The Captain & Coyote (John Price Romance)

Chapter 86 - Giving Up

(Songs for this chapter
I'd Run To You - CJ STARNES
The Night We Met - LORD HURON
Let Em Go - MATT HANDSEN)

PRICE POV

I finally opened the cigars, I had to.

Something to make it feel like she's here with me. But they just make me miss the smell of her perfume, so much so that I bought plums to try and replicate it.

They don't.
Nothing fills that void her absence leaves.

For a moment I'm fine. I can go about my day, lose myself in work. But the second I stop or see something she would like I'm done for.

Drowning in that same emptiness.
Missing her smiling up at me, her hands on my shoulders, tucking her head in under my chin, even her fidgeting with my hand when she's nervous.

I miss it all, so much more than I can put into words. Everyday without her feels like I'm slowly getting sicker, dying even. The world has a grey color to it, food doesn't taste the same, sleep feels like a stranger I met in a past life.

I could handle it if I knew she was okay, knew she was with people she knows and trusts. But she's alone out there, somewhere no one can find her doing god knows what.

My gorgeous girl if you only knew how much I want to find you, how much I need you around, how badly I want to apologize and spend the rest of our lives making it up to you.

I'm losing hope and I'm terrified that it's because I'm losing her. Does she think about me as often as I do her? Does she want to come back but doesn't know how? Is she afraid I'll yell or be angry? Does she want to see me at all? Surely she hasn't fallen out of love with me? That's the thought that haunts me the most.

"Price we're nearly there." Blade states from the front seat. I had him transferred to my team temporarily until we've found her.

He's been a big help, he and Ghost have taken the reigns so I can try and rest a little. Only problem is the more rest I get the more doubt creeps in. I was standing on the beach but now I'm in waist high water with no sand in sight.

We pull up in the car park and before I'm even out of the car Ghost says exactly what I was going to ask.

"We'll go ask around some local shops, see if anyone has seen her." He says as he and Blade get out and disappear from view.

Leaving me standing in the same car park, looking out at the ocean, and that same concrete bench.

Where she wanted to be in the water just so her body didn't hurt, where despite her body not wanting to be close to me, her heart wanted nothing more.

The place we said we loved each other. She sat in my lap for so long my legs went numb, and I couldn't have been happier to be in that kind of pain. Listening to her heartbeat, her hands playing with my hair.

My eyes are watering, I can't hold it in anymore.

Fuck.

I wipe my eyes and take out the picture of her with the wild dogs and turn it over.

Always