That vise constricts around my chest again.
This is all that exists of the last year of my life.
Our only clues.
The sole ties I have to the life I led when I left McBride Mountain.
My hand shakes as I grab the bag, pull it up onto my lap, and empty the contents onto the tabletop.
Handwritten notes.
Postcards.
A birthday and Christmas card.
Raven gives me a half grin. “I didn’t bring any of the gifts. I figured if you needed to see those, we could head up to my place before I take you to the cabin. I thought the notes might be what you were really after.”
I nod, the tremble in my hand so bad that I have to pause and fist it for a few seconds before I lift a postcard from Colonial Williamsburg and flip it over, noting the postmark and the date.
October of last year, months after I left here.
My familiar scrawl fills the space.
Hey, Rave.
Miss you. The candles are selling really well here. It may be my best setup yet. Something about this city speaks to my soul. The history is fascinating. You’d love it here. I miss you.
Love, Willow.
“That’s definitely my handwriting.”
Raven looks up from where she’s been typing, her brow furrowing. “Why wouldn’t it be?”
I chew on the inside of my lip. “I don’t know. I was kind of thinking…wondering, I guess…” The thought bounces around my head, but it seems so off the wall and unfathomable that voicing it makes my mouth go dry. But Raven continues to watch me until the intensity of her stare draws the words from me. “I was wondering if I was actually the one who sent you all these things.”
Her hands come off the keyboard as she rests her elbows on the table, her wide eyes searching mine. “Why would you wonder that?”
Everything Killian said last night comes rushing back. “Killian and I are starting to suspect that maybe I wasn’t up there by my own choice.” She doesn’t immediately reject the idea, so I push on. “It stormed the night I went into the river. Why would I have willingly been out in a storm like that, running barefoot, anywhere, let alone on such a remote part of the mountain?”
Raven nods slowly, as if she’s processing the idea. “I see where you’re going with this.”
“And if I wasn’t up there by my own choice, of my own free will, then who’s to say I was the one who sent all these things over the last year?”
She reaches out and clasps my hand. “But you were. Look at them.” She rifles through the stack to find one particular note and flips it over to show me, leaning closer as a family with small children hustles past us on their way out of the shop. “You sent this one with a damn vibrator, for fuck’s sake.”
“What?”
“On the anniversary of the day I lost my virginity.” She waggles her blond brows. “No one else would have known that.”
Relief floods through me like a tidal wave.
She’s right.
Her first time wasn’t anything to get excited about—hence the vibrator—so it wasn’t something she told anyone. Except me. Of course, Micah McConnell would know, but he would be the last person to remind her of his failure.
“You’re right…”
I clutch the note and can’t help the smile that pulls at my lips as I read the words I wrote to her.
