Find Me Series (Book 4): Where Hope is Lost

by Dawson, Trish Marie

  When the fire no longer warmed our limbs, and Lily had long fallen asleep, we kicked the dwindling fire out and climbed the hill to the cabin, each of us rolling out sleeping bags or blankets that we found stacked up on the shelves. With no pillow, I used my arm to prop my head up, and listened to Kris and Cole whisper, he on top of her bunk. Zoey was the first to start snoring, curled up in a ball by my feet. Keel was next. Drake and Connor were both on opposite sides of the cabin, but I could tell that neither was asleep. Every time someone moved, the thin plastic mat beneath them would squeak in protest. For hours, I stared at the wooden frame above me, listening to those squeaks, and to the rush of water coming in and out of the bay. An animal cried, followed by the screech of a bird, and I pushed up on my elbow to listen.

  “Just an owl,” Jin whispered from the upper bunk beside mine.

  I smiled, already recognizing the sound, then realized he couldn’t see my face. “Yeah,” I whispered back.

  The two of us listened to the owl as it made several more cries, circling an area not far above the cove. But then it was gone, and the night returned to the occasional insect sound or squeaking mat. After another hour of no sleep, I rolled off my bed and patted Zoey’s head, telling her to stay. She crawled into my spot, and lifted her eyebrows as if to say, ‘I’ll just keep this warm for you while you’re gone’.

  Jin didn’t stir when I tiptoed by his bunk, and I waited till I was outside to pull my coat on so the zipper wouldn’t wake anyone. The steps off the cabin hurt, but I took them slowly, crossing the grass slope that led down to the beach in just a few minutes. I found a water-logged piece of wood to sit on and stared at the place where the sky met the ocean.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Connor said from behind me.

  “I was wondering how long it would be before someone else came out here. I’m not the only one awake.”

  “I know why I can’t sleep,” he said, sitting down on the log. “How about you?”

  I tried to shrink into my coat, but I couldn’t quite disappear. “You and Drake. You’re going to make me choose, aren’t you?”

  Connor tilted his head up to the inky sky, streaked with the thin haze of newborn clouds, and sighed. “Ah. Finally,” he whispered.

  “Finally?”

  When he looked down at me, half of his face was lost in shadow, and all I saw was the sexy line from his jaw to his ear, his perfectly shaped and crystal-colored eyes that twinkled even at night, and the outer edge of his mouth, waiting for me.

  “Did you think we could avoid it forever, this talk?” he asked. The softer his voice went, the more obvious his accent. I wanted to skip the talk and go straight to something else.

  With a shrug, I looked away from him. “I hoped to.”

  “It’s not exactly what I want to chat about right now, either. Not with that as our view.” He followed my line of sight out across the sand, over the short pier, and as far as the water went.

  “Can I hold your hand?” I whispered.

  He took my arm and interlocked our fingers. “When have you ever needed permission?”

  We stayed outside until we were covered with an invisible layer of sand; it was in my hair, on my cheeks, and on my clothes; leftovers from the breeze, like a kiss.

  “Riley,” he said, his voice hitching. “Do you remember the first time you told me about your kids? Remember the nightmares we both had?”

  I nodded, refusing to speak. I didn’t trust my voice.

  “I know it hurts you,” he whispered. “You won’t ever recover, not completely, but you’ve learned how to grieve. They’ll always be there, right? In the back of your mind, in every sunrise and every smile. You’ll hear their voices in the wind, see their tears in the rain. But you’re trying to be happy. I know you are.”

  My chin began to tremble. “It doesn’t get easier, Connor, it doesn’t hurt less.”

  “Then how do you do it?” His voice finally cracked. “How do you cope?”

  “I don’t think about…what happened,” I whispered back. “I can’t think about it.”

  “I do, every day. Every time I see Jacks and Lily, I see Roan.”

  I nodded, resting my chin on his shoulder. “You miss him.”

  “It’s more than that, Riley. I can’t handle not knowing,” he cried.

  My body stiffened against him, realizing what was coming before my mind caught on.

  “I have to know…” he said, wiping at his face. “Tomorrow morning, when Lou takes off, I’m going with him. He’s going back to the Ark to drop off that woman, then refuel, and then he’s taking me as far as he can. All the way, I hope.”

  “Connor…” I began to cry.

  “I have to go home, Riley. I have to go home.”

  Chapter Thirty-One

  CONNOR

  Never had the sweet bitter orange of dawn looked to him as melancholy as it did on Christmas morning. The new day brought with it an overwhelming sense of appreciation for his fragile life, but it was tainted by the sour taste of deceit, and a regret that burned so intensely in his heart that he was certain the organ was blistered, blackened by his own undoing. Such was the wicked way of love. Connor had fallen into his own fate a blind man, lost behind the mask he wanted others to see, keeping the truth hidden from even himself. All because of his love for her.

  He would be blind no more. As a fairy-pink dust spread out over the ocean, he dropped the mask, and he opened his eyes. Beyond the creamy horizon, where the colors blended into each other like melting ice cream on a humid summer day, Connor could see the next part of his journey as clearly as he could the rising sun. His path, one he would take without her, called out to him with a melody so sweet his tongue tingled. Home. Over the land and on the other side of the Atlantic, clear across the bending light of the horizon, was home.

  Her fingers found his, and together they watched the sun arc over the east, breathing in the briny air, listening to the early morning birdcalls that were cut short when the plane engine sputtered to life. She jumped from the loud roar, much like he did, and then turned, burying her face into his chest. When he pulled back so he could look down at the face he had fallen so helplessly in love with, her eyes were full of tears, turning the sea blue of her gaze into a riptide that threatened to pull him down forever.

  “Why does it feel like there’s a world between us already?” she cried.

  Tracing her face, he brushed his knuckles over her lower lip to calm the tremble. “I can’t believe how lucky I am that you found me. I don’t deserve you,” he whispered.

  The tears spilled out and she stretched up to press her mouth against his. He let his lips drink as much of her into his heart as the broken thing would take, and with his hands, he pulled her tight one last time, pressing every piece of him into every piece of her. It was the only way he felt whole.

  “Will you come back…will you find me again?” she asked, touching his face.

  “God, I want you, Riley. I always will. But I’ll never be able to give you my whole heart until I know what happened to my son.”

  She nodded, knowing that if she said the right words to him at that very second, he wouldn’t climb onto the plane. “You have to do this. I won’t ask you to stay,” she whispered.

  “I won’t ask you to wait for me. I want you to be happy,” he said, pushing her hair back. The wind snatched it out of his hand and the blonde locks danced behind her like a golden cape.

  He couldn’t do it. He couldn’t let her go. Grabbing her arms hard enough to hurt, he pulled her back, and began to sing into her ear a tune his mother often sang to him as a child. During the chorus of Leaving on a Jet Plane, his voice cracked and he hid his face into her neck, where she let him cry against the wild thrum of her pulse.

  With a slow shake of her head, she allowed him to push her away, until only their fingertips touched. His feet left the uneven dirt and met the smooth tarmac, and as their hands fell away from each other, he finally let his own tears come out. Sp
inning on his heels, he turned his back on Riley, refusing to break in front of her. He snatched his pack off the runway, and at the bottom of the steps that led into the plane, he glanced over his shoulder to look at her one last time.

  He spotted Drake instantly. He stood on the road that led into the airport, out of breath, with his hair stuck to his face from sweat. He chased her down, Connor realized. He came to stop her from getting on the plane. But there was no need, because Connor wouldn’t let her come. His was probably a one-way trip, he had told her. He couldn’t take her away from the family she had tried so hard to replace. With a tight smile, he nodded at the man on the road standing so close to the woman Connor loved, hoping Drake knew she would need him now, more than ever.

  His final smile he saved for her. With all the love he had built up in his heart for Riley, and the desperate hope he had in his heart for his son, Connor smiled as if he’d just been born, as if the world was new and pure, as if she would be by his side every day for the rest of his life, and as if Roan would be there, too. And with a wave, he stepped into the plane, and let the door lock him away from her.

  DRAKE

  He was awake when they came back into the cabin an hour before dawn. With his arm covering half his face, he watched Lou step outside and Connor gather up his pack, quietly kiss Kris’ cheek as she slept, and hug the dog. Riley was out of his view, but he could have sworn he heard the straps of her pack drag across the wooden floor before the door shut with a barely audible click. When he sat up in bed, his mind racing, his thoughts so scattered that he truly didn’t know what to do, the engine of the bus turned over, and Drake realized what was happening. She was leaving him.

  His instant rage for Connor flipped into an irrational fear of losing Riley forever, and he yanked his boots on, lacing them only as far up the ankle as was suitable for running. With only his jeans and his undershirt on, he flew out of the cabin, not bothering to be quiet, and slid in the dew-coated grass, nearly falling on his ass. Behind the tour bus, a cloud of dust puffed up into the air, and Drake sprinted for it, running so fast that his feet hardly touched the ground. He ran even harder still, when the bus vanished into the hills and bends atop the island.

  The plane was on the runway when he finally crested the highest part of the road, and his heart landed at his feet. He watched it taxi, then come to a stop, and that’s when he saw them standing off to the side, wrapped around each other. He screamed against the wind, calling for her to wait, telling her that she couldn’t go without him, but his words were stolen by the sea breeze, and halfway to the coast before his shaky legs got him close enough to be seen. But it wasn’t Riley that noticed Drake first; it was Connor.

  He stood just inside the plane, his face broken, staring at Drake with the kind of surrender no man ever gave voluntarily. And then he smiled at him. Drake was frozen to the road, not sure if what he saw was real or not. His eyes flicked between Riley and Connor, but she didn’t run across the tarmac, she didn’t leave. The last shot Drake had of the man, was him hanging out of the plane, smiling like an Abercrombie and Fitch model, grinning like a damn fool.

  Minutes later, the plane had turned around, and raced down the runway. Only after it lifted off the ground and launched into the sky, did Riley turn and find him standing on the road. She stumbled forward and fell into his arms, and he held her until the crying stopped. Drake was prepared to hold her forever.

  RILEY

  With the plane gone, not even a speck left in the sky, I fell against the side of the tour bus, gutted. There hadn’t been enough time to tell Connor everything he needed to hear. Not nearly enough. There was never enough time for the things that mattered.

  Drake leaned against the side of the bus, still sweating, working on catching his breath. We stayed quiet, listening to the sound of the ocean far below us, the hum of an engine, the call of a bird and the return of its mate, and the skittering noise of something dashing through the underbrush. None of the island sounds were louder than the thumping of my heart, of the echo it created in my ears. Even Drake’s voice, when he did speak, was far away and detached from reality, like he was talking to me from an alternate time, or a dimension outside of my own. When his hand reached out and brushed a lazy fly off my arm, our dimensions met again, and my reality crashed back to Earth.

  “Merry fucking Christmas,” I mumbled.

  He was expecting anything other than that to come out of my mouth, and laughed once before forcing his jaw shut with an audible snap. The thing in the brush stopped moving, and the engine faded away. It was just us, standing on top of the island, lost once again.

  “Now what?” he asked, rubbing his palms clean against his jeans.

  With one hand, I propped myself up on the bus, and with the other, wiped my face off until every trace of my tears had been erased. There would be more, gallons more, but not now. Not today. I walked around the bus and climbed into the driver seat, waiting for Drake to follow. When he saw my pack on the floor, next to the first row of seats, I gave no excuse for it.

  “I almost left,” I said with a painful strain in my voice.

  I watched him rub at his face and then fall into the front row with a sigh. “But you didn’t.”

  “But I almost did.”

  “Jesus, shit, Riley. You didn’t. You’re here, right now. And so am I. And Connor fucking isn’t.” The deep sigh that followed his words was enough to prove he slightly regretted the last thing that came out of his mouth, but he didn’t apologize. And he wasn’t wrong.

  “I know,” I said with a nod, turning the engine over. “I can’t survive losing him the way I did before. He’s gone, that’s all.” I glanced at Drake in the mirror, and found his weary eyes staring back at me. “I don’t know how to let him go, Drake…but I know I don’t want to lose you, too.”

  He broke his gaze to look out the window, at the beginning of a perfect sunny day. “I’m not going anywhere, Riley. Maybe I’m crazy, but I’ve finally found something I can’t live without. And that’s you.”

  Lily kneeled forward with her wobbly arms, and bounced back and forth, preparing her muscles for crawling, except she didn’t really know that’s what she was doing. For her, pushing into a sitting position simply put her eyes level with the top of the coffee table and whatever mysterious objects waited there. In a thin cotton jumper that cut off above her ankles, she was all rolls and chunk, the definition of an adorable and healthy baby. A few seconds after righting herself, she fell to her side and flopped onto her stomach with a frustrated cry.

  “Lily,” I said with a smile, scooping her up into my arms. “Don’t be in such a hurry, baby. The world isn’t going anywhere.”

  Drake laughed from the kitchen and tossed a towel over his shoulder. “Already lying to the kid, huh?”

  I gaped at him. “It’s not a lie.” As he brought me her bottle, warmed to just above room temperature, I snatched it from his hand and glowered at the smile he still had on his face. “Okay, fine. Poor choice of words,” I admitted. “But she can’t be raised to be afraid of everything, can she? What kind of childhood would that be?”

  “The same one most of us had,” he teased. He bent forward and kissed me, but I shoved him back.

  “I wasn’t afraid of anything when I was a kid,” I stated.

  “Really?” He sat down on the sofa and watched me lay the baby back in my arms for her feeding. But Lily was more preoccupied with chewing on the bottle nipple than drinking. “All kids have some sort of childhood fear,” he continued. “Something irrational like clowns. Bugs. The living room floor turning into lava and burning your feet off.”

  “The lava thing is a legitimate concern. All my friends lost at least one foot before they were ten,” I said, straight-faced.

  He tossed a receiving blanket at me, and I flicked it off my face. “There had to be something,” he laughed. “Weren’t you ever afraid of the dark?”

  “No,” I said, shaking my head. “I wasn’t afraid of the dark until I
became an adult and realized that ghosts were a real thing.”

  After considering my words carefully, he agreed. “True. I guess the last few years have been the scariest of my life, too.”

  “Right? Especially last night, when you shaved your beard off. That poor chin of yours looks terrified today,” I teased.

  With a squeak, a baby toy bounced off my cheek and landed on Lily’s stomach. She instantly stopped sucking on the bottle, and fumbled for the toy instead. I glared at Drake. “Really?”

  “You insulted my chin,” he said, pretending to be hurt while caressing the smooth skin along his jaw. “It’s highly offended.”

  “It doesn’t look offended,” I challenged. “It looks like it needs a tan.”

  He swung his leg off the couch and stepped around the table, sitting next to me with his arm propped on a knee. “Damn, woman. You hurt my chin’s feelings…I think you should kiss it, make it feel better.”

  When he stuck his chin out and leaned toward my face, I smiled at him. He took advantage by pecking my cheek, then the side of my mouth. When Jacks came to the door with his work shirt open, showing off a bright-white undershirt soaked with sweat stains, he found us with our lips fused together.

  “What in the fresh hell kind of babysitters are you people?” he barked from the open doorway. After kicking his boots off, he wiggled his fingers at Lily on his way to the kitchen, and winked at me over his shoulder. “Did you get her to eat for you?”

  “A little.” I paused to glare at Drake, who shrugged his shoulders. “I think she’s teething again. Wants to chew on everything.”