The Christmas He Loved Her (Bad Boys of Crystal Lake 2)

She focused on the china cup in her hands. At one time there’d been eight cups, the bone-white china adorned with a delicate pattern of indigo blue roses. Now only five remained. The set was broken. It was unfinished. Kind of like Raine.

“You know I don’t usually say much or get too involved in the lives of those I love. I’ve always been of the mind that generally people need to come around on their own. But, Raine—” Marnie’s voice deepened and she paused.

Raine’s bottom lip trembled. Still she refused to look up at her mother-in-law.

Marnie cleared her throat and grabbed Raine’s hand, her fingers warm against Raine’s cold skin. “You’re not coming around, and I’m afraid for you. I thought that with Jake home and the fact you actually came to dinner the other night…I thought you might have turned the corner, but honey, I have to be honest with you. I’m worried.”

“Marnie, I’m fine.”

The words sounded hollow, even to Raine.

“You’re not.” Marnie’s voice broke a little. “You’re not fine at all.”

Her face was hot and the urge to wrench her hands from Marnie’s grasp strong, but Raine kept still, afraid that if she moved an inch, the wall of emotion inside her would break and her plan not to upset Marnie would blow wide open. It was so hard, though. The pressure inside was fierce, like a geyser about to explode.

“I know you’ve had a really tough time, the last six months especially so, but you’re much too young to have given up hope, and I—” Marnie’s voice wavered and slowly Raine met her gaze. Marnie squeezed Raine’s hands. “I can’t lose you too.”

“I’m not going anywhere, Marnie.”

“That’s my point, sweetie. You’re standing still, and if you don’t start moving forward, time will pass by with no regard, and before you know it, you’ll be looking back at wasted years.”

Raine’s heart beat faster as the blood rushed through her body, making her dizzy. The cracks, it seemed, were seeping. “It’s not that easy.” She withdrew her hands from Marnie and wiped her forehead. “I lost everything last year. I can’t…” She shook her head, having a hard time articulating the thoughts that filled her mind.

“Everyone grieves differently, Raine. I won’t pretend to know what you’re feeling, but I do have some perspective. I lost a son and pieces of my heart are broken…pieces that won’t ever be repaired. No matter how hard he tries, Steven can’t fill the gaps, and neither can Jake. They’re the scars that Jesse left behind, and I had to find a way to live with them. I had to find a way to go on for the ones left behind.”

Raine wiped at her face slowly and whispered, “It’s just so damn hard.”

No one slept beside her at night. There was no one there to listen to her sobs, or wipe away her tears. No one to hold her when she was cold, or tell her that things were going to be all right. No one to tell her she was pretty or interesting…or that she mattered.

But the truly sad thing was that there were some nights Raine didn’t even know why she cried. She just did.

“I know it’s hard, Raine. But you have to try to find something to hold on to…something to anchor you. Even Jake—”

Raine’s head snapped up. “Jake?” A

n image of his dark, tortured eyes solidified in her head. “You think Jake is okay? That he’s over whatever the hell it was that happened over there?”

Raine slid from her chair and began to pace. Gibson whined and sat near Marnie’s feet, his tail at half-staff, his large brown eyes fixed on Raine as she crossed to the window and looked out into the darkness.

Her heart hurt. Her throat was tight, and she felt as if she was going to throw up. “Has he ever told you what happened?” She barely got the words out and stared at Marnie’s reflection in the window. Tears began to fall down her cheeks and she wiped them away angrily. “Because he’s never said anything to me. Nothing.”

Marnie shook her head slowly, her voice barely above a whisper. “No.”

For some reason, her quiet manner revved up Raine’s anger. Something gave way inside her as she whirled around, pushing back the strand of hair that never stayed put. “Don’t you want to know? Don’t you want to know exactly how Jesse died?”

Marnie’s gaze didn’t falter. “No.”

“I do. I want to know every single detail,” Raine continued, as if Marnie hadn’t spoken at all. “I don’t care what the official report says. That’s just a lousy piece of paper with a bunch of words I don’t feel a connection to. I don’t care that it tells me it was fast, or that he wasn’t in a lot of pain. I don’t care that a fucking bullet tore through his aorta, while a piece of shrapnel sliced through his jugular.” Tears flooded her mouth, her nose—and something inside Raine burst open until pain lanced across her chest and flushed through her in a hot thrust that left her clammy. She was about to fall apart, and there wasn’t a damn thing she could do.

“I don’t care about any of that, because they’re just words on a piece of paper that some stranger I’ve never met wrote up. They don’t mean anything to me.” Her entire body shook violently, and for a moment the world darkened. All color fled her vision until there was only gray, and white noise filled her ears.

When Marnie flew to her side and wrapped her arms around her, Raine went still. It had been so long since she let anyone touch her like this.

The space inside her expanded and for a moment she couldn’t breathe. The pain was much too intense. She closed her eyes and slumped into Marnie’s arms, suddenly so utterly defeated and weak that if not for her mother-in-law, she would have fallen to the floor.

“I need to know everything. I need to know how it happened. Why it happened. I need to know if the sun was shining or if they were in the middle of another sandstorm. Did he sleep all right the night before? Or did he have one of those god-awful nightmares he had whenever he was home? I need to know that he was okay in the end. That his pain…that his fear was dealt with. I want to know why he was acting so out of it and weird that last time he was home on leave.”

There it was. The dirty little worm that had been digging into her heart and her mind for so long. “He wasn’t right,” she whispered.