He slowed and eased onto the long drive, winding up it and coming to a stop in front of my house.
I was out the door before he had the chance to be a gentleman. Couldn’t take him touching me without completely falling apart.
I started for the house. He flew out of the truck and was standing in front of me before I could prepare myself. Cutting off my path. Eyes wild. As unchained as my insides felt.
“Violet.” My name grated through the air.
Shards of broken glass.
Panic setting in, I shifted gears, and I darted away from him and down the path that led to my sanctuary. To where the flowers grew and blossomed and became something so tangibly beautiful.
A labor of my love.
Footsteps pounded behind me, that energy jolting through the cool air with each step that he took.
“Violet,” Richard shouted again, and I just drove deeper, flying through the low rows of flowers.
Hydrangeas and carnations and lavender. Until the rows grew higher.
Until I was surrounded by every color of roses.
Thorns snagged my dress and pricked my arms.
I didn’t care.
I just ran.
Not even sure where I thought I was going. How I thought I would escape.
I angled through a narrow row of holly, leaves smacking across my bare shoulders on both sides.
I swore under the starlit sky every fear I had came to a head. Climbing out of those cracks and getting free. Gathering as a united force to take me hostage.
I almost gasped out in relief when I no longer heard his footsteps pounding behind me.
I should have known better.
Should have known better.
Because his voice coming at me trampled me with the same force as if he’d tackled me to the ground. “What are you afraid of, Violet?”
I tried to keep running.
“What in this world are you most afraid of? Because what I’m most afraid of is losing you.”
A haggard breath raked up my lungs. Harsh and hard and disbelieving.
I whirled on him.
Anger flashed through my bloodstream.
“You’re afraid of losing me, Richard? You left me. You. Left. Me.” I slammed a fist against my chest. “And you don’t get to stand there and act like any of this was my fault. No matter the circumstances, no matter what happened, it was still on you.”
Richard stood beneath the pour of moonlight. So ruggedly beautiful it hurt. Hair striking like bronzed silk, the sculpted, immaculate lines of his face glinting in the milky rays, the span of him tall and oppressive and making me lose my mind.
“You’re right. It was my fault. My fault.” His voice slashed and scraped, and he curled his hands into fists at his sides.
“Your fault,” I wheezed into the breezy air, fighting tears that stung and burned. Leaves rustled all around us, the hedges tall enough that it left us hidden in the maze of vegetation. “It’s your fault that I’m broken like this. It’s your fault that I don’t trust. It’s your fault that I’ve been livin’ alone for the last six years to raise a little girl by myself.”
The words grew with intensity as I spewed each one.
I didn’t know if admitting this was assuaging something or making it worse, but I couldn’t stop. “A little girl who became my entire world. My entire life.”
I took a surging step toward him, holding my chest like it would keep that bleeding organ in the middle from tumbling out to land at his feet.
“And you want to know what I’m afraid of most in this world, Richard?” My tone was laced with ridicule and accusation. With a violent despair that came on a torrent from within.
“What I’m afraid of is losing her. I’m afraid that one day my sister is going to show up at my door and take her away. I’m afraid of not getting to be her mama, anymore.”
I guessed I hadn’t allowed myself to realize the true weight of that fear.
The sheer terror of what dredging up the past was going to do.
The fact my sister had abandoned that baby at our doorstep when she was three days old. Said she couldn’t keep her. I’d chased her down, begged her to stay before she’d jumped into a car I didn’t recognize and disappeared into the night.
Now I was petrified of her changing her mind.
In that second, the full impact of that burden pressed down on my shoulders.
Daisy.
Richard.
My mama.
The private investigator who was currently searching for the one person who I loved with every piece of me and selfishly prayed I would never see again.
Guilt and shame and grief.
They hit me all at once.
Too heavy.
Too much.
And I crumpled to the ground.Twenty-TwoRichardGrief tore through me like a raze of gunfire. Penetrating through flesh and bone. Blowing me back and toppling me forward.
My knees hit the soft dirt and trampled grasses in front of her, and in two seconds flat, I had her pulled onto my lap and my arms wrapped around her sweet, trembling body. I started rocking this girl who was shaking and weeping so uncontrollably I didn’t think I could hold her pain.