Taking every turn too fast.
Too reckless.
Too careless.
But that was what I’d always been.
Careless. Thinking I could keep two separate lives. Protect my family and please my piece of shit stepfather.
I turned the last corner onto our street.
And that was the moment every lie that I’d ever told caught up to me.
Thirty-Four
Mia
Agitated voices flooded my room, drawing my attention from my book. One second later, something banged against the wall before I was startled upright to the sound of glass shattering on the floor.
My pulse spiked, and I scrambled to get off the bed to find out what was happening.
The door flew open before I had the chance to go out.
Penny was there, shaking in the doorway. Worry written on her face.
“Penny. Sweetheart . . . what’s going on? Are you okay?” I rushed, my attention darting everywhere. Trying to find out what was happening.
She struggled for an explanation. “I . . . I don’t know. Leif got here and I asked him if he wanted to go for pizza and then Dad called and then Leif ran out. He seemed really, really upset, Mom. And Dad was saying really mean things and then he just hung up.”
Unease billowed.
Leif had to have heard Nixon on Penny’s call.
Shit.
Moisture welled in her eyes, and apprehension blew up like a balloon inside of me. I hadn’t been looking forward to talking with Nixon about Leif, or vice versa, really.
“It’s okay, sweetheart. It’s okay.” I peered over her shoulder. “Do you know where Leif went?”
Her lips pressed thin. “I don’t know. He wouldn’t talk to me. But I’m worried about him. When I looked at him, I got this feeling . . .”
My knowing child shivered and touched her stomach that I knew was twisted in knots.
Empathy and compassion and warmth.
I ran my fingers down her cheek. “Take a deep breath. It’s going to be okay. Your brother is with Auntie Tamar in the main house. Why don’t you go in there with them? I’ll go talk to Leif. I’m sure everything is fine.”
Her nod was shaky, and I dropped a kiss to the top of her head and followed her out into the hall. She went to the left, and I went to the right, my steps quickened as I rushed for the door.
Trying not to panic.
But with every step, the air shifted.
This feeling taking me over.
The energy he’d left behind thick and ugly and distressed.
I pushed the door open to stagnant, muggy heat, and I tried to talk myself down from the ledge. Convince myself not to freak out as I crossed the yard to the guest house.
It wasn’t like I’d had some delusion that Leif and Nixon were going to be friends. Or even civil. Their personalities had already promised they were going to clash.
But this was the last way I’d wanted them to meet.
I bounded the two steps to the small porch, not even knocking before I tossed open the door.
I nearly got knocked onto my butt with the frenetic energy that blazed back.
Heavy footsteps pounded from the bedroom at the back, the walls trembling and the air screaming with pain.
Warily, I inched that way, my breaths coming short and my pulse ratcheting in anxiety. By the time I made it to the bedroom doorway, my head was dizzy, and my heart careened in a manic beat when I found Leif there.
As hard as he’d ever been.
Every muscle in his body stone.
Jaw grit.
Hatred in his movements as he frantically stuffed his things into a bag.
Horror etched every cell in my body.
“Wha-what are you doing?”
He didn’t even flinch. Already well aware I was there.
“Leaving.”
It didn’t matter that his intention was already plain as day, the word jolted me back.
Like I’d been impaled by an arrow.
All the way through.
“What? Why? What happened?” I stumbled into the room. Knees weak. Trying to hold it together.
He zipped up the bag. He refused to look at me as he slung the backpack over his shoulder. “Just time to go.”
He shouldered around me.
Was he kidding me?
Anger surged. A crashing wave that slammed against the heartbreak that sliced through my chest.
I reached for him, my hand curling around his wrist. Fire streaked up my arm. This man who I was connected to in some intrinsic way. “Don’t you dare walk out on me, Leif Godwin.”
He jolted like he was shocked, his voice haggard, refusing to look at me. “Don’t make this any harder than it has to be, Mia.”
“Any harder than it has to be?” My head shook. Frantic. Disoriented. “I trusted you. Put my faith in you. Took all your reservations because I could see that you were haunted by your demons. I took on that pain, Leif, and I let it break me.”
I touched my aching heart. That place that he held in the palm of his hand.
I angled around, trying to get him to look at me. To listen. To hear me. “And you know what, it was worth it. It was worth it because we met there. In the middle of it. In a place that was just for us. And from it, you promised we were going to build a life together. That we were going to make this thing work.”
He whirled around, spite on his tongue as he released the foul-words into the bitter air. “Yeah, and I also promised you that I was going to ruin you.”
“You’re a liar.”
His face blanched at my accusation.
White as a ghost.
Grief curled around me. Terrified of whatever was happening in his dark, bleak mind.
I pressed on, refusing to let him just walk out.
“You’re a liar,” I repeated, “if you say this doesn’t mean something. You’re going to stand there and pretend like you don’t want me? That you don’t feel me? Pretend like you don’t know that we belong together?”
His sorrow darkened the atmosphere.
Finally, he looked at me.
Those sugar-brown eyes held nothing but torture.
His soul slaughtered.
“You’re right, Mia. I am a liar. I’ve been lying to myself. Telling myself that I could possibly have this. That I could have you. That I might in some small way be deserving of those kids.” He pointed aggressively in the direction of the guest wing. “Time to give up the ghost. Because guess what, those ghosts are here for me.”
“What does that mean?”
“Means I can’t fucking have you, Mia.”
“No.” My head shook, and a sob crawled up my throat. “No. I . . . I know you’ve experienced the worst kind of sorrow in your life, and I know the kids’ father was on the phone and that’s going to be hard to navigate, but—”
He had me pinned to the wall in a flash.
I gasped. Words silenced beneath the potency of this man.
Gloom covered me whole.
An eclipse.
But this darkness? It was vile and depraved.
He pressed his hands to the wall on either side of me as if he were trying to hold himself back, his nose pressed to my cheek as he grunted the anguished words, “You don’t have the first clue, Mia. Don’t have the first clue what I’ve done or what I’m getting ready to do. And I promise you, when I’m done? You’re going to hate me.”