“But what about the hospital?” she asked. “I filled out employment paperwork.”
“Tommy Tom took care of that,” I answered. “You’re now under my alias name as Mina Lane. Sienna is now Sienna Lane. For the unforeseeable future, until we can nail my parents to the wall.”
She looked at me skeptically.
“It’s been six years, Tunnel,” she stated. “What’s going to change?”
I didn’t disagree. She was right, of course. I’d been at this for six years now, and now I was no closer to nailing than when I had first started.
“I’m going to fucking kill them if I have to,” I said. “I was trying to shut down the entire operation. If I don’t completely eliminate them and just cut them out of the picture, there’s going to be just that many more taking their place. But, at least, they won’t be after you or Sienna anymore.”
She ground her teeth.
“Why haven’t you already done that?”
She sounded so freakin’ brokenhearted about it that I wanted to do absolutely anything to take that pain away.
But I knew she needed to hear the truth. She needed to know exactly why I did this.
I pulled out my phone and pulled up an app. It was one that only law enforcement was allowed to have.
“This shows the number of kids that are missing in The United States right now,” I rumbled, pulling up the list of missing children. “I know for a fact that at least fifteen of these children have gone through my parents’ operation over the last six months.”
Her eyes widened, and a tear spilled over her cheek, and trailed all the way down to her chin where it fell down onto her pants.
“Shit.”
“How could I do this, bring myself back in your lives by taking my parents out, only to have this continue?” I asked, not expecting an answer.
“You couldn’t,” she whispered.
No, that was what I’d thought, too.
It wasn’t my baby that was being hurt, but it was somebody’s baby. Somebody’s Sienna.
And I wouldn’t sit here and allow that to continue.
“We’ve foiled almost all of their shipments,” I said. “They’re being very, very careful. Each time it happens, they wise up just a little bit more.” I trailed my finger down her face. “But Josh fucked up.”
Her eyes widened.
“He gave me an in and he doesn’t even realize it.”
She watched me avidly. “This blackmailing thing…it works both ways.”
Then I grinned manically.
“I think I missed that smile, that mischievous smile, the most.”
Chapter 18
Bless your stupid heart.
-Coffee Cup
Mina
My husband was alive.
Those words kept repeating in my head, dropping like a bomb each and every time I thought them.
I should be furious.
I should be, but I wasn’t. I should be pitching the biggest fit to end all fits, but I wasn’t. I should be screaming at him for putting me through the last six years, but I wasn’t. I should be crying still, but I wasn’t.
Why?
Because I’d made a promise to God. I told him that if he, somehow, brought Tunnel – Ghost – back to me, that I wouldn’t waste a single second. I wouldn’t stay mad. I wouldn’t scream and cry. I wouldn’t do anything to jeopardize the time we had together.
I’d already broken some of that promise by crying for half the damn morning. Each time that Ghost touched me, I cried. I couldn’t help it.
My husband was alive.
I shivered as I pulled my car into my driveway.
When I’d left this morning after seeing Tunnel, I’d been totally and completely lost.
I didn’t know what to do, think, say, or feel. I’d driven to the house, the one that Ghost Lane owned.
When I’d done a search on the appraisal district’s website for that man, I’d been looking for a reason to dispute the musings that had started to filter through my head.
Everything about ‘Ghost’ had started setting off little tiny alarms.
First, it’d been the way he smelled at that baseball game. Then, when I’d arrived at the house that was set up for me on such short notice, I started having my doubts.
Why would a house, one like the one I was walking into right now, be the exact house that I’d always wanted to live in? Sure, the exterior wasn’t what I’d wanted, but the interior, it was my house. My dream house—the one I’d wanted to share with my husband. The one that I’d told him about hundreds and hundreds of times over our many, many walks we used to take together.
Over the next week or so, I’d found myself suspicious.
So I watched, and the more I watched, the more suspicious I became.
Ghost…he didn’t like burgers.
Ghost stood like my husband—like a man who was confident in himself and didn’t care what any other person thought of him. But it was the leaning that got me. The way he never sat down, and when he became tired, he’d lean his hips against a wall or a tall counter, then stack his foot one on top of the other.
He also had this nervous habit, just like my husband had. He’d touch his fingertips together in a rhythmic pattern that only he saw in his head.
But what held me back from truly believing that it was my husband was his lack of stuttering.
My husband, Tunnel, had a stutter. He also had a compulsion where he pronounced the ‘Y’ in a word two times before he said the actual word.
Still, I continued to hold out hope. Maybe the stuttering was hidden away. Maybe the stuttering wasn’t a problem any longer. Maybe he wasn’t…maybe he was.
But today, when we came back for Sienna’s papers, I’d noticed those tattoos.
They may have been marred by the scarring of his burns, but they were still there. I’d recognize those tattoos no matter what, and those tattoos were my husband’s. Ghost was my husband. Ghost was my Tunnel.
After dropping Sienna off at her Explorer Camp, I’d driven to the house that I’d seen online, researched meticulously on Google Earth, and felt the last nail hammer home.
My husband was alive.
I felt him come up behind me, felt his large hands circle around my hips and smooth down over my stomach, and I shivered in reaction.
“You’re standing here in the middle of the kitchen like I’ve…”
“Like you’ve come back from the dead,” I croaked. “Every single time I think about it, I want to drop down to my knees and cry. I’m so happy you’re here…but I can’t wrap my head around it. Not yet.”
He hummed.
“I won’t leave you again like that,” he promised.
Those were just pretty words. He didn’t know if that was the case or not. He could die tomorrow and leave me alone again.
But I couldn’t live my life thinking that he was going to die at every turn. That was also part of my promise, part of the reason that I hadn’t yet freaked out. I’d promised myself that if I got this chance again—that if I got my husband back—I wouldn’t take it for granted. I’d be grateful for each day with him, and I wouldn’t piss it away thinking that he’d be hurt or would be taken from me again.
I was going to enjoy every single moment, because I knew better than anyone that another moment wasn’t promised. I’d lived that for the last six years, and now that my prayers had been answered, I was going to seize this opportunity and stop being sorry.
“You…” I hesitated.
“I what?” he prodded, running his beard along the line of my shoulder.
“You don’t hesitate on your ‘Y’s’ anymore,” I said. “And you haven’t kissed me seven times in a row.”
He chuckled darkly.
“The Y’s still make an appearance every once in a while,” he said, kissing the back of my neck. “As for the kissing, I had to get over that one, or I’d give everything I’d worked so h
ard for away.”
That made sense.
“I guess I could see that,” I murmured.
Was it bad that I missed it? That I wanted my old Tunnel back?
Those quirks had been one of the reasons that I’d fallen in love with the man. Sure, they were incredibly inconvenient, but that didn’t change the way I loved him. If anything, it only made me love him more.
He turned me, sensing my discomfort, and stared down into my eyes.
I raised my hand and smoothed it over his beard.
“I sure do like this beard,” I informed him, trying to smile.
He caught the hand and pressed it harder against his face.
“I’m still the same annoying person who’ll drive you insane,” he promised.
My brows lowered, and a frown took over my face.
“I never thought you were annoying,” I told him. “Inconvenient, yes.” I studied his beautiful green eyes. “Annoying? Never.” I stared at him hard. “Do you want to know the things I missed the most?”
His eyes softened.
“The way you used to kiss me seven times in the middle of the night when you thought I was sleeping.”
His grip on my hip tightened.
“The way you used to walk the house to make sure that everything was secure.”
His eyes closed.
“The way you used to call me halfway through my shift and tell me something funny that happened to you.”
He swallowed, and I saw his Adam’s apple work.
“The way you used to play cards with me because I was bored.”
His lips twitched.
“How proud you were of Sienna. You used to tell anyone who would listen all about her.”
He cleared his throat.
“What I missed the most, though, was this feeling right here. Having you to talk to. Being able to tell you anything and everything that I would go through my head, and you not judging me for being a weirdo.”
He started to chuckle then.
“Let’s go to the shower,” he ordered.
I followed behind him, taking one last look at my kitchen before I went.
“This kitchen,” I said to his back as he led his way to the bedroom.
He knew this house. Knew where everything was.
Another mystery solved.
“It was the one you wanted,” he said. “Everything here is what you wanted.”
I knew that, likely better than he did.
“What did you do, look at my Pinterest board?”
He shrugged and I knew that he had.
There was no way that my man would be able to remember everything. The main things, like colors and what kinds of countertops I wanted, sure, but the tiny stuff? The freakin’ rustic light plate covers? Yeah, those he wouldn’t know.
But he had them in this house, and it showed that he paid attention.
Ghost led me into the bathroom, then pulled out his phone and pulled up an app. I watched as he armed the house, then listened as the robotic voice from the front of the house said, ‘system armed.’
My brows rose.
“Don’t want to be stupid here,” he said. “I may know what’s going on, for the most part, but my parents are sneaky little assholes. They have been able to do some things that I would’ve never thought possible.”
I sighed.
“I hate your parents.”
He pressed a button on the shower wall, and the water turned on.
“This bathroom wasn’t my idea, though,” I mused.
He grinned, and I saw a piece of my Tunnel come out to play.
“This was my dream,” he said. “We’re putting one of these in the farm house.”
I rolled my eyes and started to strip, but Tunnel’s big hands stopped me.
“Let me,” he rasped.
I raised my arms and allowed him to pull my shirt up and off me, tossing it to the side of the room where the hamper was. It didn’t make it, and my pens scattered all across the floor, but neither of us made a move to go pick them up.
“Make sure we get those pens out of the laundry basket, or you’ll be getting ink on your pants like the old days,” I teased.
I was notorious for leaving pens in my pockets, and the pen exploding somewhere in the washing process.
Then I’d dry the clothes and permanently set the stains in. I’d ruined many clothes in my time, and a lot of the time they were Tunnel’s.
He grinned.
“I think I could handle having that happen,” he drawled, moving to my sports bra. “Why are you wearing this contraption?”
I grinned.
“I’m all about comfort these days,” I teased.
His eyes brightened.
“Is that why you wear those fucking leggings all the fucking time?” he growled.
I shrugged.
“Maybe.”
He just shook his head.
“Those are not pants, Mina,” He said. “Those are leggings. There is a difference.”
I grinned.
“I noticed that they were leggings, but I don’t see why they can’t be pants, too,” I teased him, then hissing in a breath when he swept his thumbs over my nipples.
He raised one low eyebrow at me as if to say, ‘what was that you were saying?’
I started to laugh, then.
That’d been a tactic he’d used a long time ago.
When I wanted to do something, and he didn’t want me to do it, he’d distract me with sex.
“So you don’t like the leggings?” I asked. “I have over forty pairs of them now.”
His eyes darkened and I reached for his shirt.
He lifted his arms and hunched over, doing it automatically.
See, I was five foot nothing. I literally would have to climb him to get to his head. He’d learned how to compensate for my shortness, and did it now, even after six years, as if it was second nature.
My heart felt full. So freakin’ full it almost hurt.
Almost.
“I didn’t say I didn’t like the leggings,” he grumbled, his hand going to the waistband of my scrub bottoms. “I just think they’re too revealing.”
“I don’t own a single pair of jeans anymore,” I blurted. “Or, at least, none that are with me. I left them all in storage after you…died.”
I wouldn’t own another pair until I had a reason to have them.
His eyes softened. “You’re gonna have to go get them out.” He lifted his hand to my neck and pulled my closer, forgetting that he had a job to do involving my pants. “Because you’re going to be on the back of my bike again, and you’re not going to be wearing leggings when you do it.”
And there was the reason.
Being on the back of his bike again sent a thrill through me that I couldn’t hope to contain. I couldn’t freakin’ wait to get back there. Where I belonged.
“I know, baby,” he growled. “I want you there, too.”
I pushed my own pants down, then slipped off my shoes and socks before kicking the entire pile into the corner of the small bathroom.
“This works for a single person, but this wouldn’t work for us for long,” I told him as I walked to the shower and turned it on. “We take up too much space.”
He laughed and pushed me into the shower before the water had warmed all the way, causing me to screech as the coolness hit my skin.
“Eeep!” I screeched. “Tunnel, you shit.”
I turned my most fearsome glare on him, and he did nothing but laugh.
“Your hair tie is still in,” he said without apology.
I continued to glare.
“Yeah,” I said. “That was going to come out before I got into the shower.”
He shrugged, then reached for my hair.
I bent my head forward, and came face to face with his scars once again, and sadness poured through me.
“I wish I could’ve be
en there for you,” I whispered as I raised my hand and ran it down the length of his chest. “I hate that you had to suffer alone.”
“I don’t wish you were there,” he replied. “I wish that you were never subjected to my life. If it wasn’t for my selfishness of taking you all those years ago, you would’ve been a whole lot safer. And you and our daughter wouldn’t be in the middle of my shit tornado.”
I bent forward and placed my lips on one scar in particular. “This one looks terrible. What happened here?”
I could tell he didn’t want to tell me by the way his body locked, but I looked at him with a ‘you better tell me or else’ look, and his mouth twitched.
“You sure?”
My stomach knotted.
“Yes,” I murmured almost soundlessly.
He pushed me under the water, and I closed my eyes as he started to wet my hair down.
“It’s not a happy story,” he hesitated.
I opened my eyes and immediately got an eyeful of water.
“Keep ‘em closed, darlin’,” he ordered, then reached for the shampoo.
That was another thing. My shampoo had already been here when I’d arrived. And the same exact brand of soap that I used.
“Should’ve realized the moment I arrived and there was sensitive skin soap everywhere that there was more to this than I realized,” I murmured almost to myself.
His soft chuckle echoed off the tile walls, then he cleared his throat.
“I tried to escape when I was about four weeks post op for my lung transplant,” he said.
I stopped him. “You’re on anti-rejection medications, right?”
He looked at me.
“Yes,” he confirmed. “Though, it was hard to explain why I needed them to my doctor. I told him that I had a lung transplant in a foreign country.”
I shook my head.
“That’s crazy,” I said. “I never thought about that. Keep going. I’ll try not to interrupt this time.”
His fingers were doing wonderful things to my head as he worked the shampoo through my thick locks.
“Don’t think I didn’t hear you say you wanted to cut this, either,” he growled. “I’d be devastated. I know you cut it all off after I died, but no more of that.”
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