Page 2 of Hold Me Before You Go

“Sunshine, baby, look at me.”

His voice was like dark velvet, stretching over my skin, covering me, shielding me from the world. I liked that feeling. I liked his voice.

So, I looked at him again.

He took a step closer, but I still couldn’t see his face. I felt his dark eyes peering at me for a long moment, and then without another word, he turned, leaving me in the middle of my mess. My chest ached, a stabbing pain shooting through it. I looked down to find blood pooling in the center of my pink sweater, right over my heart. My head shot back up to the man, his back to me now.

“Hold me before you go,” I whispered.

He looked over his shoulder, his hard gaze penetrating my chest, aiming straight for my bleeding heart.

“Fight for me, Carrie. Don’t give up.”

Chapter One

Grayson

I will find you.

My eyes scanned over the blue and red flashing lights in the parking lot of the General Store, ignoring the looks of the nosy townspeople of Astoria, Oregon. I wasn’t here for them. I turned off my truck and swung out, slamming the door behind me, making my presence known.

Carrie had been kidnapped, taken fromme.

My jaw was tight as Sheriff Michael Humbly’s brown eyes spotted me from across the parking lot. A second later, thoseeyes widened as they snapped over to his wife, Sarah, who’d came to Carrie’s house ten minutes ago to tell me the love of my life had been taken and the owners of the store had been shot.

Humbly said something to the two officers standing beside him, patiently waiting for orders. I suspected this was the first true crime this town had seen in fucking decades. When I was nearly two feet away, Humbly turned and raised his hands. “Grayson, listen to me—my boys are on this. We are pulling the video footage. We’re going to find who did this and get Carrie b—”

In a flash, I had the man by the collar, pulling him close to my face as I snarled, “Keeping me from this would be a horrible move on your part, Sheriff.”

“Grayson,” he clipped, expecting me to release him. The people around us fell silent, the wind from the incoming winter storm howling through the air. The chill of winter stung my cheeks, burning my skin as hatred for this town and all the people in it bloomed in my chest.

Carrie was gone. My Carrie—my fucking sunshine, my warmth.

“You’ll get me what I ask for the minute I ask for it. That clear?” I asked, voice hard as I stared into his eyes, letting him see the monster inside me.

He looked over to his wife, panic in his eyes. “Grayson, my family—”

“You don’t let me do what I do best to get mine back, you’ll lose yours, Humbly.”

His eyes snapped back to mine, and seconds later, I shoved him away from me, pulling out my gun and showing the other officers. Humbly cleared his throat. “Boys, this is Joseph Grayson. He’s going to be helping us out on the Hale case.”

The Hale case.

Once upon a time, she was my case…

Get it together, Grayson. Find her first.

I shoved my gun into the waistband of my jeans and headed inside, leaving the shit show of a police department in the freezing parking lot. The scene in front of me was something out of a horror film; the simplicity of it alone shouldn’t have affected me, but this was different. All I could see was Carrie. I could hear her screams and could practically smell her fear that still lingered in the air alongside the scent of blood.

My eyes scanned the fallen produce, apples, and oranges scattered across the cream tile, spanning into different sections of the store. I moved closer, letting the door fall closed behind me as I made my way around a produce bin. I stopped breathing at the sight of the small pool of blood on the floor directly in front of the checkout counter. I followed that, my eyes lifting up to the counter to find more blood splatter. My feet moved then, carrying me over to the spot and discovering even more blood splatter on the wall beside the office door.

It wasn’t Carrie’s.

The voice inside my head, the one desperately trying to hold on to hope and not let me slip back into darkness, was louder than I expected it to be. I expected logic to be louder, but it seemed I wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between logic and delusion much longer. Emotions I’d never felt before were blooming inside me like weeds, spreading throughout my system, infecting the man I used to be.

The cold man, void of emotion.

“None of this blood is Carrie’s.”

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