To the Stars (Thatch #2)

  Dedication

  For Cory . . .

  My life and my heart would be so empty without you

  Note for the Readers

  If you or someone you know is a victim of relationship abuse, you are not alone; there is help available. Go to stoprelationshipabuse.org for more information.

  Contents

  Dedication

  Note for the Readers

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Molly McAdams

  Credits

  Back Ad

  Copyright

  About the Publisher

  Prologue

  Harlow

  Fall 2010—Walla Walla

  “HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LOW. I waited for you.”

  The instant his voice filtered through the phone, my body stilled and warmed at the same time. My breath came out in a soft, audible huff, and my eyes shut as hundreds of welcome memories flooded my mind.

  I didn’t have to look at the screen to know who was calling. I would know that voice anywhere, and I should have been expecting his call. Not just his call. This call. We’d been preparing for and talking about this call for two and a half years now.

  My lips and fingers trembled, and I almost dropped the phone as I tried to make my throat work.

  “I waited for you,” played over and over again like a broken record. A broken record with the most beautiful music still coming from it.

  Turning my head just enough to look over my shoulder, I eyed the guy shrugging into his shirt, and my chest ached when I faced forward again.

  No longer seeing the dorm room I was standing in, I let our memories consume me. “I—” I took in a shaky breath, and my voice came out as a strained whisper. “I didn’t wait for you.”

  There was nothing. No sound, no response—only the most heartbreaking silence I’ve ever endured.

  And it was a heartbreak I would carry with me forever.

  Chapter 1

  Harlow

  Present Day—Richland, Washington

  MY EYES SHOT open as the dream faded away, and my dark bedroom blurred for a few seconds as the tears fell steadily across my face, dripping onto the pillow. Locking my jaw against the trembling, I took deep breaths to keep myself calm—to keep myself from giving in to the sobs that were building in my chest.

  The heartbreak that had settled over the silence during that phone call was still one I felt today—as if it had just happened rather than four and a half years ago.

  I should have known in those seconds that I’d said the wrong words. I should have known I was choosing the wrong man. He would have understood my mistake. He would have still been waiting for me, like he had been for two and a half years.

  My Knox.

  But I’d ignored signs; I’d gone with what my then-eighteen-year-old heart had been screaming over—and I hadn’t heard from Knox Alexander since.

  I lay on my side long after the tears had run their course and my cheeks had dried, clinging to the memories I knew I should let go of, but couldn’t. I should have noticed the sky lightening outside, I should have been checking the time to get up before the alarm went off; but I was still there daydreaming when the shrill sound filled the room, and my body locked up as I waited for what would meet me this morning.

  My fingers curled around the edge of my pillow when the alarm was turned off, my stomach churned when I heard him roll over behind me, and my jaw trembled almost violently when his arm slowly wrapped around my waist, pulling me closer to him.

  I closed my eyes tightly as my husband’s lips pressed firmly to my shoulder, and refused to acknowledge him until it was necessary.

  “You’re still in bed,” Collin observed.

  I nodded my head sluggishly against the pillow.

  “Which means I don’t have breakfast waiting for me; am I right?”

  Swallowing past the thickness in my throat, I nodded again—waiting, always waiting.

  His fingers slowly traced up my arm resting on my side until they reached just above the inside of my elbow. My body jerked when he dug two fingers into the pressure point there.

  “Then why the fuck are you still in bed?” he growled against my shoulder before releasing my arm roughly.

  I moved quickly, not wanting to give him an opportunity to do anything else, and released a shaky sigh of relief when I hit the kitchen. If that was all I got for still being in bed, I would take it and be thankful.

  After putting his bread in the toaster, I mixed up some eggs and milk, then poured them into a skillet and ran across the kitchen to get the Keurig ready. I’d just put everything on the table and had started washing the dishes when Collin walked into the kitchen and right up behind me instead of going to the table.

  He only had a towel wrapped around his waist, and when his arm snaked around my body, I saw there were still drops of water racing down his skin.

  My hands fisted around the handle of the skillet and the dish-scrubbing brush when I realized he was testing me, but I didn’t say anything. Collin never came out here like this. He ate either as soon as he woke up, or right before he left for work . . . if he was still in his towel, he was just looking for more reasons to be upset with me.

  “Good girl,” he whispered against the back of my neck before placing a soft kiss there.

  My nostrils flared from my rough, nervous breaths when he stepped away from me, and after a few seconds, I began slowly scrubbing the skillet to calm myself.

  “Now make it again since you were late.”

  I watched as he dumped the food and coffee into the sink before roughly setting the plate and mug on the counter next to me. I wanted to cry, I wanted to yell at him for being an asshole, but I knew both those things would only end badly for me. So with a defeated sigh and hollow feeling in my chest, I quickly cleaned and dried the skillet before making his breakfast all over again.

  The dishes were cleaned, his food and coffee were on the table, and I was sitting in one of the chairs at the kitchen table by the time he came back out—this time ready for work.

  He held my hand on the tabletop the entire time he ate, and even cleaned and put his dishes in the dishwasher when he was done before walking back over to me. Bending at the waist so he was eye-level with me, he stared at me for an entire minute with an apologetic look.

  “I love you, Harlow,” he said, as if he was trying to determine whether I knew that or not.

  “I know,” I responded softly. “I love you too.”

  His lips fell gently upon mine for a few seconds before he straightened. Grabbing his wallet out of his back pocket, he pulled out a credit card and let it fall to the table. “Go pick up your sister, take her out to lunch, and get your nails done or something. If you have time, go shopping.”

  “Thank you, Collin.”

  “Anything for my girl. I’ll see you when I get home.”

  I just nodded and watched as he left the kitchen. I waited for the front door to close and his car to start before I finally let my body relax.

  T
here was no point in telling him I didn’t want his money. He knew he’d upset me, and having me buy things for myself was his way of apologizing. Money was his way of apologizing, but no amount of money could keep me in this house and married to that man.

  The threat of my family’s lives could.

  When times were better, like just then, he handed me his credit card and told me to do things for myself. That way, he could show me off to his family and mine with how well he took care of me. He would joke with them that I loved him for his money, but he and I knew differently. And I knew that if he handed me his credit card and I didn’t have anything to show for it at the end of the day, I would pay for it in other ways.

  When times were bad, the jokes about credit cards and buying me off were something I longed for, because it was then that I got my monster. It was then that my husband would tell me in detail the ways he would kill my family in front of me if I ever left him or told anyone what happened in our home. I hadn’t believed him at first. I’d been terrified of him—no, beyond terrified. Terror couldn’t begin to explain the feeling that coursed through my body when I first came face-to-face with my monster, but I had thought he would come after me if I left . . . never them.

  I’d planned for two months over a way to leave him, leave everything. It wasn’t until my little sister was still here when he got home one night—something I knew wasn’t allowed—and he came back into the living room with a gun in his hand and his lifeless eyes fixed on her, that I understood his threats were very real.

  My sister never saw the gun. I’d been able to come up with a reason for needing her to leave before she could understand the underlying panic in my words or see the detached look in Collin’s eyes. But according to Collin, I still needed to pay. I’d waited in the bedroom for him all night, trembling, but he’d never come after me. It wasn’t until the next morning that I received my punishment. I’d walked into the kitchen to find him sitting at the table in his clothes from the night before, eating breakfast and drinking coffee like any normal morning . . . except our dog was dead on top of the table.

  He’d told everyone that she’d been hit by a car, and as an apology a few days later, had allowed me to buy a new kitchen table. Thankfully he had never put me through the torture of making me buy another pet.

  So I’d waited until that summer when my family was on vacation in California before finally attempting to leave. I had thought if they were out of state I could leave and give them enough warning, especially since I’d never let it slip to Collin where they were going, or that they were even going, period. I hadn’t known my parents had disclosed everything to him, since they hoped Collin would be able to get time off from work to fly us down.

  I’d barely even made it into Portland, Oregon, before I was pulled over and arrested for “driving while intoxicated.” It didn’t matter that it was late morning, that I wasn’t given any form of field sobriety test, or that the officer didn’t bother to put me in a holding cell once we arrived at the station. It didn’t matter that I hadn’t been given the privilege of using the phone—not that I would have called Collin anyway. He still showed up at the Portland police station less than three hours later to pick me up; all of the charges were miraculously dropped.

  That night Collin made me sit on the couch with my phone in front of me, and told me I wasn’t to move until I’d received “the call.” I didn’t understand what call he was talking about since he sat across the room from me the entire night.

  Then my phone rang.

  It was my younger sister crying and telling me that the beach house they’d been staying in had caught fire. They had all made it out fine, but half of the house had been destroyed, and the cause was later determined to be arson. They never found who did it, but I hadn’t thought they would. Collin had been able to get an officer from Portland to fake my intoxication; why would he hire someone in California who was so careless as to get caught?

  I hadn’t tried to leave Collin again.

  After getting up from the kitchen table, I moved slowly through the house, making sure everything was still clean from the day before. Once the clothes in the bedroom were picked up, and the bed was made, I texted my younger sister, Hadley, and headed into the bathroom to take a shower.

  I hated our shower. It was big; too big. You could comfortably fit ten people in there. Collin had one of those rain shower systems put in so the entire thing was heated and could be put to use. All it did for me was make it harder to push memories of Knox aside, especially after dreaming about him—which was nearly every night.

  Our first kiss had been in the rain. We’d danced in the rain. And it’d been raining the last time I’d spoken to him. Everything about rain reminded me of him, reminded me of what I’d lost.

  Summer 2008—Seattle

  “BUT DO I look okay for the concert?” I asked my older sister, Hayley. “You keep skipping that last part!”

  She rolled her eyes after pulling into a parking spot. “I’m saying you look hot; that’s all that should matter.”

  “I’ve never been to a concert; it could totally matter!”

  “This can’t even technically be considered a concert. I mean, it is, but it isn’t. There will be people coming and going, and just hanging out . . . it’s just chill. You’re fine, I swear.”

  I flipped down the visor and checked my makeup in the mirror one more time before stepping out of the car with her.

  She sent me an approving smile as I rounded the front of her car to join her. “Ready?”

  “Obviously,” I said, holding my arms out.

  “You’re such a brat,” she said with a laugh. “Come on.”

  Wrapping an arm around my neck, she pulled me across the parking lot and over a large lawn to a building I would’ve sworn was abandoned, by the looks of it. But it was a local hangout, as well as the place to go to indie concerts. Mom never wanted me coming out here, but somehow Hayley had managed to get her to agree tonight. Usually wherever Hayley was, I wasn’t far behind.

  She wasn’t just my sister; she was my best friend. Her friends were mine, her curfew was also mine, and this was our last summer together before she moved across the country for school. I didn’t know what I was going to do without her; our other sister was too young for me to hang out with yet—and I’d never even had friends my age. My parents always called me an “old soul,” whatever that meant. All I knew was that I never fit in unless I was with Hayley, and she was leaving me.

  “Look who decided to show!” Hayley’s boyfriend, Neil, called out as we reached the building. “It’s Little Little Low Low.”

  “Hilarious,” I muttered before he picked me up in a big bear hug.

  “You’re not looking so little there, Little Low.”

  “And you’re a creeper,” I said at the same time Hayley made a face and smacked his stomach. “Ew, don’t be gross!”

  “I’m not!” He flung out his arms then wrapped one around Hayley. “I’m just saying we should probably keep a leash on her tonight, or something. Babe, you know your sister doesn’t look fifteen, and then you dress her in that? No one here is going to think she’s underage. I should put a sign on her that says ‘young one: untouchable.’”

  “She’ll be fine.” Hayley smiled and winked at me. “She looks great, and she’s here to have fun. She’s not going to do anything stupid.”

  Neil groaned. “I’m going to be punching people, aren’t I?”

  “Probably,” Hayley responded, and leaned in to kiss him. They soon forgot we were in public.

  “Did we come here for a concert, or for you to maul each other?”

  Hayley turned to grin at me. “Both?” When I made a face, she laughed. “Come on, let’s go inside.”

  I found out very quickly that concerts weren’t my thing. If it hadn’t been for the fact that most of our friends were there, the bad music and heavy smell of something that I wasn’t entirely sure was legal would have been unbearable.

  I d
rummed my fingers on the table and blew out a heavy breath as I looked around us. “I’m going to get some fresh air,” I stated loudly for whoever was listening.

  “Not alone you’re not,” Hayley yelled over the music.

  “I’m fine,” I said as I stood, and the unmistakable sound of a grunt came from behind me when I quickly took a step back from the short stool I’d been on.

  My body locked up and face pinched as embarrassment flooded my veins.

  A chorus of “Heys!” came from our table, and I turned to see which one of our friends I’d backed into.

  “I’m so sorr—” My words cut off when I looked up at him.

  Not a friend of mine. I would have remembered having a friend like him.

  “I’m sorry,” I whispered, my words drowning in the music.

  His lips tilted up in a crooked smile that was too perfect to be real. “No harm done,” he said in a deep, fluid voice.

  I’m positive my mouth was open as I continued to stare at him, not moving. His eyes quickly ran over my body, and his smile turned into more of a smirk before one of our friends said something and his head shot up to look at them.

  I blinked rapidly and took a step away from him. Keeping my eyes trained on the dark floor, I tried to remember what I’d been doing before he’d walked up. Outside. I wanted fresh air. I wanted to look at him again. No, walk outside, Harlow. Walk outside.

  I’d only taken two steps when I heard my sister’s voice above the music. “Somebody take Harlow outside.”

  I turned to glare at her. “I’m not a dog.”

  Walking away from the tables, I pushed through the mass of people standing near the front doors of the building, and breathed in a deep lungful of clean air.

  “They’re just looking out for you.”

  I turned and looked up at the same guy I’d just stepped on.

  “A girl who looks like you shouldn’t be out here alone.”

  “Because of guys like you?” I challenged, raising an eyebrow, but there was a teasing hint to my tone.

  That crooked smile was back, and he laughed softly as he leaned up against the wall next to me, close enough that our arms were touching. “Considering they asked me to come out here with you, I sure as hell hope not.”