Missing

Cries of Kara rang out in the night. Their sound lingered ominously between the trees. Feet moving through the dark forest sent up a chorus of crunching pine needles. Hearts beat faster in chests with nervous feelings. Eyes darted into the shadows. Searching for what was lost, hoping not to discover what was feared.

Peter was breathing now. At least he could say he was breathing. The air felt cold and distant in his lungs. What had he done? Nothing. That's what he'd done. Kara was never there. She was just a nightmare who lied and said she was a dream. His hands weren't bloody. His side, where her foot had landed, wasn't bruised. He had to get somewhere. He had to stop fucking standing where he was. Clean, he needed to be clean. Moving his feet, he took one last look at the poorly composed mound of dirt and moved through the thick fog of the forest.

Thomas gripped the pebbled grip of his gun tightly. Somewhere in the darkness that still lay in the hours before the sun would rise were two very scared parents. Who had heard Kara close her door before she went to bed. Who had been woken by a crash of broken glass. Who had heard her scream just before the monster who had taken her had covered her mouth.

15 and one in the chamber, he muttered as he kept moving. Kara’s voice from days before haunted him. I'm scared, Tommy. Why had he told her to calm down? Why had he blown her off, saying he would look into it? A lot of good looking into it was doing now. He could still see his stupid hand on her shoulder. Don't worry, Kara. I'll talk to him. He wanted to ball his own fist and beat his own ass for saying that to her.

Peter could taste the salt from his sweat in his mouth. He was running now. The cool, wet, humid night air felt good in his lungs. The faster he ran, the more convinced he became that Kara was never really there. It was all his imagination. He had watched her turn off her light before she got into bed, and then he had gone home. He hadn't broken the window and slipped past her curtains.

The world felt heavy above Kara. Time slowed. Her thoughts seemed to swim through a river filled with mud. The taste of soil filled her mouth when she parted her lips for air. Coughing and spitting, unable to breathe, she became a convulsing mass of flailing limbs. Everything seemed to move and slide around her as she kicked and thrashed. At first, her movement was restricted before the grip of what was holding her began to loosen.

Peter felt a wave of relief wash over him at the realization he was free. There was his house just ahead through the trees. He was almost there, almost to his bed where he could forget his dream that had become a nightmare and go to bed. That's right, he could go to sleep, and when he woke up, there wouldn't be sirens in the distance. There wouldn't be the terrible feeling in his chest that he'd done something unbelievably wrong.

Because Kara wasn't real. She wasn't even a ghost. Ha. He knew it. This was all a terrible joke his mind had played on him. He hadn't grown up with Kara. He hadn't ruined their friendship by becoming obsessed with her. Because she didn't exist, she never really had.

There that piece of shit was. Tommy broke into a run. Peter was just ahead of him. Where was Kara? What had he done with her? Peter had her. He knew it. He had known it from the moment the call had come in. And Peter running out of the woods just proved it. Pulling his weapon, he knew he wouldn't hesitate to use it. Nothing would stop him from getting Kara back.

"Stop!" Fear shot through Peter's body. He was frozen with it. His eyes focused on his house just ten feet away before he turned around.

"Where is she, where the fuck is she?" Tommy's voice boomed toward him. He watched as the other man's chest heaved with anger.

"Who?" His question was genuine. After all, how could you ask about someone who never existed?

"You know who? Kara!" Tommy's voice broke this time as he shouted the words across the space between them. Blue lights appeared in the sky, closing in on them. The sounds of sirens weaved their way into his ears. Running his hands down the front of his sweat-soaked shirt, he let a smile stretch across his face before he answered.

"I don't know a Kara, is she an imaginary friend of yours?"

Flexing her fingers, Kara tightened the grip on the bag in her hand. She never really thought she would get here. A part of her had always thought they would listen. But that had been the foolish hope of a child. Her parents didn't care about her. They only cared about the grades, the accolades, and the articles about the prodigy who had created a medicine that could fight cancer in a university science lab. In the three years that followed her discovery. Her parents hadn't cared about who she was or what she wanted. They had only cared about the mountains of money that had come in. They had only wanted her to find the next great breakthrough.

Stepping on the bus, Kara sighed in relief. The day when she'd be here had always seemed like a far-off fairytale. Every week, every month, she had spent planning, she hadn't allowed herself to actually believe it would happen, but now that it was here, she wrapped herself in the comfort of it.

With a roar of the engine, the bus moved out onto the road. As the large tires began to roll faster down the pavement, she let her eyes drift to the buildings moving past the window beside her. With each passing block, she sank further down into the feeling of fate that surrounded her. She didn't mourn the life she was leaving. She hoped for the one that was starting.

Months. Seven long months of Kara’s ghost haunting him. Sometimes Tommy couldn't remember who he was before she left. His life had become consumed with nothing but thoughts about where she was. Slamming his tired fist down on his desk, he tried to forget the image of the upturned earth where Peter had said she was buried. How could they ask him to close her case? To give up on her. To make the girl he had always secretly felt so much for a cold case. How could they ask him to do that? He couldn't. It would be a betrayal. He'd been her only friend through high school and after.

Peter enjoyed the moments they gave him in the prison's yard when he could look at the blue sky and be free in his mind. A bird flew across his vision, and he imagined it was Kara. His beautiful angel, who had always been living in the heaven of his mind. His lips turned up in the corners, and a smile spread across his face as he thought of how he could always be with her now. She was always waiting just for him. She only existed to be with him.

Spreading the fingers of his hand, he felt her hand slip into his. Letting the early afternoon air settle in his lungs, he waited for her to begin to tell him what they would talk about today.

Kara loved the way the sun drifted up from the ocean's blanket every morning. Yoga on her balcony, followed by a cup of coffee, had become one of her favorite routines since she moved into the villa. Pulling her legs underneath her on the cushion where she sat, she let the warmth of the sun pour over her. The Italian coast suited her. For the first time in a long time. Maybe for the first time in her life, her heart was still.

Moving her cup of fresh ground coffee to her lips, she let her mind drift to her one regret. Tommy had always been her bright spot. She missed his kind eyes. She missed staring at his lips and imagining hers pressed against his. Looking down at the table to her left, she studied the corners of the postcard lying there before settling on the pen beside it. Reaching out was a risk.

Kara’s words danced and played in Tommy's mind. I'll be waiting when you arrive if you want to take a chance on a love I was always too afraid to tell you of. The line moved, and he looked down at the ticket in his hand. France, all this time, and she'd been in Paris. More of Kara's words drifted through his thoughts. You'll have to leave everything behind, but if you think you can love me forever, I'm yours. As he handed his ticket to the gate agent, he thought leaving everything behind was easy. He had no family. His parents had never been in his life. His friends had all fallen away, the more he'd become obsessed with finding her. His job and his career were in shambles.

The bustle of the airport moved around Kara. Her heart beat with a nervous energy in her chest. Her eyes danced from face to face, searching for Tommy's familiar one. She couldn't think about how she'd feel if he wasn't on the plane. She had to believe that he would take a chance on a life with her. She had to believe that in an hour they'd be making the fourteen-hour drive back to her villa.

She believed in their love. But she'd been careful having him fly to France instead of Italy. In her soul, she knew he would never betray her, but she'd still forced herself to be cautious. Knowing that if he didn't keep her secret. If he hadn't come here alone, she would be able to disappear again without anyone knowing where to look. They would hold her for a while. Question her. But she hadn't broken any laws. Eventually, they would have to let her go, and she would vanish to Italy again.

Seeing Tommy appear, walking among the crowd as he left the plane, cleared every thought but him from her mind. She raced forward.

Tommy spotted her when she was halfway across the distance between them. He let the bag in his hands drop to the floor before holding his arms out to her. Kara launched herself at him when she was only a step away. Their lips crashed together the moment she slammed into him. Her hands went around his neck, and in that moment, being kissed by him like she was all he had ever wanted, she knew this was where her happily ever after began.

Epilogue.

Walking with her hand in Tommy's. Kara thought the Italian coast was a perfect place to be a ghost. Two years had passed since Tommy stepped off the plane in France. Two years of perfect days and unforgettable nights. Giving her hand a squeeze, Tommy turned to her, placing his hand on her swollen stomach before leaning down to give her a kiss.

"I can't wait to meet our girl." He said, before moving his eyes to look out across the ocean. Wet beach sand felt like fingers of comfort as grains squished between her toes. A warmth spread in her chest as she thought about their lives that had turned out to be their own version of the best fairytale.

Since Tommy had arrived and they'd started their new lives, they'd gathered a small group of friends who had become a family to them. Last spring, they had been married in a small garden wedding, and now they were about to begin the adventure of raising a child together. Looking up at Tommy's profile, she said the words she would never get tired of saying to him.

"I love you."