Page 65 of Until You Found Me

Cutting the cord seems simple when she finds a pair of scissors in the drawer. Each strand hitting the ground feels like liberation until she’s half finished and the reality of what she’s done hits her like a shovel to the face.

Logan’s footsteps creak on the floor boards and she tenses, not wanting him to see her like this.

“Hey, what are you doing?” He pushes the pocket door open to find her with the scissors still shaking in her grip and enough hair in the sink to craft a small animal.

“I cut it,” she states the obvious because she doesn’t know what else to say. Then she crumbles and shatters, hitching sobs erupting from deep in her chest. “It was a mistake and now I can’t fix it.”

Some part of her waits for a stab through her hand that never comes as he takes the scissors and places them on the counter. She folds into him, curling against his chest, letting him hold her up.

His words are as soft as the touch soothing up and downher spine. “Did you have a bad dream tonight?”

She nods. “I didn’t want to wake you and now look what I’ve done. I don’t want to be her anymore, Logan. I can’t be. I can’t see her every time I look in the mirror, but I think I made a mistake. It looks terrible.”

“It’s not terrible. Lemme help you get the back?”

Reluctantly, she turns to face the mirror and grips the edge of the sink, offering him the back of her head, trying not to stare at his reaction behind her.

She shuts her eyes when he begins cutting. It can’t get any worse so she doesn’t care how it turns out, except she does care because if he isn’t attracted to her now, all because she let a nightmare convince her to chop her hair off she might not survive that.

One snip turns into three turns into six. Soft hairs tickle her bare feet as they drift to the floor.

“All done. Look at me.”

She opens her eyes to meet his reflection in the mirror. She’s still uncertain about the shoulder-length bob she’s ended up with but there is only warmth in his gaze.

“You’re so fucking beautiful.” He wraps his arms around her waist from behind, nestling his temple against hers. “Love you so much. Always.”

She hugs his arms to her chest, her expression cracking all over again, fingertips tracing the crescent moons her nails left behind on the back of his hand during therapy. “I have to tell you something. I didn’t want to because you’d worry but…promise me you won’t….”

Won’t what, she isn’t sure. Leave her? Worry? Commit her to a psych ward?

“You can tell me anything.”

She should be telling him she loves him too and she will, but his admission has made it impossible to keep secrets a second longer.

“Today at therapy, I saw something I think was from the same day you found me. When I was in that tub, before whatever happened to land me in the woods, I think I tried to kill myself.”

Chapter 15

Logan is worried about Tessa. She hasn’t left the bed since she woke at four am on the edge of a nightmare, screaming that she couldn’t breathe.‘I was drowning in the tub,’she said, curling against his chest and twisting the front of his shirt in her fingers.‘He kept holding me under. He was too strong.’

She slipped back into unconsciousness almost as quickly as she’d woken and sits beside him now in bed, half rested and hollow, tracing a fingertip along a copy of the police sketch.

“I wonder if she ever felt safe in her own house, even once. Was I able to give her that by myself, even with him there? I wish…” Tessa trails off, shaking her head. “Never mind.”

“Wish what?”

“That things were different, that I met you first, but I didn’t and they aren’t.”

If they met first, she wouldn’t have ended up on the road and maybe this little girl would have been his. “I wish they were different, too.”

Thinking too hard about these things isn’t smart. They should focus on the future and nothing else, but that’s impossible when so much of her past is still a mystery, and every twist and turn only leads to another dead end like this skillfully drawn picture that’s produced no clues. They sleptthrough a message from Carl this morning that said she wasn’t in any database.

Logan’s watching Tessa’s heart break a little more with each new memory and each bit of disappointing news. This is one more hit to someone already down, and he’s starting to worry she might not get back up next time.

“I’m stuck in the past wishing I could change it, but I can’t even remember her. I dunno what I hoped for. If she was reported missing, that might have led me to who I am, but she’d still be gone.”

“If she’s out there, we’ll find her.” He’s only repeating his go-to answer when there’s nothing else he can offer.

---