Beneath the Stars (Falling Stars 4)

“What happened? What happened?” He tried to break away from his mama and run for the house. “Oh god. What happened? Dad!” He screamed it and started for the house. “Dad!”

Tears blurred his eyes and streamed hot down his face as he struggled to push through the officer who tried to hold him. His mama jumped on him from behind. Her torment making her stronger than he ever knew she could be. “Stop, Rhys. Stop. You can’t go in there. Please. Stop. Listen to me.”

And Rhys knew.

He knew what he’d done all those years ago had finally ended his daddy.

Had destroyed their family.

He roared and his knees quaked. He wasn’t even strong enough to stand.

He dropped to the ground.

Love, love, love.

He’d crushed the truth of it beneath his feet.

Then he felt her behind him, her panic, her disgust, Genny shaking her head frantically as she backed away. “No. No, no, no.”

She kept shaking her head, stumbling as she floundered backward, before she turned and ran back for the idling truck.

He could feel her horror as she jumped in the front seat, though Rhys wasn’t sure he could process it through his grief.

Through the pain.

The sickness.

The truth of who he was.

He should have known he’d never be enough.

That Genny would see right through to the ugliness of him, too.

He moaned, torn between running for her and running into the house like he could stop it from happening.

Change it.

Fix it.

Maybe he could run so fast that he could get back to the time before it had begun. To the time when he was just a child and he’d believed he could save a small piece of the world.

Back to before he’d made the biggest mistake of his life. When his daddy was whole and right and the strongest man he knew. Back to when his daddy believed in him.

Instead, he remained on his knees.

Frozen.

Locked in his horror.

Locked in his shame.

Watching as Genny shifted the truck into reverse and flew backward, skidding and weaving as she threw it in drive. She tore down the lane.

When she got to the main road, she gave no heed to the headlights coming up the bend, her need to get away from him greater than anything else.

And there was nothing he could do.

Nothing he could do but scream and watch as the rest of himself went up in flames.

Thirty-One

Rhys

Panic knocked my ribs into havoc and my heart clawed out of my chest as I was jolted awake to the chasm of darkness. The memories consumed. That fuckin’ nightmare haunting my dreams. The truth of what I’d done. Of what I’d caused.

For years, my mama had done her best to convince me it wasn’t my fault. Through tears, she’d say she knew it hurt, but that I was holding onto a burden that wasn’t my own.

She’d promise again and again that I’d been just a little boy, like that made a lick of difference.

Because it was that little boy who’d had to carry the knowledge of what he’d done to his daddy into his days of bein’ a man.

A man who’d had to stand aside, helpless, watchin’ his father wither away until there’d been nothing left. No reason to stay. So broken that he’d taken his life.

Then Genny…

Guessed it was karma responsible for that. The fact that what I’d done to my father had ruined her on the very same night.

It’d always felt like a message being sent.

The truth that I wasn’t allowed joy when I’d stolen his, and just for the fact that I’d tried to take a little of it, anyway, Genny’d been the one who’d had to pay.

I’d never known it so true than when I’d started to race down the driveway to where she’d pulled out in front of another pickup truck on the main road. Would never be about to forget the sound of the sheering and twisting and groaning of metal. The splintering of glass. It’d all happened two seconds before the trailer the other driver had been hauling had burst into flames.

I had never felt the true impact of it until I’d pulled her from the fiery wreckage.

That was the night my fractured, mangled heart had completely collapsed.

Only saving grace had been that the paramedics had already been on site. They’d saved Genny and the other driver…my daddy was already gone.

Gone.

I choked over the swell of agony.

On some kind of twisted instinct, I reached for the one who’d come to hold the power to fill that void.

My Sweet, Sweet Thing.

Fear slicked like ice down my spine when my hand hit the spot-on the mattress where she’d fallen asleep curled in my arms. It was as cold and vacant as the warning I could hear howlin’ from within.

“Maggie,” I wheezed it, fighting the instant fear that rushed through my veins.

I scrubbed a palm over my face like it might put a crack in the chaos.