The Missing

down her back as he cried. He clutched her to him, almost desperately. But as the storm of grief eased, he pulled back. Pulled away completely. “What are you doing here, Taige?” he murmured, easing back from her. He walked away, disappearing through a door on the far end of the room. She trailed behind him, uncertain how to answer that.

    “I . . . I wanted to be with you.” She peered around the doorjamb into a bathroom that was easily three times the size it needed to be. It had a huge sunken tub on one end underneath a huge window. There was a separate shower that had two showerheads. The toilet was behind a little wall. Cullen stood at the sink, his hands braced on its smooth, glossy black surface.

    He laughed, and it was a hollow, jagged sound that hurt her just to hear it. “Be with me. Why?” he asked, lifting his head so that he could meet her gaze in the reflection. “You want to comfort me? Make me feel better?”

    Taige didn’t have any answer for him. She stood there, staring at him and feeling so damn useless. Useless. It was worse than evil sometimes. At least evil accomplished its goal. Useless didn’t accomplish anything.

    “You knew she was already gone, didn’t you? When you headed up here?” He looked away from her, as though he couldn’t even manage to look at her reflection.

    “Yeah.” She had to force the word out, and it was like squeezing it out through a pipe lined with rusty nails.

    “When it was too late. Why couldn’t it come sooner, Taige? You’ve saved little kids right in front of my eyes. People that were total strangers to you. Why couldn’t you save my mom?” he asked quietly.

    He turned to stare at her, and his eyes seemed to burn clear through her.

    “Cullen . . .”

    He crossed toward her. When he reached for her, Taige held still, hardly able to move. That intensity on his face—it almost scared her. His hands came up, cupping her face and forcing her to look at him when all she really wanted was to look away. Hide. Hide from the shame that he had dragged out from inside her. Useless. Failure . . . “You have this amazing gift. But you hide from it, don’t you? You hide yourself and screw the people you could help.”

    Taige flinched as though he had slapped her, jerking away from him. She wished he would have hit her. She could handle being hit a hell of a lot easier than she could handle this . . . this contempt. It cut through with laser-sharp acuity, tearing something deep inside, and she knew it was going to leave a scar. Some wounds didn’t ever heal, and this was going to be one of them.

    Nervous, Taige backed her way out of the room with some barely formed idea of escape circling through her head. But Cullen followed her, advancing each time she retreated, and when she backed herself up against a fat, wide couch situated under yet another window, he lifted his arms, bracketing her into place. “Nothing to say, Taige?” he asked softly.

    Digging her fingers into the plush padding of the couch, Taige stared at him. Her throat felt tight. There was a knot in it that felt the size of a golf ball. It took two tries before she managed to force any words out. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Cullen. I’m . . .” Sorry. It sounded so lame, so empty. His mother was dead, and she had nothing for him but some trite, meaningless phrase that anybody could say. Frustrated, she brought her hands up and smoothed them down over her hair. The wild curls sprang right back into place, but she was doing it more out of nerves than anything. “I’ve already told you how sorry I am. I know how this hurts—”

    The completely wrong thing to say, she realized about two seconds too late. Cullen’s eyes narrowed. His hand flew up, this time fisting in her hair so that if she did move away, she was going to have to leave some hair behind. “You know how this hurts,” he repeated softly, his voice incredulous, as though he simply couldn’t believe she had just said that.

    Her voice shook as she said, “I lost my mama, too, Cullen. I lost my mama and my dad, and I was just a little kid when it happened. I didn’t have anybody. So yeah, I do know how it hurts.”

    Cullen shook his head. “You can’t know, Taige. Your parents died in an accident. Yes, a drunk driver killed them, but he didn’t do it on purpose. And they didn’t suffer. My mom? He raped her. He beat her. He choked her to death. The entire time, she probably knew she