Chapter 30

“Three, two, one…Happy New Year!” Everyone yelled out, and Jet pulled me to him, sweeping me up in a kiss. His fingers threaded under my ponytail, and he tipped my head back, nipping gently at my bottom lip for me to open. I threw my arms around his neck, my back arching with the way he delved into me, his tongue brushing tenderly with mine, slowly urging and begging for more.

I moaned, leaning in, the world around us fading to nothing, but instead of holding me closer, Jet pulled back, pressing a couple of gentle kisses to my lips. He brushed his nose against mine, my heart fluttering at the touch, and then our eyes flickered open.

I pouted.

“What?” He grinned.

“It was a good kiss. You stopped.”

“I had to. If I didn’t, I couldn’t tell you happy birthday.”

His eyes glinted playfully in the light of the bonfire nearby, and I couldn’t help but smile. “Thank you.”

“Always.” He pecked my lips again, and we sat back against the log we’d claimed since early on in the party. With Tucker and Izzy staying in, Jet and I were able to slip out from the family thing and ended up at the blowout Corey had put together down at the beach. It wasn’t as crowded as usual, which suited me just fine. I just needed out of the house. I needed a distraction. And Jet had laid down the law with our friends since we first got here, no Izzy talk. She and Tucker were healing, and that was all they were getting for now.

I seriously loved him.

As much as I loved and worried about my sister, being asked a million questions about her and Tucker was not going to help me unwind.

“Another beer?” Jet asked after downing the last of his cup.

“Please.” I plucked mine up from where I had it propped in the sand, and Jet took it, disappearing into the crowd. We’d done the social thing for the first part of the party. Now, I just needed space to decompress. Which wasn’t normally like me, but life was a lot right now.

I closed my eyes, letting the heat from the bonfire wash over my face in the cold breeze. I didn’t know how people were standing it out closer to the water. It was freaking cold tonight, only getting colder with the front, but the air was fresh in my lungs, the bite of the cold welcome on my skin as it cleared my thoughts.

If only it would clear the constant ache I felt inside, knowing how much my sister was hurting. It killed me that I couldn’t fix it. It wasn’t even that I didn’t know how, but that I doubted there even was a way. It was a grief I didn’t even know how to touch. I’d dropped the ball when we’d lost Daddy, and I didn’t want to drop it now. But that ball was free falling, ready to plummet and shatter to earth. If only I knew how to reach her.

No. It’s just that what she needs is out of my control.

“Hey, no dwelling tonight,” Jet’s voice came from above me, and I smiled, though it really came out more like a grimace.

“Sorry. It’s hard not to.”

He handed me my cup before settling back down at my side, and I sucked most of it down in one go. Jet’s brow raised.

“So, I guess that answers my question.” My brow furrowed, asking, and he added, “If it’s a good birthday so far.”

My chest deflated with a sigh. “It’s good. Fine really considering everything. I just…it’s just weird without Izzy here.”

Jet’s mouth pulled in a sympathetic smile. “I know, but she wouldn’t be having a good time if she was.”

“No, I know, but it’s still weird. We’ve always celebrated together. She’s so withdrawn, babe. I don’t like it. I don’t know how to help her.”

“Same with Tucker. He just looks tortured when I go to see him. I think he blames himself.”

“Well, that’s stupid.”

“I know, but that doesn’t change it.”

“Well, he needs to get over it. It’s not helping anything, and Izzy needs him.”

“And he needs her.” Jet leveled me with a look.

I shook my head. “Don’t get me wrong. I worry about Tucker, too. I’ve seen how he is now. But Izzy’s my sister.”

“I know sweetheart, and Tucker’s like my brother.” He squeezed my thigh before taking my hand, running his thumb in soothing circles along my palm so my nerves would ease. I downed the rest of my beer, needing the temporary relief from everything it would bring, and Jet handed me his cup. I smiled down at it.

“I’m glad he has you. I’m just frustrated. It feels like we’re back to square one before they were together. All the tension and denial…”

I bit my lip, worrying, and Jet brushed it free with his thumb. “Give it time, Annie. We don’t know what they’re going through. Not really.”

“You’re right. I know. It’s just so hard to hold back.” Because I was ready to club a certain friend of mine over the head.

“Well, how about we focus on your birthday instead? Drink up and make a night of it before we have to go back?”

“Sounds perfect.” We shared a conspiratory smile as I took a long swallow of beer, the music Corey had pumping in the background changing beats with a new song. Jet took the cup from my hands and pulled me into another long kiss.

“Ignore it,” Jet growled when my phone buzzed in the cupholder.

Yeah, there were no arguments here. I pulled at his shirt, balling it along his back to yank it over his head as Jet’s tongue swirled over one of my nipples. We were panting. Desperate. Our breaths fogging the windows. It was with the fifth call that I couldn’t ignore it anymore. I grabbed my phone without reading the screen.

“Yeah?”

“Have you heard from Izzy?” Mom’s panicked voice came through, and with that one simple question, I went from horny as hell to terrified.

“No. Why?” Jet stopped his attention, looking up to study my expression when he heard my tone.

“Because your truck’s gone. She’s gone.”

She’s what?! My brain faltered with that information.

“I need you to come home.”

In a heartbeat.“We’ll be right there.” I looked down at Jet, my phone now clutched to my chest. “Izzy’s missing.”

His eyes widened, and in a scrambled panic, we were both throwing on clothes, and I was back on my side of the car as Jet peeled away from the party.

My legs bounced, heels tapping, so much nervous energy flooding through me. My fingers flew over the screen of my phone, texting and calling Izzy, memories of the last time she’d vanished rushing through me. And just like then, she never answered. I prayed it wasn’t because she couldn’t.

Jet took my hand as tears pricked my eyes, giving me an anchor in the storm of my emotions, and the second we pulled up to the house, I was sprinting for the front door.

“Mom!” I bolted inside, Jet right on my heels.

“Up here!” She called from upstairs.

I ran up, and what I saw sent a fresh kick of terror and panic rushing through me, my feet pausing in shock just inside the room. Jet gasped when he reached my back.

“Holy…”

His reaction jolted me back, my eyes still taking in the destructive mess. “Izzy would never do that, right? Not to Daddy’s dresser.” I looked at Mom, hoping for some kind of answer, but she shook her head, looking as lost as I felt.

“Try not to panic. Maybe there’s a clue.” She started shifting through the chaos.

Try not to panic? Who is this woman?“Shouldn’t we call someone? The cops? Report her missing?”

Mom shook her head. “It doesn’t work like that. Y’all are eighteen now, and with the truck gone…I doubt they’ll do anything. I already called your uncle. You know he’d know.”

“Shit.” He was a cop. Of course he would. “I’ll try calling again.”

“I already did. She left her phone.” Mom’s eyes went to the nightstand, and mine followed, widening when I saw Izzy’s purse and jacket on the chair by the desk.

“She didn’t take anything. Mom, we have to do something!”

“Y’all help look,” she demanded, and Jet tugged on my arm.

I bent down to the floor by her bed to sift through the mess and winced when I moved some of the folded clothes from the dresser out of the way. “Do you think it might have set her off when she realized you confiscated all the medicine?” I held up the large bottle of Tylenol we’d locked away. “I told you she wouldn’t like it if she believed we thought she might hurt herself.”

“Shit,” Jet murmured. “Did y’all really think–”

“I wasn’t taking chances,” Mom snapped. She ran a hand back through her hair in her stress, and then a dawning realization struck her face. “Oh.”

The one word spoke volumes that I couldn’t place as Mom’s expression shifted quickly to fear. “What?”

“I don’t think the medicine’s what set her off.”

“What then?”

“Ummm…”

“Mom.” My eyes narrowed in suspicion. She was hiding something, but why? I was about to press her again when something caught my eye, and my stomach dropped. “Oh, no.”

“What?” Jet looked around, trying to see what I had.

“Behind you. By the window.”

Mom grimaced as Jet bent down to pick up the broken picture frame, a scratch from the glass cutting straight through Tucker and Izzy’s faces. This was so much worse than seeing the dresser torn apart.

“Can we panic now?” I snapped, and Mom gave me a confused look. My hands flew to my hips. “Really? You don’t get it? You don’t get what that photo represents or what it meant to her? What he means to her.” I pointed to the picture.

Mom’s face slowly began to pale. “I’m calling Chuck. Jet–”

“Calling my dad,” he interrupted, his phone already at his ear.

I pulled out mine, too. I wasn’t going to stand aside anymore while Tucker broke what was left of my sister’s heart. He needs to see what he’s done.

I laid across my bed, face down on the comforter in my favorite pair of sweatpants. The ones Izzy loved to ogle me in. My back was getting a lot better at this point, but it was still a little bruised, and my ribs definitely weren’t healed.

I’d heard my family come in earlier, sometime after midnight I assumed, and Mom had popped her head in my room to say goodnight. I’d held back the scoff that threatened to escape at the concept of goodnight. That didn’t exist anymore.

Sleep, when I got it, was anything but restful. All I ever saw when I closed my eyes now was Izzy lying at the bottom of those stairs, bleeding. Her pale, broken body lying bandaged in the hospital. The wild agonized expression on her face while she thrashed about on the bed, calling for our baby. The withdrawn, hollow shell that used to be the girl I loved. I’d ruined her. Ruined us.

And if it wasn’t that it was my daughter. Izzy had never gotten the chance to see her, and for that, I was grateful. The one time I’d held our baby girl had nearly broken me. Maybe it actually had.

She looked like us. Her tiny, broken body resting in my hands.

Any one of those images would jolt me back awake if they hadn’t kept me from sleeping in the first place. Putting my little girl in the ground had been hard enough, even with my parents’ help and advice, but I couldn’t stand to see Izzy so broken. Too ashamed to look into her eyes, afraid of what I might see.

It was best if I stayed away, even if I was dying to be with her. I’d put her through enough. She didn’t need to see my pain, the pain I’d inflicted on both of us.

It was all I could feel now, but I didn’t fight it. I knew I deserved every piercing stab to my heart. When I was lucky enough to avoid the horrific, torturing images, there was never relief. The open space in my mind just allowed room for thoughts of our lost child to surface.

How cruel was fate to let me fall in love with my child just in time for her to be taken away? The fact that she’d never been given the chance to live past more than a few minutes made it even crueler. She’d deserved her chance at life. But it honestly didn’t matter. In reality, she was gone, her mother destroyed.

I laid there in the dark, everything rolling through my thoughts, when my phone lit up. I almost ignored it but second guessed it when I thought about the time. Stretching an arm out, I grabbed my cell from the nightstand.

Annie?“Hello?”

“You need to get over to my house now!”

My expression dropped, not in the mood. “It’s past two in the morning. I’m not going over there.” Your sister doesn’t want to see me anyway.

“I’m not playing, Tucker! Get over here!

“Why?!”

“I’m not getting into it over the phone! Just come over!”

Argh!“Fine!” I snapped, throwing the phone down on my bed. I threw on a sweater and my sneakers before shoving my phone in my pocket to sneak out of the room.

I wondered if my parents might hear me leaving for once. Their room was on such an opposite end of the house that I doubted it, but damn, would it help if they could put their foot down and I could go back to my room and ignore Annie.

“Did Annie call you?”

I stopped on the stairs at Dad’s voice, spotting him by the door. “Yeah?...” I waited, my luck maybe actually turning around.

“Well, come on. We need to get going.”

“You’re going, too?”

“Yes. Now, hurry up.”

I rushed down the stairs, my confusion well and in place as I put on the jacket Dad held out.

“Grab your keys, son.”

I did, giving him a funny look when he grabbed blankets and flashlights from the hall closet. “What’s going on?”

He passed me one of each and threw the door open, letting the freezing air flood the entry of the house. “Your girlfriend is missing.”

“What?!” I couldn’t have heard that correctly. “What do you mean Izzy’s missing?”

“She was gone when Bridgette got home. Took the truck and left the door to the house wide open, but she didn’t take anything with her. Not even a jacket or her phone. Bridgette said there’s more. We need to get over there.”

That was all Dad had to say. I was at my truck seconds later, throwing the blanket and flashlight on the seat before sprinting across the street to the Donovan’s house.

Bridgette held the door open for me before I even reached it and pointed me up the stairs. Jet and Stefano were already there when I reached the room, and Annie was up in my face before I could say or do anything.

“This is all your fault!” she screamed, throwing an arm out towards me.

“I know,” I said quietly, my voice breaking, though I didn’t know why. Those words just confirmed what I already knew.

“No, you don’t know! You don’t have any idea what you’ve done!”

Jet came forward and gently pulled Annie back, holding her to his chest. “Calm down, sweetheart. We’ll find her. It’ll be fine.”

“No, it won’t,” she cried, desperation thick in her voice. “He’s destroying her.”

“That’s enough, Annie,” Dad warned from the doorway as Bridgette shot her a look.

“No. She’s right.” I kept my eyes on Annie, knowing she needed to hear it from me. “I know I’ve destroyed her, and I hate myself for it, but there’s nothing I can do about it now. The damage is done.”

Annie threw her head back and rolled her eyes, disdain dripping in her words. “I swear, sometimes you can be so dense, Tucker.”

“Well, I’m sorry we can’t all be brilliant like you, Annabel,” I snapped back.

“I wish you could be! Then maybe you wouldn’t be screwing everything up with my sister!”

My fingers locked together behind my neck, gripping in aggravation. “Screwing up? Screwing up?! It’s already screwed up! Our baby’s dead! I killed her!”

“You can’t think that way, son.” Dad stepped closer to put a hand on my shoulder, but I jerked away.

“I can because it’s true! And Izzy knows it.”

“No!” Annie tossed back. “Izzy doesn’t blame you, you idiot. She wouldn’t cry for you in her sleep if she did.”

“What?” Hope staggered in my chest.

“You know what gets me, Tucker? I stepped aside for you. Do you have any idea how hard that was for me? When Izzy was breaking down in that hospital, I stepped away, for you. Because you two have a bond together now that no one else can touch. That’s what she needs more than anything right now, and you’re ignoring it and throwing her away! You’re letting my sister die inside because you’re too stubborn to be there for her!”

I stared, processing. Wondering if it was true. If it was, I’d really screwed up. I swallowed hard. “I didn’t know.”

Stefano cleared his throat. “I’m sorry to break this up, but this isn’t helping us find Izzy. Bridgette, you said you had more to tell us, other than the dresser?”

The dresser? I looked past Annie and Jet for the first time, and my heart dropped when I saw the mess. “Izzy did that?”

“And this.” Annie held up a broken picture frame, and I winced at the now ruined photo staring back at me. It was ours. It was us. What we used to be.

“She destroyed it?” I asked, taking it from her. I gently pulled the picture from the frame, bits of glass falling at my feet.

“I think she threw it against the wall.”

Everything ate at me now. I’d been so wrong. “Fuck, I’ve screwed up.”

“Do we know why she flipped out? Did you break up with her or something?” Stef looked at me.

“No. Never. We haven’t even talked since she got home from the hospital.”

“And that’s why,” Annie interrupted. “She couldn’t take it anymore.”

“No. That’s not why,” Bridgette said from behind me.

“Then why?” Dad asked as we all turned to give her our attention.

Hesitating for a moment, Bridgette pulled some folded up pieces of paper from her back pocket. “She found this in my room. I was going to give them to the girls later today. That’s what Patrick wanted.”

“Daddy?” Annie asked, but I snatched the papers from Bridgette’s fingers and read them as quickly as my eyes could fly across the pages, my stomach tensing the further I read. The second I was through, I darted from the room and raced outside for my truck, knowing I had to find my girl.

I stared after Tucker as he ran from the room, shocked until it was too late to ask what it had been. I looked back at Mom. “What did Daddy say? What was it?”

“A letter, but I think it’s better if you read your own. I’m pretty sure that what upset your sister will be in yours, too.”

She held out an envelope, and I reached out to take it with nervous, excited hands. It seemed too good to be true.

“Annie?” I looked up at Jet’s dad. “If you don’t mind, could you read it out loud? We all need to hear it if we’re going to find out why Izzy’s so upset.”

I nodded, stunned, and began to read.

Hey there, Annie!

Happy birthday! Wow, if I were there, I’d be feeling pretty old right now, my baby girl now a legal adult and everything. I know so much has been thrown on your shoulders with everything that’s happened, and I pray that some of that has eased in time now that I’ve been gone. You’re too young to carry the weight of the world on your shoulders. Take your time growing up. It will happen when it’s supposed to.

But in case with everything it already has, I think you should know that you’re more prepared for it than you might think. You have a desire for reaching out to those around you, and you strive to protect and encourage others in whatever way is needed at the time. Those are strong qualities that will serve you well your entire life. Stay true to them and to yourself.

I have always admired your passion for life, your dedication, and your need to protect. All qualities that drew me to your mother, by the way. You are so like her. Keep that in mind when y’all fight. You’re both too stubborn for your own good. Handy for that persistent side we have but try not to push it on your sister too often.

Now, I know you worry about her, and you mean well. You’ve always taken being the oldest so seriously, but remember, your sister has a mind and dreams of her own, and you should know that she’s stronger than you think. She feels things harder than most, so she falls harder than most, harder than you can sometimes understand. But understand that underneath it all, she’s resilient. Her ability to feel so deeply is her greatest strength. Not a weakness. Have faith in that. Let her live up to it.

And your brother…I’ve had so much less time with him than you girls. That is one thing I will always deeply regret, even up here. All I can say is keep an eye on him forme and promise that you and your sister won’t let him forget me. Tell him all of our crazy and fun stories, and let him know that I would be there for him just as much if I could.

How’s Jet? He reminds me of myself with your mom, crazy about you long before you ever realized how you felt. It’s been such an honor watching you with the love of your life these past few years, and it makes me sad to know that I won’t be there the day he takes your hand. He already asked, you know. This morning, actually, here at the beach house. So don’t worry when the time comes. You have my blessing. I can’t think of anyone better for you to share your heart with.

I wish I were there to see the beautiful, passionate, young woman I know you’ve grown into, but unfortunately, I can’t. Remember, though, that I will always be in your heart. I’m sorry that it has to be this way, but it’s how it’s supposed to happen. The parent goes before the child, even if, in our case, it happened too soon.

I stopped reading as my voice cracked, knowing those had to be the lines that had done my sister in. That Daddy could have never known would strike such a raw chord, and my eyes flitted down the rest of the letter about life insurance and money that had to have kicked Izzy as well. My throat closed when I got to the final lines.

I’m always watching out for you. I’m so proud of you. I love you. I miss you.

Love,

Daddy

P.S. Embrace Life.

I was crying at the end, and the room stayed silent for several seconds before a rushed conversation broke loose. But I was still lost in my thoughts. There couldn’t have been a better gift. Those words were exactly what I’d needed to hear, and somehow, Daddy had known we’d still need him and found a way to come through.

“Annie?”

“Huh?” I looked up, surprised to see just Mom and Jet in the room, both of them watching me with concerned and hurried eyes.

“Are you coming, or are you staying here with your mom to wait for Izzy?” Jet asked.

“Coming.” I stood up, because there was no way I could just wait around while my sister was missing. Taking a moment to fold the precious letter, I placed it in the drawer of my nightstand and gave my mother a hug. “We’ll find her.” I felt it now.

Mom choked on a sob, and I rushed out the door with Jet to his Mustang.