Total pages in book: 137
Estimated words: 138683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 138683 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 693(@200wpm)___ 555(@250wpm)___ 462(@300wpm)
“You don’t deserve to be.” It was spite.
Hurt.
Part of me wanted to agree with her. Take on every single thing she threw my way.
God knew it was my fault.
The other half knew my kids needed me. I knew it to my soul.
“I’ll fight for them.” Those words came out hard, laced with that truth.
“If you had any heart at all, you’d let us live. They’re safe. Well cared for. And you see them every week. Isn’t that enough?”
An afternoon at the park. She thought that was enough to make up for every memory that was lost? For every holiday and birthday and chaotic morning trying to rush them out the door to make it to school on time?
Misery crawled through my bloodstream. Clotting off life and love and hope, but it was the last vestiges of that hope that had me whispering, “I love them, Paula. I love them. They’re my children. They need me.”
“Are you sure it’s not the other way around, Milo? Are you sure it’s not you who needs them, and you are too blind to see what is best for them?”
Torment flayed and cleaved.
“I’m not backing down. They are my children.”
“And you stole mine.” The heaving of her grief slashed through the too-dense air, impaling me in the chest, this torture that would never end.
“I would have died for her.” The words croaked from my trembling throat.
“But you didn’t.”
The line went dead before I could say anything else. I threw my phone to the mattress beside me, slumped over, and buried my face in my hands.
I did my best to lock down the riot of emotions.
A war that raged and fought to take hold.
The truth of Paula’s accusations at odds with the truth of my soul.
I couldn’t sit still.
I pushed to my feet, my boots slogging slowly over the planks of my cabin floor, the call of my heart drawing me to the destination.
I crossed the great room and turned down the hall. Outside the closed door, my forehead dropped to the wood. Inhaling a shuddering breath, I pushed into my children’s room.
Sunlight filtered through the window. It pitched a glittering glow over the room my mother and I had painstakingly poured our love into. Her fingers had woven the patchwork designs of their bedspreads and painted the images on the walls, while I’d carved and nailed and drowned myself in the making of the treehouse beds, praying one day they would be filled.
Agony I would never be free of lifted from the pit of hell where my soul was condemned.
Suffocating.
Crushing.
Excruciating.
Every fuckin’ horrible memory, every mistake, impaling me as I stood there in the middle of it.
A prisoner to the vacancy within the walls.
I was so lost to the turmoil, I guessed I hadn’t heard my SUV roll up to the front of the house.
It didn’t matter.
I felt her.
I felt the shift in the air and the tremble of the ground and the warm energy that infiltrated the space.
I needed to guard myself against it. Ignore the pull that tugged and whispered and coaxed.
A gravity I’d do best to resist. I never should have asked her to stay here because there wasn’t a single piece of me that could handle her presence.
Her smiles and her goofiness and her laughter.
Her quiet insight and soft spirit.
The way she filled the walls of the cabin like she was supposed to be there when it was supposed to be Autumn who roamed the halls.
Guilt nearly choked me out.
How could I even think it? Want something good after what I’d done?
Motherfucking heresy.
Knowing it didn’t stop it.
Heat crawled up my spine as Tessa slowly approached from behind, each step quieted and cautious as she crept up to the door.
I could feel her peering in. “Hey. Am I intruding?”
I shifted to look over my shoulder. “It’s okay.”
When it came to Tessa, I couldn’t seem to refuse her anything.
She took another cautious step forward.
Shit, I could actually sense her inhaling my grief, experiencing it, her attention carefully moving around the room like she was newly categorizing everything.
Ocean eyes swam.
Calm on the surface and a riptide underneath.
“Tell me about them?” she whispered.
Telling her no would be the correct answer. Instead, like a fool, I scrubbed a palm over my face before I fully turned around to face her.
Tessa stood just inside the doorway.
The sight of her tugged at every forbidden place inside me.
A blaze of red hair framed her gorgeous face, all those freckles bright beneath the shimmery rays of light.
She wore jeans and a cropped white tee. Casual and sexy at the same time.
Her lips parted on a breath, like she was hinged on my next words, waiting on me to invite her into a place I shouldn’t let her go.
“Remington is my daughter. We call her Remy. She’s eight. She’s shy but super intuitive. One of those quiet spirits that get things on a deeper level, especially for her age.”