Pieces of Us (Confessions of the Heart 3)

I looked toward the ceiling like it might hold some answers. A direction. Maybe in the texture was one of those secret mazes that led to a hidden clue, or maybe it was one of those pictures of Jesus that suddenly popped out and spoke to you.

God knew, seeing Izzy again felt like some kind of biblical miracle.

Or maybe it was just karma teasing me again with what I could never have.

Was I really going to let Clarissa continue to influence me?

Heaving out a sigh, I drained the rest of my beer, threw the bottle in the recycle, and walked out of the kitchen to the hallway that led to the back of the house.

I passed by the one guest bedroom on the right, then followed the hall as it made a ninety-degree turn to the left where the two additional bedrooms ran along the very back.

The first one I used as an office, and the second was the master.

Opening one side of the master’s door, I flicked on the light. Basically, the entire house had needed to be gutted when I’d purchased it, new floors and new paint and new fixtures.

I crossed the room and went into the restroom at the back. It was all white cabinets and chrome fixtures and black accents.

I brushed my teeth and shrugged out of my tee and jeans, tossed those into the hamper.

Routine.

Exhausted, I made my way back out and climbed into my bed.

My very huge, very empty bed.

I flopped onto my back.

Excitement and dread warred inside of me. This feeling that I was coming up on something good. Worry was if I was going to taint it. Ruin it the only way I seemed to know how to do.

I tossed, trying to get comfortable, then tossed to the other side.

Yeah, sleep was not gonna happen.

It was going to be a long damn night.

Sitting up at the side, I flicked on the lamp and opened the drawer on my nightstand.

A mangle of emotions surged from that dark place hidden within. Grief and regret. I rarely let myself visit it, but tonight, I couldn’t resist.

I squeezed my eyes closed for a beat before I pulled out the flimsy book that had been bound with twine, the pages made of a thick tan parchment, cut at haphazard angles.

Completely handmade.

The cover was cardboard that had been covered in more of that parchment. It was the drawings on the front that had gotten to me most.

A black dragon had been sketched like it was perched on the spine, and images of a young man were interwoven in the shiny, scaly tapestry with peeks of the sky and a volcano in the background.

Gorgeous and crude.

Agony settled over me.

The loss radiating. Screaming out from my insides. What I would never reclaim. A life I would never be able to save.

My whole childhood I’d pretended I was a dragon. Hell, I’d claimed it, insisting the truth of it to my mother and anyone else who would listen.

She’d nod along, tell me I was the best, fiercest dragon in the world, laughing under her breath as she’d shake her head.

I’d thought she thought it was silly. Nothing. Or maybe that she hadn’t even listened or understood me in any way.

But then I’d found the book with my name scrawled on the inside in the shed near her things when I’d cleaned it out that last time. Like she’d left me a message. Words when she no longer had the power to speak.

And it’d spoken to me.

It was the day I’d turned my back on my past and made the decision to become who I was today.

Inside, it was filled with a story that was simple and profound and had always felt like my mother had left me a message.

This was a fantasy about a barn boy close to becoming a man. He’d been sent to slay a dragon to earn his right in the castle, only to find the dragon close to death, left with a stab wound from a knight who’d already come to do the deed.

The boy had nursed it back to health, and in the process, they’d found something in the other. A missing piece. An understanding. A realization that things weren’t always as they seemed.

They’d become united. A team who’d sought out the treachery of the king who’d sent the boy in the first place.

I flipped it open to a spot at the end where the dragon had been injured again in the last battle that had brought everything to a head.

“Go, earn your right. Finish what you were sent to do,” The Dragon rasped. Its body heaved with great lurches of pain, the wound at its side gaping as its blood spilled onto the mountain floor, running down like a red river twisting through the towering trees.