“What orders are those?” she’d ask with a lift of a brow. Desperately wanting to know not only what they were, but also who gave them. She was still learning to ‘interpret’ the Rawlings’ clan as a whole. She would swear they were all telepathic or something because they used few words but they were all on the same page, and she was always scrambling to find any hint any one of them might have dropped.
Boon would impishly narrow his gaze. “Who do you think?”
At the next base Declan went to, he could use his phone, and Skype, too. Paper letters all but stopped, it was faster to email if he really wanted to write. Well, they stopped for everyone but her.
Now Atticus or Boon would drop a sealed letter off with their name on it at least once a week. On the back there would be the tiniest hand drawn rose. A symbol that meant the words were all hers.
If she doubted she had fallen hard for Declan, the way her heart would pick up when she saw one of those letters, or how she’d run to find a place to read them sealed the deal. Those letters, the ones just for her, were love letters. “I dreamed of you again last night. You were smiling, and all those long curls you like to hold back were free...let them down for me today, pretend I’m right there, rushing my hands through them.”
The emails he sent or the texts to his brother had words for her too, but those were all about the hunt for Nolan, someone else they could ask, when and how.
Declan had a theory that some of these girls the boys were trying to talk to about Nolan would be more open to talking to a girl—which is where Justice came in.
All of Nolan’s friends that were girls cried and wailed when Justice even tried to talk to them. All but one, Faith’s sister, Ex. Her full name was Exodus Tidwell.
She was intimidating as hell, but Justice was good with facing off with her. She’d do anything to find Nolan. Faith had gone to public school, but she was the only one. The others lived out in the middle of nowhere, and what they exported for a living was never talked about but known. The best moonshine and cannabis was said to be made and grown by Marshall Tidwell, Ex’s father. A man who was barely forty but already a legend. The reasons, of course, were another story.
Justice’s job was to ask Ex where Faith was. No one had seen her since the summer, and apparently Nolan was doing his best to help her with a personal issue before he left on his trip. One of the most terrifying theories was the Tidwell’s had crossed Nolan. When people do such things...they vanish.
Justice finally found Ex down by the Savannah river, arguing with a fishing boat captain and the two crew guys with him.
“I got this,” Justice said to Atticus who had helped her track Ex down.
Right then, him and Ex were locked in a silent stare, even though they were at least seventy-five yards away. Atticus was behind the wheel of his truck, leaned into his door.
“I already asked her. She doesn’t know where she is.” His tone was low and measured.
Curiously Justice glanced over him. She knew he had, she was there when he said as much to his dad and the private investigator, but Declan asked Justice to try. “The Tidwell’s loved your grandfather...maybe she’ll open up more to you, Faith could hold the entire key to this—we gotta find her.”
“You make her nervous,” Justice said, not even having to look Ex’s way to know so. She could feel the tension in the air.
Atticus bit his lip before he spoke. “I’m not what scares Ex.”
Justice waited for him to go on but he didn’t. “Wait here.”
When Ex saw Justice walking down the dock, bundled up in a flannel shirt that was two sizes too big for her and her wild blonde curls dancing in the wind, she smirked and shook her head.
Ex had always been a loner; some even said she hated people in general, which might be true. She had the same wild, long heavy curls Justice had, only hers were jet black. Their eyes were mirrors, a heart stopping blue, full of secrets, confusion, and anger.
“I almost didn’t recognize you,” Ex said in her common slow southern drawl.
“Why is that?” Justice asked, expressionless.
“Missing the book,” Ex said. “Hadn’t seen your eyes in a good ten years.”
“The view is better in books,” Justice said with a glance down the river. “How’s your sister?”
“Look, I already told Atticus, and that jarhead investigator of yours, I haven’t seen Faith. She bailed in the middle of last summer, long after Nolan was seen for the last time—she’s not with him.”
Ex was at ease, which made it easier for Justice to believe her. Still there was something off, a missing truth.
“Rumor has it that boy is dead,” Ex said casually.
“Whose rumor? Not mine,” Justice said harshly. “Why can’t I just talk to Faith?”
Ex stepped up. “You’re out of your zip code, and the way I figure it you already got too much on your plate to be barking up this tree.” She swayed her head as an easy smile came to her. “Faith’s gone,” her eyes glistened. “She didn’t say goodbye...when you find her—tell her I said to keep runnin’.”
Justice hesitated for a second, struggling to see the half-truth but failing. “What exactly is on my plate beyond the obvious—why I want to talk to Faith?”
“Mary Souter, Sheriff’s wife...I heard she thinks Nolan killed your daddy, you covered for him, and Nolan took off.” She grinned. “Her poor son was oblivious to it all, only saw the fire start that he couldn’t stop.”
Justice stared forward in the same haze she had gotten used to masking when her father was mentioned. The stance where she told herself not to smell the gas, oil, and blood, but she always did.
“That woman is grieving awfully hard for my father,” Justice said with a sneer. “Murdock says she stays high.”
Ex nodded sagely. “I’m sorry for your loss,” she said before she turned and boarded the fishing boat behind her.
***
Declan was becoming braver as the months ticked by. He always called Boon, or Skyped when he knew Boon was being ‘tutored.’—making Skype Justice’s best friend and biggest fear.
When they saw each other, words were hard to come by. It was more shy blushes, and a reach for the screen wishing she could move through it.
Justice had learned that when you’re in love with a warrior, every word, every touch is sacred. Any word could be the last. And even if it wasn’t, the man you were looking at right then could change in a beat, face a hell that would mark him—chisel its imprint on his soul forevermore.
When you loved a warrior, you soaked it all in, every glint in his eyes, the way he moved, not only what he said but also how he said it. And for days afterward you’d break it down, read between the lines, and let your mind run wild. Only to tell yourself to be strong, to get over it—to be stouter than your emotions or circumstance.
No, life didn’t stop when they were gone, but it could if you let it. If you allowed yourself to sit on a shelf and worry, let the years of your life slide by unlived, waiting.
The waiting was too hard to handle with empty hands which is why Justice filled every moment she could. She’d work an hour and a half before school, three hours after, tutoring after that point.
She helped her grandmother with the house and the volunteer work she had, and she did her best to make a few senior memories. She saw a football game or two, went to a bonfire, joined a committee here or there to fill any spare hour she had, which at the end of the week wasn’t much.
Still, late at night, her demons rose. She’d worry for Nolan, strain to think if he had told her without telling her a plan to vanish, if there was a name that they hadn’t checked. She’d worry for Declan, wonder what he was doing...and with who. Then her dad, and the ball and chain of Murdock would surface.
There were times when she just wanted to get up and run, as far and fast as she could, in any direction—just away. Long enough for her to think, to find air. So tempting.
At Christmas, Boon laid a silver bra
celet with interlocking hearts on the book they were working out of. “This was in my gift box. Not my color.”
When he saw her eyes well, he jerked it away. “Well, forget that! I can’t deal with this madness.”
Justice had to flat out wrestle him to get it back. “Uncle, uncle!” he yelled when she threatened to knee him where it mattered. He dropped the bracelet in her hand, shaking his head. “What have you done to my brother?”
She met his stare.
He nodded to the gift. “He ain’t never done that before.”
“Don’t say things like that to me,” Justice said, not wanting to put it on in front of him and choosing to hide it in her coat pocket.
“Why?” Boon asked, lying back on the floor, bracing his arms behind his head, willing to take any break from the tutoring.
Boon had grown a lot over the last year. He still had the boyishness Atticus had lost over the summer but was built well, and learning to use charm to get what he wanted. Charm or not, he was still quick to shift moods and not knowing where Nolan was, having to go through a Christmas without him or Declan there had given Boon more than enough reason to look for a fight to pick.
More than once, Justice had to stop him and Murdock from going at it. As far as Boon was concerned, Justice belonged to Declan and Murdock had no right to even be in the same zip code as Justice much less walk her to class or have lunch with her. He didn’t like that so many people still thought they were a golden couple.
“Why?” he asked again. “Murdock wearing you down?”
He was, but she’d never admit it to Boon. “No,” Justice said. She couldn’t help it; she was lonely...she was jealous. She knew Declan was all but walking sex, him around all his buddies on some base, she could put two and two together and she didn’t like the solution she came up with. “I just have to think about it my way...so it won’t hurt.”
“Being apart?” Boon asked.
“All of it,” she said, standing up and gathering her things. She wanted to get away from him and everyone before she slipped further down an emotional slope.
“He hurts you and we’re all gonna kick his ass,” Boon said, smiling up from the floor.
Justice vaguely grinned. She was sure that was why Declan had never once made a promise to her, a promise they were more than friends.
After Christmas, the phone calls stopped and letters picked up, but they were not as often, and from his words she could sense how even more rigid he’d become. He was an emotionally unavailable warrior who was desperately searching to find his brother, shouldering all the blame for his disappearance and thinking the worst.
By the time spring came, his letters all but stopped. He was taking days here and there off, and each one was spent trying to find Nolan. The investigator had turned up nothing in the town Nolan was last seen in or the ones close to it, and nothing along the path he was supposed to take to reach his friends. No hospital records, no tickets, no use of his phone, or the account he had shown Declan. Nothing.
Around Justice, all her friends cared about was prom, then graduation. She’d agreed to go to prom, not really with a date, but in a group, one Murdock was in. And the only reason she gave in was because of the whole ‘it’s your senior year’ mantra.
She had fallen into another pit of depression and she was mad at herself for doing so. Through all this hell she had counted down to her eighteenth birthday, sure that day everything would be right with the world once again.
No longer a girl.
At least he’d be able to write or call and not have to worry about the added grief of her age. Then maybe she’d really know what they were—friends or something else.
Nothing happened. No one snapped their fingers and made all her issues vanished.
Declan didn’t call. He didn’t write. Nothing. And the Rawlings’ had nothing to say about it. The garage threw her a party, had a cake and such. Boon decided not to be the world’s worst procrastinator and actually did his work when she tutored him. Atticus had taken her out to eat, and the whole time she expected Declan to show up, Atticus to hand his phone to her—something—but in the end it was just them and a few other friends who surprised her with a party.
Being around the Rawlings’ so much had allowed her to develop their way of going about things. She learned not to bring up things she’d rather not deal with. Like the fact she was waiting on someone who was not waiting on her. When she’d let herself get that dark, she’d miss Nolan all the more, missed his smile, how he could sum up the strife and find the good with little effort.
In a haze one warm spring day she was walking back to her class from lunch, the last one she had for the day—all the seniors were ‘skipping’ afterward to get ready for their big weekend.
Justice was only halfway listening to her friend Kayla talk about the hotel rooms they all had in Savannah for the next night; they were just down from where the prom was going to be. None of it made much sense to Justice. It sounded like they were all spending a fortune to get dressed up only to show up for pictures then head to the hotel. Pointless. Especially when you were counting pennies so you could go to school in the fall.
Murdock had ended up buying her dress, and the rest, she didn’t care—there was going to be no up do, or makeup, or nails or anything else. She’d smile, make whatever memory, act liked she cared, and then move on.
“Holy shit,” Kayla said. “Oh my God, is he here for you?”
Justice lifted her gaze from the squares on the linoleum floor she was counting as she walked, an oddity she did when she was just trying to mull through whatever temporary moment she was stuck in.
Instantly the lackluster sheen of her life faded like someone had unlatched her prison door.
He was there. Declan, in uniform, was standing before her classroom door talking to her teacher, one he’d had the year before.
The teacher kept talking, but the moment Declan met her stare the world for both Justice and Declan faded away.
Other students walked into the classroom looking up at Declan with fear in their eyes, and rightly so. He was not only breathtaking in his uniform, he was demanding. Ageless.
It didn’t matter that it had been eight months since she had been in the same room with him, this close, he still had the same effect on her, and she was damn pissed at him for it.
Somewhere in the haze the bell had rung and everyone went to class—everyone but Justice. The teacher who always left the door open, shut it, leaving her alone in the hall with him. The act was meant for privacy, but all it did was put a spotlight on Justice who had all but turned the color of a rose.
Declan’s gaze moved over every inch of her and once he was sure his deep voice would be steady, he held out his hand. In the palm of it was the necklace that matched the bracelet Boon had given her months before. “Happy Birthday.”
She breathed a tight smile. “Um...do you know when my birthday is?”
“Eleven weeks, four days and give or take a few hours ago.”
She furrowed her brow, refusing to take the gift. She wasn’t sure if the hope was worth it, if the way she felt five minutes ago was not better. At least five minutes ago, she knew what to expect. She’d found a way to agree with the pain.
“Better late than never, huh,” she said finally.
He tensed his brow, not sure how to take her reaction. “I was deployed. I told you I would be.”
A short tour, mission, whatever. Yeah, he’d said as much, but it was said in passing. He didn’t say he was going to cut off all communication. Now she was not only mad at him for not telling her, but mad she had been angry instead of worrying about him. This boy drove her insane, he really did.
She searched his gray eyes shattered with blue rays finding a truth. As far as he knew or was concerned, he’d done nothing wrong. “First chance I’ve had.” He reached for her hand and put the necklace in her palm. “I’m not looking for a promise, I get it. This is hard. But I wanted you to know I thought of you.”
“First chance?”
Declan gave a shallow nod. He could have called a few days ago, but this was the first second he had a chance to lay eyes on her. He’d been making plans, checking on things with his family as he made his way here. “I texted you, told you it would be a minute—not to worry about me. To stay strong, lean on my brothers if you needed to.” And she didn’t text back.
Shock glinted in her blue eyes.
“You didn’t get it?”
Her relived stare told him she hadn’t.
“I gotta get you a real phone. Fuck that pay by the minute shit.”
All Justice could think was that better be the reason she didn’t get the text. It better not be because he was just trying to smooth things over.
Declan stepped closer. “I’ve got a few days...I was going to head up to around Mt. Mitchell for the weekend, see if there’s anything I missed before.”
She nodded and looked down, wishing he had just mailed the gift. Last time she was face to face with him it was for less than an hour, and it was looking like this time was going to be less than ten minutes.
“I asked Bell already. She said you could come with us if you wanted.”
“Us?”
“Boon, Tobias, and an old friend of Nolan’s.”
“You’re serious?”
He playfully narrowed his gaze. “Am I serious about having you at my side for the rest of this day and the next two, looking at you when I want?” He bit his lip before he went on. “I couldn’t be more serious.”
Justice couldn’t help it. She launched herself on him and he picked her up and spun her in the hall, raising his head only to catch her lips. “I need you, baby,” he said with more pain than she expected.
Justice slowly slid down him, her hands framing his face. “We’re going to find him.”
He swayed his head and glanced away. “Everyone says it’s been too long.”