Like all of us could feel it.
The rumble coming from underneath. Coming closer. Growing stronger.
Bailey was humming under her breath, a few words coming out here and there as she played with her dolls and books, caught up in her own little make-believe world with the Beast propped up in the middle of it.
I brushed my fingers through her hair, and she turned to grin up at me before she slipped right back into that sweet imagination that ruled her mind.
Part of me was wondering if that was what I was doing.
If I was lost in my own imaginary world. Pretending I could stay here. Be a part of something beautiful.
I’d rarely had anything beautiful in my life.
Every second that I had? It’d been wrapped up in one single woman. The woman who lightly brushed her fingertips across the satiny petals, her face cast up to the sky as she swayed.
Sunlight pouring down.
I got the distinct feeling she was gathering it. The girl taking on that energy.
A reflection that glowed.
Beauty.
Drawn, I pushed to my feet and edged that way, couldn’t stay away a second longer.
She felt me approaching
She always had.
A tremor of awareness slipped down her spine, need a force that blistered across her damp, soft skin.
I pressed my nose to it, to the light sweat that had gathered on her nape.
I inhaled.
Tucked her down.
Everything I was determined to keep.
“You are a vision,” I whispered at her flesh.
Chills skated. I kissed across them. Gathering them on my tongue.
“Jace,” she whispered, barely turning to look at me from over her delicate shoulder that carried so much weight.
That’s what she was.
Delicate and strong.
Fragile and compelling.
Her attention traveled to where her daughter played quietly on the quilt she had set out for her.
I followed her eyes, my heart doing that crazy thing again, my words rough where they hooked in the air. “She is the most incredible thing.”
Impossible in her perfection.
“I’m doin’ my best . . . to give her the life she deserves.”
I felt the intensity of Faith’s stare where it landed on the side of my face. I looked back at her. “She’s incredible because of you. Because she is filled with you. With your belief and your love and your strength.”
Her throat bobbed when she swallowed, her voice pensive. “She’s not going to remember him. Soon, she’ll forget. He’ll be nothing but a vague memory in a picture book.”
Part of that felt like a slap to the face. The other totally got it. Her worry. Her devotion to her daughter bigger than either of us.
Needing the connection, I reached out and trailed my fingers down her bare arm. “I’m so sorry. That you both lost him.”
I didn’t know how to relate to that.
The idea of Joseph being here.
Not when these two were the only things I wanted.
I also didn’t want to be the dick who discounted what he’d been.
Her face pinched, and her tone turned wistful, as light as the gentle breeze that whispered through the blooms of purple roses.
“After it happened, I’d felt this consuming need to keep his memory alive. To constantly talk about him to her and show her pictures.”
Pain etched her gorgeous face when she let her attention travel back to me. “And I can feel all that slippin’ away, Jace. His memory. Who he was. And now, I’m left wondering if I even knew him at all.”
I cupped her cheeks in my hands. “Everyone has their secrets. We all have good in us, and we all have evil in us. We are all going to make the world better in some small way, and we’re all going to do some damage. You’re the one who taught me that. That we’re not all good, and we’re not all bad. That we each deal with the circumstances we’re placed in differently. It makes us who we are. Joseph included.”
Why was I talking that bastard up?
But it was true.
He’d been who he was because of his circumstances. Because he’d done it the best way that he knew how.
I was the one who’d taught him that we had to do anything we had to in order to survive.
And he’d been her husband.
Bailey’s father.
I couldn’t erase that truth. Couldn’t blot out the importance of it. No matter how badly I wanted to.
Problem with Joseph? I was pretty sure the bad had spoiled the good. That every part of him was rotted.
Moisture filled that knowing gaze, and she tucked one side of her bottom lip between her teeth. Her head swung to the side to look at the hedge of roses.
I reached out for one, for the tiny bud of pink that was all curled up, waiting to blossom, to grow into something beautiful.
My fingertip trailed down the stem, and I let it catch on a thorn, let it prick my flesh.