Hold on to Hope

Flames flickered and leapt toward the star-strewn sky. Small waves lapped at the lakeshore, and a speaker playing old indie songs my parents had listened to when I was growing up hummed with temptation, seducing the shadows to dance through the trees.

Uncle Ollie quietly strummed along, his guitar propped on his lap, his face tipped toward the heavens.

Most everyone had mellowed except for my brothers and Bo who were still out in the lake roughhousing, tossing each other around. Charlotte and Becca giggled from their tent, whispering teenaged scandal, while my mother and her friends shared a bottle of wine where we’d all gathered around the fire.

Carly was sitting on the ground to my left and Josiah was on the right in a chair where he was laughing at some tales my daddy and Uncle Kale were regaling him with.

Tales that seemed to get taller every time they were told.

Stories I’d heard so many times they’d become legend.

Behind me, Jack sat on a chair, tossing back beers. No question, he was feeling the tension that wound and whispered and thrashed.

It didn’t help that Evan was sitting directly across the fire from me, holding that child who was fast asleep against his bare chest, his emerald eyes watching me.

Hotter than they’d ever been.

A shiver rolled the length of my spine, and I tried to rip my attention away. To stand against the lure and attraction that rose and lifted like it was fueled by the flames.

The problem was, it only seemed to dump gasoline on the inferno of mourning and need and love that toiled inside of me.

That power only increased with every erratic beat that thudded from my heart.

My best friend. My best friend.

My everything.

I wanted to reach through the distance to the way things used to be, but I was still having the hardest time trying to figure out my way back there after all the obstacles that had been dumped in our path.

The potholes and pitfalls.

The fathomless scars that grieved.

Maybe the hardest part of that was the way the wounds ached to be soothed, well aware that balm was sitting right there, five feet away.

“She was always gettin’ into trouble, wasn’t she?” My mother’s soft voice touched my ears, and I barely turned that way to catch onto the conversation that was clearly going on about me, too much in a daze to notice until she’d mentioned the word trouble.

Daddy had once convinced me he’d actually changed my middle name to Trouble.

I’d cried for two days straight.

I guessed I had it coming considering I’d stuck a bobby pin in a socket to find out if it actually would shock me or not. Somehow, I’d rationalized that I really needed to know it for myself. Knocked the electricity out for an entire day and burned my hand really good.

Evan had freaked out, lecturing me about needing to be safe and to listen and to stop being so reckless for about fifteen hours, and Mama had cried for just as long.

Both terrified over what could have happened.

“Hey, are you all talkin’ about me over there. That’s hardly nice.” My words were soft, filled with all the adoration I had for this woman.

God, coming here? I couldn’t help but remember to be grateful for the way she’d come into my life. To never take for granted the sacrifices that had been made.

I’d experienced both sides of the token—sustained the most damaging sort of abandonment and witnessed the greatest forms of sacrifice and devotion.

I did my best to remember the sacrifices were the most important.

Mama giggled and pointed at me around the wine glass she clutched, the red sloshing close to the rim. “Well, all the worry you put us through was hardly nice, either. I don’t remember a single time that we came out to the lake that you didn’t get yourself into some mishap or another. I think Kale only came because he knew we were going to need a doctor on call.”

“I was just exploring,” I defended with a grin.

“More like you weren’t listening.” Daddy’s gruff voice was suddenly in the conversation. My attention whipped over to where he sat. I was hit with a surge of the protective devotion he’d always watched me with. “You’re lucky I’m still around with the way my heart damned near stopped every time you up and disappeared.”

My heart did for the quickest flash.

Stopped beating.

People used that phrase so casually.

Flippantly.

Not that I could blame my daddy. It was an everyday expression.

Still, I hated it.

Hated it so much that it sent a crash of nausea spiraling through my stomach.

I forced a smile.

“You told her one thing, she’d do the opposite,” Uncle Kale added, watching me soft, the man my hero in so many ways.

He’d been there for me through the toughest time of my life.