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7

7

She couldn’t move. "Y-you?!" Lauren gasped. No. Something wasn't right. The man stared back at her and Lauren stood, frozen by shock.

The man who'd helped her by the roadside... the man with the alluring good looks, the thick blond hair and those gold swirled chocolate brown eyes.

Aaron fucking Spencer.

"You're Aaron Spencer?!" Lauren screamed. He remained silent, staring down at her with unreadable eyes.

"Answer me!!" Lauren screamed again, her initial fear of the man overcome by rage right now. "Oh, my God! I let you near me! You touched my hands and you're... you're the man who murdered my mother... my grandfather!! How dare you?" Lauren let out a bitter chuckle. "Wait, you don't know who I am, do? I'll tell you who I am. I... am Lauren Burns. The daughter of the woman you murdered twenty years ago. Catherine Burns. Does the name ring a fucking bell?! I'm the granddaughter of the man you killed on the same night!"

She was breathless, struggling to control her breathing and not cry at the same time.

Aaron Spencer stared at her.

"Lower your voice," was all he said. His words clipped, cold and emotionless.

Lauren narrowed her eyes, the grey orbs darkened by her wrath.

"Lower my voice? Lower my voice, are you kidding me?! You saw me at the diner, didn't you? And what did you do?? You ran like the coward you are, you bastard!!"

She leaped at him, her hands clawing for his throat, wanting to take all her anger out on him for all he put her family through, hating him for every nightmare she woke up sweating from, every dream in which her mother disappeared, hating him for her anxiety and pain. Everything! But only halfway towards him, she was cut off. A pair of strong arms wrapped around her waist and pulled her back. Lauren struggled furiously, her empty hands burning to wrap around Spencer's throat.

She threw a dark glare over her shoulder to see who the hell had stopped her. Grayson.

"Get your hands off me!" Lauren demanded, her voice thick and trembling.

"Lauren, I told you not to come here, please calm down," Grayson said gently and firmly, a look of apology in his eyes.

"Let me go!" Lauren insisted, her glare turning on Aaron as he stood in his doorway, just looking at her. "He's the one who should be caged up like an animal! I'm just a woman with a heart grieving for her mom and her pops. Do you remember them, Aaron Spencer, huh? Do you remember the people you murdered in cold blood? You remember C-Catherine Burns?"

"Lauren, please," Grayson said, pulling her struggling form off the porch.

"Gray, leave her," the man said.

Grayson looked up into Aaron's brilliantly gold-brown eyes and hesitated, but loosened his grip. Lauren shrugged completely out of his arms, her body weakening. She felt her muscles release the tension as she took a few steps toward Aaron Spencer.

He stood, large and dominant, filling his doorway, looking down at Lauren as she approached him.

She was disgusted with herself.

She’d fantasized about this man. She'd thought he was handsome, delighted in the feeling of his hand on hers! The thought now made her sick.

Lauren felt the tears that had blinded her finally coat her cheeks in thick glimmering lines.

"Why did you do it?" she finally said, her voice coming out in a broken whisper. Her pops had been a priest, for Christ's sake. Who the hell murders a priest?

Aaron said nothing in response, only looked at the face that he really should have recognized upon seeing. Only after she'd mentioned Woodfair that other day by the roadside, had his brain managed to link her face to one he knew only too well. She was the photocopy of her mother.

He'd tried to leave as quickly as possible, but it had been too late. She'd registered almost every detail of his appearance. God, the pain in her eyes. The absolute heartbreak. He wanted to feel unaffected, but in truth... her tears shattered him.

"Please just..." Lauren cried. "...just answer me. I just want to know..."

She looked at him through the blur of tears, her hands coming up together in a pleading pose. Maybe if she asked him nicely, he would tell her why. Maybe he'd help her understand why he'd had to do what he did and why she'd had to live each day without her mother's warm embrace. Maybe he'd explain the reason why the blood on his hands could have belonged to nobody else but her sweet mama and her pops.

"Lauren..." Grayson said quietly, swallowing to hold his own tears at bay. He hated seeing anybody in such a heartbreaking state. When she'd left the diner, he'd just known. He knew she'd come here. He also knew that Aaron would say not a word to her and that would drive her insane, she needed someone here. So he followed.

"Where did you put them?" Lauren questioned.

She really just needed to know. If he'd dug graves in some forest, maybe she could at least find some peace. Lay some flowers on her mother's grave for the first time. Lilies. Her mother had loved lilies.

"Did you dig a shallow grave in your backyard? If I ask nicely w-will you let me put flowers on it?" her voice broke and a torrent of sobs flooded out of her. Grayson caught her as she fell.

Aaron flinched, his heart constricting painfully in his chest. He wanted to take her pain away. But he couldn't. So he turned around, walked back into his house and closed the door, his jaw firmly clenched.

Lauren cried, her chest hurt from it but she couldn't stop. All her life, she'd never cried for her mother. Or her pops. Not a tear. Aunt Abby wouldn’t tolerate it. Lauren had just lived with the knowledge of what had happened twenty years ago in some distant part of her mind and soul. And today, it had all resurfaced. Too quickly and too painfully for her to deal with at once.

All it had taken was just one meeting with Aaron Spencer to bring all her carefully built self-control crashing catastrophically down on her.

Grayson rocked her gently until the last sniff had been made and the last tear spent.

Slowly, she eased out of his arms. "Thanks, Grayson..." she murmured shakily, wiping at her face.

He nodded. "No problem, Lauren. I'm really very sorry. You don' deserve none of this," he said and Lauren sighed heavily.

"Yeah, well, we can't change anything, can we?" she responded with a sarcastic smile. She turned her reddened eyes to Aaron Spencer's closed door. He'd closed his door on her. He'd actually closed it.

She scoffed. "The only thing he said to me was 'Lower your voice.' I don't even..." she trailed off, shaking her head in disbelief. And to think that he'd been on her mind a few times since she met him by the roadside. Lauren was sickened by that.

"Probably because of his mother," Grayson said. "She’s somewhere in the house and he hates for her to be disturbed."

Lauren turned to give him a lethal side-eye. "I'll tell you this, Grayson, and God is my witness. I don't give a shit whether his mother is disturbed or not. At least he still has her."

With that she walked slowly off the porch, Grayson followed.

They walked out of the yard and onto the road.

Silent moments passed when Lauren remembered the cold look in his eyes when he watched her scream and yell. It was like he wasn't even alive inside. He was so cold. It was so hard to believe that that was the man whose hands had warmed hers a few days ago. The man, thoughts of whom had filled her mind and made her wet last night.

What had he been doing on that road, dressed as a fireman? Surely, he couldn't have gotten such a good job with his record of murder?

"He has a job?" Lauren finally said as they slowly walked. Grayson glanced at her, knowing what he was about to say would probably anger her.

"Yeah. He works four times a week as a Fireman at the Fire Department in Malbourg, the neighboring town," he said.

Lauren stopped walking and laughed bitterly. "Wow," she said. "Wow. Who the hell hired him? Do they know that he's a murderer?"

Grayson cringed. "They know everything. They decided to give him a chance since the place hires many rehabilitated ex-convicts to get them into doing something much more beneficial to the community. It's saved a lot of lives, that program."

Lauren tucked her hands into her hoodie pockets. "He's still a murderer," she muttered.

Grayson stopped walking and after a few steps ignoring this, Lauren finally turned and looked at him.

"What? You wanna start defending him again, don't you?" she asked, her tone slightly accusing. She liked Grayson enough, but if he didn’t stop trying to paint Aaron Spencer as a saint, Lauren wouldn’t tolerate it.

Grayson held up his hands. "I'm not defendin’ nobody, Lauren. I don't know much about this anyway."

"Oh, don't you? You two seem to know each other pretty well, though. He called you Gray and you keep defending him, are you best friends or something?" she asked.

Shrugging, Grayson shook his head. "It's not like that. I used to get bullied a lot. I had absolutely no friends and one day, Aaron Spencer came across my miserable self by the lake. I kept cussin’ him out at first, but he ignored my insults. He taught me to defend myself and was the first person who acknowledged the physical abuse I was goin' through at home to my face. Everybody else just turned the other way, but Aaron taught me how to deal with it and my step-father."

Lauren applauded. "Lovely! What did he say? Slash your step-daddy's throat and throw him in the river? Cause that would be fitting of a murderer."

For the first time, Grayson looked at her with a hint of anger in his eyes.

"No!" he denied. "My step-dad was a coward and Aaron helped me realize that. Once I began standin’ up to him, he backed off. When I turned seventeen, he tried beatin’ on my mom again. I damn nearly smashed his face in with my fist. He left after that and never came back."

Lauren lifted her chin stubbornly. "So, he taught you violence. How heroic."

Grayson groaned in exasperation. "All I'm sayin’ is that nobody knows the real Aaron Spencer. Nobody knows what really happened all those years ago. People assumed. Yes, he was seen at the Reverend's house that night with blood on his clothes. Yes, he carried a big bag out of there after which the Rev. and Ms. Catherine were no longer found, but even as obvious and as gruesome as it sounds, it is not the full story!"

Lauren swallowed, crossing her arms. "So, you're saying he's innocent?"

Grayson sighed, turning his blue eyes up to the sky. "Well, like I said, nobody knows. And you know what I think, Lauren? I think if you truly wanna know everythin' that happened... you need to ask Aaron Spencer himself."

Lauren scoffed. "I did! You saw how he reacted. Like a statue!"

Grayson shook his head. "You didn't ask him, Lauren. You screamed at him for murderin’ your mother. You didn't ask him for the truth. Go to him...talk to him."

Lauren felt herself tremble in the midday breeze. "The thought of going back to that house...” She shook her head. “I’m... I'm scared of him, Grayson. That was all just my anger screaming. That man was the thing of my nightmares."

Grayson laid a hand on her shoulder. Strangely, it relaxed her.

"Lauren, look at me." She looked up. "Aaron Spencer won't hurt you. He will never hurt you."

She wasn't convinced. Not even a little bit.

"He wasn't just seen leaving our house that night, Grayson. Aunt Abby told me everything." Lauren steeled herself for this horrid story. "My aunt told me... that night... we'd gone to the clinic. I had a fever and asked why my mama didn't come with us to the clinic. My aunt said mama wasn't well, so she would take me instead. When we got there, she left me with a nurse and said she would hurry home to get me a warmer jacket. When she got home...she saw it. Aaron Spencer standing over my grandfather's bloody corpse. My mother stood in a corner, stained in blood and frozen by shock. My aunt screamed, Grayson. She screamed and that was when Aaron Spencer turned on her. He panicked. Hit her over the head with something, knocked her out. When she woke up, he was gone along with pops and mama." Lauren's lips quivered. "How do you explain that, Gray?"

Grayson stared sadly at Lauren. "I'm sorry. I can't explain it."

She nodded and kept walking. “Didn’t think so.”

"But you gotta know, Lauren, that your mother was proclaimed missing after that night. Not dead. There wasn’t even any blood found at the scene. That case had huge chunks of evidence missing."

Lauren shook her head. "She witnessed him murdering her father, Grayson! You think he let her go, risking her return to the town to testify against him? I don't think so. He killed them both and destroyed the evidence."

She walked on, turning onto a main street, on the opposite side of which, there sat a peaceful lake.

"I still think you should speak to him, Lauren. Find peace, else this will forever haunt you. You deserve to find that peace, I think," Grayson persisted.

Lauren nodded as she wandered onto the grass skirting the lake. "I think so too, but I doubt Aaron Spencer will give me the peace I need."

They stood in silence for a few moments, looking out at the still lake. Its waters glistened under the high sun, but the warmth it reflected was an illusion. They both knew those waters were cold and dead. A little like the image this town presented, Lauren thought. Bright and cheerful from afar, but really just dead and eaten away by the worms of a gruesome past.

She rubbed her hands over her arms against the sudden chill she felt.

"Why did you come back?" Grayson asked quietly, giving her a curious look.

Lauren sighed. "I thought they were going to break our house down, so I swooped in to save it. Go, me," she said. Grayson frowned.

"Oh, they’d never do that. This town worshipped Rev. Burns."

Lauren nodded. "I've heard."

Grayson looked at her again. "Well, I hope now that you know that, you won't decide to leave again. This is your home, Lauren. You're one of us even if your accent's changed a little."

She smiled a little. "No, it hasn't."

"No, it hasn't," Grayson mimicked in a girly voice. Lauren laughed and slapped his arm.

"Whatever." She sighed, staring out at the lake. "Well, actually, Mayor Stanford told me that the house is mine now, since I'm the only Burns descendant. So, I'm thinking of going through it a little."

Grayson nodded. "Okay. You sure it’s safe though? I mean, it's been locked up for twenty years."

Lauren shrugged. "I'll find out how safe it is when I'm inside."

Grayson looked shocked. "That's not wise. Want me to come with?"

Lauren smiled weakly.

"I wouldn't mind. I'm going to hire people to fix it up a little and then I'll sell it."

Grayson looked a little stunned. "Oh. I thought you wanted to live in it." She shook her head no and he understood. "Well, okay, but do yourself a favor and don't hire nobody. Myself, Parker and James will gladly help you turn the place around."

Lauren brightened. "You would?"

"Absolutely. That's what friends are for." He grinned at her. "Aaron's got some tools that-"

"No," Lauren cut him off. "We'll buy anything we need even if it's a tractor. I want nothing from him."

Grayson sighed and nodded. "Alright, ma'am."

With a smile softer than her words, she turned away and headed back to the road, trying to push all thoughts of Aaron Spencer out of her mind.

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