Just a Little Series (Parts 1 - 4) (24 page)

“Julie,” she glanced out the window at the
heavy snow. She turned back to me. “Go home. It’s late. It’s dark.
Wherever he is, I’m sure he’s fine—”

“But—”

“Julie,” she said again, her voice growing
testy. “It’s almost Christmas. Don’t you think your family wants
you home right now… and not on a wild goose chase?”

I stood in the middle of the floral shop and
shook my head. Christmas or not, I didn’t really care. I wanted to
find Luke, or at least know that he was okay.

“Something must be wrong,” I ignored her.
“Luke wouldn’t just take off and not come back.”

“Sure he would,” Lonnie stepped out from
behind the curtain that separated the storefront from the back
office.

“Stop,” I pointed at him, “you’re the last
person I want to hear attitude from right now.”

“I’m just saying,” Lonnie said, now leaning
against the counter.

“Where does he live?” I asked Grace,
ignoring her husband.

“Couldn’t tell you if we wanted to,” Lonnie
said. “We don’t stay in touch, remember?”

“148 Main,” Grace avoided Lonnie’s stare.
“It’s a two-story apartment complex here in the district. Right
down from Dot’s Antique Shop.”

Not sticking around to hear how Lonnie and
Grace’s conversation would unfold from there, I ducked out into the
snow and headed for Luke’s. One block later, my toes were frozen.
My nose felt like it could break off, and I’d lost all feeling in
my fingers.

I reached Luke’s complex and rang the
bell.

Nothing.

I knocked—pounded, actually—but there was
still no sign of him. And suddenly, an eerie feeling settled in the
pit of my stomach.

It all felt too familiar.

What if he had left?

What if all the pressure was too much? He’d
been depressed for so long about not getting back to his normal
work schedule, and now that he was back at the station, Charlie had
been treating him like dirt. The person he respected the most
suddenly stopped respecting him. And then, adding in all the
familial pressure he was under with Lonnie only made matters even
worse. And then, of course… there were all those mixed emotions
he’d been feeling because of me….

What if, when he added it all up, it was
just too much?

Did he make like Derek and leave Oakland for
good?

“Luke!” I screamed, now banging on the door.
“Please, Luke!”

I didn’t even care that it was a shared
complex; surely another tenant would hear me and let me in. Surely
someone
would know
something
. Had anyone seen him
come or go? Where was he?

The crunch of footsteps in the snow rounded
the corner and I stopped, praying it was Luke as he returned home.
But I soon realized that I couldn’t have gotten so lucky. It wasn’t
him; it was, however, a comforting and familiar face.

“Miss Julie,” Detective Bruno rounded the
corner, “still nothing?”

“Where is he?” I asked, tears welling up in
my eyes. “Why isn’t he answering?”

Bruno wrapped me in his warm arms and let me
cry against his chest. It wasn’t long before he pulled away, draped
his arm across my shoulders, and walked me down the street to his
car.

He didn’t say where we were going, but I
knew. He was pulling me off the street and taking me home; whether
I liked it or not, Bruno was calling off my search.

Just a few minutes later, I was sitting on
the first step inside the house, listening as Detective Bruno told
Charlie he’d found me wandering through the historic district, cold
and frazzled… and looking for Luke.

“Thanks for bringing her home,” Charlie
waved as Bruno let himself out.

When the door shut, Charlie turned to me and
sighed.

“What do I have to do to get through to you,
Julie?” he asked, grabbing at the roots of his short hair.
“Stop—chasing— Luke. He’s no good for you—”

“I know you think that,” I pulled myself up
to take a stand. “And I know you’ve thought that since the day he
came here to talk to you.” A questionable look swept across his
face, but he bit his tongue and let me continue. “But you know
what, Charlie? I don’t care anymore. I’m not gonna keep pretending
that what you’re doing is okay. You can’t keep bending over
backward to keep me from seeing him. You can’t follow me around,
question my every move, and lock me up in jail cells for the rest
of my life. I love him—”

“I don’t care,” he said, acting as though my
words had stung a little. “As long as you’re under my roof—”

“I live by your rules,” I said. “Yeah, I
know. I’ve heard it a million times.”

“You and Luke… that combination is out of
the question—”

“I don’t understand why you hate him—”

“I don’t care if you understand!” he yelled.
He took a deep breath to calm himself before continuing. “Luke is a
damn good cop; he’s an even
better
person. I couldn’t ask
for someone better on my force. My feelings about this situation
have
nothing
to do with me not liking him. I love that kid
like he’s my own.” He raised his chest as if he was done explaining
himself, but then he continued. “My problem, Julie, is that I don’t
like the idea of you
with
him.”

“If he’s so great,” I hoped to get to the
bottom of whatever it was that was going on, “why are you so
recklessly determined to keep us apart?”

He glared at me, wearing his typically stern
expression, but I refused to falter. Finally I had something worth
fighting for, and I was
going
to fight for it. Charlie
must’ve sensed the determination in my stare because he finally
dropped his head.

“Because,” he said, “if you keep running
after him, you’ll finally get what you want.”

“And getting what I want is a
bad
thing?”

“Yes,” he admitted, and I had to give him
credit for his honesty. But I still didn’t understand. “You’re
beautiful, Julie. You’re so intelligent, and sure… Luke would be an
idiot to ignore all of that. So yes, if you go after him, he’ll
fall—hard. And maybe someday you’ll get married and have a kid of
your own.”

“I’m failing to see the problem with this
picture,” I nearly whispered, imagining the joy that would come
with spending an eternity with Luke.

“What happens when you get that call?” he
asked, his eyes welling up with tears. “
I’m sorry, Mrs. Reibeck,
your husband won’t be coming home. He’s dead
.” He choked down a
sob, and I could see him reliving his very own past. A tear escaped
from his eye, and he quickly wiped it away. “Then what, Julie? Then
you have
nothing
!”

“Charlie—”

“No!” he yelled. “Why haven’t you learned?
Don’t you remember what you went through the night Luke was shot?
Don’t you remember the hell it put you through? Multiply that by a
million and maybe you’ll understand what it would be like to fall
in love with him, marry him, have a family with him… and then have
it all ripped away in one fell swoop.”

I bit my tongue and swallowed hard.

Matt had only been three when Charlie’s
wife, my Aunt Laurie, was killed in a hit and run accident. When
Charlie’s peers showed up on his doorstep, heads hanging low, and
delivered the news to my uncle, his life came crashing down. He’d
lost his wife, and there was nothing he could do to rectify the
situation. It was completely out of his control. He was left to
raise Mattie alone, and—true to what I’d always believed— he’d
never healed his broken heart.

And now he was taking his heartache out on
me….

“Charlie,” I kept my voice low, “I know you
miss Laurie, but no matter whom I choose to love, that love will
come with the risk of loss. Laurie had the safest job in the world,
but that didn’t keep her from meeting her inevitable fate.” Charlie
continued to shake his head, practically blubbering at this point.
I couldn’t be sure he was listening to a single word I said. “I
don’t want to live my life in fear anymore. Getting through this
past year has been one of the hardest things I’ve ever done. I
cried myself to sleep for months after we buried my parents. I
struggled to fit into this town and make friends at a new school.
News flash,
I didn’t fit in
. The only friend I had was Matt.
The
only
reason people accepted me was because of him. But
deep down, I was just that freak whose parents were slaughtered. No
one wanted to be my friend, Charlie. But then I met Luke…and Derek…
and everything changed. People started to actually care about me
for
me
. I finally felt like I belonged somewhere.” Tears
soaked my face, running from my eyes to my mouth. I wiped them away
with the back of my sleeve and shook my head. “I lost Derek. He’s
gone, and he’s probably never coming back. But please don’t take
Luke from me. He’s all I have,” I cried harder still, almost
toppled over from the pain. “So please… if you know where he
is….”

Charlie dropped his head. He wiped away a
single tear and shrugged.

“I haven’t heard from him, Julie,” he said,
and I truly believed him. “You’ll be the first person he tries to
contact. If he’s not checking in with you, maybe you should take
the hint.”

I nodded and turned back for the stairs.

“As long as Luke wants me in his life,” I
turned back to get my last word in, “I’m going to be there. I don’t
care if it’s one day, two months, or a lifetime… I’m not going to
run from him just because I know he could die someday. Charlie,
we’re all dying. Every breath we take… we’re one step closer to the
end. And I want to spend every second of my life holding on to the
people I love. If you can’t respect that, fine. That just makes you
one less person I don’t have to waste my time loving.”

He nodded as if he finally understood, but
didn’t say a word. I followed the steps to the second floor,
reaching my room, and shutting the door quietly behind me.

I spent the next hour trying to call Luke,
but the calls were going straight to voicemail.

By ten o’clock, I decided to get some sleep.
If I hadn’t heard from Luke by then, I probably wouldn’t.

I lifted my school bag off the end of the
bed, cursing myself when the contents of the bag spilled on the
floor. I picked each binder and notebook up off the floor and
tucked them back into their rightful place. The final notebook had
fallen open, so I picked it up with care. Keeping it in hand, I sat
on the bed, leaning over the pages of scribbles, doodles, and
chicken scratch.

It was my notebook from the job-shadowing
project, and it had honestly been weeks since I’d cared to open it
up.

I’d been in Luke’s patrol car when I first
scribbled the questions on the page. Each answer he’d given me was
written next to the original question. Little hearts covered the
page. Tiny notes in the margin said things like
you’re not the
only one suffering, Julie
and
find out where his scar came
from
. I read over the notes for ten minutes, laughing at the
stupid little notes I’d left myself. And then, as if by a force I
couldn’t control, my eyes gravitated to the bottom of the page.

Angry cops make bad cops.

Without another breath, I suddenly realized
where Luke was.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Sunday, December 23

I slid on ice for the third time, using the
branches along the wooded path to keep myself from falling.

There was something incredibly eerie about
the Oakland woods in the middle of the night. It wasn’t nearly as
serene, beautiful, or magical as I’d remembered it.

I’d only ever taken this path once before.
The first time I’d come through here, it was daytime, and I was
holding on to Luke’s hand to keep from losing my way through the
trees.

After ten minutes of trudging through the
snow, I finally reached the opening. The hills that were once
spread with thick, luscious, green grass and beautiful wildflowers
were now covered with two inches of white, mostly untouched snow.
The blanket glistened in the moonlight, and now—more than ever—I
understood why Luke came out here to escape.

Sitting at the far edge of the nearest hill,
Luke stared out at the rolling acres. A fire burned next to him,
crackling and popping as he looked on.

I took a few loud steps toward him, still
trying to keep my balance.

“Luke,” I said quietly, hoping not to scare
him.

He didn’t turn to acknowledge me. He simply
looked on without moving an inch.

“You’re getting good at this disappearing
act,” I tried to break the ice with a little smile. “You’ve been
MIA for quite some time now, and you never did tell me how you got
out of the cell last week. What’s your secret?” Still, he didn’t
look at me. Figuring he wasn’t in any kind of mood to joke, I let
go of a sigh. “I hope you’re not mad that I came out here…. I
figured you wanted to be alone, but I’ve been worried about you. I
just wanted to make sure you were okay.” A few quiet minutes
passed. I took a seat on the snow-covered hill and stared at him
from the corner of my eye. “You’ve been ignoring me.”

“No,” he whispered, finally looking at me.
His nose was red and his cheeks were burned from the wind. “I left
my phone at home. It’s probably dead.”

“How long have you been out here?” I asked.
“Is this where you came yesterday after you left the parade? Lonnie
said you never showed up at the house, which we all kinda thought
you would. When… when no one had heard from you, I was scared that
you might’ve—”

“Fled?” he asked, understanding why I’d
assume so. He shook his head and then looked across the empty
field. “I’ve been here, yes.”

“The whole time?” I wrapped my coat tighter.
The cold wind trumped the warmth of the fire, so it worried me that
he’d spent so long in these elements.

“I didn’t sleep here, if that’s what you’re
asking,” he said. “I slept at home. I came back first thing this
morning.”