Found (Captive Heart #2) (12 page)

T
he sound
of a lawnmower beneath my window jerks me awake. It’s one of those weekend wake-ups that isn’t good, isn’t peaceful and cozy and will surely ruin your mood for the rest of the day.

For one thing, it’s loud. I don’t awaken to the sound of birds chirping and sunlight streaming in. Sometime during the night I threw my comforter off, so now my feet are frigid instead of toasty warm. My eyes feel heavy and puffy, and then I remember how many tears I spilled last night. My mouth is sour and dry from the crying jags I put myself through.

All in all, it’s a sucky wake-up. And to make it worse, Tucker’s side of the bed is empty. I can’t even roll over onto his hunk of man meat and scrub away my bad mood using his muscles.

“Tuck?” I call out, expecting his voice to float up to me from downstairs.

He’s probably down there making coffee and a bagel. Once he’s up, so is his stomach. That man’s appetite waits for no one. Not even his wife.

But I get nothing. Which makes me even crankier.

Last night royally sucked. It was beautiful, a shining moment that burnt out way too soon. And all because of Brian Fucking Lockwood. He had to go and run his mouth. But I could have also controlled my reaction. I fed in to exactly what he wanted. And now, I was likely going to lose my job.

Where the heck was Tucker? I really needed him and his abs right about now to cheer me up.

“Tucker? Where are you?” I call out into the house.

Nothing. What the heck?

I get up, pulling on the nightgown I’d discarded on the bench at the end of our bed two nights prior. Pulling it over my head, I listen for any type of noise in the house. But all I’m greeted by is silence.

After checking both bathrooms upstairs, and finding no Tucker in sight, I head downstairs.

Nope, he’s not in the living room. Or the basement. And I can’t see him in the kitchen as I peer through the open-concept arches and dividers connecting our first floor.

I check out front, peeking through the blinds. My Jeep is sitting in front of our house, but Tucker’s beige pickup truck is not across the street in its usual spot.

Maybe he went out to get breakfast? He usually texts me to let me know that if I was still sleeping. But maybe he just forgot.

I head to the kitchen to grab a granola bar until he gets back, because my stomach is rumbling. Too much white wine and not enough of the tasty ribs and wings last night.

I’m crossing to the fridge to grab some orange juice when I see it. The tiny folded note with my name on the front sitting on the counter next to the fridge.

Suspicion creeps into my blood like venom, and I can feel my body preparing itself for something. Something that makes the hair on the back of my neck stand on edge and my teeth grind together.

Tucker’s illegible handwriting hits me square in the face as I open the folded piece of paper.

I should have a reaction. A scream, sobs. A kick or a punch to an inanimate object in the kitchen.

But … I can’t feel a thing.

I sink to the cool hardwood, my tailbone making harsh contact with the floor. But I don’t even feel it. My entire body is numb, all of my feelings and expressions and reactions are gone.

Gone with Tucker. Out of the door, out of my life. Nowhere to be found.

The note still lies in the palm of my hand, and it may as well be slicing me up. That’s how much its presence, and Tucker’s absence, is killing me.

I know why he’s gone. He thinks that last night is his fault. Of that I’m sure. He thinks that because Brian Fucking Lockwood ran his big mouth in front of the party, and because I slapped him, that it’s somehow his fault.

I should have reassured him, should have told him that he wasn’t ruining my life or something. But I was too wrapped up in my self-pity, wallowing because I could very possibly get fired.

I must sit on the kitchen floor for hours, just staring off into space, because suddenly it’s dark out and I’m still in this ratty nightgown.

And I still feel nothing. So I drag myself to bed. Where I don’t cry. And don’t sleep.

I just wait for the sun to rise on Monday. And hope against hope that when it does, Tucker will be back.

“
A
nd in this corner
, weighing in at one hundred pounds soaking wet, is Charlotte ‘The Beast’ Lynch!”

Jackie pumps her fist and jogs around my desk, chanting like she’s Rocky or something.

“Will you quiet down? I’m trying to work here.” I scowl at her, annoyed that someone outside might hear.

“Jeez, ya crab. Lighten up. Landon fired Brian and you’re in the clear. It’s totally fine. You’re still kickass at your job, everyone here loves you and is behind you, you have the best friend in the world …”

“And my husband left me.”

I bury my head in my hands, the tears coming freely now. It’s been two days and Tucker being gone still hasn’t sunk in. I’ve tried to throw myself into work, staying at the office until all hours of the night. Not only to prove to Hunter that I love my job, after our talk about etiquette he let me go with a slap on the wrist, but to avoid going home to our empty condo. To our empty bed.

“He still hasn’t called?”

Jackie squats down next to me and wraps her arms around my shoulders. If anyone walks by, they’ll know something is up. And I don’t plan on telling anyone at work about this. Ever.

I shake her off and sniffle. “No. His phone is off, or disconnected, I can’t tell yet. No email, no letter, no carrier pigeon. No nothing.”

“I just don’t understand why he would do this. He loves you. I can see it and I don’t even know how to translate his caveman attitude most of the time.”

Her comment makes me smile. “I love that caveman attitude.”

And then my smile fades. Because Tucker is gone.

“I don’t know what to do. I love him, Jackie. I went so long without him, and now to know that he left, and he thinks that’s what’s best for me? God, I just, I don’t know …”

I collapse onto my desk again, too exhausted to do this for another day.

“So go tell him that.”

I look up to a shrugging Jackie.

“I would love to. But, oh hey, I can’t because he’s gone! Have you not heard anything I’ve said in the last twenty minutes?”

Jackie throws her blond curls over her shoulder.

“Has he ever done this before?”

I think about it. “Well, no. He’s been with me ever since he got out.”

Jackie lifts up onto the stilettos of her heels, walking on them and looking like a clown. “Well, what about when he was in prison? Did you guys ever fight?”

Her words tumble around in my brain, and I think back to the way Tucker retreated after Christmas.

“There was this one time. A couple months before he got out. He told me he was no good for me.”

I hadn’t believed him then, either. He’d tried to tell me to move on, to find my own life without him.

How could I ever do that when he was such an integral part of me?

H
e wouldn’t see
me again today. I drove an hour and a half each way just to be shut out and told I wasn’t on the visitation list.

I don’t know what’s more crushing. Having the other prison wives look at you with sympathy in their eyes, or have your husband have another man, also known as the prison guards, tell you he doesn’t want to see you anymore.

Because yeah, he didn’t even tell me himself. He’s just shut me out for the past two weeks. Won’t see me, won’t call me. I’ve written letters it’s gotten so bad, and we’ve barely done that in the two years he’s been locked up. Apparently, even snail mail is too slow for some inmates these days.

But today, I’m going to call. And call. I’m going to try to get through to him so that he has to talk to me. I’ll reach out to the guard I know he’s friendly with.

It started after Christmas. Tucker slowly began retreating. Calling less times a day, wanting to visit with me less hours on the weekend. At first I thought he was just adjusting to getting out soon. Or maybe he was just having a moody month. But now … this.

If he was going to end our marriage, if he didn’t want me anymore, he could at least have the decency to tell me himself.

I text the guard, Derek, that I know he’s friendly with. According to state laws, I shouldn’t have Derek’s cellphone number. I shouldn’t even know Derek’s name.

But prison is corrupt, and that corruption goes all the way up to the top and out to every single branch. There aren’t many people in the system that you can’t buy, for the right price. Derek’s price? His wife loves a certain type of expensive perfume.

A perfume whose company I just happened to do a successful campaign for a year ago, and have worked with ever since.

Derek responds ten minutes later, telling me to expect a call in half an hour. I wonder what he had to say, or most likely do, to get Tucker to agree to a phone call. I hope he isn’t hurt or in trouble, but part of me doesn’t really care.

I’m sitting on one of the long gray couches in my living room with my cellphone in hand ten minutes later, waiting. I’ll wait all damn night if it takes him that long.

Fifteen minutes later, the screen lights up and I swipe to connect the call.

“This call is from an inmate at
the
State Correctional Institution at Mahoney. Press one to accept.”

I hit the button with fervor.

“Tucker?” My voice is frantic and I realize I’m more on edge than I thought I was. This could be the conversation where my husband asks me to end our marriage.

A failed engagement and now a failed marriage. And Tucker is the only man I’ve ever truly loved. I don’t know what I’ll do without him …

“Hi, Char.” His deep voice sounds tired and strained.

“Oh God, I didn’t think you were actually going to call.” My legs are shaking so hard that I almost knock over the glass of water I put on the coffee table.

“Well, when Derek threatened to take away my meals for three days, I didn’t have much of a choice, did I?”

So he could only call his wife when the thought of his food disappearing became dire enough? I tamp down the anger that rears its ugly head and try to talk to him calmly. Hurt and upset won’t get us anywhere.

“Why won’t you let me come see you? Why haven’t you called?”

There is a heavy sigh on the other end of the phone. “Char, you should just move on.”

My heart sinks and I can feel the bile rising in my throat. “Move on? Tucker, stop this. Seriously. Why are you being like this?”

“Come on, Char. You’ve stuck by me as long as you could, and it’s admirable. It really is. But you can call it a day now. I’m just some washed up piece of shit convict, and I’ll be the same thing when I get out of here. You … you have a whole life and this bright future ahead of you. You’re great at your job, you have Jackie now, you’re so beautiful. Another guy would be so lucky to have you even look his way. And that’s what you should do. Find someone who is worthy of you.”

I’m sobbing by his last word. Not only because he’s trying to break up our marriage, but because he thinks so little of himself.

“You’re right. I have stuck by you. I fell in love with you at your lowest point, and have loved you fiercely ever since. I’ve driven three hours every weekend for two years to come visit you. I haven’t been able to touch you, to kiss you, or to even be alone with you in all of that time either. And still I love you. I love you more than I love myself. So no, Tucker, I’m not just going to move on. To find some other guy. Because you are my whole world, and there isn’t a way to separate that part of myself.”

I take a breath through my tirade and hear his heavy breathing coming through the phone.

“Now, I’m going to say goodbye and I love you before either one of us says something else that we’ll regret. I’ll be up at visitation next weekend, and I better be on that goddamn list. Goodbye. I love you.”

I hang up with a pained moan and bury my face in my hands.

Seven days later, I showed up to visitation hours and was let in.

Tucker and I cried quietly as we made up at our regular corner table. Even though I wasn’t allowed to comfort him and he wasn’t allowed to comfort me.

T
he drive
through the woods looks the same as it did over three years ago. The winding gravel trail, the mass of brush and trees. The only thing different about this journey was that the leaves are a leafy green in the middle of summer.

And the fact that I’m alone.

The wooden Camp Marsh sign comes up on my right and is followed by a fit of laughter and spray of water. I slow my car and roll down the window, only to get shot in the arm with another blast of water.

“Whoops! Sorry, mister!”

Two little boys run down the hill, shooting each other with water guns and laughing the entire way.

My car crests the hill and then there it is, the entire camp in the valley down below. And this is another difference. It’s not barren and cold. It’s not just Char and I out here in the frozen wilderness.

There are kids everywhere. And counselors in their hunter green shirts, chasing them around. There are rowboats on the lake and tug of war matches going on in the quad. Kids sit at the picnic tables strewn about outside, coloring or reading or just licking ice cream cones.

I pull into a lot off the main quad and get out to stretch my legs. My body is tired from the travel, and the fresh mountain air I suck into my lungs is refreshing and delicious. It’s been two days since I left Lancaster, and I stayed in a hotel last night. Even though I intended to come here, to come see William Marsh, I needed a night alone. I needed to think. I needed to sit on the floor of that dingy hotel room and mope and try not to open one of the mini-bottles of alcohol in the fridge.

My heart still aches like a cut that’s been sliced too deep and won’t clot. It throbs in my chest, the beat chanting Charlotte’s name. I miss her smile and her eyes, her hair. I miss her voice, the way she threw her arm over my hip in the middle of the night. I miss everything.

And it’s only been two days. I have no idea how the fuck I’m going to live without her.

“Well, no shit.”

I turn around and there he is. William Marsh. The owner of this camp, the man who forgave me for what I did. And then proceeded to visit me in prison for three years and basically become like a father figure to me.

He’s tan and leathery from the sun, with a shock of white hair and arms that are probably more muscular than mine. Even though he is about sixty-five years old, he still runs each morning at five before playing and executing activities with the kids each day. And he’s been married to the same woman for forty years. He’s the man I want to become.

Well, if I hadn’t just left my wife to give her a better life.

“Willy. It’s so good to see you.” I shrug and step towards him as he embraces me in a gruff, manly hug.

“Tuck, what’re you doing here? I didn’t think you’d come since you told me no at the beginning of the summer.”

I look off into the distance at the lake. “Yeah well, I needed a break. I had to get away. It seemed like the right place to come to.”

Willy is quiet for a second, assessing my mood as kids scream and run all around us. “Ah, I get it. Something happened.”

I don’t confirm or deny it to him.

“Well, we don’t have to talk now. It’s Tuesday, which means it’s Taco Night. Melody is fixing up some real tasty meats in the mess hall. Why don’t you drive out to one of the empty counselor cabins and put your stuff away? Then walk down and join us for dinner.”

He turns without my answer, knowing I’ll follow his word because on this land it’s golden. And he’s also the only man I’ve really ever respected besides my high school and college football coaches.

I start the car and drive the service road down to the cabins out farther in the woods. Out here is where the counselors stay, and hook up with each other all summer. They have a drama all to themselves. There are also a few small guest cabins for visiting friends or the occasional local celebrity who comes to entertain the kids for a night. And then way farther out is Willy and Melody’s house.

Now that I see the big log cabin, stark and tall above the trees, I wonder why Char and I never just came back here and stayed in their house when we were hiding out. Probably because we knew we were already trespassing, and that would have just felt like too big a line to cross.

I let myself into one of the guest cabins, which seems empty. I put my duffel on the floor and survey the small hut. This cabin is probably only the size of a normal living room, with a twin bed against each wall and a door on the back wall that I can only assume leads to a shower.

I know I should get down to the mess hall, but the idea of scrubbing away the dirt from the hotel and the regret of leaving Char is too tempting to pass up. I slip into the stall, which barely contains my body, and think of the time I walked in on Char in this same exact kind of shower when we were in camp. Or how we used to lay the skinny mattresses on the floor to build ourselves a bed. And then we’d get as close as we possibly could …

It only takes me as long as squeezing the shampoo into my hands to realize that coming here might be a bad idea. I see Char in every nook of this place, smell her in every corner. And we didn’t even stay in this cabin. But it’s no shit that every single thing reminds me of her. This is where we found each other again; its where we fell in love.

I finish the rest of the shower with a lump in my throat and my eyes threatening to spill tears.

When I finally make it down to taco night, I can barely look at the food I’m so depressed.

* * *

A
week
into my stay at Camp Marsh and Willy has had enough of my brooding silence.

“Sit down, now.” He waves to a picnic table outside the canteen and I reluctantly sit down.

For a week I’ve been good. Or … I’ve been decent. Better than horrible. Which I guess isn’t really good. But … I’ve been getting through. I’ve been doing repairs on all of the buildings for Willy and Melody, eating dinner with them each night. I’ve helped out with some of the kid’s sports games during the day and even been having a drink or two with the counselors by the fire pit at night. And by drink, I mean Pepsi. While I watch the love triangles and ridiculous drama unfold. It’s actually pretty distracting.

And when I lay down in the guest cabin at night, all I think about is Char. I picture her lying on the floor of the cabin with me, touching her anywhere my hands can reach. I dream about her soft body beneath me, the expression she makes when I stroke all the way to the hilt. The noises that she makes and the way she breathes my name as she comes.

My bones and muscles ache from the loss of her. I miss her down to every last tendon, down to my soul.

I fold my hands under my chin and look off into the distance at the campers playing, getting in all the time that they can before the dinner bell rings in an hour.

“Tucker, look at me.”

I direct my eyes to him, if only out of respect. I have no interest in having this conversation with him.

“I know what you’re doing now. And I don’t know why you’ve picked this place to do it. Maybe it makes you feel like a kid. Maybe it’s just all less complicated out here for you. You’re hiding. You’re running.”

I don’t confirm this for him, but I know he’s right. I realized that three days ago. That whenever it got to tough, whenever I felt suffocated in my own skin, I ran.

“Tuck, life has been easy for you.”

I scoff at his statement that couldn’t be further from the truth.

“It has though. Before your injury, you were a golden child. Sure, your dad was a prick. But other people, they put you high up on this pedestal. You never got told the word no. Life never threw you any challenge flags. Football came easy. I’ll bet that throughout high school and college, you didn’t have to work hard at anything you didn’t want to. Am I right?”

I think it over for a minute. He’s right. I wanted to work at football, but school? Classes? Girls? Anything else … it all came easy. Someone else worked it out for me, or the universe just handed me what I wanted at the moment.

“Yeah, I guess so.” I shrug, looking more like a sulking teenage boy than a fully grown man.

“After your injury, nothing came easy. You had to work at everything. And it just wasn’t something that you’re used to. So you started to run. You ran from your life by using drugs. And then you ran from your mistakes concerning that by coming here. And then you took the deal without going to trial. You never fought, you ran. And now, life is getting too hard. People are judging you. Your solution? To run away from the only woman who has ever loved you so completely that she has stuck by you through everything.”

I wouldn’t be surprised if my heart was lying beside us, bloodied and mangled, in the dirt. Willy’s words hit hard. But they’re also true.

“You don’t think I’ve already heard all of this in therapy? I get it. I’m a coward. Why are you doing this?”

Willy reaches out and lays his hand over mine. It’s intimate and fatherly, and while my insides warm, preen to make him happy … I’m also uncomfortable. I never had parental love like this, and I’m not sure what to do with it now.

“Because I’m not going to let you off easy like your shrink. I’m not going to analyze you and let you walk out the door thinking you’ve made some big strides today. Hell no. I’m going to tell you this. Get off your ass, stop being a little bitch, and call your wife. Beg her to forgive you and plead with her to take you back.”

A chuckle bursts from my throat before it’s replaced with a frown. “Willy … she’s too good for me. Our life, it will only bring her down. Drag her into the dirt where I reside. I don’t want it to be hard for her. Ever.”

Willy slaps a hand on his knee and starts laughing. Hard. “Son, do you think marriage is ever easy?! I’ve been married to Melody for over forty years and it’s a challenge every damn day we get up. The number of days that have gone absolutely perfect in our marriage … hell, I can probably count them on one hand. Life is messy. And marriage is the number one culprit.”

I lean in, listening to him.

“But does that mean I ever want to give up? Say goodbye and leave Melody? Hell no. I love that woman more than earth itself. More than anything I got, including my own body. I would die without her, and I sure as hell don’t know how I’d be able to do a damn thing if she wasn’t planning it all out. Marriage is worth it, love is worth it, because you work through all of the hard stuff. It’s like a diamond. There is always going to be coal and dirt on the surface, and it may take a long time to dig it out or rub it off. But in the end, you’re left with this thing that is solid, unbreakable, beautiful and perfect.”

He’s right of course, so absolutely right. And now I feel like the biggest moron who ever lived.

Willy must see the horrified shock on my face. “I’d say right about now, you’re realizing how big of an idiot you are.”

“I have to go …”

He calls after me as I sprint back to my cabin. “Tell Charlotte to come out for the weekend! We would love to see her!”