I lifted my chin, my gaze, and my hand.
Cameron sat across the room unmoving in his chair. As if he sensed the end and willed me to be the one to end it. With so much evidence stacked against him, there was virtually no chance of acquittal. I doubted aiming my attention at him would make a difference either way.
But it didn’t matter.
Because I would no longer remain silent.
I would no longer hide or mask or run.
I pointed a finger at Cameron Lucan.
The rest of her questions were a blur. “Can you please describe what that person is wearing for the court?”
I mumbled the answer and slumped forward when I did.
Gasping.
Reeling.
Free.
“Let the court record reflect that the witness has just identified the defendant, Cameron Lucan.”
I was completely shaking when I was excused from the stand, the cross-examination nothing but a muted whir at the fringes of my mind.
From the back of the room, Lyrik West smiled at me.
So damned soft and filled with understanding.
And I saw it there.
Written all over the edges of that convoluted man.
Pride.
I stumbled into my seat where my mother pulled me into her embrace, pressing wet kisses into my hair, her face soaked in tears. “I’m so proud of you. I’m so proud of you.”
And when I looked back over my shoulder, Lyrik was gone.
Mom edged out onto the back porch and handed me a hot cup of tea.
“Thank you.” I blew at the cup as I sat on a wooden rocking chair watching the sun melt against the mountains, a reflection of its passing as it dropped down the horizon at the opposite end of the sky.
These mountains had always been one of my favorite parts of home. Watching the storms build above them, witnessing a beauty unlike anything I’d ever seen. So strong and powerful and dangerous.
Mom settled in the seat next to me and propped up her feet on the railing. “How are you holding up?”
Two days had passed since my testimony. One day since Cameron Lucan’s conviction.
I took a sip and let it soothe my aching throat. “It feels…good.”
I eyed her with a half-smile. “Weird. The day I escaped, I’d accepted the fact it would be something that chased me forever. That I’d have to look behind at every turn. Always be ready to run again. It feels so odd to put it to rest.”
“Yet you’re not settled.” When it came to me, she’d always been this way. Intuitive.
I shook my head. “No.”
“Where do you go from here?”
I hefted a single shoulder. “I don’t know, Mom. I just feel so…lost. I’m not sure where I belong anymore.”
“I’d keep you here forever if you’d let me.” It came out almost a tease, although I recognized the honesty behind it.
“I know you would. And you know I love it here, but—”
“I know, Tamar. I know. You’ll find your place.”
Her smile was knowing. “Are you about ready to tell me about this boy who broke my baby’s heart?” She lifted a brow. “I want to know whose ass I have to kick.”
Wistful laughter fumbled from me and my smile trembled. “Maybe that’s the hardest part of it all. He broke it in the best way. He found me when I didn’t know I was lost. Turned me in the right direction. It was him who pointed me home.”
“You’re here because of him?”
I gave a small shrug. “No…but in some ways, yes. He forced me to see myself. To hear where I was being called.”
“It takes someone brave to listen.”
I choked over the swell of emotion. “He used to call me that… Brave.”
Sympathy clouded her blue eyes that were the same color as mine, her voice soft as she reached out to play with a few stray strands of my hair. “You love him?”
My insides shuddered and screamed and flailed.
Searching for a way to fill up the hole he’d left behind. Carved out and bleeding.
Hollow.
Every time he barged into my life, he took a little more when he left me behind.
“So much,” I whispered as I released the tears Lyrik had taken the time to show me weren’t a weakness.
They were ones I deserved to shed.
And God. I missed him so much it reminded me of death. His name equating to loss and grief and sorrow. And still, his touch had been my resurrection.
This beautiful, tormented boy.
He’d both wrecked me and breathed the life back into me.
The conflicting emotions got locked up in my chest. Because the deepest part of me knew where I belonged was with him.
And I remembered.
I remembered.
Even after he was gone.
He was worth every second of the pain.
Light tapping at my door roused me from sleep. It was the drifting kind, where I hovered just above full coherency, as if watching my life suspended above it all.
It felt so strange, this broken heart up against the overwhelming feeling of being free. Missing him and being so thankful to be home.
The door creaked open. “Hey,” my mother said as she slipped into my room. Late afternoon light bled in through the parted drapes, shadows playing on the vista, dancing up and down the peaks and ridges of the mountains.