Kele Moon - Crossing the line

“Wyatt!”

That one cry was so raw and terrified it caused an icy wave of horror to hit him square in the chest. He couldn’t resist the call for help, even if it was just a dream and likely his only way to find out what was causing this.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Wyatt shook her as his heartbeat throbbed in his ears. “I’m here!”

“No, you’re not! Make him stop!”

“Oh Jesus.” Wyatt shook her hard, realizing he couldn’t take this. “Wake up, Tab. It’s a dream.”

Tabitha jerked out of his arms with core strength driven by pure adrenaline he knew well. Her breathing was hard and labored, and she looked around the room in a wild daze, as if still disorientated.

“It was a dream,” he told her again as he sat up next to her and wrapped an arm around her bare shoulders. “Just a dream.”

“It was?” She turned to him, her brown eyes wide in the night.

“I’m here, darlin’.” He pulled her close and kissed the top of her head. “You don’t got a thing to be scared of.”

She nodded frantically, her breathing still harsh. “You didn’t leave me?”

“No.” The lie was choked with emotion, and he hoped to God she was still too disoriented to notice the shake in his arm. “I would never leave you.”

“But you did.” Tabitha pulled away from him and fell back against the bed. She pulled the covers over her and then whispered, “We let the villains win. They beat both of us. There are no happy endings.”

Wyatt stared down at her, realizing she hadn’t fully woken up. He could hear the haze of dreaming in her voice. Her wild imagination was vibrant in the night, letting him see the inner workings of a mind that was genius enough to turn a truly terrible childhood into stories that made children believe in the impossible.

He knew he shouldn’t do it.

It was a horrible violation of her privacy, but Wyatt had spent too much of his life digging into things people wanted kept secret to stop himself from lying down next to her and then wrapping her up in his arms. “Who are the villains? The real villains.”

“Brett’s a villain. He sold me. That was real,” she whispered.

“Sold you to who?”

“Shh.” She shifted as if fighting to fall deeper back to sleep. “Protect Wyatt.”

Wyatt’s face scrunched up as that soft, broken plea ripped at his soul in a way that stole his breath and made his heart stutter as if it was trying to give out and stop beating under the weight of agony.

“I love you, Tabby,” he whispered as he pressed a kiss against her temple. “Do you know that?”

“I know.” She sounded unbendingly confident of that if nothing else.

He held her, his arms shaking, his chest hurting as tears he couldn’t fight rolled down his cheeks. He tried to stop the hot, irrational rush of fury that throbbed in his ears for Tabitha’s sake. He honestly did. He was older, he was wiser, but he had also hurt for thirteen long years over whatever happened to Tabitha.

He almost won too.

If it had just been his suffering, he might have dropped it and let the villains win, but then he considered what Tabitha had gone through. He thought of her at twenty-one, alone, hurt, and scared in New York, and all because she had a tragic case of codependency that forced her to take care of everyone else but herself.

He already knew who it was. She’d been fine until that day in the hardware store.

“Was it Vaughn?” he whispered into the darkness.

“You can’t tell Wyatt ’bout Vaughn.” She sounded terrified, as if saying Vaughn’s name made her ill.

“Tabby, listen to me.” Wyatt rolled her onto her back and grabbed her face, making Tabitha blink up at him. He cupped her cheek and stared into her eyes, hoping she remembered this. “The villains aren’t supposed to win. I would never let them win. Do you hear me, pretty girl? They don’t get that. I’ll fucking die before I let that happen.”

“What?” She was still blinking at him in confusion, but he could see clarity filtering into her eyes.

“I just want you to know I would do anything for you.” He stroked her face and ran a thumb over her lips. “Anything.”

“That’s sweet. I’d do anything for you too.” Her eyes closed, and she turned in his arms again, making it obvious the absolute exhaustion after a full week of stress had taken its toll. “Love you.”

Wyatt held Tabitha until her breathing fell into the slow, steady rhythm of deep sleep once more. He kissed her forehead and slipped his arm out from under her as carefully as possible. Then he rolled out of bed.

Then he turned and walked to his closet. He considered putting on his uniform and relieving Deputy Cowden of duty for the night. Then he thought better of it and put on jeans instead. He didn’t feel like being a cop. he decided right then he was going to be a vigilante instead.

The villains didn’t get to win. They had thirteen years longer than they were supposed to have, but Wyatt had watched enough movies and read enough books to know they always lost in the end.

Tonight was the end.

Tabitha rolled over, reaching out for Wyatt, but found herself grasping at a cold pillow instead. She frowned in confusion as she fought to wake up more fully. She expected sunlight, so it confused her when it was still dark.

It was Wednesday, wasn’t it?

Wyatt was off Tuesdays and Wednesdays. She looked at the clock, expecting it to be that new-morning hour when the sun was hiding right behind the horizon. Sometimes Wyatt left before light to go workout at the Cellar with Clay.

2:19

Wyatt got up early, but not that early.

She glanced at the bathroom, expecting to see the shine of light under the door, but it was dark too. She got out of bed, wondering if he’d gotten up and got a late-night snack. She pulled one of Wyatt’s T-shirts from his drawer and tugged it on as she walked out of the bedroom.

She padded barefoot downstairs and called out, “Wyatt?”

She stopped on the bottom step, waiting for him to answer, but eerie silence greeted her instead.

“Wyatt!” she shouted, this time louder, the sound of it echoing off the old walls of the house.

She ran to the front door and unlocked it. Then she jerked it open and looked into the night for his sheriff SUV, but her car was lonely in the driveway. It had started snowing sometimes during the night, and she blinked past the first featherlight snow of the season, seeing the flakes dance in the moonlight.

What if something happened to Jules?

The thought entered into her mind, but then just as quickly she remembered his insistence over dinner that he wanted her at the hospital with him. He would have woken her if Jules had gone into labor.

As she stood there in the cold, something else struck her—Wyatt’s voice filtering into her dreams in a way it hadn’t before tonight. She remembered talking to him, but for the life of her, she couldn’t recall what was said.

She slammed the door and ran back up the stairs as her heart started thumping hard in fear. She grabbed her phone off the nightstand and dialed his number. Her breathing started to fall shallow when it rang and rang, and he didn’t answer.

She called him four times.

She texted him twice.

He always answered when she called. Now suddenly the lifeline had gone dead as if she’d never gotten a second chance at it to begin with.

Her first instinct was to drive out into the night and search for him, but she had no idea where to find him. Then just as the panic was threatening to choke her, she thought of someone who knew Wyatt better than Wyatt knew himself.

* * *

The dull buzz of plastic vibrating against wood had Clay rolling over blindly. He smacked at his nightstand until he found his phone. He lifted it up, squinting at the screen, but nothing but the time glared back at him.

2:31

He frowned at the early hour and then looked past Melody, seeing that it was her phone still buzzing.

“Mel.” He shook her. “Your phone.”

“Huh?” Melody moaned and pulled the covers tighter over her.

“Your dang phone. It’s ringing. Get it. What if it’s Jules? Oh, hell.” Clay leaned over her and used his long reach to swipe at her phone. He answered it, expecting it to be Jules announcing she was in labor. “What happened?”

“C-Clay?”

He sat up in bed, knowing who it was despite not having a real conversation with her in over thirteen years. “Tab?”

“I’m sorry. Melody gave me her number and—”

“No, no, it’s okay.” He took a deep breath and looked at his own phone, staring at the early hour once more as his adrenaline spiked in apprehension. “What’s wrong?”

“Um.” Tabitha’s voice shook in a way that terrified him. “Wyatt’s gone. I was hoping you could help me find him.”

“He’s gone?” Clay repeated as he looked at Melody, who sat up next to him, making it obvious the phone call had jerked her out of sleep. “Where’d he go?”

“I dunno.” Tabitha sounded frantic. “I think he might have gone off to do something dumb.”

“Did you tell him?” Clay asked, knowing he was betraying Melody by doing so, but something told Clay the situation was a little too serious to pretend he wasn’t fully aware of what was going on. “Does he know it was Vaughn?”

“Oh God.” Tabitha sucked in a sharp breath of horror. “She told you.”

“Give me the phone, Clay!” Melody shouted next to him.

“No, I can do this.” Clay leaped out of bed to avoid Melody’s swipe for her phone. He held it closer to his ear and whispered, “Listen to me, Tab. I ain’t blaming you for leaving. I ain’t mad at you. I should’ve never been mad at you. I am sorry.” His voice cracked with emotion he couldn’t hide. He didn’t want to hide it. “Melody’s right. I am an asshole. I should’ve known—”

“No, I didn’t want you to know. I didn’t want anyone to know. I wanted you to be here for Wyatt.”

“You’re important too,” he said softly. “You don’t have to fight alone anymore. I’m in your corner.”

“You are?”

The sheer disbelief in her voice tore at Clay, but he pushed the pain back to deal with the problem at hand. “What happened tonight?”

“I think I was talking in my sleep.” Tabitha took another shuddering breath. “God, Clay, I think he knows. I sorta remember him asking me questions.”

“I’ll find him.” Clay didn’t put it past Wyatt to use the advantage of Tabitha talking in her sleep to get answers to questions that had been plaguing him for years. “I promise.”

“You’ll stop him?”

“I have to find him first. I’m handing the phone over to Melody. She’s gonna drive out to you,” Clay said as he walked over to his drawer and pulled out a pair of jeans.

“No, she’s been so nice. I don’t wanna put her out and—”

“Listen to me,” he growled in a low voice. “This shit ends now, Tabitha. You have been sacrificing yourself for too long because your cunt of a mother fucked you up. We don’t have time to teach you how to accept help, so you’re just gonna have to trust me when I say we’re in your corner if you want us there or not. Watching you do this to yourself hurts us too. Do you want to hurt us?”

“No!” she said quickly. “That’s the last thing I want.”

“Then you go downstairs and wait for Melody to get there.”

Clay handed the phone to Melody, who took it with a glare. She put her hand over the receiver and whispered, “That wasn’t very tactful.”

“That’s okay.” Clay tugged on his jeans. “Tabitha was my first friend, remember? She knows I ain’t tactful.”

He grabbed the shirt he’d discarded earlier and tugged it on as he walked out the bedroom, determined to save Wyatt from himself.

* * *

It wasn’t the first time Wyatt used this spot. On slow nights, he’d pull off to the side of the road across the street from Jake’s Bar. The trees hid his SUV that everyone in town who had even a remote inkling toward breaking the law could usually spot from a mile way.