Page 121 of The Complete Truth Duet
The same thing had happened to me when Penn died.
And then it happened all over again the moment I heard his voice in the hallway.
“Cora. Tell me where she is,” he demanded.
My whole body jolted, and then my mind checked out.
It was all wrong. Drew was fighting with Thomas. Isabel and River were hiding in the closet. Catalina had gotten caught by someone in the hallway.
And Penn was outside the door.
My ears started ringing as my hand lifted to the knob.
I couldn’t be right. It was impossible.
He was gone.
I cracked the door open. The wide, muscular back straining against a white T-shirt could have been anyone’s. But those tattoos? I’d traced them too many times to ever be able to forget them.
“I’m not here to hurt you, Catalina. I need to find Cora, and then I’m going to get you all out of here.”
He was…
Alive. Oh, so beautifully alive.
“Penn?”
He spun around so fast that I nearly fell when the tangible weight in his eyes hit me.
“Cora,” he breathed, his whole handsome face softening.
My nose started to burn, and he took a step toward me. Instinctively, I backed away. Shaking my head rapidly, I waited for him to disappear. It had to have been some kind of cruel trick Thomas was using to torture me with.
“You’re not here,” I croaked.
“I’m right here, baby,” he soothed in a voice so sweet and so kind that it crumbled reality.
Tears hit my eyes.
I was dreaming. That had to be it.
But I wasn’t.
He was too real.
Too perfect.
Too Penn.
I brought a shaking hand to my mouth. “How?”
He curled two fingers in the air. “C’mere, Cor.”
I couldn’t process any more words. He might have vanished by the time I got to him. Or maybe I was dead too. But no matter what happened after that moment, there was only one place I wanted to be.
I launched myself full body, all at once, into his arms and burst into tears.
“Shhhhh,” he breathed, palming the back of my head and tucking my face into the curve of his neck.
I shimmied in his arms. I couldn’t get close enough to absorb him the way I so desperately needed to.
The deep baritone of Drew’s voice interrupted our rose-colored reunion. “We gotta go. Cops are on the way.”
My head popped up, and even though my thighs were still wrapped around his waist, I waited for Penn to cease to exist.
Instead, he replied, “Where’s Thomas?”
Drew took his hand away from his head, revealing a gaping wound pouring blood from the side. “I don’t know. His fucking buddy caught me with a tire iron. They tore out of here.”
I felt Penn’s body go stiff.
Penn.
Fucking Penn.
Alive, well, breathing.
Penn.
He turned the blue stare that had been haunting my dreams for almost three weeks on me. “Where’s River?”
“In the closet,” I replied.
He gently set me on my feet, kissed my forehead, and marched over. I knew the exact moment he opened that door, because I was certain her gasp and then the sob that followed could have been heard around the world.
“Penn? Oh, God, Penn!”
I turned in time to see her dive into his arms much the way I had. No DNA test needed.
River wasn’t particularly cuddly with anyone but me. With the way she’d been raised, I’d never seen her hug a man. And there she was, wound around him like she too was trying to absorb him.
And, like he had with me, he held her, palming the back of her head and whispering something I couldn’t make out in her ear.
Seeing her with him—him with her—broke me in so many ways.
I wanted so badly for that to be real.
For her.
And for me.
I didn’t know what the hell was happening or when it would suddenly end, but I never wanted to wake up.
I could live a lie.
To keep that moment, I could live a lie for the rest of my life and die with a smile on my face.
“Mom?” Isabel croaked, shoving to her feet and sprinting into Catalina’s arms.
Catalina looked at me and asked the only question I couldn’t answer with a truth or a lie. “What the hell is going on?”
That would have entailed someone filling me in first.
However, I didn’t figure we had a hundred years for someone to explain to me how Penn had overcome the plague of death in order to save me all over again.
“We gotta go, man,” Drew said. “And I mean now.” He reached a hand out. “Cat, let’s go.”
She looked at me nervously and then moved toward him.
Penn set River onto her feet. The ink on his arm danced as he dug keys out of his pocket and threw them at his brother. “My car’s parked three houses up. Change the tag before you bring it back to the apartment.”
Drew looked at the keys. “It’s a two-seater.”
“Just you,” Penn clarified. Taking River by the hand, he marched over to me and curled me into his side before herding us both toward the door. “I got everyone else.”
