eyes excited. He’s still a kid when it comes to birthdays, and I love finding that out about him. I love every new thing I learn about him and everything I remember about him from before.
“This wouldn’t just be a good time; it would be an ideal time,” I say, glancing at him from the corners of my eyes.
He’s grinning, but his grin fades a little when he leans in closer. The candle still flickering below us catches the lights of his eyes. “I love you.”
My head turns, and I feel my eyes widen. “Torrin . . .”
It’s the first time he’s said it like this. It’s the first time he’s said it since the night I disappeared.
“I didn’t think it was a secret.” He looks me straight-on and doesn’t look ashamed. He doesn’t look like he’s said or done anything wrong. “I told you I loved you for the first time thirteen years ago. It didn’t come with an expiration date. It never will.”
The breeze whips around me and feels like it’s trying to lift me up. “I thought you weren’t allowed to love someone like that anymore.”
“My job is to love people.” He stretches his legs in front of him and stares at the ocean. “There’s no line drawn between who I can and can’t love. The calling is to love all people.” The corner of his mouth twitches. “I just might not mention I happen to love you a little or a lot more than the rest.”
I stare at the ocean with him until I feel the waves churning something inside me too. “Those journalists have accused me of being your forbidden mistress, your submissive, and everything in between, but they’ve never printed the truth.” I taste the words in my mouth first, testing them. They feel right. “The woman who loves you.”
His head turns, and he watches me for a moment. “I’m ready, Jade. To walk away, to start a new life. For whatever comes—good and bad. I’m ready.”
“I know you are.” I dig my toes into the sand. Delaying the inevitable for two more seconds. “But I’m not.”
He exhales slowly, but he doesn’t say anything else because I think he knows. I’m healing, but there’s still more to do. Some days it feels like the more I fix, the more I realize is broken. Those are the bad days. The good ones are the days I remind myself that no matter what, everything can be fixed. Those are the days that get me through the others.
“I’ve been through a year of intensive counseling, some serious soul-searching, daily meditation, and some really sad attempts at yoga.” I nudge him. “And I still know something’s missing. I’m not whole, and until I am, I won’t let you give everything up for me.”
“I want to give up everything for you. Broken, whole, I don’t care.”
I take a slow breath. I know he can and does love me exactly the way I am, but his end of the love equation isn’t the problem—it’s mine.
He kicks at the sand. “You’re whole already,” he says, looking at me like he’s trying to prove it. “I know that. But I can wait for you to figure it out on your own. I’m really good at waiting.”
I kick some sand over his toes. “You have ten years of experience.”
“I suppose I do,” he says, smiling at the horizon. He keeps staring at it as his hand lifts to his chest. “So . . . I had another birthday present for you . . .” When his hand curls around something hanging beneath his shirt, I swallow. “But I’m guessing this isn’t the right birthday for this gift.”
I can see the chain around the back of his neck, the outline of the ring beneath his shirt. My hand curls into the sand when I find myself wanting to hold
it out to him. “Not this one. Not yet.”
“I’m ready to make that choice—no one and nothing is forcing it. I’m ready to walk away.”
“Don’t walk away—not yet. Stay where you are. I’ll be right here.” I slide just a fraction of an inch closer so our shoulders are just barely touching. But even with this slightest of touches, my body responds as if he’s crawling over me the way he did that night in his bedroom, that night when I’d never been happier. “I’m not going anywhere.”
“But if I do that—stay where I am—you know what that means, right?” His eyes drop to the distance between us. “Father Costigan can’t give you a ring. He can’t give you intimacy. He can’t give you his last name or a family or a home.”
My chest contracts—then it slowly releases. “I know, but Torrin Costigan can love me.”
“And this is enough for you? Being what I am? Being like this?” He looks at my mouth in a familiar way. He wants to kiss me, but he can’t. Not with the way our lives are now. Not on a public beach for anyone to see.
“All I’ve ever wanted is you. You’re enough. In whatever way I can have you.” I lean forward. “Besides, look at me. I’m a psychologist’s dream or nightmare—depending on the day. I’m at the epicenter of an international media storm. I’m in love with a priest.” I fight my smile but lose the battle. “Is that enough for you?”
He lowers his face toward mine. He doesn’t blink. “You, Jade Childs, have always been more than enough.”
I don’t lean back. I stay right where I am, our faces in line so I can feel his warm breath wash across my lips. I’ve never mentioned to him what I found out that day in the interrogation room with Reyes, and I’m not sure I ever will. I think he doesn’t want me to feel like I owe him anything or have that skew my decision when it comes to us. I think it’s important to him that when I’m ready, I make that decision because I want to be with him and not because I want to pay him back for the ten years he never gave up—for the decade he refused to let go of me.