For a second, it felt like I was holding that same eight-year-old boy who’d wept that day. That fucking devastating day when we’d lost everything. The day when everything had gone to shit and we knew things were never gonna be the same.
Just like we knew it now.
Things weren’t ever gonna be the same.
Finally, he tore himself away, eyes red and bleary and blurred.
He sniffed and I gripped him by the sides of his neck, squeezing in emphasis. “No matter where this world takes you, no matter where you go, I’ll always be your home.”
He grasped my wrists. “I know.”
Taking a step back, he bent over and grabbed his bag and slung the strap over his shoulder, still clutching the worn monkey to his chest.
His eyes were downcast when he edged around me.
“Just…” I called, this old piece of me breaking free, feeling like he was ripping it away. Like this kid needed to take a part of me with him.
And God, if that’s what it took for him to finally break free of this past, then I’d let him.
“Keep in touch,” I finally said. “I need to know you’re okay. Where you are. For my own sanity.”
For a moment, he paused with his hand on the knob of the door, before he turned to look back at me from over his shoulder.
The smile he projected was soft and thankful and somehow resolved.
Then he dipped his head in a nod and my baby brother walked out the door.
I PULLED TO A stop at the curb and cut the engine. A smattering of stars hung in the darkened sky. They peeked through the spindly branches adorned with the few remaining leaves that had long since turned red and gold, those tall trees stretching out to brush the high eaves of the historic white house that rested in the heart of Savannah.
A feeling of ease and welcome swept through me. Like everything dialed to wrong had suddenly been set to right.
You’d think after years of traveling, out on the road living in a damned van trying to make it big, five days wouldn’t make a man homesick.
You’d be wrong.
Lights glowed from within the windows of the old, majestic home. The sight of the porch swing where I’d spent so many nights rubbing Shea’s feet and talking to her belly after we’d tucked Kallie into bed quickened my heart, that front door calling out for me like my marrow had become ingrained in the wood.
I stepped from the Suburban in the same second that front door swung wide open.
A streak of blonde flew down the sidewalk. All those wild, wild curls struck like white flames in the moonlight.
“Daddy!”
My quickened heart damned near burst.
I hustled around the front of the truck and scooped Kallie up just as she was hitting the end of the walkway. I swung her around in circles, lovin’ the feel of making my Little Bug fly.
She squealed and clung to my neck. “Daddy, don’t you dare drop me!”
I hugged her close. Squeezed her tight. “Never.”
She settled and stilled, like she was washed in a wave of comfort as she tucked herself into my chest. I could feel her little heart going boom, boom, boom as she found her own ease.
“I missed you so much,” I murmured into those untamed locks at the top of her head.
“Me, too,” she whispered back.
She flashed me one of those brilliant smiles. Though now that smile was missing two front teeth. Considering Christmas was rolling up fast, I couldn’t help but relentlessly tease her about it in song.
One-hundred percent not my fault.
Uncle Ash started it.
Go figure.
I hooked Kallie to my side and let my needy gaze travel to the doorway.
Shea leaned up against the jam.
She was wearing a tank top and some of those short, short sleep shorts she liked the wear, a cascade of blonde falling down her shoulders, those tempting strands a couple inches longer than they were when I’d married her just over a year ago.
Her adoring expression screamed so many things. I missed you. I need you. Home—this is where you’re supposed to be.
Like her dial had also been shifted to right.
My wife was cradling our tiny son, rocking him in her arms as her head tilted to the side in the softest welcome.
That sweet, sexy mouth tipped up at the corners.
Shea.
Shea.
Shea.