I started for my car, only to stop halfway down the porch steps when Faith called out again from the doorway. “They’re worth it, Ian. I know your life hasn’t always been easy, and I won’t pretend to have a clue what you’ve been through. But what I do know is you’ve had to fight to survive. That it never made sense to let your heart go when there was never anyone there who you could trust to hold it.”
My spine stiffened, and I locked my muscles, refusing to look her way.
“This place is made of magic and dreams. I have never stopped believing that. Not once in my life. Yours are here, too. I felt it, between the two of you. How real you are. That you both are fighting for the chance to live again. You will, Ian. You’ll live again. That life is right there, waiting to break free, to take its rightful place.”
My head swiveled in her direction, and there was no anger in my voice, only pain. “I think we both know it’s too late for that.”
Faith sent me a tender smile. “Love never comes too late.”
Thirty-Nine
Grace
I ran into the bathroom and dropped to my knees. I vomited so violently I was sure my guts had to be coming up with it.
Everything. Everything.
Tears burned and stung where they dripped down my cheeks, and my body heaved and clutched. A tight sob wheezed out of my throat while my insides squeezed in the most excruciating kind of pain.
I clung to the toilet, knowing I had nothing left.
No ammunition. No fight.
How could I fail my children this way?
I guessed I really had been a fool. Because I was absolutely staggered that Ian had just walked. Turned his back on me in the moment I needed him the most. Maybe I did have the worst intuition when it came to men.
But I’d believed in him so wholeheartedly that, when he brushed me off, it felt like the cruelest sort of blow.
Total devastation.
Ravaged by anguish.
How could I have hope when the man who was supposed to advocate for us believed there was no hope left?
Another roil of nausea slammed me, and I heaved again, bringing up nothing, my stomach expanding with the void.
Sobs ripped and tore, and I didn’t have the strength to lift my head when footsteps shuffled in. And I didn’t think things could get any worse until I felt my grandmother’s heart shatter right there.
Her grief mine and mine hers.
“Oh, my girl.”
A soft hand was laid on my back, stroking down my spine, voice coaxing in its soft timber. “It’s okay. It’s okay. Tell me what happened.”
I clung tighter to the cold porcelain, the only relief for my skin that felt as if it were on fire. “I wasn’t enough, Gramma. I wasn’t enough. My babies . . . Oh, God, my babies.”
I doubted she could understand a word I said, everything fragmented and broken.
An extension of me.
She hadn’t been home when I’d stumbled through the door after Ian had driven off without so much as a backward glance. I’d originally intended to tell her about what had happened with the kids with Ian at my side. I’d envisioned we’d gather at her table and together we’d form a plan.
I could feel her trying to be strong, but her own torment shone through, her voice growing craggy and thin. “Reed got to them?”
My face pinched in agony, and I nodded, sniffling, raking my forearm across my face in an attempt to see through the bleariness. Moaning, I pushed myself back and flopped against the tub. “He said he came to pick up the kids yesterday and they weren’t here. That going to the judge was the only thing he could do. Of course, that judge just so happened to be Jonathan.”
Anger gusted from her being. “He did nothing of the sort.”
I could only nod again. There was no surprise in hearing the bastard had lied about that, too.
It wasn’t as if it wasn’t obvious that he’d been having me followed this whole time. That my private life had not been private at all.
But it stung, just the same, that the man could spew lies and blasphemies and claim it as truth and the world would take it as fact.
“It doesn’t matter. The only thing that does is that my kids are gone, and I have no idea how I’m going to get them back.”
She reached out and tipped up my chin. “You dry your eyes, pick yourself up, and remember you have the power to go after what’s right.”
Helplessness bled free. “I’m not sure that I possess that power anymore.”
“Nonsense. Of course, you do. Your last name might still legally be Dearborne, but you’re a MacNally at heart. We might get beaten down, but we always get back up.”
Unable to fully focus, I blinked at her through the haze of misery. “And sometimes we make mistakes, Gramma. Terrible mistakes that are selfish and stupid, and we ruin any chance that we had, and once we realize it, there is absolutely nothing we can do to take them back.”
Her gaze deepened, and she inclined her head. “Are we talking about that looker of yours?”
Her words were nothing but a jagged blade driven into my side. “He’s not mine.”
“You sure about that? Because it definitely seemed that way to me when he came for you in the middle of the night a couple of days ago. Not many men step out like that, not unless they’ve already put their heart on the line.”
“We put everything on the line. Both of us. And we both lost. We lost everything.” My voice was a wisp.
She brushed her knuckles through the tears that blanketed my cheeks.
Unchecked and unending.
“Don’t you know the bleakest times are making way for the brightest sunrises?”
“I’m not sure the sun can rise when there’s only darkness left.”
Her head shook. “The sun always comes. It might tarry, but it will shine. Now that’s a gift we can always count on.”
“I’m sorry, but I don’t think my life is gonna end up wrapped in a pretty red bow.” I swiped frantically at the tears that kept falling. “Maybe the best thing I could do is give in to what he wants. Go back to him.”
The thought of Reed ever touching me again made my skin crawl. But my children were worth any sacrifice.
I’d trade joy for their safety.
Happiness if it meant I was there, watching over them.
She huffed out a loathing sigh. “You will do no such thing. You left because you knew that’s what you had to do. Because your children deserve better than that life. Because you deserve better than that life.”
“But what if it’s the only option?” I whimpered, hugging my knees to my chest.
“It’s not. It’s not. So, here’s the plan. You’re going to get in that shower and clean yourself up, curl up in bed and have yourself a good cry, and when you wake up in the morning, you’re going to be ready to fight again. Because I promise you, even though you can’t feel it right now, the sun will be there to welcome you.”
I gave her the weakest smile. “It shouldn’t be possible to keep crying, but I can’t seem to stop.”
Sadness wedged into the lines of her aged face. She reached out and cupped my cheek. “Tears for our children don’t go dry. Our cares don’t dissipate. Until they’re safe, those tears will go on forever. But you will smile again, sweet girl. I know it. My heart knows it. You just have to believe it, too.”
Forty
Ian
There are moments in our lives when we gain evidence of everything our souls had forever screamed was our truth.
Call it a reaffirmation.
An underscore.
Motherfucking proof.
Or maybe it was just providence cinching down tight on the collar it had wrapped around your neck. A noose reminding you who you were. Who you were destined to be.
Changing—becoming someone better—wasn’t in the cards.
I’d wanted to. God, I’d wanted to.
A week had gone by, and there I was, in my darkened condo in the middle of the night, responsible for the very thing I’d promised myself I’d never be.
The joy of children.
Innocent children who had no way to fight. Children who were sitting across town waiting for someone to be their hero when they didn’t know our only fate was tragedy.
I knew it.