Total pages in book: 168
Estimated words: 169013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 845(@200wpm)___ 676(@250wpm)___ 563(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 169013 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 845(@200wpm)___ 676(@250wpm)___ 563(@300wpm)
Retreating.
Dimming.
It wouldn’t be long before they faded into nothing.
Every piece of me recoiled, ripping and tearing at my consciousness as the faint thuds of them moving around upstairs filtered down to touch my ears.
Or maybe it was just her fingers sinking directly into my soul.
A prod.
A pull.
That fucking gravity that she exerted.
I couldn’t help but move.
Something unseen coaxing me into action.
But it was hindered.
Held in the trepidation that blustered through my insides. Warnings and reminders of who I was. Of the things I’d done and what I caused.
It didn’t seem to matter because I found myself standing in the hall two feet from Kai’s door.
Hazy light spilled out into the hall, and I could hear Brinley murmuring, “There we go,” as fabric rustled, and I could imagine her pulling his sleep shirt over his head.
The sleepy smile he’d give her as he squirmed on his changing pad.
This child who I wanted so much more for, too.
“Which one do you want to read tonight?”
“Doggies.” Kai giggled, and the book scraped as she pulled it from the small bookshelf, and I could feel her settling with him onto the rocker that Elena had set up in the corner of the room.
Drawn, I lowered with them. My back sliding down the wall as I sank to the floor. My head rocked back as I listened to Brinley begin to read.
Her voice soft and tender and lulling Kai right into a dream.
One where he felt safe and secure and loved. The way he should be. The way I wanted him to be.
And I could almost remember the sound of my mother’s voice. Could almost hear it whispering through the dense, rippling air.
It’s your heart. It’s your heart.
A tremor rocked through me.
Fuck.
I roughed a hand down my face.
What I wouldn’t give to be the man my mother had wanted me to be.
Brinley continued to murmur those soothing words, slower and quieter as Kai drifted to sleep.
For a few moments after she came to the story’s end, a hushed silence whisked through the atmosphere, then the rocking chair squeaked as she stood and I heard her feet padding across the room.
Overcome, I stood, too, and I shuffled to the doorway to watch as Brinley carefully laid Kai into his crib. Only a dim nightlight glowed in the room.
She stood gazing down at him, but I knew she felt me.
Hell, I was pretty sure she’d known I’d been there all along. It wasn’t like either of us were immune to the simmering fire that smoldered at the fringes of our beings.
Her back rose and fell with her uneven breaths, a slow severity rising and falling over me.
A breaking tide that kept crashing, riding higher with each undulation.
I took a single step through the door.
“Brinley.” I wheezed it, no way to staunch the flow of grief. I didn’t know if it was fueled by hers or if it was wholly mine.
This need that thrummed and throbbed. Something greater than the physical. A part that I didn’t recognize.
Brinley took it as an apology, and she sniffled, clearly working to shore up the pain.
“He’s so perfect,” she whispered, barely turning toward me. The gold flecks of her eyes flashed in the bare radiance of the nightlight. “I had no idea I could feel this way about a child who doesn’t belong to me, but God, I love him so much.”
The bones in my chest creaked with the pressure.
“Brinley,” I said again. That time it was a plea.
She barely shook her head. “It’s my fault. I knew. I mean, God, I’ve only been here for little more than two weeks, and I let myself go. I was the fool who let this place invade. The one who let your family invade. The one who let you invade.”
Her brow pinched. “But I don’t regret it. Sometimes we have to let ourselves feel—wholly and without reserve, the pain and loss included—to find who we really are.”
She inhaled a stuttered breath. “And I’ve been running from the pain for so long, fighting and fighting and barely surviving, that I forgot who I wanted to be. I lost her, Silas. I lost her behind the walls and armor I built around myself. I lost the hope and the belief and the joy of dreaming. And I want to be her, Silas. And maybe because of you all, I finally might be.”
“Brinley.” Her name hemorrhaged from my mouth, bleeding like a fatal wound, and I took another step forward. I realized I was basically chanting her name, unable to process or formulate the real chaos toiling in my conscience.
Her words were daggers that impaled. Arrowing through to the hidden places that had rotted and festered in the depths of me for what felt like a million years.
A different lifetime.
Sounded about right considering the good parts of me had died the day my mother had.