Page 164 of The Spider & the Storm

It seemed impossible, yet I knew it was true, and why had time been passing so oddly since I’d met her?

“I've never been to a wedding before,” I confessed, sweeping my gaze around the emptying ceremony room.

“This was my second.”

“Which was the first?”

My gaze landed on the open doorway to watch as Ivan and Lyla greeted their small group of guests, stopping frequently to stare into each other's eyes with gleeful disbelief and elation.

I want that.

“My sister's,” Stormy replied, tightening her hold on my arm with hers. “Theirs was a lot like this. Soldier doesn't really have any family. Just us and his friend Harry. So, it was really small and informal, but it was nice.”

“I'd always assumed my first and last would be Luke's.”

I looked down at her in time to watch her head tilt and her brow furrow.

“Why your last?”

“Because”—I shrugged—“I didn't have friends and I wasn't sure I'd ever actually get married myself. I had a hard time imagining life progressing much outside of Luke and Melanie.”

A coalescence of affection, pity, and sympathy pooled in her eyes. “And you were content to be their third wheel?”

“Honestly?” I huffed a chuckle, seeing entirely why she'd feel sorry for that younger version than me. “Yeah, I was. They were home; they made me feel safe. At the time, that was all that really mattered.”

She nodded. “And now?”

Luke and Melanie and the dysfunctional, imperfect, but loving home that they had forged for us to live … it had been everything to me for what seemed like the longest part of my life even though I’d been without it now for longer than I'd had it. Yet losing it, losingher, had obliterated everything. The pieces of who we—Luke and I—were had scattered in a thousand directions. And although I couldn't say he'd ever found his happiness—I wasn't sure he'd even bothered to look—I knew, in the most bittersweet of ways, that I had found mine.

I’d just had to run away to do it.

“You,” I said, my voice splintered with a rush of emotion. “You're all that matters.”

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

CONNECTICUT, PRESENT DAY

Black velvet night shrouds the cemetery as bare feet slap furiously against sodden ground. There isn’t enough air in the world to fill my lungs. My arms pump, my heart pounds, my legs protest with each step taken. Every part of my body begs to stop running, even if to take a short break, but there isn’t time for that.

The scent of cigarettes permeates the moist air. He is close.

“Leave me alone!” I cry, breaking free of the trees and finally stepping onto the blacktop.

The cottage on the hill is within view, illuminated now by a crack of lightning slashing across the angry sky. Home is right there, so close that I can taste it, taste her. Behind that door, I'll be safe—she'll make sure of it.

I take another step across the rough road before gnarled, shadowed hands reach out from the asphalt. Gripping my ankles, feet, legs. Holding me still, holding me down.

“No!” I cry, tears streaming down my face, arms reaching out toward the house. “No, please! Let me go!”

“Charlie.”

That old, familiar voice from my nightmares breaks through the trees at my back. Icy tendrils slither down my spine as I squeeze my eyes shut, shaking my head.

“Go away, go away, go away …” Like Dorothy and her red slippers, I chant the wish over and over and over until the rain ceases in its onslaught.

A cool, calming breeze blows the wet strands of my hair from off my shoulders, and as if by the wind's command, the grasping, clawing hands retreat back into the surface of the road, once again solid beneath my feet.

A breath of relief escapes my lungs, and I think of her. Stormy.

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