Show Me the Way (Fight for Me 1)

“We searched. Searched and searched and searched for what felt like forever. I hunted through that forest every day. Months. A year. Maybe more. Screaming her name. Begging her to come back. She was gone, Rynna. Fucking gone. No trace. No suspects. No clues.”

In agony, I looked at her, fighting the moisture that had gathered in my eyes. “Now I do it in my dreams. I hunt for her. Scream her name. Desperate to find her when I know with every part of me she’s gone.” My teeth ground. “Buried in some shallow grave.”

Tears streaked her cheeks. “Oh God, Rex. I’m so sorry. I’m so sorry. I can’t . . .”

She gulped around the tragedy. Like maybe the magnitude of it was slowly sinking in. Her arms wound around her stomach like she might be sick. “Oh God. Oh My God . . . Ollie. Oh God,” she whimpered. Looking up at me, she set one of those tender hands on my jaw, her face pinched in anguish.

How was it even possible she was looking at me that way? Grief striking her cheeks and sympathy in the warmth of those eyes?

“Did you ever tell Ollie? Does he know you loved her?” she almost begged.

My head shook. “He’d kill me, Rynna. He’d fucking kill me. I just let her walk away. She’s gone because of me. I was responsible, Rynna.”

“No.”

“There’s no lie you could tell me, no lie I could tell myself, that would convince me otherwise. I know it, Rynna. I know if I hadn’t have done what I did, she would still be here.”

It sliced through us. A double-edged sword. Piercing through the atmosphere.

My gaze traveled out into the night, to the duskiness that held to the sky, trees gusting in the wind.

Swore I heard Sydney’s spirit howling back.

“You’d think what happened would have driven the three of us apart. But it tied us together some way. Ollie’s been . . .” I gulped around the barbs spiked in my throat. “He was a goddamned mess, Rynna. Blaming himself for that night when the blame has always been on me, and I’m the bastard who can’t bring myself to tell him. He tries to pretend he’s okay, but he’s not. None of us are.”

Tenderly, Rynna touched my chin. Her lips trembled and her tears wouldn’t stop falling.

I almost managed a grin. “Kale is like a rock. Think he’s the one who held Ollie and me together when we were falling apart.”

“Does he know?”

I gave a regretful nod. “Yeah. He called it the second things started up with Sydney and me. Think the asshole manages to see everything before it even goes down.”

Rynna gave me the softest smile before she laid her cheek on my knee, watching me, holding on to my leg like she could keep me from splitting apart. The girl my strength when that was all I’d ever wanted to be.

“Tell me how you met Frankie’s mom,” she whispered, encouraging me to go on.

“Was lost for a lot of years, Rynna. Fucking lost. But the wilderness gets lonely, you know? So, I fucked around. And that was messed up, too, because any time I touched another girl, when I closed my eyes, only thing I saw was Sydney’s face.”

Rynna flinched, but I continued, unable to stop the train wreck from tumbling from my mouth. “Then Frankie’s mom . . .”

Rynna’s spine went rigid.

“It was just the same as always. Met her at a bar on the other side of town. Went back to her place. Whole time, that same guilt ate me up because the only thing I could think was I wished she was Sydney. Then one day, she showed up at my house, telling me she was pregnant.”

My voice dropped low, and my mouth angled at Rynna like I were offering her a dirty secret. “I freaked out. Accused her of lying. Claimed it wasn’t mine . . . because fuck, I couldn’t have a kid. Not with her.”

Rynna tried to subdue a sob. But it tore free. A partner to the ripping wind. “She’d told me fine. She’d get rid of it. No problem. She took off down my driveway. Next thing I know, I was chasing her, pleading with her to come back, promising her we’d figure it out. She told me the only way she was going to keep it was if I married her.”

The words deepened like a plea. “My mom always taught me to do the right thing, Rynna. So, I did. I married her. I didn’t even know her, didn’t even like her, and I fucking married her.”

“Rex,” she whispered.

My gaze turned to where she was still on her knees, staring up at me. Emotion throbbed all around. Circling us. Drawing us in.

My body shook, every part of me overcome. Overwhelmed. “And then . . . I’m holding this baby girl in my arms . . .” I held out my hands, palms up, like somehow Rynna might get it. Like she could see me holding Frankie Leigh for the very first time. Like she could experience what that felt like. “And suddenly, it’s not just the right thing. It’s the very best thing.”