Page 9 of Until You Found Me

His face on that rainy road is burned into her retinas where she’s certain it’ll stay until her last breath leaves her lungs. How dilated his pupils were, how pale he had been, and the gentleness in his voice when he spoke, even if she can’t piece together his words anymore. The headlights formed a bright and fuzzy halo around him and in her delusional state, she thought he was an angel coming to take her.

“You asked if you were dead.” He admits. “Nothing else.”

She nods, unsure if she feels better or worse for knowing. “Not yet, I guess.”

He doesn’t reply, but there isn’t much to say, she figures. How can two people rationally discuss one of them almost dying over waffles and coffee? If she ever possessed that skill, it’s gone now, and she gets the feeling he may have never had it either.

“Chips and a question tomorrow?” he offers, like she’s worth the effort of visiting two days in a row.

“What I said before about you not needing to come back, that’s still true. You don’t have to. You can walk away knowing I’ll be fine, Logan. I’m not someone you need to worry about.”

His face falls for the briefest flicker until he schools it again. She told him to go at least three times already and he probably thinks she doesn’t want to see him, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. She’s fucking this up on the first go without trying.

“I won’t come back if you’d really rather I not,” he replies. “I get it. No worries.”

“That’s the thing, Idowant you to visit again. I just don’t wanna keep you from your life. That’s all.”

“Not keeping me from anything.”

“Okay.” She agrees.

“Okay.”

She won’t tell him to leave again, she decides. He’ll figure that out on his own eventually and one day he’ll stop showing up. Tomorrow or the day after. Might last a week if she’s lucky, but she’s under no delusions about this being a long-term situation. She’ll take what she can get and be grateful for any tiny amount of comfort and hope that he’s willing to offer.

There’s a ripe, bitter taste of regret though in allowing herself to lean on him much as she has, which is very little in the grand scheme of things, but feels monumental when the sum total of her interactions are comprised of Audrey and Logan, and she’s already spent more time with him.

When the waffles are finished and he walks her back to her room, telling her he’ll see her tomorrow, that brief lightness she was able to harness in the face of her somber situation vanishes the moment he disappears. She’s alone again in this white room with nothing but her own thoughts. For a second, she wants to call him back.‘Leave your whole life and spend every waking moment here with me, a stranger, because being alonemakes everything worse.’She doesn’t, of course. Somehow, she curbs the urge and tells herself she’ll be just fine.

The worst is already over. She survived. She only has to make it through what comes next, and that has to be better than waking up underground.

Chapter 3

Logan’s been trying not to think of her, but she lives in his mind twenty-four-seven, anyway. When he eats, brushes his teeth, or watches crap TV, Tessa’s right there tempting his attention and he gives in every time. Just like he did last night when she overtook his nightmares.

She was hurt on the road and he found her again even worse off than before.

She died on the wet pavement, soaked in rainwater, blood, and dirt, because he arrived too late.

She remained buried underground while he drove right on by, never knowing the difference.

His sleep-drunk brain concocted one horrific scenario after another until he woke sweating and distraught with the dog staring at him from the foot of the bed. His nightmares have always been about his own impending doom or past traumas. He’ll ration his insulin and collapse in a public place or run on cement-heavy legs from his father through the woods. This is the first time his dreams feature a new face and, in some ways, it’s even worse. Normally, he can brush it off when he wakes up, but he isn’t so lucky this time.

He had the ridiculous thought that he wished she was here so he could prove to himself she’s still alive. Residualgrief and terror almost had him going to the clinic in the wee hours, but he managed to curb the urge, not wanting to wake her.

Logan dedicated the majority of his day to his neighbor, Arthur’s, to-do list, grateful for the extra income and the distraction. The grapevine in these parts is quick, though. Logan finds out the police located the hole this morning just by going into town for odds and ends.

‘Shallow enough for someone to crawl right out of.’

‘Only a few yards into the woods. There was some sort of ripped open tarp on the ground…’

‘Can you imagine? That poor woman. She’s barely holding it together and she still can’t remember anything.’

His knees feel like buckling right here in the hardware store while a nurse from the clinic gossips two aisles over to anyone who might listen. He wants to tell her to stop running her mouth about Tessa. Being Carl’s wife means she can break whatever privacy laws she wants and spread everyone’s business. This isn’t the first time and won’t be the last. Getting on her husband’s bad side won’t do Logan any good, so he pays for the wrench and pile of two-by-fours with the money Arthur gave him and gets the fuck outta there before he says something he’ll regret.

He knew even before today what happened to Tessa. He may not have gone out searching for that shallow grave himself, but it doesn’t take much to connect the dots. Hearing it for certain is a whole different experience and the rage he feels for whoever did this to her flares with a renewed intensity. He wishes he could be shocked at the depravity but he’s seen and felt too much himself to assume even the deepest depths are off limits.

Still, this is a lot, even for him.

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