Page 26 of The Whisper Place
“I know. I thought it would be okay for a minute. Exposure therapy, or something like that.” I gave him a shaky smile. “I’ll help you clean up, or pay for whatever I broke.”
“You’ve already paid for it by helping Blake and me.” His warm brown eyes found mine. “You don’t have to, you know. I don’t want you to feel obligated because you work at the bakery.”
“That’s not it.”
One of his hands was braced in the grass. In the cellar, I’d thought his hands were someone else’s. Hands that closed like vices, that could find you anywhere, no matter how small or quick you tried to be. But those hands were gone now, forever. I’d buried them. I’d covered them with dirt and branches and leaves and walked away, praying that the worms would find them and feast.
Charlie’s hands were nothing like my stepfather’s. Charlie’s hands were bear paws, massive and adorable and alive. I reached over and slipped my fingers under his palm, holding on to the warmth and strength. It felt like my entire life rested on the edgeof a knife, and everything that came before was on the other side of the blade, ready to finally be cut away.
“I’ve never had friends like you and Blake before.”
“Bickering siblings in arrested development?”
I huffed out a laugh that felt impossible ten minutes ago. “It’s not easy for me to get to know people. It feels safer sometimes—being alone. Keeping space between me and everyone else.”
“I get that.” Charlie glanced toward the horizon where the fields rolled into the sky.
“But it’s different with you and Blake. I want to hang out with you and help you and be part of your lives. I guess that’s what friendship is?” It had only taken me twenty-four years to figure that out. Twenty-four years, a murder, a fake identity, and a new life. And all of that had somehow brought me exactly here, sitting in the grass with Charlie on the edge of an endless spring field.
His fingers curled around mine and squeezed, sending warmth through my entire body. When his mouthed curved up, lifting his beard into a shape I already knew so well, my heart picked up again, but in a way I’d never thought I would feel in any version of my life.
“Friends.” He nodded and lifted my hand out of the grass, looking at them linked together. “You know, sometimes friends go out with each other. If they both want to.”
His gaze traveled up my arm to my face. I smiled, tilting my head. “That’s good, because I was thinking of asking Blake out.”
He shook his head and the grin turned lopsided. “Makes sense we’d start fighting over you, too.”
I pulled his hand up and held it in both of mine before pressing it to my lips. He shifted, cupping my jaw and lacing his fingers through the hair behind my ear. Then Blake’s voice made me jump.
“Well, shit.” She looked at the two of us in the grass, hands on her hips, eyes narrowed, pink hair rippling in the breeze. “Here we go.”
Max
“So, this is what you were hiding when we came out to your house.”
I stood in the kitchen of Pastries & Dreams at ten o’clock at night, bellied up to the butcher-block worktable next to Jonah and across from a very guilty-looking Charlie and Blake Ashlock.
Jonah called just as I’d finished cleaning up dinner and Shelley was prying the screens from Garrett’s hands to send him to bed. When Jonah explained the situation, I wasted no time driving to the bakery.
In front of us, a dozen pans held hundreds of brownies and bars, alongside molds of gummy-looking candy in every color of the rainbow. It was, apparently, the secondary business of Pastries & Dreams and a lucrative one at that.
“I wanted to tell you, but Blake said not to.” Charlie glanced at his sister, who glared at him.
“Your website bio says former cop.” Blake tossed her braid over her shoulder and started loading the gummy trays into a commercial refrigerator. “And for bullshit red-state reasons, this is somehow a crime. So are you going to report us? Do you have some ex-cop code of honor obligating you to blow up my entire life’s work?”
“He’s not going to shut down the bakery,” Charlie said, but Blake whirled on him, visibly cowing the brother who was twice her size.
“This is your fault.” She jabbed a tray into his chest. “You and Josh Grohl getting high every day during the summer after tenth grade, sitting out in the barn and inviting me to join you.”
“You could’ve said no.”
“To piercing blue eyes and a leather jacket? He was basically a young Rob Lowe,” she explained before turning back on her brother. “You coerced me with a young Rob Lowe. I never even got to make out with him and now I’m going to lose everything.”
“I think he’s in prison now if that helps,” Charlie mumbled.
The look Blake leveled on her brother could’ve shattered glass. I’d bet a thousand bucks Jonah could literally feel the guy’s testicles shriveling. Clearing my throat, I held up both hands.
“Let me stop you there. You’ve hired our firm to investigate Kate’s disappearance. We’re working for your benefit and your interests. We’re not obligated to report any criminal activity that we uncover during the course of our investigation.”
