Hold on to Hope

I thought I could feel her from a hundred miles away.

Sense her presence.

Feel her turmoil and questions.

Didn’t have the right to stop, but I didn’t think I could leave things how we’d left them yesterday, either.

Could barely stand under all the vulnerability she’d let spill out on the ground between us when she’d come running across the street. Like she was crossing a river of hurt and she was willing to feel it if it meant she could get to me. All the while my spirit had gone mad with the need to hold her. Body demanding the girl it’d been missing for the last three years.

Knew I didn’t deserve her.

Fuck.

Probably even more so now.

But I couldn’t help but put my car into park, kill the engine, and climb out. I went right for the back and pulled out my son.

He smiled one of his smiles and patted both my cheeks and for the flash of a second my entire world felt whole.

Purposed.

It should be enough.

Still I rounded the front of my car, hit the sidewalk, and headed for the entrance.

Wasn’t really paying all the much attention until I was right there, when the super tall, lanky guy stretched his legs out in front of me from where he was sitting at one of the bistro tables in front of the café.

My attention darted that way.

His dark hair was unkempt, his jeans ratty.

“You got a few bucks to spare?” he asked.

I shook my head. “Sorry, man, don’t carry cash on me.”

“Bullshit.”

My hand instantly went to Everett’s ear, holding him tighter in a protective stance, because there was just something about this guy that was off.

“Don’t owe you anything,” I told him.

Not money or an explanation.

Not that I wouldn’t have given him some change if I actually had any, but still, what the hell was this guy’s problem?

“No?” It was purely a challenge, and my pulse started to pound harder. A warning blaring somewhere deep in my mind.

My eyes narrowed, and it was one of those times I really wished my voice was normal. That my words wouldn’t be a tell that would give this prick the idea that I wouldn’t gladly throw down if he even looked at my kid wrong. “You should probably move along.”

He laughed, and I got the sense the sound coming from him was cynical.

Mocking.

There was something in his eyes that set me on edge.

That alarm screamed louder.

He pushed to standing, angled his head, got in close. “Whatever you say, freak.”

The last he spat, his unwarranted grudge hitting my cheek, but it was my own venom that pooled on my tongue. I glared at him from over my shoulder, watching him as he swaggered off the sidewalk, not going to the crosswalk but instead loping across the street like the fucker thought he was invincible.

Apprehension seethed.

Another thing about being deaf?

I’d learned to read people really goddamn well. Sense their spirits. Read their movements. Listen to their intentions.

Didn’t even have to look that hard to smell the vileness seeping from his flesh, and it didn’t have a damn thing to do with the fact he looked homeless.

I watched him until he hopped onto the sidewalk on the other side of the street. Whole time, I held my son protectively, making another silent promise that I wouldn’t allow anyone to touch him.

I pressed a kiss to his temple, breathing relief when the guy disappeared around the corner, realizing I was probably being overprotective.

Judgy.

But when it came to your kids?

There were some things you just didn’t risk.

Seven

Frankie Leigh

Have you ever felt like you were hooked on a moment? Waiting for a specific second to unfold, not sure which it would be, but one-hundred percent certain it would come?

You might not know exactly where you’d be standing.

Where the sun might sit in the sky or if the moon might be glowing from the heavens.

Oh, but did you ever know precisely how it would feel.

How it would rock you to the core and send the ground rumbling below you, your heart taking off at a sprint, bang, bang, banging against your ribs that suddenly felt too tight?

That precise second for me?

It was when the door to A Drop of Hope swung open during the typical time of our afternoon lull. When we were working to restock and clean up and regroup.

But I doubted there would be any recovering from this. No reprieve from the sight of him, so tall where he stood in the doorway, sun shining all around him.

A blaze of light lit him up, a beacon so powerful, it was enough to draw me home.

Same as he had yesterday.

Only today, my spirit had known he would come. I’d known with every fiber of my being that there wouldn’t be a way to avoid the fact that Evan Bryant had returned.