if there’d been anything in his stomach. By the time he made it around the bar, practically shoving people away as he forced his way to the backroom, he was physically distressed. His steps were all wrong, weighed down by panic and fear.
Surely if something had happened to her or to his baby he would have known. His family – and the prison – would have made sure of it. Yet…paranoia ate away at the last scraps of his sanity. The what-ifs swirled around him, swallowing him whole.
He barged into the backroom, his eyes rimmed red. He immediately found Jem seated behind his desk, making orders over the phone. Looking up, he had a mad expression that the door had been charged through. His mouth was already forming a harsh curse when his eyes landed on Thames and suddenly he went still.
“Oh, my God.” Jem exhaled. The phone fell from his hand, hitting the desk with a sickening crack. He bolted up just as Thames rounded the desk and grabbed at the collar of Jem’s shirt, looking disturbed and ragged.
“Jem,” Thames forced out, his throat feeling strangled. “Where is she? Is she okay? The baby…Jem, the house…The house is gone.”
Jem’s face broke with emotion. He pulled Thames to him, supporting his weight. Immediately, he grasped Thames’ shirt in response and nodded, hurriedly responding. “She’s okay. They’re okay, Conor. They’re alright, buddy.”
Eyes bright with unshed tears, Thames withdrew his grip from Jem and staggered back, breathing for the first time since he’d seen the sight of the rubble. His entire body prickled with the most intense need to see her. While he shut his eyes momentarily to focus on bringing down his body’s response to what he had seen, he felt Jem studying him.
“Thought you had three more months left,” he said, sounding apologetic. “I wish I’d known. How’d you get here? Jesus. I feel like I’m looking at a fucking ghost, but…” He paused, looking more disturbed now as he uttered, “but I’m also feeling like I’m looking at a stranger.”
Thames was too lightheaded to respond. He gripped the back of a nearby chair and squeezed it hard. He felt like every ounce of his energy had been drained from him. All that pent-up worry, all that fear and anxiety ebbed away slowly, until he was finally forced to absorb his current situation.
Jem.
Jem was in front of him. He hadn’t seen his friend in so long. There was such a chasm between them.
“Are you okay?” Jem asked, watching him intently.
In a physical sense, yeah, but…
Thames swallowed hard as he looked into Jem’s eyes, catching sight of that old familiarity. Still, it felt all wrong being here, standing before him now after having nearly lost his sanity.
“I need to see Charlotte,” he spoke, his voice eerily calm now.
There was something in Jem’s expression that didn’t sit right with Thames. It was wariness and hesitation. He pursed his lips together, thinking.
“Jem,” Thames pressed, cocking his head to the side as he watched him. “I’m not asking.”
Jem let out a long sigh and leaned back against his desk, arms crossed. It was a defensive stance, suggesting he wasn’t going to part with this information straight away. Rubbing at his face with sudden exhaustion, he asked, “Are you planning on seeing her right this minute?”
“Is there something wrong with that?”
“Have you seen your mother?”
“I want to see Charlotte.”
Jem nodded stiffly. “Then you haven’t seen your mother. Of course not. She’d have told you about the house, about it burning down two years ago. About who was responsible for it.”
Thames let his words soak in without responding. He forced himself to stay calm. He clung to that apathy, aware now of why it existed in him. If he felt any of that old flame of rage, he would have lost his shit. He would have torn the town apart, searching for the culprit.
But now, well, now the laws of human etiquette didn’t entail open violence of that nature.
“I don’t want to know right now, Jem,” he declared, solemnly. “I want to know where Charlotte is.”
Jem appeared curious. “Not the response I was expecting.” Turning around, he grabbed at his notepad and pen and began jotting something down. “I’ll give you her home address, but she’s not there right now. She’s somewhere else, and I’ll write that down too.”
“Where is she?”
Jem shook his head, reluctant, tearing off the page to give to him. “No, my friend, I’m not going to bear witness to your reaction. You