Hide. Hide. Hide.
I was so damned tired of hiding. Of running from everything that scared me, but I didn’t know how to handle this when I’d been running for so long. I didn’t know how to bear the brunt of it. How to stand up under the sudden recognition that lit on his face.
I was peeking out from behind Lyrik when the reporter suddenly shook his index finger my direction, the smile on this guy’s face making it clear he had no idea he’d knocked me from the precarious foundation I’d created.
Where I’d balanced on unstable ground.
Knowing one day, one side would eventually give out.
“Yeah…yeah…you’re that girl. Tamar Gibson. Madeline Shields…she was from here…L.A. That whole thing is about to go to trial in Arizona, right? Saw something about it come across the feed last week.”
He frowned as the full story seemed to dawn, sudden confusion setting in. “Are they still looking for you?”
And that was it.
The bottom finally crumbled out from under me.
Darkness pressed in as a horror of memories came crashing through my mind.
Madeline Shields.
Pain lanced through my being like the cut of a rusted, dulled blade.
Paralyzing.
My legs wobbled as my heart and knees went weak.
All functions gone.
“Blue.” Lyrik was suddenly there. Holding me up.
Protectively, he wound his arm around my waist, let me bury my face in his chest. “Think that’ll be enough questions for tonight.”
He began to guide me through the shadows and voices and bodies. He brought his free hand up to my cheek, pressing me closer, covering the part of my face still exposed.
Blocking.
Shielding and sheltering.
Lyrik squeezed me tighter, his voice an echo on the fringes of the world I’d disappeared to. “It’s okay, baby. Ten more feet. Just need to make it out this door. I’ve got you. Not gonna let you go. I’ve got you.”
My hands curled tighter into his shirt, and I could hear the hushed murmur of his voice mixed with another man’s, the scrape of a metal door as it was opened.
Fresh air breezed across my damp, sticky flesh, wiping away the grime of the theater.
But there was no relief.
It was just another layer exposed.
Another sweep across the dirt.
Revealing my forgotten reality.
Madeline.
I hadn’t allowed her name to enter my thoughts in years. There was too much guilt. Too much shame.
Now I almost buckled beneath the weight of it.
Lyrik helped me into the backseat of the waiting SUV. The black leather was cold against my already clammy skin. Sliding in, he curled me back in his arms.
“I’ve got you,” he whispered at the top of my head.
“I’m so sorry,” I mumbled through the old grief. But I’d kept it in for far too long.
“Shh…don’t apologize. You’ve got nothing to apologize for. Nothing. You’re safe. You’re safe.”
And I remembered that voice and those words.
Lyrik.
The night he’d first found me. When he’d first unearthed everything I’d buried like a cursed relic.
“Lyrik.” It was pain. Torment. Regret.
“Shh…baby…I’ve got you…I’m not gonna let anything happen to you.”
“Promise?”
“I promise,” he said.
The ride sped by in a blur of memories as I finally fully opened the door.
Opened it for everything to come rushing in.
Every fear.
Every hope.
Every memory.
I opened myself to every wound that had never healed.
I let every single one of them invade.
It was time. It was time. It was time.
I was so tired of being the girl I was not.
And I missed her. Tamar Gibson. The girl Cameron Lucan had tried to destroy.
Just like he’d destroyed Madeline Shields.
It seemed only seconds later when the SUV came to a stop. Lyrik opened the door, quick to slide out, hands careful as he helped me stand.
“Can you walk?”
Through bleary eyes, I nodded, and he wound his arm back around my waist, supported me as we started across the cobblestone drive.
With each step, I somehow felt stronger and stronger.
Braver and braver.
Unchecked, tears streaked down my face.
Once, I’d believed they made me weak.
But now. There was power in their presence.
And I felt a little crazed. Maybe a little insane. To feel so much turmoil and welcome it all the same.
Lyrik fumbled in his pocket and took out his keys. He opened the door to the massive house he called home. The expansive windows on the other side of the huge living area opened up to the pool and the sparkling city below.
He didn’t hesitate, just turned me to the right and led me upstairs and down the hall to his room.
I’d only been in it for a few minutes this afternoon before we’d had to leave for his parents’. But it felt so much like him. Dark and filled with mystery, the corners filled with shadows that ached to tell the same story he had written across his skin.
Releasing me, he quietly latched the door shut behind us.
Standing in the middle of his room, I turned to look at him.
For once, I was hiding nothing.
Open and free.
And it hurt and it hurt and it hurt.