“Oh, man! Do I have to?” Kallie pouted.
Shea just shook her head. “I let you stay up an hour past your bedtime so you could be awake when your daddy got home, and you promised you’d go right to bed once you got to see him. Remember?” she drew out, the graze of her knuckles down Kallie’s cheek a gentle encouragement. “You have to get up for school in the morning.”
“I know,” Kallie conceded.
Knew I’d be getting in late, past Kallie’s bedtime, but I’d left the second I could get out of L.A., eager to get home. Desperate, really.
“Why don’t we get your baby brother into bed? Then you can read me a story. How’s that sound?” I offered.
Curls flew when Kallie nodded. “Okay, Daddy!”
Stepping forward, I dipped down and gave Shea another kiss and a quick squeeze to her hip. “Later,” I whispered.
Shea hummed.
Yeah. I’d be showing my wife just how damned much I missed her. I’d put bets down she’d be amending any assertion about me missing her half as much as she missed me.
We climbed the stairs. I held my son, chest to chest, my arm secure across his tiny back and head, my other hand one with Kallie’s.
At the top of the landing, my attention went right to the wall of photos I couldn’t help but study the first morning I’d woken up in Shea’s bed. The morning I’d had every intention of running.
Little did I know, I’d be running right back to Shea.
Find love and bring it here.
Those words were inscribed in black cursive letters along the top of the wall, like a vocal statement of what the stilled images hanging on the wall proclaimed.
All the original pictures were still there.
A wedding picture of Shea’s grandparents graced the center, the frame surrounded by others that showcased the people Shea adored. People who’d helped to shape her into the magnificent, caring, gentle woman she was today.
I grinned at the young picture of Charlie sitting off to the side, back when he’d barely been a man and not the scruffy old guy now slinging drinks at his bar down the street.
Of course there was the one of Shea holding Kallie as an infant in profile. Seeing that picture the first time had unleashed some kind of fear in me, a fear I was dragging all my ugly onto sacred ground.
Tainting and marring and ruining.
But Shea had turned that vision around.
Wanting more, more, more.
Filling me with good. Or maybe she’d just discovered it.
I gently bounced my son as my gaze moved to the picture of Shea’s mom still on display. Yeah, she’d been responsible for so much negative in Shea’s life. But she’d ultimately been the one who’d set it in order. The one who’d put herself on the line and accepted responsibility. The one who’d provided enough information that the judge had issued a warrant to search Martin’s house. The one who’d stood up at the sick bastard’s trial and testified.
The one now serving ten years in a women’s prison back in California.
Her testimony had helped convict Martin Jennings of drug trafficking and extortion. But that didn’t even come close to grazing the tip of the iceberg. The rest of his vile practices had been lurking just under water.
He got life for the murder of Donny Alstinger.
The part I still couldn’t stomach? What was always gonna haunt me?
They’d found evidence of plans to have Shea extinguished, the first time stopped by Mark’s intervention.
The second had been in the making—first getting me out of the way so he could easily access her. With Lester running for governor, they couldn’t risk the condemning evidence Shea had against them coming back to bite them.
Just the thought, the possibility, sent pangs of anger and fear spiraling through me.
Lester Ford was currently standing his own trial.
Added to that?
Martin Jennings’s conviction in the murder of Mark Nathanial Kennedy.
Fucking agony.