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“She said she loved him, and told me what happened the night she was taken.”
I closed my eyes and was taken right back to when…
The air smelled like old carpet and overheating electronics. I smiled as I turned the corner to the booths, excited to finally see my girl after what I just went through with Mum, but when I looked towards the table I set up this morning, Evie wasn’t there. I slowed without meaning to, eyes locking onto the empty seat. No jacket draped over it, no half-finished drink, no empty basket of fries. But…the hydrangeas were there. I walked up to the counter instead, and the girl behind the register looked up from her magazine.
“Hey, I called before…about being late?“
“Are you Jackson?”
“Yeah.”
“I told your girlfriend, and she left.”
I frowned slightly. “Left where?”
She shrugged. “Dunno. Just said she had to go. Like…a few minutes ago.”
A few minutes—that's how close I had been to saving her. Just a few minutes.
“She didn’t say much about anything else,” Christopher went on. My throat felt tight, like it was closing in on itself. I let out a slow breath, trying to keep it even. Trying to keep everything else where it belonged. “Imagine my surprise,” he said lightly, though there was something heavier underneath it, “when the Jackson from her love story turned out to be you.”
CHAPTER TWENTY THREE
EVIE
December 25th, 1992
It was Christmas.
A day we used to celebrate with Dad’s lemon-infused lamb roast, watching White Christmas on the couch together after spending the day playing cricket in the back yard, or having a picnic down at the beach. We’d get up early and open the presents, playfully singing carols as Dad made breakfast—just the three of us before Jackson began staying over.
Since being here, Christmas had been nothing but a crudely decorated tree and a reminder that another year had come and went. The first Christmas here was the hardest. Knowing that it would’ve been the first one without Dad was bad enough, but spending it in a basement instead of with Jackson, Peter, and Nicola was high on the list of awful things Wayne had subjected me to. Last year, he had spent Christmas night in the basement with his latest capture while I’d tried to drown out the screams with the Carols by Candlelight performers.
Today…I didn’t know how to feel.
It’d been two days since I last saw Jackson.
Two days that I’d spent every second of every hour thinking about him.
Two days since I thought I had imagined the whole thing.
But it was real.
Jackson was here.
It was hard to fathom that he wasn't just on the TV or in my dreams anymore. Now he was here—destined for death. In a couple of months, I’d have to stand behind Wayne while he…
I brutally shoved the thought away. I couldn't…I couldn't think of what Jackson being chained in the basement meant. I’d seen so much death, but…I wouldn't survive seeing his. I think I'd lose the last remaining pieces of my soul if he was no longer on this earth.
“Jackson?” I said softly, my voice muffled by his chest, our legs entangled beneath my duvet, the moonlight streaming in through the partially opened blinds and resting gently on his face.
“Mmm?” he hummed, his heartbeat steady against my cheek.
“Do you ever think about the future?” I asked him, my fingers curling in his shirt.
“Sometimes.”
“Yeah? What do you think about?”
