Falling into You (Falling Stars 3)

“I have her.” It was a grunt. No room for argument.

I didn’t even fight him.

At this point, I just wanted to get this over with.

Make sure my Daisy was okay and then get as far away from this man as possible. Set boundaries. Make him promise there would be no more of this.

The way he was infiltrating our lives as if he had a right.

Like he wanted to, which was a smack to the face in itself.

I couldn’t handle it, the betrayal that had cleaved a hole in the middle of us.

Couldn’t take his presence that screamed to fill it.

Couldn’t risk getting swamped in his dark, decadent aura.

The last thing I could do was allow him to hold my hopes and my fears for a second time.

Give him that trust.

Because when he left me again? I wouldn’t know how to stand.Darkness cloaked the sky, heavy and oppressive in the moonless night.

A cascade of stars spiraled across the heavens, so low where they dipped down to meet the horizon that it felt as if we were driving through a glittering veil as we traveled the deserted two-lane road.

Headlights cut a path through the disorder that had become my world.

Silence a roaring presence in the cab.

Different than it’d been on the way to the emergency room.

It’d shifted.

Turned into something somber and quiet.

I glanced back at where Daisy was asleep in her car seat. Out cold. Sleep had already been chasing her down while we’d been waiting for the doctor to come in and cast her wrist.

I reached back and caressed it, my chest stretched tight as I took in the child who was filled with so much life and laughter and mischief, and still, so vulnerable and innocent.

Her well-being cast into my hands.

A shiver curled down my spine.

An ice-cold dread.

Maybe it hit me right then. After the shock had worn off.

What truly could have been. How close she’d come. That it could have been any other day when she was off on one of her escapades and no one would have been there to save her.

Gratefulness rocked me. Slamming me from out of nowhere. So intense it brought moisture burning at the back of my eyes.

“Shit,” Richard muttered.

Like he’d been struck by the intensity, too, but in an entirely different way.

I jerked, and my attention rocked back to the man who kept hitting me like an earthquake. Quivers that staked through my being every time he said a word. Driven deeper with each glance.

Pain lashed across his face when he looked at me. “I’m sorry.”

My brow twisted, and my heart skittered. “What exactly are you sorry for?”

Loaded question, much?

But I couldn’t stop the gate that busted wide. Freeing something. Opening me up for one vulnerable second.

Truth billowing between us.

That connection zapping and zinging through the dense air.

“For not getting there sooner. For doing it wrong. For fuckin’ it up.” He mumbled it toward the windshield as if the night could take hold of his confession. Like there was more to it than what had happened this afternoon.

I needed to refuse it. Give him no credit.

But I couldn’t ignore what he had done. That cresting of gratitude pouring from me.

Wave after wave.

“You saved her, Richard. If you hadn’t been there…in that spot…”

I shuddered at the thought, unable to process a tragedy that great.

“She has a broken wrist.” His voice cracked with some kind of unspent grief when he said it.

My head shook, that truth gettin’ free. “And I’m thankin’ God it wasn’t a broken neck. Thankin’ God that you were there. Right when she needed you. Right when we needed you.”

The statement hovered in the cab.

Words smothering just as much as they were giving life.

The weight of it pressed down on our chests.

Our hearts drumming so fierce they’d become a lifebeat in the cab.

The two of us trapped in it.

Going under.

Clearing my throat, I ripped my attention from his profile and glanced back at her again, my voice filled with adoration and fear. With the burden I carried. “Sometimes I worry that I’m not enough for all that she is.”

Richard’s teeth clenched, his hands firm on the wheel as he stared out at the road ahead of him. “I’m pretty sure you’re everything she needs.”

My mouth trembled. “You don’t even know me anymore.”

He tossed me a glance. “Don’t I?”

I got caught there, lost in the depth of his gaze. Unrelenting. Hard and soft and everything in between. I searched for a missing breath, finally tearing myself from the trance cast by this man and forcing myself to drop my focus to my lap.

I doubted that more than a blip of a second had passed that we’d both been there watching it through the distance. But in it had been the eternity we were supposed to share.

His eclipse right there to swallow it up.

A black hole where I’d forever gotten lost.