Page 2 of Rescued Hearts
“Yeah, baby. We’re here.” I set him down while I grabbed our bags out of the storage area under the bus. “We have to get a taxi to go to Aunt Claire’s house.” It still felt weird to refer to my childhood home as hers, but with both our parents gone, it technically was.
By the timewe pulled up to my childhood home, I was exhausted but simultaneously bursting with adrenaline. Luke slid out of the car behind me, rubbing his eyes and looking around like he didn’t know what to make of the small ranch. “Whose house is this?”
“I grew up here,” I said, taking his hand. “We’re staying here for a little while.”
“For a week?” he asked, repeating what I’d told Jeremy.
I knelt in front of him, brushing his hair off his forehead. “Maybe a little longer,” I said softly. “Would that be okay?”
“Is Daddy coming?”
My body tensed at the mention of Jeremy. I swallowed. “No.” And he never would if I had anything to do with it.
He nodded, like it didn’t matter to him as long as he and I were together.
I could hardly breathe as I stepped onto the porch, inundated by memories that squeezed my chest in a vice grip. I set Luke down, unable to carry his weight and the weight of my anxiety. My siblings didn’t know I was coming, didn’t know about their nephew, didn’t know what we just ran from.
Knowing them, they would have a lot of questions, ones I didn’t know how to answer. Or if I’d ever be ready to.
But I’d come this far, and I refused to go back to the life I was living.
So I knocked.
The door flew open, and my eldest sister, Claire, stared at me like she’d seen a ghost. She looked the same, just slightly older. She had Mama’s curly, dark auburn hair and Daddy’s light green eyes. Looking at her was like a knife to the heart.
“Oh my God,” she blurted.
Another voice came from inside the house. “Who is it?” My sister, Savannah.
I shifted on my feet. “It’s Tess.” Her eyes fell to Luke, and they widened, her lips parting further with shock.
“What?” a man barked, his voice a boom of thunder. Luke jumped, his hands wrapping around my thigh. Adrenaline hit my system hard and fast at the stomping footsteps, but it melted away when I saw my big brother, Emmett. My best friend in the entire world growing up, despite the five years between us. He looked older, broader. All muscle and ink. If I hadn’t known him, I might’ve been scared.
“Tessie?” he rasped, his eyes glassy with emotion.
I swallowed past the knot in my throat. If I started crying, I wouldn’t stop. And I wasn’t ready for that, so I forced it back. “Hi, Em.”
“Who’s this?” Claire rasped with barely constrained emotion, looking at her nephew.
“This is Luke.” I took his hand in mine. “My son,” I said, my voice shaking like the rest of me. Like Luke.
Claire blinked, processing. It’d take them a while to wrap their minds around this, and I had braced myself for it. But it still felt surreal to be here. I never thought it would happen, honestly.
Emmett moved Claire out of the doorway. “Well, get in here.”
And just like that, we were home.
Not just for a week. For good.
1
Tess
Three weeks later…
The phone shook in my hand like it was alive. Alive with the hate and vitriol that Jeremy was flooding my inbox with every day for the last three weeks since I’d been back in Wild Creek.
I swallowed down the bitter taste in my mouth and brought the phone to my ear. I couldn’t understand why I was torturing myself by reading every heinous text he sent or listening to every threatening voicemail he left. It was some kind of compulsion I couldn’t control, like staring at a ten-car pile-up on the interstate out of morbid curiosity, wondering what happened to cause such devastation.
