It made me feel cheap, just a foolish country girl who’d taken up his time while he was hiding away.
April slid around to my front, pushing back the hair matted to my face, her head tipped to the side in understanding. “You’re too good, Shea. And it’s my job as your best friend to hate him for you if you can’t do it yourself. Someone needs to just because he made you feel this way.”
Sympathy filled up the weight of her smile, and I choked over a stuttered laugh. “I hate him a little bit, too.”
Hated the decision he’d made, the one that had caused him to walk away.
“You won’t feel like this forever,” she promised. “You will find someone who’s going to love you back. Someone who loves you the way you deserve to be loved. Someone who loves Kallie the way she deserves to be loved.”
My spirit thrashed its own dispute, refusing the idea, because the only thing I wanted was him. Wanted him to be the one who loved me. The one who loved Kallie. Because I loved him in that way, in a way that was resolute. Complete. Whole.
Kallie came barreling back in. She stopped short when she saw the scene in the middle of the kitchen. “Momma?” she whispered, fear filling up her tiny voice.
For eight days I’d been protecting her from seeing me this way. Shunning all the dark when I was standing in her light. But I just couldn’t fake it anymore.
April nudged me back and murmured, “Go on, you better get ready for work or you’re going to be late. I’ve got her.”
Nodding, I turned to look down on my daughter who was staring up at me, confusion and doubt in her eyes. I crossed to her and cupped her cheek, ran my thumb beneath her eye. “It’s okay, baby, don’t be scared. Mommy’s just missing her friend.”
“Baz had to go back to work,” she said as if it was a suitable explanation for the unbearable ache I’d felt since he’d walked out, because that was the same explanation I’d given her every single time she’d asked for him in the past eight days, which was often, and her asking for him had just worn me down a little more.
“And that’s why I’m so sad…because I miss him a whole lot.”
Much too innocent to grasp any of this at all, she whispered her reassurance. “It’s okay, Momma. He’ll get off work soon.”
I forced a bright smile, deciding that for now it was best not to correct her because I’d barely just pulled myself together, and telling her he was really gone would suck me right back under. I dropped a tender, lingering kiss to the top of her head. “I have to get ready for work.”
A grin took hold of her. “You better hurry or Uncle Charlie’s gonna be mad.”
Heat permeated the muggy room. My skin sticky. My heart heavy. A haze filtered through the thick air, a tinge of yellow cast from the muted lights hanging from the rafters above. Carolina George was back on the stage, and Emily’s strong, hypnotizing voice languished from the speakers. It filled me with a yearning unlike anything I’d ever known. Tonight, the familiar nostalgia that wrapped me tight every time she sang was almost suffocating.
People were packed wall-to-wall in the cavernous space, the old walls alive with the secrets they held.
My eyes trailed a path up toward the darkened ceiling that seemed to go on forever, an eternal void that held my own secret, as if this place harbored what had transpired that night forever in its shadows.
Without a doubt, that night had changed me.
Sebastian had changed me.
Altered who I was, what I believed, and what I wanted.
It was somehow liberating and bound me in chains all at the same time.
What a sad, twist of fate it had turned out to be. Sebastian was more afraid of his lifestyle than me.