Leif stilled. Waiting.
Air puffed from my nose. “There was one night he didn’t come home. It wasn’t the first time it’d happened. I texted him probably a thousand times, and I realized that wasn’t the life I wanted to live. Paranoid. Worried. Angry. So I packed our things and left. It didn’t matter what the explanation or reason he was surely going to give, I couldn’t continue to put me and my family through that constant turmoil.”
“So, that was it?”
My shoulder hiked. “He’s been trying to get me to come back ever since. I can’t completely cut him out when he’s still involved with the kids, and he was the one who’d helped to fund mine and Lana’s art gallery to begin with.”
Our pasts tied in a way that would never be undone.
“I’m sorry. Anyone dumb enough to mess up being with you? Don’t think he deserves you, anyway.”
He said it with a cocky smirk lined with the most callous truth.
I lay my head on my knees, peering over at him, just the outline of him in my periphery. It didn’t matter. The man was the only thing I could see.
“I can’t regret a second of it. I got my children out of it. To me, that will always be the greatest, most important thing.”
Leif flinched. I wasn’t sure if it was in agreement or pain. Maybe both.
Eyes narrowed, I focused on him. “Kids make you nervous.”
Air puffed from his nose. Incredulous disgust. “Guys like me shouldn’t get mixed up with kids.”
“Why is that?”
His grin was wholly forced. “We’ve seen how much Greyson likes me. He thinks I’m a hole in one. It’s better to stay out of the line of fire.”
A giggle slipped free. “He’s a handful, that’s for sure.”
“Maybe the kid is just a good judge of character. He’ll scare off all the bad guys for you. Second he saw me, no doubt he was figuring out how to get me away from you.”
His grin was brittle.
Amusement flashed while disappointment spun.
“Tell me not all the good men are gone.”
Leif sighed. “Don’t doubt he’s out there, Mia . . . a guy who can handle it all. One who is good from the inside out. One who deserves you and those kids. Don’t give up on that.”
I could feel his reservations ripple through the space. “You gonna have more?”
My head slowly shook, and I tilted my gaze to the heavens. “I had a complication after I had Greyson and had to have a procedure.”
I lifted my cupped hand toward the sky. “Having another would be like catching a falling star.”
Impossible.
But I was the fool who would wish on it, anyway.
“I’m sorry.” His voice was low.
“How could I be sad? I have the two most amazing children.”
His jaw twitched with the crush of his teeth, and his eyes squeezed shut before he said, “You do.” He scrubbed his palms on his jeans like he needed to break up the tension. “So . . . where do you go from here? Back to California? After the bastard is caught who took your friend?”
I looked that way. At the softness in those brown-sugar eyes, at the hardness that surrounded the creases, and I did my best not to think about the way his lips tasted the same.
Tender and biting.
“I’m not sure. I feel a little lost right now, honestly. Not sure where I belong or where I want to go. I always seem to find myself in these messes and don’t know how to get myself out of them. I don’t know if I have a backlog of bad karma coming at me or what.”
“Or maybe you’re just too sweet to see when you’re mixing with the wrong people.”
I knew what he was implying. Who he was referring to. Was I so blind to disagree? And why did I feel so damned compelled to dig deeper?
To seek and find and discover?
But I wanted to, to disappear inside his mind. Get lost in his cruel, brittle heart.
“Call me naïve, I guess.”
“No, Mia, I’d call you kind.” He edged in closer. The overwhelming force of his presence covered me whole.
Cloves and whiskey and hot, wicked sex.
His hand came out, the pad of his index finger scraping down my cheek and across my bottom lip. “Which is the reason I would gladly hurl myself over a wall to face the unknown. Why I would gladly rip apart any monster who would seek to do you wrong. Which is exactly why I stay away because the last thing I want to do is more harm. I will destroy you, Mia, just like I destroy every good thing I ever have.”
“What if I don’t let you get that close?”
He moved in, his lips an inch from mine. “Don’t kid yourself, Angel. I’m already there. You and I both know it.”
Flames licked. Danced and jumped and burned in the naked space between us.
“How is it possible you already made it there?” I whispered.
“Maybe some things are meant to be, written before time, but when you get there? You’ve already fucked it up so bad that it’s not yours anymore, and it gets lumped in with the things you can’t have but feel like you can’t live without. They become a piece that will forever go missing.”
“And what if you’re only meant to work harder for it?”
“That is nothing but a dangerous fantasy.”
“Is that what you are, a dangerous fantasy?”
He leaned forward, his touch searing through me when he set his palm on my cheek. “No, baby, you’re mine.”
Seventeen
Leif
Dread whirred. A cyclone. A tornado.
A typhoon that twisted and blew and raged.
I raced through the middle of it, wind whipping at all sides, exhaustion weighting my feet as I struggled to break through the crush of the crowd that surrounded me like an army that had been sent to wall me in.
Arms like tendrils that curled and bound and struggled to hold me back.
Pain everywhere.
Body afire.
Soul consumed.
I broke through the mob, a roar rushing up my burning throat, eyes searching through the blinding rays of sunlight that streaked from the sky.
Blazing hot whips that scored my back.
Time ticked.
Another minute passed.
Running out of time.
I could fix it. Stop it. End it.
Offer myself. I burst through the door. Hands fought to hold me back.
“Maddie!” I screamed. “Maddie!”
I screamed and I screamed.
“Maddie!”
“Maddie!” I shot upright in bed as the name left my mouth, the shout of agony bouncing off the walls and echoing back.
Perpetual.
Eternal.
Gaining speed with each pass.
Sweat drenched my skin, heart hammering at my ribs, so hard something was bound to crack.
Sickness squeezed my insides to liquid, nausea climbing my throat and threatening to spill out onto the floor.
I gasped and choked, blinking frantically, trying to orient myself from the dream.
To bring myself back from the nightmare that would haunt me for all my days. The ghosts getting closer, demanding vindication. Screaming for retribution.
They howled and moaned in my mind, my soul at their mercy.
This.