Page 14 of The Whisper Place (To Catch a Storm #3)

He opened the horizontal door and gestured for me to go first. Something clenched in my chest at the sight of the door opening into the ground, the stairs that led down into darkness.

It was fine, though. I was fine. I was Darcy.

I took a deep breath and tried to shake out the uneasiness in my chest, flashing a tight smile at Charlie as I passed him and started walking down.

The stairway was narrow with a low ceiling and roughed-in walls that bled dirt and cobwebs.

A tarp hung at the bottom of the stairs, curtaining the refracted light from the room beyond it.

I stared at the light, clinging to it as my heart kicked into high gear.

Two minutes. I could do this for two minutes; a quick walk around and then back out. I just had to keep breathing.

Charlie pulled back the curtain to reveal rows of pot plants baking in the artificial light. He gestured for me to go first and I stumbled ahead, trying to look like I was paying attention while scanning the far edges of the room for any windows or other ways out. There were none.

“—why LEDs really help. They don’t draw enough electricity to ping any radars.

” He kept talking, and I tried to focus on what he was saying, but the more he talked the less sense any of it made.

All I could hear above my racing pulse and breathing was white noise.

We got to the end of the row, which dead-ended into cinderblock.

I turned around, but Charlie’s massive shadow took up the whole space.

I couldn’t get around him, couldn’t get outside.

The stairs beyond the tarp had disappeared.

The sky and sun were gone; I’d been swallowed by this room.

My back hit the wall as Charlie’s voice rose.

It wasn’t him anymore. The voice changed, became sharp and angry.

The silhouette grew bigger. A hand raised and I flinched. My knees started to give out.

“No, don’t. Please.” I couldn’t breathe.

Hands—impossible hands, how were these hands here, now?

—caught my arms and I fought against them.

I couldn’t let them grab me. I wouldn’t, not ever again.

The world I’d created, the world where Darcy existed, melted away until there was only panic and sweat and screaming.

My stomach heaved. The lights dimmed. I lunged sideways and felt a crash.

Something hit my head and I curled up, trying to become as small as possible, contracting everything I was around my frantic, spasming lungs.

There was nothing.

Black.

Quiet.

And then, light.

I opened my eyes to blades of grass eclipsing the robin’s egg blue of the sky.

“Breathe, Darcy. Just breathe.”

The voice came from somewhere above me. A large hand gently rubbed up and down my back. I tried breathing, found I could, and without thinking began to inhale in time to the movement on my back.

After a minute the pieces of what happened in the grow room started coming back to me and I pushed myself upright, sitting with my knees drawn up tight in a patch of grass in Charlie’s backyard, a few feet away from the cellar door.

Charlie sat across from me and my back grew suddenly cold where his hand had been. I was covered in sweat and shivering, despite the warmth of the sun.

“What do you need? Water? A blanket?”

I shook my head, afraid to look at him. The back of my head throbbed and I flashed back to something crashing in the grow room. “Did I break your greenhouse?”

He waved the question away. “A plant or two. Don’t worry about it. But the light—” He scooted marginally closer, cautiously examining my hair. “I think it hit you. Are you okay? Do you want an aspirin or something?”

My stomach pitched at the idea of putting anything in it. “No. I just—” I broke off as a tremor ripped through my body, making me shake all over. “Could you maybe put your arm around me? Just for a second. I’m so cold.”

He did immediately, sitting next to me and pulling me in toward his chest. I closed my eyes and listened to his breathing, the steady thump of his heart.

We didn’t talk. He didn’t press me with questions about what happened or why.

He didn’t make me feel like I needed to get up and pretend I was okay, like none of it happened, like I had to be Darcy in my new dress.

I could just be. I could just breathe in the grass and clover and sunshine and the warm, clean smell of him against my temple.

Just be here, and not alone. His hand wrapped around my entire shoulder, his touch light but overwhelming in the amount of comfort it offered.

I felt safe, truly safe, for maybe the first time that I could remember. I never wanted to move from this spot.

Gradually, my heartbeat evened out and the cold sweat soaking my Ragstock dress dried in the sun.

I lifted my head, reluctant to break away from him even though I should.

Blake could pop around the corner any second, and I wasn’t ready for the amount of questions, demands, and general chaos that would ensue if she found us together on the grass.

“Thanks,” I offered, scooting away and sitting cross-legged. “I’m . . . claustrophobic.”

It was true, but the shade of truth that described the ocean as wet. I couldn’t tell him anything more, and he didn’t seem to expect me to. He looked at the open cellar door and shook his head.

“You should have told me. I wouldn’t have made you go down there.”

“I know. I thought it would be okay for a minute. Exposure therapy, or something like that.” I gave him a shaky smile. “I’ll help you clean up, or pay for whatever I broke.”

“You’ve already paid for it by helping Blake and me.” His warm brown eyes found mine. “You don’t have to, you know. I don’t want you to feel obligated because you work at the bakery.”

“That’s not it.”

One of his hands was braced in the grass.

In the cellar, I’d thought his hands were someone else’s.

Hands that closed like vices, that could find you anywhere, no matter how small or quick you tried to be.

But those hands were gone now, forever. I’d buried them.

I’d covered them with dirt and branches and leaves and walked away, praying that the worms would find them and feast.

Charlie’s hands were nothing like my stepfather’s.

Charlie’s hands were bear paws, massive and adorable and alive.

I reached over and slipped my fingers under his palm, holding on to the warmth and strength.

It felt like my entire life rested on the edge of a knife, and everything that came before was on the other side of the blade, ready to finally be cut away.

“I’ve never had friends like you and Blake before.”

“Bickering siblings in arrested development?”

I huffed out a laugh that felt impossible ten minutes ago. “It’s not easy for me to get to know people. It feels safer sometimes—being alone. Keeping space between me and everyone else.”

“I get that.” Charlie glanced toward the horizon where the fields rolled into the sky.

“But it’s different with you and Blake. I want to hang out with you and help you and be part of your lives.

I guess that’s what friendship is?” It had only taken me twenty-four years to figure that out.

Twenty-four years, a murder, a fake identity, and a new life.

And all of that had somehow brought me exactly here, sitting in the grass with Charlie on the edge of an endless spring field.

His fingers curled around mine and squeezed, sending warmth through my entire body. When his mouthed curved up, lifting his beard into a shape I already knew so well, my heart picked up again, but in a way I’d never thought I would feel in any version of my life.

“Friends.” He nodded and lifted my hand out of the grass, looking at them linked together. “You know, sometimes friends go out with each other. If they both want to.”

His gaze traveled up my arm to my face. I smiled, tilting my head. “That’s good, because I was thinking of asking Blake out.”

He shook his head and the grin turned lopsided. “Makes sense we’d start fighting over you, too.”

I pulled his hand up and held it in both of mine before pressing it to my lips. He shifted, cupping my jaw and lacing his fingers through the hair behind my ear. Then Blake’s voice made me jump.

“Well, shit.” She looked at the two of us in the grass, hands on her hips, eyes narrowed, pink hair rippling in the breeze. “Here we go.”