The Outliers
Page 40

All the feelings I never thought I would experience again, happiness, joy, elation, and love, all came back to me at once. The weight lifted off my chest and I could breathe again. I was so light I felt as if I were floating above my own body.
Critter was driving. Finn was standing at the front.
Both we’re in one piece.
Both were alive.
 
 
Chapter 26
 
 
Finn
 
 
I still have no idea how Sawyer and her mother managed to free themselves from a man who would stop at nothing until he got what he wanted. What he wanted was their lives. By way of either submission or death.
My stomach rolls at the reminder of how close he came to getting what he wanted, of the despair I felt while thinking the absolute worst had already happened.
We were lucky
Just because I don’t know how they managed to free themselves doesn’t mean I was surprised. There were never two more-determined people on the planet. No one with stronger wills. No one braver.
They might not think so, but they were well equipped to handle the likes of Richard Dixon.
“I’ve never been so goddamn scared in my entire life,” I told Sawyer as she woke up from a twenty-hour nap. She rolled over took one look at me as smiled like I meant everything in the world to her. “I can’t help but think of what could happened to you if…”
“Don’t. Come here,” Sawyer said, stretching out her arm. She rolled over so that we were lying facing one another with our arms and legs intertwined, a lot like we did the first night she spent in my bed. Except this time one of my hands rested on top of our growing baby.
I hadn’t gotten much sleep at all. I found my rest in watching my girl sleep, her chest and belly rising and falling with each intake of breath.
“I missed you,” Sawyer said sleepily. And although her words were simple the look in her eyes said so much more.
“Me too,” I whispered.
Her eyed widened and met mine. “Richard,” she said, suddenly looking panicked.
“He won’t Hurt you again.”
She relaxed into me once more. “What happen to him?”
I shrugged. “Critter said he was taking Richard back to jail but not the one he escaped from.”
“Do you think that’s what he did?” She asked, knowing Critter just as well as I did.
I shrugged. “I think it’s best if we don’t know.”
“That sounds like something he would say,” Sawyer said, placing a hand on my face. I leaned in and kissed her, needing to feel her against me, needing to remind myself that although she was in my arms that she was really here. She was really okay.
“I’m here,” she reassured me, knowing exactly what I needed to hear.
“Yes, you are.”
She glanced over my head to the nightstand. I turned and noticed she was staring at her dirty clothes in a pile as well as the rock that her mother had been clutching to her chest when we’d found them.
“It was real,” she whispered.
“What was real?” I asked, turning back around to face her.
“You see that scarf?” she asked, pointing to the muddied purple piece of cloth on top of the pile. “I had a vision that this blonde woman saved me and she was wearing it. I know it sounds silly but it helped pull me through.”
I sucked in a breath, not wanting to think about how scared she must have been but glad she had found comfort in some sense, even if it was in a vision or a dream.
“What’s with the rock?” she asked.
I couldn’t help the smile that grew on my face. “That’s what your mother was holding. That’s what she hit Richard over the head with.”
“Strange looking rock,” she commented.
I sat up to inspect it closer. “You’re right. I’ve never seen a round rock like that around here. "I picked it up and turned it over. I almost dropped it when I saw what was on the other side.
“What?” Sawyer asked, scrambling to a sitting position on the bed.
The rock wasn’t a rock at all.
It was a skull.
Suddenly something clicked. The purple scarf. The skull.
I envisioned a certain picture hanging over Critter’s bar. One where I had my arm draped around Jackie. She was wearing the purple scarf I’d bought her from the craft fair. I even had her initials embroidered in the lining. JC. The exact initials that were peeking through the splotches of filth.
I dropped my head in my hands. At first, I felt my stomach roll like I was going to get sick. I took a deep breath through my nose but it didn’t help. This was her. This was Jackie. Suddenly it was two years ago and it was like I’d just lost her all over again. Her death was like a knife to my throat.
“What! What is it?” Sawyer asked again. It was her voice that brought me back to the present. Her voice that reminded me that it wasn’t two years ago anymore. I’d almost lost Sawyer. The love of my life. The mother of my child. But I didn’t. And something told me the blonde woman in Sawyer’s vision was someone familiar to me.
There had been a reason we hadn’t found her despite countless searches over the years. And although it sounded ridiculous to even think it, I think she stayed out there for Sawyer...for me.
I felt a warmth grow within me. A sense of completion. Finality. Love. We’d found Jackie...or just maybe, she’d found us.
“Finn?” Sawyer asked again.
I quickly turned the skull backed around. “Nothing, I thought a saw a worm on it. It was just a leaf.”
“That was an awfully big reaction for worm.” Sawyer said, skeptically. “For someone who grew up in a swamp.”
I laid back down on the bed and pulled Sawyer down with me. “Worms are gross,” I said, pressing her body against mine. Relishing the feel of her lips as a brush my jaw and chuckled.
“No, tell me. Please.”
I sighed. “Okay, but it’s going to sound a little crazy.” I warned her, tracing the freckles around her right eye.
“Lucky for you, I’m used to crazy.”
I told her everything and she remained expressionless until the end. “That’s not crazy, Finn. That’s beautiful.”
We remained silent for a while after that. Content with breathing each other in. “Did you are the bravest person I’ve ever met in my entire life?” I asked, not being able to hold inside how I felt any longer.