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I looked up at him, and he just smiled and said, “Your mom asked me to call with an update, but I figured she’d like to hear from you more.”
I couldn’t help leaning up to kiss him as hard as I could before pressing the green phone icon next to her name.
“Dillon? Please tell me you have good news.” My mom’s voice was frantic.
“I think he would give you really good news, if he were the one calling you,” I said, twining my fingers with his.
“Oh my God! My baby! Thank God you’re back!” My mom’s voice was so loud that I had to pull the phone away to spare my ear. Then I heard her start crying and brought it back to my ear.
“I’m okay, Mommy. I’m okay.” I never called her Mommy, but there was something about hearing her cry like that made me need to comfort like I had as a kid. “I’m okay, and we’re gonna be free of him.”
“He kept his promise,” she said through her tears.
“What do you mean?”
“Dillon,” she responded. “He promised that he’d get you back safely. He promised me that, and he delivered.”
I felt the tears start to flow down my own cheeks again as I turned to look up at Dillon. His face, though it was still tight when he looked back at me, had a certain softness behind the eyes that made my stomach hurt. I laid my head on his shoulder as I said, “Yeah, he did.”
27
DILLON
The last forty-eight hours had had some of the hardest moments of my life, but all of them had been worth it when I finally took Macy home from the hospital at around two in the morning on the night we’d gotten her back.
I’d hated every second that I hadn’t been able to go into the room with Jim and his deputies, but since I was no longer an active-duty cop, I knew that it would not only be profoundly unethical—since it was my girl who’d been taken—but extremely illegal, and I didn’t want there to be a single technicality that could lead to that piece of shit getting off.
Even with her face black and blue, she’d been the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen when she’d come out of that room with Jim. After that, every second we’d had to spend apart had been a wrench, from me having to get the money order for Jackie and Patrick to the time in the hospital when the doctor had made me leave the room as she’d been examining Macy.
The second we got back to the cabin, though, we waved goodbye to Hank—the guy had stood by us for the entire night and promised to come by with my truck the next day—and stood in the house on our own. She moved around gingerly, moving over to the island. I wondered what she was doing for a second before she reached over and ran her finger over the divot in the granite left by the bullet.
“I can’t believe he almost killed you,” she said, her voice soft and vengeful.
“He didn’t get me, Macy,” I said, walking over to her. “You don’t ever need to worry about him. He’s shit, and he’ll be going where the shit goes.”
She gave a funny little hiccoughing laugh before looking up to me, and I felt that now familiar pain in my belly at the sight of the tears on her face. “Now I see why you retired from police work. You just can’t help sounding like a cheesy eighties cop stereotype, can you?”
I laughed with her but stopped when I saw that the laughing in her face dwindled to pure crying. I reached over to her, pulling her into my arms and letting her cry into my shirt with abandon, not saying a word as I pulled her over to the couch and sat her down with me. Without speaking, we found our usual position together, with her head on my chest and my arms around her.
It felt almost normal, but not the normal I’d gotten so used to over the last few years. This was the life I’d been missing, the thing that “normal” always should have been.
When her crying finally died down to soft sniffles, I tilted her head up so I was looking at her straight on and touched her cheek again. “What do you want to do right now, babe?”
I didn’t exactly know where the shift was that had pushed me to start calling her by this pet name instead of by her real name, but I couldn’t stop. It was like I needed her to know how much I considered her mine.
“It’s a weird three-way tie; I feel like I want to eat, shower, and sleep, all at the same time, and I never want you to let me go for all of them.”
My heart swelled at the sound of her words, and I pulled her face up to mine. “I could make you something to eat, but it would require me letting you go. Although you could go shower while I cook so that your food is ready when you get out—”
Her groan sent a vibration running through my body, and she buried her face in my chest. “The thought of just making a choice is making me dizzy.” She looked up at me, resting her chin on her hand, which she rested on my belly. “Will you just take me to bed and not let me go tonight?”
It thrilled me that she’d asked me for something that was so easy for me to promise her. I moved gently, pulling her up with me so that she was cradled in my arms as I carried her down the hall.
As I made her breakfast and she sat on the bench outside, staring out at nothing as she sipped from a cup of coffee, I thought of the next thing I needed to do, that would probably be the most difficult yet. She still hadn’t told me what it was that had driven her out of the cabin, leading Alex back to us, so I’d figured that the only way to get her to do it would be to be vulnerable enough for the both of us.
I slid her omelet onto the plate and took it outside, taking my seat next to her. She blinked a few times as she came back from wherever she’d been and smiled at me as she took her first bite.
“I need to tell you something,” I said, breathing deeply as I started talking, “that I probably should’ve told you before.”
