Page 42 of Above All Else
“Even though you were here, I couldn’t come back, June. Not for anything.”
Scoffing, I swiped my hair off my forehead. “Except to murder me?”
“That’s not fair.”
“No?” I spun on him. “I waited for you to come back to me. I waited at the funeral. I waited after you graduated.”
He raised a brow.
“Yeah. I knew you’d graduated at the top of your class and then completed your residency in pathology. I waited for... a phone call... anything.” My heart slipped into my throat, my pulse hitting my temples. “Then your mom said you completed your fellowship and had started at the county coroner’s office.”
Both brows raised as he cocked his head back to the road. “You spoke to my mother?”
“I used to.” A considerable sigh fell from my lips as I glanced out of the window. The sun peaked over the mountains, brushing the treetops with a golden hue. “And then she told me to move on. That you had found your calling, and it was time I looked for mine.”
“That was four years ago.”
I puffed out my cheeks and leaned my head against the door.
“Why didn’t you just pick up the phone and call me?”
“Last time you saw me, you told me I was a mistake.” I scoffed.
“I was wrong.”
Pursing my lips, I rubbed my hands together in my lap, mymuscles fluttering. “I know.”
My life as I knew it was over.
My students, the whimsical little home I’d adopted, and the neighbors I’d known my entire life.
All gone.
My chest tightened, and the overwhelming need for clean air pressed against me.
“Are you cold?”
“Huh?” I tore my gaze away from the road and glanced at my shaking legs. “Oh,um...yeah. I kinda don’t have clothes.”
Carter reached behind his seat, pulled out a small bag, and plopped it on my lap—the leather chilling my skin like a freezer burn. “I have a long sleeve in there. Put it on.”
I unzipped the bag, my teeth chattering, and dug into the clothes, his essence saturating my lungs.
His fingers dig into my hair, his lips entwined with mine as our tongues dance.
My hips buck against him. My leg wraps around the back of his thigh, giving better access to the hardness pressed against me.
He pulls away. “Wait.”
My fingers brushed against a rough surface, and I grabbed it, bringing it to the top of the bag, unlatched the buckle, and gasped.
Metal knives, scalpels, and saws sat tucked inside their individual spaces.
“Shit.” Carter reached across the console and rolled it back up, dropping it in his lap as he watched the road and buckled it. “I forgot it was even in there.”
“This is what you had planned for me?” A tear trickled down my cheek.
“I think I’m going to be sick.” I removed a button-up long-sleeved coal gray shirt from the bottom of the bag. I shoved the bag to the back floor, where it belonged, and wrapped the shirt around my gooseflesh-ridden arms.