Page 2 of Scar Tissue

“Lucas…what if something’s wrong? What if…what if we lose her?” He leans over and kisses my forehead, being my anchor amongst the storm of my emotions. His hand strokes the side of my face. “We don’t know anything yet. It could be nothing. Just breathe.” I nod, trying to hold onto his words, but they don’t feel like enough as my mind spirals.

The door swings open suddenly, and my doctor walks in. Her expression is unreadable, but her eyes scan the screen as she takes the seat beside me. She adjusts the machine and checks the settings before looking at me. “How are you feeling?” she asks, but there’s something hidden in her voice.

“I’m scared.” My voice cracks.

She nods before looking back at the screen. “I’m going to take another look at the baby’s heartbeat.”

The room falls silent as she repeats the same movements the technician did. Seconds pass. Then minutes. I feel the weight of her gaze, but there’s no sound—no heartbeat, no reassuring rhythm. The monitor is silent.

My chest tightens, the panic beginning to rise. I search Lucas’s face, but he’s pale, his eyes wide, and I can see the same fear reflected in him that’s rapidly consuming me.

The doctor finally puts the wand away and looks at me with a gentle sorrow in her eyes, and I already know what she’s going to say. “There’s no heartbeat, Thea. I’m so sorry.”

The room spins, and the blood drains from my face as I reach for Lucas’s hand again, but my fingers feel numb. This can’t be real. I thought…I thought she was fine. I thought we were almost there. We’ve been getting ultrasounds every week. I just felt her move earlier this morning.

Lucas’s voice is shaky, but he’s holding it together, his hand gripping mine tightly as if to keep me tethered to the reality we’re in. “No…no, that can’t be. Are you sure?”

The doctor nods slowly, her eyes filled with empathy. “I’m so sorry. We’ll need to confirm it with another test, but it doesn’t look good.”

My entire world narrows, the edges of everything around me blurring as I try to comprehend the words she’s just spoken. “No heartbeat,” I repeat, the words poison on my tongue, feeling like a cruel mockery of everything I’ve hoped for. And in that moment, all I can think is ‘what did we do to deserve this’?

I wake up drenched in sweat, my face wet, but from silent tears as I dreamt of the worst moment of our life all over again—or should I say my life. The sun has started to set and Lucas wasn’t coming home, not until I was gone. He made that clear when he told me to pack my shit and that he wanted me out. Thefuckingaudacity. I had a lot to be upset about, but the fact that he even suggested any of this was my fault…I choke on more tears as they threaten to rise. It’s like he was an entirely different person, the man that I married so far removed from his old self that I find myself stirring with regret at making the decision at such a young age. I should’ve listened when everyone told me to give it some more time, but we were hopelessly in love. High school sweethearts. The honeymoon phase didn’t end until the life of our daughter did. And even then, I thought that we could get through anything together. How wrong was I?

A sob leaves me; my body wracked with the emotional weight of everything that’s gone wrong. The pain is a constant echo in my chest, a reminder of everything I’ve lost—of everything that never had the chance to grow. I never wanted it to be like this. The thought of it never even crossed my mind. Why would it? How did it go from dreams of a future with a family to this dark, suffocating reality? The house feels eerily empty without Lucas, and I can only hope that Dylan and Fletcher get here soon. I glance at the clock, feeling the weight of the time slipping by, of how many moments I’ve wasted crying over things I can’t change. It’s hard to breathe here, in this house that used to feel like a sanctuary but now feels more like a prison. I try to focus on the present, but it’s impossible when the ghosts of everything that once was—and everything that never will be—lurk in every corner.

The way Lucas looked at me when he walked out, cold and distant, like I had become nothing more than a problem he couldn’t fix, haunts me. His words, the sharpness of them, still cut through me like blades, and it hadn’t even been twenty-four hours. I try to remind myself that he’s hurting too, that he’s grieving in his own way, but it’s hard to accept the man I thought I knew has become a stranger in so many ways. Ways that only furthered our pain. But yet, it’s somehow my fault. A part of me wants to reach out—again. But he hasn’t answered my last several calls or texts, and I’m tired of trying. I stand up, my legs shaky, my mind a whirlwind of confusion.

Maybe in some really messed up way, this is a good thing. A chance to start over. A way to figure out how to breathe without drowning in this grief. I don’t know. What I do know is that I can’t keep lying to myself and pretend that everything is fine when I’m slowly falling apart.

Which is why I need Dylan. If anyone knows how to get through hard things, it’s her.

Chapter

Two

NATHAN

Ever since we rescued Dylan after she was kidnapped, I’ve taken a step back from the underground and am now working a little closer to what my degree actually calls for. In fact, it’s allowed me to open up my own practice so that I’m able to make my own schedule. That isn’t to say I still don’t help out every now and then when an assignment is kicked out, but I told the FBI that I was taking a step back. So did Fletcher. But that has less to do with him and everything to do with Dylan. At first, I thought they were going to protest, but it worked out in our favor that we helped take downThe Wraith—the largest human trafficker on the east coast, who also happened to be Dylan’s sadistic uncle. They were pretty much willing to do anything to keep us around, even if that meant us working minimal hours. I hadn’t left the area, having decided to make the move to be closer to the two of them, because I really didn’t have much of a relationship with anybody else. I now own a one-story home down the street from Dylan’s rental that is entirely too big for me on my own, but it’s home—or as close to as it can get.

Dylan and Fletcher? They’re the closest thing I’ve ever had to afamily. And that isn’t to say I don’t have my own blood, I do. I have my parents and two siblings, but we don’t talk anymore. They have their reasons, and I have mine. So, I still don’t know what that kind of connection feels like, but there’s a sense of peace when I’m with them, despite everything it took for us to get here. Maybe it’s the way Dylan lights up when she talks about her future, or how Fletcher’s unshakable loyalty makes me believe that I belong here. Whatever it is, it makes this place feel like it’s where I’m supposed to be. The house, the neighborhood, even the quiet nights alone are more than just a routine; they’re the life I never thought I’d get. Before this it was always a question of when the next job is.

I glance at the clock. We’re all supposed to go to lunch together today before Dylan starts job hunting for the first time since her abduction and everything else she went through, and right as I’m about to step out of the door, my phone rings. It’s Fletcher.

“Hey, I was just about to leave. What’s up?” I ask as I step out and close the door, locking it. He sighs on the other end. “Yeah, about that, we aren’t gonna be able to make it. Something is going on with Dylan’s friend, Thea, and she needs us to head back to Norfolk. Whatever it is, doesn’t sound good.”

I’d heard a lot about Thea over the last few months and knew she had been through the ringer, based on the details Dylan had chosen to share. It dampens the mood to know that there is something else going on in her life. The poor girl deserves a break. They both do. “My schedule is clear, mind if I tag along?” It isn’t like I have anything better to do. There’s some rustling on the other end of the line and I can make out the hint of a conversation before Fletcher responds.

“Yeah, we will swing by and get you.”

I hang up and head back inside to grab my jacket and an overnight bag. I tend to always have one packed because I never know where I’m going to end up or if I’m gonna be out on a job. The weight of the situation hangs heavy in the air—Dylan’s life had beentough enough, and now Thea, too, was in trouble. My mind races as I wonder what could possibly be going on that’s rough enough that they’re willing to drop everything. I’ve never met her in person, but I know she’s been a lifeline for Dylan, and vice versa. I find my keys and head back out, leaning against the porch railing as I wait for them to arrive. The spring air warms my skin, but it’s nothing compared to the ice running through my veins thinking about whatever crisis has popped up. I don’t even know why it’s stressing me out the way it is. I don’t know her. Maybe it’s the time spent doing what I do for a living, a lingering paranoia that never goes away.

Moments later, I see Dylan’s truck pull up, with Fletcher behind the wheel and Dylan in the passenger seat, her face pale and tense as she goes to hop out and get in the back as I approach.

Fletcher stops her with a hand on her arm. “Little viper, don’t you dare hop out of that fucking seat for him. He can ride in the back since he’s so eager to tag along.” His tone is playful, but there’s an edge to it that makes me pause for a second. Dylan gives him a side-eye but leans back in the seat with a resigned sigh.Sorry,she mouths at me as I open the back door and throw my shit in beside theirs, hopping in. Alaska, Dylan’s Golden Retriever, also in tow.

There’s a palpable tension as I enter the truck. Whatever is going on with Thea is obviously having a physical effect on Dylan. I settle into the back seat, my eyes flicking between Dylan and Fletcher. What’s just as incredible as Dylan making it as far as she has since we rescued her, is how far she and Fletcher have come. I knew how they came to know each other, with him being her dad’s best friend. But there was one night we all had a little too much to drink and Dylan spilled how theyreallyended up together. I was pissed at first when she told me that Fletcher had blatantly stalked her for weeks, breaking into her house, leaving her gifts, threatening her and…Callum, her now dead ex. It felt out of place at first because I barely knew her then, but my anger came from a place of knowing what Fletcher and I do for work. I actually didn’t end up speaking to him for days after that until Dylan reassured me that she was fine and not a victim of Stockholm syndrome, or of Fletcher.

She told me she truly understands what it feels like to be a victim and that Fletcher, while his actions were questionable and scared her at first, never once hurt her or put her into a position where she was forced to do anything. She said she understood him, understood why he did what he did after learning more about his past, even going so far as to say his level of…protection, if that’s what you want to call it, was built up over years and years of knowing each other and being the person there for her when she was younger. She admitted that it was a twisted kind of connection, especially at first, born out of pain, but also out of the fact that Fletcher understood her and knew her in ways that no one else did. And that only grew after we got her out of her uncle’s clutches—Fletcher’s sister had been trafficked and he never found out what happened to her, and she had been through the same kind of darkness.