Page 51 of Outlawed

“I love you, Mommy, and I miss you. I really want you to come back home, but Calliope says you can’t because you’re in heaven now watching over me like an angel. Did you get your wings yet?”

I swallow around the knot in my throat, tears slipping down my cheeks.

“I hope I see them one day. Maybe you could fly down for a visit. I wouldn’t tell anyone. I promise.”

She’s quiet for a minute. I’m about to move in closer when she speaks again. “Calliope says I can stay with her forever if I want. But princes live in castles, so when I get married, I might have to move. Maybe I could marry a cowboy instead, like Mr. Riggs. I like him best because he makes cookies with me, but I think he needs to get a laser eyeball for under his patch. He could help Mr. Shepard catch the bad guys then.”

I hear laughter from the crowd and find myself chuckling through my tears, too. Where the heck does she come up with this stuff?

“Mr. Shepard is teaching me how to kick butt, so no punk-ass boy puts his hands on me. What does punk-ass mean?”

I turn around and find Shepard, who looks at me and grins without repentance.

Hannah leans in a little closer and starts whispering, but in that way kids do, which makes the whisper louder than her everyday speech. “Mr. Austin is kinda grumpy and sometimes scary, but he gives the best hugs. And when I’m sad, and I miss you, he picks me up, and he makes me feel safe.”

Her head dips, and her shoulders bow as I cover my mouth with my hand. Movement catches my eye, and before I know it, Austin is there scooping Hannah up. She doesn’t hesitate to wrap her arms around his neck and lay her head against his shoulder.

This. This version is what makes it impossible to hate this man. I know he’s every bit as bad as people say he is outside of our bubble. But he’ll defend those inside it until his dying breath. He turns to me, a question in his eyes about what to do next.

I reach for his hand, making an on-the-spot decision, one I hope I don’t end up regretting. “Let’s go home.”

“Whose home?”

“Ours.”

Chapter Sixteen

Isit laughing as Jackie looks away, biting her tongue when a man picks up six bottles of medicine that will help with his little problem, right before he asks her out.

She politely declines before giving me the stink eye. “You’re so bad.”

“I can’t help it. He obviously envisioned a hot date with you.”

“Yeah, well, a hot date does not entitle the man to a hot fuck,” she curses, making me snort.

“Amen to that.”

“Anyway, I already have a date.”

“With doctor delish?”

“For the love of god, please stop calling him that.” She swats me with a huff before heading back to her stall. Judging by how many pies she’s sold today, I’d say when her shop—Shut your Pie Hole—opens next month, she’ll have a queue around the corner of customers waiting for her.

“Hey, can I pick up my order real quick?”

I turn when I hear Sarah behind me. “Sure. I can’t believe how busy it is. Have you even had a five-minute break yet?”

“Are you kidding me? This is my five-minute break. I’m not complaining, though. This festival is so much more than I even imagined it could be.”

I look around at all the stalls lining the street. Flowers are hanging in baskets and in planters, adding a rainbow of color to the day’s events. Banners flutter above us, declaring today the New Dawn Festival, and the sun is shining down on it like a beacon of hope. I like to think Dawn is watching it all unfold from her perch above.

I agree with Sarah about being surprised by the turnout. However, I’m not sure why. In the three months since Dawn’s death and the truth came out about my father, the townsfolk have consistently shown up and made an effort to make a change. They’ve started treating each other like neighbors rather than enemies, and, as such, a sense of community has brought peace and belonging, even for an outcast like me.

The horror of how widespread the rot in this town was shocked some people to their cores, even the people who were always so sure of my guilt. When Shephard’s team found proof that not only had the coroner lied about his findings, but that he’d used a cadaver for all of his photographic evidence, because, of course, there was no actual body, it became the first of many dominoes to fall. Sherif Andrews had, as we suspected, created evidence to fit the statement, all of which he pointed my way. The one that hurt the most was finding out the doc at the clinic had treated my father’s gunshot wound (they needed his blood and the bullet at the scene after all). He’d said nothing as I was waiting to be tried for murder. He hung me out to dry and helped Dale, the man who shot my father in the arm and staged the scene before calling the police, get him to a hospital in Mexico, where he underwent his plastic surgery to become Porter.

Thankfully, it hadn’t all been a horror story. The purchase of the shops went through seamlessly. And though I get a pang in my gut every time I think about doing it without Dawn, I know she’d be pissed at all of us if we used her death as an excuse to stand still and not keep moving forward.

“Well, you need to make sure you take a nice soak in the tub later and have Henry give you a foot rub.”