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It was all a haze to Justice. She didn’t remember the pain the second she felt her son against her, and when she looked down at him and saw his thick dark hair, his father’s eyes, she gasped a smile. “
We’re going make it, kid. You and me. One way or another...”
she thought, knowing out of all the life changing moments she’d lived through, the hells she had walked through—this was the only one that mattered.

This was a promise, a symbol. It was life.

“How many are here?” she asked Bell.

“Chasen and Boon,” she said with a weak smile.

Justice was surprised, but then again she wasn’t. Those men were too loyal. She asked for them not to say a word, and they wouldn’t.

Justice nodded and Bell went to get them.

Her stare flicked to Dawson.

“I got it all, girl, swear,” Dawson said.

Justice breathed a smile as she looked down at her son.

She didn’t mean to get upset when she saw Chasen hold him, at how he marveled at how small his grandson was.

“I couldn’t decide. Not alone. So I’m giving all the names to him,” she said. “But I’m calling him Nolan.”

Chasen’s eyes welled then. “He’d like that.”

She didn’t know which
he
Chasen meant, and didn’t ask.

Late in the next day she called Missy, told her what she already knew, and asked her to come by. Over the next few days she saw all of Declan’s immediate family, and felt the pain they all had, but she also felt the hope. The loss of Nolan, one son, had ripped their family apart. They wanted to believe the birth of a son could help mend the broken road.

Once home, Justice had all the help she could want from Dawson and Bell, even Boon changed a diaper or two. Her watch on the mail, the clutched phone, the message boards, it was an obsession.

A month later, it was her devastation. Declan was home, and had been for a few days—almost a week— but no one, not even Providence had heard from him.

“What do I do?” she asked Dawson right as they ended their kick boxing match because Justice’s anger had turned to tears and Dawson was calling her out on it. Shaking her head saying it was too soon for Justice to be working out as fiercely as she had been—not when the issue was on the inside, not the outside.

“Fucking send him a text and say, Hey. I’m sure you’ve moved on, but if you ever come back through town say hi to your son?” Justice asked, ripping the gloves she had on off. “I can’t do this shit!” Her hands rushed through her sweaty locks as she turned away. “One second I feel guilty, and the next
validated
.” She glared over her shoulder. “I’m here doing this. What the fuck is he doing and with who?”

“It’s only been a few days,” Dawson said quietly, understanding the fear but doubting it all the same. Providence told her more than once, Declan was devastatingly faithful, even if only to a memory. He was never wrong about his friends.

Justice was so unnerved because she knew Declan’s pattern and this was it—silence before he erupted in her life, which was why she was looking up her drive every five minutes with both dread and longing coiling like snakes in her gut.

In the haze of the dawn, through her fury, she did see the outline of a truck coming her way, and thought to panic until she saw it was Providence.

He stopped right by Justice, sorrow in his eyes, enough to make her want to crumble. Instead, she jutted her chin up and braced herself.

“Can you come with me,” he asked her, flicking his gaze to the yard then the house, hoping Bell was there, that she could watch little Nolan.

Justice let a trembling breath out, then nodded stiffly. She turned and rushed inside. Little Nolan was asleep, she’d just put him down before she and Dawson went through their work out.

She woke her grandmother and told her she was leaving and rushed out a list of care instructions as she pulled on her hoodie over her tank and yoga pants.

This was the first time she’d left Nolan and it was killing her. She had no idea where Providence was taking her, but she did know if Declan was at the other end of that road, it would be best for Nolan’s first impression of his parents not to be one of them screaming at each other. It didn’t matter he was only five weeks old and would never remember it—she would, Declan would.

When she came back outside and saw Dawson in the backseat of the truck, her furious grief-stricken stare caused the knots in Justice’s stomach to twist even more. Dawson had silently taken all of this harder than anyone gave her credit for, and for Justice to see the death of hope in her eyes...it said something.

Providence didn’t say a word as he pulled out of her drive then down an old country road. Miles down the road he stopped alongside flashing lights that were glowing in the dawning fog.

He put the truck in park then dipped his head before he slanted it to the side. A million dark and twisted scenarios were rushing through Justice’s mind, and they did not sit well with the empty feeling she felt.

“Tell me,” she managed to say, glancing back at Dawson who was crumbling more with each second. She had reached the point of shuddering.

Providence pressed his lips together in anger then looked forward before at her. “You know I tried. I knew from the start this was a bad deal and at the very least ya’ll needed closure,” he said as his stare flicked to his rearview mirror at Dawson.

The blush Justice was known for was so red she felt hot and cold all at once.

Providence nodded forward. “I told them to check this way, but they said they didn’t have the funds to chase an idea.”

“What?” she managed to say, still not getting what was going on but knowing no matter what, she was not going to be good with it.

“If Nolan dropped those letters off at your place, and if he didn’t want too many people to see him, then he would have taken the back roads.” He paused. “This bridge was out...”

“No. No,” she said, shaking her head. “It was marked well long before you reached it. I remember. He would not have driven through a barricade. He lived here. He knew how dangerous it was.”

She could hear her heartbeat in her ears, could feel a pain in her soul as the final sliver of hope she had for Nolan’s safety died that dawn.

He nodded. “Yeah, the Sheriff said the same. The federal investigators wanted to take a look, though.”

“No...”

Moments later Providence was walking her along the road. Dawson was a step back as if the actual river was repelling her.

“The current had to have been strong that night, the river was still swollen from the storm.” He nodded toward the bank. “I called in a favor and for the past few weeks we’ve been moving down this waterway looking with sonar so we’d know where to dive.” His jade stare met hers. “We found the truck...what’s left.”

She heard the awful sound of a winch and then as the endless minutes ticked by she watched Declan’s truck being pulled from its watery grave.

The windshield was shattered, the driver’s window was halfway down. There were deep scratches all over the side of the truck.

As it dangled in the air, upside down, the driver door flung open. When Justice saw the seat belt was fastened, when she saw boots and other clothing falling down into the water, she retched. She cried, and beat the earth with her fist. The grief was hers, yes, the anger was, yes.

But it was just as much for Declan, for his family. For the lost years of worry. For the fact that Nolan sat at the bottom of this river for months before the search ever began. She’d let Nolan down. She should have said something. They should have known to look sooner. They would have seen the path the truck went off the road—something. Closure would have been giving and then maybe now, four years later, they would be ready to move on, not still suffering from this tragic loss.

“It’s going to be okay,” Providence said to her and Dawson, who wasn’t fairing much better at the sight of Nolan’s tomb.

Justice shook her head. She knew this was going to kill him...Declan would never recover from this finality.

C
hasen had arrived right as the truck was set on the tow truck. The other boys were not far behind him. The demand for answers, the fall of blame caused more than a few fights and eventually the Sheriff made them all leave.

That was hours ago, now the sun had been down for a long time, and Justice was pacing her porch as Dawson sat and stared into space, unable to deal with the pain she had shut down—cut her emotions off.

The investigators were very clear when they stated there was slim to no hope of finding any actual remains at this point. The river life and the current would have ensured what was there was gone by now.

The family was going to have to bury an empty casket.

Providence had not only come to break the news to Justice face to face that morning because he knew that she had never given up, and had felt the same way as Declan about the search—but also because he almost assumed Declan would be with Justice.

Providence knew for sure Declan was not on base, and those who saw him last said Declan told them he was heading toward what mattered.

One would think that would mean the girl and family he’d pushed away, but since he wasn’t there, Providence thought perhaps Declan had started to look for Nolan all over again.

Dawson looked up from her phone when a text came in, then shook her head, “He hadn’t really had a chance to land anywhere, he will,” she said. The pressure now was to find Declan before he heard the news from someone else.

Declan had left base just before dawn, and until he checked into a hotel somewhere, used his card anywhere, Providence wouldn’t be able to flag where he was.

“He’s going to see the news,” Justice said, clutching her first.

Every channel had picked up the story, even national news, each calling off the newly engaged search for James Nolan Rawlings.

“Good, maybe he’ll call home then,” Dawson said right as truck lights peeled into the drive.

In a beat Dawson was at her side and both of them, who almost always stayed armed, stood shoulder to shoulder.

Murdock had been calling all day, wanting to talk to Justice. More than once he had driven by but wasn’t stupid enough to turn in.

“Oh my God...it’s him,” Justice said when she was sure it was Nolan’s truck, the one Declan had driven for years.

Dawson squeezed her hand then went inside to tell Bell who had little Nolan in her arms.

On shaky legs, Justice walked down her steps.

Over the years she’d figured out the first few seconds she saw him after he had been away, there was this odd vacancy, then it was good. Then he felt like home all over again.

This time, she’d have to face the same emotion, but on the heels of their fight, a birth, and a death. She didn’t even know what to broach first. Or how she was going to find the courage to say one word.

***

D
eclan slammed the truck into park and then got out, the same haunted expression he’d carried since he’d heard the news across the radio two hundred miles back was in his eyes.

He was on his way home to her but needed the drive to get his head right, to work out the words he’d been thinking over for too long. Words he should have said months back but knew he couldn’t.

She’d put up with a lot from him. And the last thing he was going to do was take the coward’s way out and say he was sorry over text, a letter, or a computer screen.

He half expected her to not listen, and tell him it was too late that she had moved on. Hell, for all he knew there was some guy in her bed, tracing the fire blush, and that would be fine.

No, it wouldn’t be.

But it would let him know for sure, one way or another. If she made it through this, and still cared about him, even a fraction of what he felt for her—there was no end to them. Nothing could destroy what had pulled them together long before they understood the world was cruel.

Now all the shit between them, the hell he’d caused had been overshadowed. He wanted to look at her, the one person who had never given up, stood by him and believed him when he said Nolan was
not
gone, and for her to tell him they were wrong.

It didn’t happen. One look in her blue eyes, and he knew it was final.

Declan staggered forward and fell on his knees before her. His arms encircled her and he buried his face next to her and shook with silent tears.

It took her a second, only because she was having a hard time balancing out the magnitude of his presence, but her arms fell around his shoulders as she held him tighter.

Long moments later, he rose in one fluid motion and took her lips like they were the air he needed. She did kiss him back, and for precious heart racing moments it was as if no time at all had passed.

But things were different now, and right as he went to pick her up, when she knew he was seconds away from using her body to help him forget it all, she stopped him and stepped back, catching her breath.

Declan turned sharply, and rushed his hands through his short cut and he bent forward on his knees and cussed.

“I said I was sorry,” he said as his chest heaved. He couldn’t deal with this without her. He knew he couldn’t now.

“That’s
all
you said,” she managed to say.

Declan stood up straighter and glanced at Dawson’s new truck and shook his head in a pissed sway, sure now there someone else in Justice’s bed.

He turned sharply around. “That was it? That easy for you? Out of sight out of mind?”

“Don’t you fucking blame me for this!” she yelled.  “I told you not to leave!”

With a sardonic shake of his head he looked away. “You needed better.”

“So you said,” Justice said as her entire body tensed. She could see the war he just fought in his eyes, the pain there, the years it put on his soul and she knew he just walked into another. At the same time, she had some more earth shattering news to give him and she had no idea how he’d take it.

“You chose to listen to me?” he raged. “Hours after I beat the shit out of my brothers, my
father
. After I told them to never fucking come near me again—you. After they tried to fucking bury my brother!”