The Outliers (The Outskirts Duet #2)

“Strange looking rock,” she commented.

I sat up to inspect it closer. “You’re right. I’ve never seen a round rock like that around here. "I picked it up and turned it over. I almost dropped it when I saw what was on the other side.

“What?” Sawyer asked, scrambling to a sitting position on the bed.

The rock wasn’t a rock at all.

It was a skull.

Suddenly something clicked. The purple scarf. The skull.

I envisioned a certain picture hanging over Critter’s bar. One where I had my arm draped around Jackie. She was wearing the purple scarf I’d bought her from the craft fair. I even had her initials embroidered in the lining. JC. The exact initials that were peeking through the splotches of filth.

I dropped my head in my hands. At first, I felt my stomach roll like I was going to get sick. I took a deep breath through my nose but it didn’t help. This was her. This was Jackie. Suddenly it was two years ago and it was like I’d just lost her all over again. Her death was like a knife to my throat.

“What! What is it?” Sawyer asked again. It was her voice that brought me back to the present. Her voice that reminded me that it wasn’t two years ago anymore. I’d almost lost Sawyer. The love of my life. The mother of my child. But I didn’t. And something told me the blonde woman in Sawyer’s vision was someone familiar to me.

There had been a reason we hadn’t found her despite countless searches over the years. And although it sounded ridiculous to even think it, I think she stayed out there for Sawyer...for me.

I felt a warmth grow within me. A sense of completion. Finality. Love. We’d found Jackie...or just maybe, she’d found us.

“Finn?” Sawyer asked again.

I quickly turned the skull backed around. “Nothing, I thought a saw a worm on it. It was just a leaf.”

“That was an awfully big reaction for worm.” Sawyer said, skeptically. “For someone who grew up in a swamp.”

I laid back down on the bed and pulled Sawyer down with me. “Worms are gross,” I said, pressing her body against mine. Relishing the feel of her lips as a brush my jaw and chuckled.

“No, tell me. Please.”

I sighed. “Okay, but it’s going to sound a little crazy.” I warned her, tracing the freckles around her right eye.

“Lucky for you, I’m used to crazy.”

I told her everything and she remained expressionless until the end. “That’s not crazy, Finn. That’s beautiful.”

We remained silent for a while after that. Content with breathing each other in. “Did you are the bravest person I’ve ever met in my entire life?” I asked, not being able to hold inside how I felt any longer.

“Why do you say that?” She asked, running her hands all over my body like she too cannot believe that I was there. “You are the one who crawled out of a burning building.”

“Not so much,” I explained. “A rain squall came in at the right time and doused the flames before they could spread.”

“I thought you were crushed under the roof,” she said, resting her chin on my chest and looking up at me with glassy eyes. I needed to protect her from those kinds of feelings, from the pain.

“No, it was just the part over the storage unit.” I reassured her. “I am here. I’m fine.” Repeating her same reassurances, she just used to comfort me.

I chuckled to myself.

“What’s so funny?” she asked, her bright smile lighting up the entire room as well as my heart.

“Here I thought you were the damsel in distress. I was wrong.” I cupped her jaw. “As it turns out, you were both the damsel and the knight.”

I kissed her deeply and we spent the rest of the night and the following day not more than a few inches from one another. If I had it my way we’d spend the rest of our lives in bed, but if we did that I wouldn’t get a chance to show Sawyer a surprise I had for her. And as much as I come to learn that she hates surprises, this was one I could not wait to give her.





Chapter 27





Sawyer





My mother and I started seeing a therapist together. Eugenia Collins specialized in something she called Religious Trauma Syndrome. She was also a specialist in those who have experienced domestic mental and physical abuse.

And although Finn would probably benefit from talking to someone like Eugenia as well, he insisted he was fine. And because of the way he’d been whistling and skipping around while preparing for the baby to arrive, I was inclined to believe him.

Two days a week we’d make the hour-long drive to her office and we’d each do a session alone and then one together. It was enlightening to learn about how and why we react to things and how blame is so easily placed when it was no one's fault but the person who made us feel this way.

And I know my mom was benefiting from it because I could see it in her smile. The softening of her features. The way she squeezed my hand every time the therapist said something she could relate to.

To be perfectly honest it wasn’t so much the therapy that did it for me, but the time with my mother that I benefited from the most. Most trips I’d drive and while listening to the stories she’d tell and each time I’d learn more about the woman who’d given me life. And each week the life would return more and more to her eyes until I began to know my mother as the rebellious, funny, spunky, stubborn, and loving person that she really was.

She started working with Critter at the bar. Running it I should say. And between the two of them they took on the jobs of four people, just like Critter had done, although now he didn’t have to do it alone. She looked at home there. At peace. And if you saw the two of them interact you wouldn’t think that two decades passed between them being together. You’d think that they’d been together their entire lives. That’s probably because in a way they had never left each other, at least not in their hearts.

Mom was also looking forward to being a grandparent. There were many nights when I heard her bragging about her future grand baby to customers at the bar.

Finn and I had finally finished the library although he didn’t have a ton of time considering he’d found his passion. He’d started buying the half-built housing communities around Outskirts and finishing the construction. What had started as a bright promise of a future-turned into a ghost town nightmare-Finn had managed to produce an affordable, environmentally friendly, energy-efficient home in its place. The first one was already completed and sold and he was in the process of working on several more.

He had also managed to convince a very large car rental company to build their new plant just outside of Outskirts by donating the land for the building. Which meant those homes he was building wouldn’t go unused.

The town would never be a big one but Finn was working on making it a great one. And though some would say his passion was construction. They’d be wrong.

Finn’s true passion was people.

Me, his daughter, and the people of Outskirts.