I just didn’t know how deep his deck went until tonight.
“It doesn’t matter,” she whispered, her voice all wispy with hope and faith.
I looked up at the fucking gorgeous girl who, with just a glance, swallowed me whole.
Annihilated me with a touch.
The one I was willing to lay it all down for. My life and my heart and my future. But I was willing to break my own damned heart if it meant she got her little girl back.
I forced myself down the stairs, turning back just in time to watch as I broke Shea a little more. Always knew I would. Disappointment and hurt amplified her fear. With all of me, I wanted to wipe her pain away.
Expose her beauty and belief.
Live in it.
But I didn’t know how to stay.
Things had spiraled since the fateful moment when Kallie had almost drowned two days ago. It felt like a fucking lifetime, worn tatters of days strewn across too much time.
This goddamned perpetual tragedy that just wouldn’t quit.
I turned away.
“Sebastian…don’t leave me. You promised me…you promised you’d never leave me again.” Desperate feet pounded on the steps behind me. “Please…look at me.”
I couldn’t. If I looked back again, I would only cave. Give in, because I was already gone.
“Look at me!” she begged from behind. Fingers scraped down my back, trying to latch on.
Pain.
I fisted my hands, trying to catch a fucking breath, to drag the air in and out of my punctured lungs.
April sat on the couch with her face in her hands, crying. She jumped to her feet when I tore open the door. Tears soaked her plain face, plain brown eyes dulled and dimmed. Like maybe she got it, too. Why I couldn’t stay and break Shea any more than I already had.
“Sebastian…see me!” The tortured cry erupting from Shea’s mouth nearly dropped me to my knees. I slammed the door shut behind me and rushed out into the waning storm.
The sky was dark and ominous.
It felt like a warning of what was to be.
PAIN ENGULFED ME. IT crashed in from every side, pummeling and beating and battering until I was being swept away by the vicious undertow.
I gasped over the sorrow, and I grappled at the railing in an attempt to stay upright when my body almost gave.
Kallie.
Kallie.
Kallie.
I felt as if I were shattering. Splintering. My soul fragmenting as it screamed for the pieces that had been ripped away.
Kallie.
Fear consumed me.
What did Martin want with her?
Why now, after all this time?
And Sebastian.
Without him, I no longer knew how to breathe.
Warily, April looked at me where I held onto the railing at the bottom of the stairs. Her wide, frightened eyes were stained red, cheeks wet with her own misery.
“I can’t believe this is happening,” she whispered, as if she didn’t want to speak the words, because if she did, it would make them real.
But I could. I’d always known. No amount of lies or hiding or pretending could have kept this day from coming to pass.
Martin Jennings had been sitting back, lying in wait for the perfect opportunity to strike. The precise time to swoop in and tear my world apart. The circumstances didn’t matter. Martin had promised he would find a way to make me pay.
And now I was paying the greatest price.
My head spun, my entire being reeling with the aftermath of everything he threatened to take from me.
Kallie. My baby girl.
Sebastian.
Hadn’t Martin already taken enough?
“He would never have just let me go.” The raspy words scraped like razors up my sore throat.
Her voice was small. Scared. Just like me. “What do we do?”
A flurry of adrenaline whipped through me. A frenzy fueled by the fear and resolution to do anything and everything I had to do—just like I had before. I lifted my chin. “We fight.”
She swiped under her eyes and laughed a soggy laugh that held zero humor. “I can’t believe I almost forgot about him. So much time has passed and I’d pretended he didn’t exist…it felt like he didn’t.”