Page 224 of Things We Left Behind

The key.

I remembered Simon and Karen used to keep their spare key under the red planter they filled with ferns every spring and evergreen boughs every winter. Eagerly, I tipped it back and felt around the floorboards under it. Nothing.

Damn it. I guess some things did change. I moved the entire planter a foot to the right, then looked under Sloane’s whimsical welcome mat. I scoured every inch of the porch around the front door, then expanded my methodical search, pausing every minute or two to text her.

Me:I’m not leaving. Let me in.

Me:Are you okay?

Me:If you don’t at least respond, then I’m going to have to call Nash and have him do a welfare check.

Sloane:I’m fine.

Relief immediately gave way to suspicion. No insults. No accusations about shouldn’t I be drinking the blood of unicorns and leaving her alone. No hurling my past actions in my face.

The panic was back.

I checked the underside of the entire length of the railing. No key. When I got inside, I was going to bully her into giving me a spare key. Then I was going to have my security team install a state-­of-­the-­art system to keep her safe. I paced to the end of the house where the porch wrapped around the side.The flashlight from my phone panned over the thick, flaky bark of the tree trunk.

For the first time in weeks, I grinned.

I vaulted over the railing and landed in the flower bed between a budding rhododendron and an azalea. I shoved my phone in my pocket, then wrapped my hands around the trunk. With one confident hop, I sacrificed my leather Brioni loafers against the rough tree bark.

The trick with climbing a cherry tree was to keep all the force pressing in a downward motion so the bark didn’t peel away from the tree. I shuffle hopped my way up the trunk until I reached the first branch. The first cherry blossoms had already started to bloom, filling my head with their familiar scent. It fueled me, fed me, and I climbed faster.

I chose an aggressive trek, and when I reached my foot for a higher branch, I heard the telltale rip of fabric. The rip was followed immediately by a flow of fresh air over my balls. The tree was a few decades older than the first time I’d climbed it, and I was out of practice, but I managed to land on the porch roof with only a few more scrapes and tears.

Sloane’s bedside lamp was on, I noted as I scrambled up the gentle incline over the shingles to the window.

My heart stopped.

Her light was on, but she wasn’t in bed. Sloane.MySloane was sitting on the floor, arms wrapped around her knees as she rocked back and forth. Tears washed clean trails as they cut through the soot on her beautiful face. Her clothing was dirty. Even her hair had lost its brilliant shine. Her ponytail drooped with the heavy weight of smoke residue.

The middle window was open a few inches. It always had been. So I did what I’d always done. I pushed it up and let myself in.

I could only imagine the picture I made, slinging one leg over the sill onto the cushion of the window seat. But Sloane didn’t laugh. Or yell. Or tell me to go fuck myself and leave her alone.

She looked directly at me, then covered her face with her hands and cried harder.

“Fuck,” I muttered, clambering into the room and racing to her side. “Sloane. Baby.” My hands searched her arms and torso for injuries. Because only the worst injuries could break her like this. The worst injuries and the worst heartbreaks.

Finding nothing, I shifted her into my arms. Panic was a living breathing thing in my chest when she didn’t fight me. She should be telling me what an asshole I was. She should be throwing me out. Not collapsing against me.

I picked her up and held her cradled against my chest, and when she didn’t start throwing punches and insults, I marched us to the head of her bed. I dragged the covers back, kicked off my ruined shoes, and sat against the pile of pillows, still holding her.

Silent sobs racked her body, forming wounds in my cold, black heart. A bottomless well of tears soaked my shirt as I held her tighter to me and let one hand stroke down her ponytail. Over and over again. She smelled like the kind of smoke that destroyed dreams, and I could hardly bear it.

Yet even though it carved me up to see her pain, I realized what a gift this was. To be here when she broke. To pick up the pieces and help her put them back together again.

I didn’t tell her it would be okay. I didn’t beg her to stop crying. I just held on tight as my pathetic, cowardly heart broke.

I thought I’d been doing the right thing by keeping her at a distance. She was supposed to have been safer that way. But by leaving her alone, I’d left her vulnerable to a danger I hadn’t anticipated. I wanted to protect her from me, from the dark shadow that was my past, from the danger that was my present. But I’d left her open and vulnerable to something else. Something that had almost stolen her from me.

If my distance couldn’t protect her, my proximity would. From now on, I would be Sloane’s shadow.

The tears stopped sometime later. They were replaced by full-­body shivers. She still hadn’t spoken a word to me. And I was eager to do whatever I could before she regained her voice and tried to kick me out. Without a warning, I gathered her up and carried her into the bathroom.

“What are you doing?” Her usually husky voice was a painful rasp.