Falling into You (Falling Stars 3)

For the first time, I realized all that darkness was sinister.

A true, malicious threat.

The man nothing but ugly secrets and dark lies.

Just like my daddy had warned.

His aura rushed and howled, and I slowly turned around to face him.

The man stood in the doorway.

And I didn’t want to believe it. Wanted to refuse the evidence. Wanted to plead with him that it wasn’t true.

But this was the man who’d left me.

Just…left me.

At the very same time as Lily had.

Oh god.

A rush of fear tumbled through me, head to toe. Saturating my spirit. Soiling my stomach.

Belief smashed.

He took a step toward me, and I took a fumbling one back. “Violet.”

“Don’t.” It was a jagged, gutted cry.

His attention darted to the pictures scattered on the table.

Guilt streaked across his face.

Bile rushed again.

Richard started coming toward me, hands out in front of him like he was approaching a rabid animal. “I need you to listen to me, Violet.”

I stepped away, my entire body trembling with rejection. “You did this to her. You did this, didn’t you? Oh my god.”

He tried to grab me. “Please, just fuckin’ listen to me. Told you we needed to talk last night, Violet. That I needed you to listen. To hear me.”

A scream tore out of me, made up of so much disbelief and confusion and hurt and terror for my sister that I started to weep. “Don’t touch me! Don’t touch me. I can’t believe you’d do this. That you did this. You knew. You knew where she was this whole time, didn’t you?”

It all flew out. Sobs of accusation.

I couldn’t believe he’d come back here. Touched me. Told me he loved me. And he knew what’d happened to my sister all along.

Had been a part of it.

“Violet,” he pleaded.

He kept trying to grab me. Hands reaching.

Panic surged, and my mind spun, and I was sure my heart was gonna completely bleed out.

“Where is she? Tell me where she is!” I screamed.

“I can’t do that, Violet. I can’t fucking tell you. It’s not safe.”

“You liar! All you do is lie. Everything out of your mouth is a lie, isn’t it?”

He grabbed me by the wrists. “Violet…listen to me. God. Please listen to me.”

“Don’t touch me, you sick, disgusting monster.”

He dropped his hands like I’d burned him. But it was the guilt wracking those sage eyes that confirmed it all.

He’d done this.

“You’re a monster. Get out of our lives. Go. Don’t ever come back.”

The words were haggard.

Frayed and splintering apart.

“Violet, I wouldn’t.”

“You already did!” I screamed, my focus turning to the evidence strewn out on the table.

Richard’s jaw clenched, his hands in fists, and he started to come for me again when the door creaked.

Our attention whipped that way.

Daisy stood in the middle of the doorway, fear and confusion on her face. “Mommy?”

My shattered heart jumped. The one thing I had left. That and getting her mother back.

My sister.

My sister.

Mouth trembling with devastation, I looked at him. “Go. The police are gonna be comin’ for you, and I don’t want my daughter to witness it when they do. The private investigator already sent the images. It’s done.”

Richard’s attention swung from me to Daisy and back again.

“Viol—”

“Don’t talk to me. Not ever again. You disgust me.”

Wrecked.

Ruined me.

Was a part of ruinin’ my sister.

Oh god.

My head spun again, and my throat throbbed with the bile that just kept comin’ and comin’.

Reluctantly, Richard started to back away, the man wearing no shirt or shoes as he edged down the porch steps.

When he got to the bottom, he looked back at me, grief on his face. “I would never hurt her. Never.”

God, that stupid, vulnerable part of me wanted to believe. To give him the benefit of the doubt, but I couldn’t be so foolish not to believe the blatant proof that had been presented to me.

Should have known with his silence that what he was hiding he’d never wanted revealed.

God.

Did Emily know?

Hurt blazed a path through me.

No.

She couldn’t. She wouldn’t have kept this from me.

The second Richard got to his truck, I rushed for my daughter and swept her into my arms, held her close, pressed my face into her cheek.

I wouldn’t allow her to be collateral damage in this mess.

In this disaster.

In this tragedy.

There was only one flicker of light remaining in this total eclipse.

My sister was alive.

And I was gonna find her.

I slammed the door shut and locked it up tight, breaths shallow and hard as I moved over to the window to peer out the slit in the drape.

“Mommy, what’s wrong?” Her fear was palpable. Poison on my tongue. “Are you mad at Mr. Richard?”

I ran my hand over the top of her head and bounced her like a baby that needed to be comforted.

“It’s okay. It’s okay,” I told her, unable to actually answer that question.

Her little face twisted. The child so knowing and astute. She wrapped her arms around me, her cast scraping my skin.