Page 62 of Stay Away from Him

“Come on,” Thomas said, stepping out ahead and walking backward, a playful look on his face as he coaxed Melissa out with him. “Might be our last chance. The park service will close the dock when the lake freezes.”

She followed him to the end of the dock, then stopped at the rail and looked across the water with him. On the far side of the lake, the sun was setting below the trees, casting a shadow all the way to where they stood.

“Beautiful,” she said.

“You’re beautiful,” Thomas said next to her—and when she turned, he was on one knee.

“Thomas,” she said, suddenly breathless.

“Melissa,” he said, and now he was opening a ring box in front of her, revealing a sparkle of platinum and diamonds whose details she couldn’t quite make out through the sudden rush of tears in her eyes. “I love you. I can’t live without you. Marry me.”

Melissa blinked furiously, her eyelids moving open and shut as quickly as a camera shutter, capturing the moment in a burst. “It’s so fast. You—you barely know me.”

“I knew everything I needed to know the moment I first saw you,” Thomas said. “I knew then—rightthen—that you were the person I’d been waiting for, without even realizing it. You fill the empty parts of me, Melissa. You fix everything about me that has been broken since, since…well, you know.”

There was a hush on the air, and Melissa glanced to the shore to see that a small crowd had gathered. Around their kids and their small group of friends, strangers out for an evening walk were pausing to watch, surprised smiles on their faces. One of the people by the bonfire had stood up and taken a few steps toward them, and further back, the slim figure of a man wound its way toward the shore from the parking lot, come to see the spectacle. Heat rushed to Melissa’s cheeks with the awareness of being watched—but then Thomas’s hand tugged on hers, pulled her attention back to him.

“Melissa, I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I want to spend my years making you happy—protecting you. Caring for you. Won’t you let me do that?”

Thomas’s words washed over her, and she had to close her eyes against the swell of emotion she felt in her chest. She was about to open her eyes and sayyeswhen she sensed a small commotion at the shore.

“Daddy?” A small, quavering voice—it took Melissa a split second to recognize it as Bradley’s. Her son was afraid, and the warmth in her chest from Thomas’s proposal was suddenly replaced by an icy fear as she looked up to see what was happening.

Bradley’s face was white. Thomas’s girls, Lawrence and Toby, Amelia—they’d all turned to the shore with a mixture of confusion and alarm on their faces. There was some jostling and movement in the small crowd at the entrance to the pier, and then the bodies parted. A gasp darted into Melissa’s throat and lodged there as she saw him and recognized him for the first time.

Carter. Her ex-husband.

He’d found her.

“Here she is,” Carter said, walking down the pier toward Melissa and Thomas. But he wasn’t talking to Melissa. He had his phone held in front of him, taking video, and he seemed to bespeaking to an audience on the other end of the recording. “What do you have to say for yourself, Melissa?”

He was live streaming.

Thomas rose from his knee, stood next to Melissa. “You know this guy?”

Melissa couldn’t speak.

Carter came closer, pointing the phone at Melissa.

“This is my wife, folks. My ex-wife, Melissa Burke. And there he is.” Now he turned the phone on Thomas. “Thomas Danver, accused murderer. I didn’t believe it, but here it is, right in front of me. My ex has fallen for a killer. Not only that, I just walked in on him asking her to marry him. What did she say?”

Carter pushed the camera toward Thomas’s face. Thomas swiped at his hand, pushed him away. Carter backed off a step but kept his grip on the phone, went on recording. Over the phone, their eyes met—Carter, the man Melissa had escaped, and Thomas, the man she’d fallen in love with. The man who’d just told her that he’d do anything to make her happy. To protect her.

And for a taut moment that seemed to stretch out interminably, Melissa was able to look at both of them at the same time, to appraise them and compare them as they faced off against each other. Thomas, the broadness and the strength of him that she’d grown to love and to feel safe in. A sharpness growing in his eyes, storm clouds gathering, a fierce darkness she’d never seen in him before. Next to Thomas, Carter looked like a boy—lank and wiry, his neck hunched, his shoulders creeping up toward his ears. His cheeks were gaunt, pitted beneath an unshaven spotting of facial hair, his chest almost hollow above the swell of a growing beer gut, somehow fat and skinny at the same time. He never took care of himself, and it looked to Melissa like he’d slid even further since the divorce was finalized. Thomas was stronger than him—but there was danger coiled in Carter’s wiry frame, in his look of callowdefiance masking fear and deep insecurity. Thomas was a big man; Carter was a small man, trying to puff himself up big.

“Get the fuck away from us,” Thomas said. “Go.”

Carter’s chin jutted out, but he didn’t talk back. Instead, he turned from Thomas back to Melissa, phone still held out.

“I want my son back,” he said. “I’m going to go for full custody.”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Melissa said, her voice barely above a whisper.

“What do you think the judge will say when he sees this video?” Carter asked. “Marrying a murderer? Bringing your son into that? After all the lies you told about me. Told everyone that I’m a bad father.”

“Youarea bad father!” Melissa screamed, finally finding her voice. “Look at your son right now. Look at how afraid he is of you. Why don’t you show that on your little recording?”

On the shore, Bradley was crying, and Melissa ran to him, leaving Thomas and Carter alone on the pier. She scooped her son up, felt him quake in her arms. His tears ran wet and hot against her neck.

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