But that feeling had turned frenzied.
Frantic with the need to make this right. No longer knowing what that looked like or what it meant.
I strummed the quietest chord that resounded deep. The vibrations of the strings reverberated through my body.
Eyes shut, I swayed, got lost in that mystery.
Violet and dreams and the girl.
Almost silently, I began to sing.
I closed my eyes
I fell into a dream
Watching through a looking glass
Nothin’s what it seems
Shards of ice
Cold, bitter bliss
That’s what I get
For stealing that first kissI strummed through the verse as the chorus took hold. Framed in my mind and written from my soul.
Now I’m lost
Lost in your mystery
I lost sight. I lost my right
Staring at eternity
What’s come, what’s gone
Never gonna be reclaimed
Because clinging to this moonflower
Is where I’ll forever be chainedBecause I knew—knew it in her kiss.
She hadn’t gotten over me any more than I’d gotten over her.
My hope.
My reason.
My wife.
I just didn’t know what part of this life I had left to give her.
If there would be anything left at all.
If any forgiveness could be found in the mistakes that had been made. The heap of them had only grown higher as the years had passed.
I turned my gaze out to the sheer drapes at the window. The blink of the stars were barely visible.
But they were still clear.
Still inevitable.
And I knew right then I couldn’t go on without taking back what was always supposed to be mine.SeventeenViolet“Wakes it up, Mommy!”
I was facedown, tossing in a tormented sleep when the tiny tornado made landing on my bed. Jolting through a gasp, I flung around to find Daisy actually jumping at my feet, waving her casted arm in sync with the other over her head.
I squinted at her through the harsh light breaking through the drapes. “What on earth do you think you’re doin’?”
She didn’t even seem to register that she’d been injured. That she might make it worse.
Goodness, I was gonna have to tie her up if I wanted to tame her, but I was pretty sure my spitfire would find a way to get herself free.
My own little Houdini.
“Wakeskin’ you up, what do you think?” she said, matter-of-fact. “It’s almost passed the whole day and Papa said I had to let you sleep because you had a reals rough night last night. You have a rough night? Lords knows I did.” She tried to form a low whistle, but it was more a raspberry.
A laugh that was a cross between exasperation and adoration slipped up my throat, and I forced myself up to sitting. I scrubbed my palms over my face to break up the sleep.
The dreams that lingered.
The aura of him still holding me. Touching me. Luring me in the way he’d always done, willpower dust with a brush of his hand.
The man my destiny and my destruction.
How was it possible I could have succumbed so easily?
Put myself in the position to be wrecked all over again?
Hell, I was the one who’d begged for a little breakin’ when I’d followed him out the door and into the hall.
But that’s the way that boy had always made me.
Liquid.
Melted butter in his hands.
I blew out a heavy sigh and pushed back the matted, tangled bedhead that no doubt was givin’ the scarecrow out in the field a run for its money.
I had to get myself together. Remember the pain of what he’d done before he had the chance to ration another deadly dose.
Just him being in this town meant I was traversing dangerous ground.
Heartache curled through my chest at the thought of it, that speck of me trying to hold on to what wasn’t there, my wrist burnin’ from the agonizing temptation of his touch, his mesmerizing voice a song that still whispered in my ear.
“That is the one lie I never told.”
How could I even consider believing that B.S.?
Believe that charmer?
I knew better.
He was nothin’ but a swindler and a fraud.
A snake lookin’ for a snack.
I shook Richard Ramsey out of my thoughts because he didn’t belong there, and I turned my attention to my little girl who continued to jump on my bed.
“You are somethin’, you know that? You fell out of a tree last night and now you’re trying to break your head by falling off my bed.”
“But Imma bird! See how high I fly.”
“And don’t you know birds can’t fly with a broken wing?” I teased, reaching out to grab her and haul her onto my lap because words didn’t seem to do a whole lot of good.
Apparently, emergency room visits and broken bones didn’t, either.
“How are you feeling?” I asked with her back tucked to my chest, my chin hooked over her little shoulder as I lifted her arm that was casted.
In pink, of course.
“It only hurts just a little tiny teensy bit.” She tipped her head back to look up at me, her mess of hair bunched at my face and her sweet grin and scrunched-up nose splitting me open wide.