Where the Darkness Goes

Chapter 1

CHAPTER ONE

TESSA

This has to be a bad omen.

As far as I can see, the storm has erased the world. Against the dark gray sky, ominous clouds loom. Thick raindrops smack into my windshield with a roar so deafening I can no longer hear the music playing from my car’s speakers. The raging storm outside competes with the cyclone inside my core. The swell of dread grows in my stomach, gnawing at my organs with a foreboding sort of panic as real as the heartbeat in my chest, and on its own, it would be enough to make me consider turning around.

As if I wasn’t already.

“Kick me when I’m down,” I mutter.

Apparently taking it as a challenge, the universe offers a steel-toed boot to the kidneys in the form of a loud THUNK and an agonizing jolt of the car.

A pothole.

My stomach skydives. I curse to myself as I grip the steering wheel tighter with both hands, navigating the car to the flooding shoulder and into the nearby church parking lot as the wheel wobbles and clunks. The shaking is so treacherous, I can’t pretend to hope I’d make it to Ernie’s garage, the only mechanic shop in this sleepy town.

I drop my head forward, slowly and gently tapping it against the steering wheel in an effort to calm myself down and slow my breathing.

Get it together, Tessa. We will figure this out.

With newfound determination, I look out the windows, searching for the world I know is out there. I haven’t seen another car in ages, which means no one will be by to help unless I call for it. It’s Thursday, so no one will be at church, either.

Unless You feel like sending a miracle. I turn my eyes up to the sky, but it’s useless.

Putting the car in park, I lean across the center console and dig my phone out of my purse, looking for my brother’s name in my recent calls.

I can’t remember what time he said he was leaving town, but hopefully I can catch him before he heads out.

There’s no one else I can call for help anymore. The thought is more depressing than I’d expected. Will is all I have left.

I tap Will’s name in my call log, disconnecting the Bluetooth and turning it up as loud as it goes before I press it to my ear, though the ring is still barely audible over the clamor of the storm.

Lightning cracks overhead, followed almost immediately by a clap of thunder that makes me jolt.

Pick up, Will. Please pick up.

As if denying my requests, the phone goes to voicemail just moments later. I groan, end the call, and try again.

Without any luck, and as tears begin to prick my eyes, I open my phone’s browser and search for the number to Ernie’s garage. It was one of the numbers Mom kept taped to the fridge all my life. There were quite a few there, and I could probably remember everyone on the list: our pediatrician, Dr. Jacobs; the church; the school; Ernie’s garage; a handyman we used occasionally when things went wrong around the house; and Dr. Tubb, our dentist. I can see her scratchy handwriting so clearly in my mind—the list etched out on a yellowing scrap of notebook paper—but I definitely don’t have any of the numbers memorized.

Across the top of my screen, the blue bar of my search moves slowly, stopping midway as if it’s a toddler stomping its foot. Refusing to do what I’ve asked. The storm is making the internet slower than usual, which is truly saying something.

Damn it. I scroll through my contacts, racking my brain for anyone else I could call, but just as I’m about to give up, my screen goes dark with an incoming call. It’s Will.

“Hey, thank god. Where are you?”

My brother’s calm but wary voice comes through the line. No matter what is going on, he always sounds a bit too casual. The voice of someone who’s never had anything bad happen to him. “Sorry. I’m fighting airport traffic right now. This storm has grounded everything.”

“I know. I’m stuck in the middle of it right now. It’s really coming down.”

He sighs as I hear his blinker turn on. “Damn. I was hoping you’d make it to the house before it hit. Where are you?”

“Sitting in the church parking lot. I hit a pothole, and my tire’s flat,” I tell him, raising my voice as the sound of the rain gets louder outside. “Any chance you can come pick me up? The internet on my phone isn’t working, or I’d call Ernie’s.”

There’s a long pause, and I can practically see him running his hand through his perfectly coiffed blond hair. Undeniably at ease. His flight has been canceled, and he’s dealing with it as if a road was closed and he’ll just have to go around. As if it’s a simple detour and not the plan-ruining update most people would make it out to be.

“Uh, I’m having to drive to Huntsville, so I can’t backtrack, but I’ll figure something out, okay?”

“No, it’s fine. I can call Pastor Charles. I probably still have his number in my phone.”

“He’ll be getting ready for the funeral, so I wouldn’t. I have Ernie’s number saved. I’ll give them a call and see if someone can come get you. Just sit tight.”

“Oh. Right.” The funeral. The reason I’m here. “Thanks.”

“No problem. Stay right there until someone comes for you, okay?”

I puff a breath of air through my lips, moving the hair from my face. “Not like I can go anywhere.”

“Says the girl who made sneaking out look like an Olympic sport.”

“Says the boy who taught me how.”

He chuckles, and before I’m ready, he’s gone. After placing my phone down, I grab my purse and haul it across the console and onto my lap, digging for one of the snacks I always keep on hand.

I’m not even hungry, I know. Just nervous. The idea of being back home, the idea of staying in my brother’s house alone while he’s gone, the idea of seeing my mom for the first time since right after her accident. Most importantly, the idea of going to the funeral?—

I cut the thought off at the root. Right now, I don’t have time to get upset. Too much is happening. Placing my purse back in the seat next to me, I turn the heat up and wait.

Through the thick, gray haze of the rain, I spot a truck slowing down at the entrance to the church parking lot, and my heart instantly hitches. It’s been years since I saw Ernie himself, and I have no idea who currently works at his shop, but I’m sure I’m about to see a familiar face. I just hope it’s also a friendly one.

The truck makes a slow turn into the empty parking lot and pulls to a stop next to me. The headlights flash as the truck is shut off, and then I try with all my might to make out the figure walking toward me.

It’s a man, I know almost instantly. Thin hips. Broad shoulders. But that’s all I can decipher through the storm. When he reaches my door, I roll down my window cautiously, just in case this isn’t actually who Will sent for me.

The inside of my door is drenched in seconds, but I barely have time to process that as I hear his voice.

“Heard you need a ride?”

My jaw snaps shut, and I stare at him as if this is a dream, as if I’ve completely lost my mind. He looks almost exactly the same—dark curls gathered around his head and those piercing brown eyes. His jaw is sharper, face thinner, and his usually clean chin and cheeks have a solid amount of facial hair across them.

I’m completely blank. Every thought, emotion, or action I’d prepared moments ago has been wiped from my mind in a split second.

“ Garrett? ”

“Good to see you, too,” he says with a laugh. His voice is different from Will’s. Every bit as calm maybe, but there’s a weight of conflicting emotions in his timbre. An unspoken history yet to be defined.

“What are you doing here? Do you work for Ernie now?”

His eyes drift up as rain continues to pour down his face and into his eyes, and it’s only then that I register I’m also being soaked by the storm. He squints one eye shut, raising his voice as a crack of thunder booms. “Do you mind if we get in the truck before we have this conversation?”

“What about my car?”

“Leave it.” He steps back, pulling my door open. “Mark Summers is on his way to get it. We’ll wait for him and hand off the keys. Where’s your stuff?”

I gesture toward the back seat, and Garrett pulls the door open, retrieving my suitcase and duffel bag.

Scrambling, I grab my purse and shut off the car.

“Anything else?” he calls, shouting over the storm.

“That’s it.” We shut both doors and race toward his truck. By the time we reach it, I’m completely soaked. I may as well have been plunged into a pool as I tear open the door and step up out of the ankle-deep water.

I slam the door closed, and the world feels instantly quieted, though the storm is still raging. Garrett shakes his head like a dog, reaching in the back of the truck. He grabs two T-shirts and tosses one to me, then he uses the other to dry his face and arms.

He’s tall and tanned, with more muscles in his ropy arms than I remembered. Each movement causes new lines of muscles and skin to appear underneath his drenched shirt, like a sculpture. I fight the urge to reach out and trace my fingers across him, to study him like the work of art he appears to be.

My throat is sandpaper as my eyes travel up his arms and across his collarbone. His chin, beard, lips. He’s beautiful. Every bit as beautiful as I remember.

He clears his throat, and my eyes meet his, my cheeks boiling over with the heat of embarrassment. He just caught me staring. And not just staring, but drinking him in.

I avert my gaze at once and tuck a piece of hair behind my ear.

When I look back, hoping he won’t call me out on what just happened, he holds up the fabric in his hands, nodding his head toward the shirt in mine. “It’s clean, I promise.”

“Right.” I pat the material against my face, and his familiar scent hits me all at once. Fresh, like laundry detergent and soap, plus a mixture of something citrusy like bergamot and something else that’s entirely male. Entirely him.

As I slide the fabric down across my skin, it’s hard not to imagine it’s him, that he’s the one touching me. Especially with his scent invading my senses, his gaze now drilling into me as if in payback for the way I stared at him. We’re too close here, too alone. I try not to think about the times, not so different from now, that we spent together in his truck. The times when I couldn’t keep every inch of my skin from his.

When I check the mirror, the ghosts of those memories have painted themselves in scarlet across my neck and chest. I wonder if he’s thinking the same thing.

I chance another look at him, just once, and he shifts his gaze away from me— guilty, perhaps? I turn back to my mirror, scraping the water off more than absorbing it with the T-shirt before drying my phone’s screen.

When I’m as dry as I can get—which isn’t saying much—I follow his lead by wadding the shirt into a ball and tossing it into the back seat. He turns the heat up, pointing the vents in my direction with a chuckle he fails to hide.

“What’s funny?” I demand, though it feels pointless to ask. He’s clearly going to call me out on what I’ve been thinking about. He’s always been able to read me like that.

“You look like a drowned rat,” he says pointedly.

Oh. “Well, you look like a wet golden retriever.”

“Aren’t they supposed to be golden?” His eyes meet mine and several lifetimes pass, neither of us saying a word, though I desperately want to. I just don’t know what I would say.

I never thought I’d be in this position—soaking wet, sitting just inches away from Garrett again, having all his attention to myself.

Before I can work up the nerve to say anything, he blinks—moment over—and turns away. He checks his dark hair in the mirror as I feel the moment fizzling out like carbonation under my skin.

He closes his visor just as we’re both distracted by a tow truck pulling into the parking lot. We are alone no more. Just like that.

“There’s Mark. Give me your keys.” He holds out his hand as the truck stops in front of us, and Mark Summers steps out and jogs through the rain, waving a hand over his head. Like Garrett, he has grown up well— I can’t believe we’re all adults now —and his kind smile is as familiar and warm as ever. He appears at the window, a black rain hood pulled up over his blond hair.

Mark has always reminded me so much of Will—pure sunshine in a bottle.

Garrett rolls down the window as Mark gives me a lopsided grin.

“Tessa Becker.” He drawls my name, his eyes trailing the drenched outline of my body. “When Will said you were back in town, I thought he was pulling my leg.”

“My brother?” I tease. “Never.”

He tilts his chin upward as Garrett puts the keys into his palm with a little too much force. “Don’t worry about the car. Just a little flat. It doesn’t look like the rim is bent or anything. ’Course, I’ll get a better look at it in the shop. Either way, we’ll get you fixed up, good as new.” He pauses, his eyes flicking from the car to me. “Maybe I’ll bring it by once it’s fixed, and I could take you to dinner? Will said you’re staying at his place.”

“Alright, Romeo,” Garrett cuts in before I can answer, “why don’t you just get the car fixed and try to play loverboy when my truck isn’t getting drenched in the process?” To emphasize his point, he brushes a handful of water off the plastic piece of the door just inside the window.

“Fair enough. See you guys later.” Mark backs up with a beaming smile before waving and returning to his truck. Garrett rolls the window up. We wait as Mark backs the tow truck up in front of my car, but when he’s done and back out in the rain, he gives us a thumbs up, and Garrett waves at him again before pulling away.

For a while, the ride is silent, and I’m not sure if we’re supposed to be pretending this is all very normal, or admitting that it’s not. It’s not like I haven’t ridden in a vehicle with Garrett. As my brother’s best friend, I’ve ridden in his truck more times than I can count.

Just not since everything went wrong.

“Thank you for coming to my rescue, by the way. I can’t remember if I already said that.” I pick at the skin next to my thumbnail for something to do.

“Come on, now.” He gives me a look that says I should know better. “Of course I came to get you.”

“I know, I just…I didn’t expect Will to call you. I thought he was calling a mechanic. If he’d told me…”

“What? You’d have said no? You needed a ride, too. Not just the car picked up. Unless you were hoping to ride with Mark.” There’s an edge to his tone, even with the joke.

“You caught me.” My hands go up in mock surrender. “Foiled my plan.”

He’s quiet for a long while, but eventually he says, “Well, ever so sorry, but it sounds like you’ll have a second chance when he drops the car off.”

I sway my head to the side. “Who would’ve ever thought little Mark Summers would grow up so well? He was so small back in school. Now he… Well, clearly he works out.”

He gags silently.

I laugh, shoving his arm. “Dude, leave him alone. He’s sweet.”

“Mm-hmm. That’s why you were ogling him. His sweetness .”

“I was not ogling him.”

“You were ogling each other.” He cuts a glance toward me. “Makes sense. You always were into the teacher’s pets.”

I eye him. “That’s not how I remember it.”

His quick glance my way is pointed, but he says nothing else. We ride in silence for a while as I take in the familiar sights of my hometown. Nothing has changed here, and yet everything has changed. This place is a roadmap of my childhood—the empty lot where I learned to drive, the park where I played with my friends, my favorite Italian place that Mom reserved for the most special occasions, the doctor’s office I visited when I was sick, and the streets Britney and I used to drive down at all hours of the night discussing everything from boys to the future to our parents.

Garrett slows the car before he turns into my brother’s subdivision, and I can’t believe how quickly that went. I’m almost sad to say goodbye to him again.

When the house comes into view, I’m hit with an odd pang in my gut, like missing something that was never really mine. Perhaps it’s because Will isn’t here. It’s funny. Will is my brother and one of my best friends, and yet I’ve only been inside of his house once—the weekend he moved in six years ago.

The few times I have visited, I stayed with Mom, and Will would come there. Now, Mom’s house has been sold to pay for her care, and this is all that’s left.

I know it’s unlikely, but the threat of her making a recovery that doesn’t require facility care and learning that our home is now owned by someone else—that we have no real plans for where she’ll go if that were to happen—keeps me up at night.

As if he can read my mind, Garrett clears his throat before saying, “Are you, um, gonna go visit your mom while you’re in town?”

“She’d kill me if I didn’t.” I look worriedly at the house as something occurs to me, then squeeze my eyes shut. “Oh. Shoot. ”

“What’s wrong?” He comes to a stop in the driveway, unbuckling.

I scrub my hand over my forehead, frustration running through me. “I just realized I gave Mark my car keys, which just so happen to be connected to the rest of my keys.” I pause, looking over at him. “Which means I don’t have my keys to Will’s place. Mark does.”

Realization sweeps through Garrett’s features, his dark brows smoothing out, pink lips coming unpinched. “Oh.” He shuts the truck off. “Okay.”

“We’ll have to go back to the shop and get them. I’m so sorry about this.”

He takes his key out of the ignition, clearly still not understanding what I’m saying.

“What are you?—”

“I’ve got a key.”

“Oh.” Well, that makes sense. “Okay. Cool.”

He pauses, hands resting in his lap as he stares at me. A strange look comes over his face, like he’s realizing something for the first time. His eyes go slightly wide, and he appears conflicted, but eventually, he pushes his door open without a word and grabs my luggage from the back seat.

We climb the concrete steps and find ourselves on the large front porch. The space is plain, and Will has made no effort to decorate, but I’m impressed to find it still looks kept up. He’s even repainted the front door, which desperately needed painting when he bought the place.

“Well, thank you again for all of this,” I tell him, reaching for my bags.

“Always happy to help,” he says, sticking a key in the lock. He pushes the door open, and his eyes find mine. Something flips in my stomach, a deep tug like even my muscles want me to step closer to him, but I can’t.

If I do, I’m terrified of what would happen. What I would let happen.

What I might want to happen.

“Thanks again,” I stumble over my words, and from the look on his face, he read, highlighted, and notated everything that was just going through my mind. I step into the house backward and move to shut the door, but he doesn’t budge. Why isn’t he leaving? “I’ll, uh, see you around, okay?”

A corner of his mouth quirks with an expression I don’t understand. He sighs and looks to his right, talking to himself when he says, “He didn’t tell you.”

“Who? Will? What didn’t he tell me?”

He puts a hand on the door and jiggles his keys in the air. “I, um,”—there’s a bit of laughter in his tone—“I have a key to Will’s place…” His chest puffs with a deep breath. “Because it’s my place, too.”

My brain sputters to a stop. “What?”

“Guess you’ll be seeing me around a lot.” His bright smile beams. “Roomie.”