Eventually, the third floor would serve as our own, personal living space and the second floor would be guest rooms.
If that ever happened.
Each step I took incited something frantic in me as I searched under beds and old furniture and behind curtains.
She wasn’t there.
Dread crawled across my still wet skin.
I was fighting tears when I got to the end of the hall and stepped over the baby gate that was supposed to keep her contained on this end of the house. Quickly, I searched the rooms on the other side of the hall.
It was just as quiet.
Flying back out, I took the third story steps to the top floor where she wasn’t allowed to be, shouting out her name.
“Bailey? Where are you, Button? Please come out. This isn’t a good game.”
It was dim and dark up there, sunlight barely breaking through the thick curtains that covered the windows, a thick coat of dust covering every surface.
The top floor had hardly been touched since we’d moved in, the area one large space and crammed full of the old furniture that had been left there from more than a century ago.
In a frenzy, I rushed through it, searching.
Desperation took over.
My blood running thick, pulse thumping in my ears and slogging through my veins as I raced back down the third-story steps.
I took the staircase for the bottom floor, and my limbs started to shake as I moved through the living room, the office, the parlor, the formal dining room.
I shouted her name.
Over and over.
It echoed back.
Dread spiraled through me, my soul screaming out, no.
No.
Not my baby. I wouldn’t let anyone hurt her.
By the time I made it to the huge, country kitchen set at the very back of the house on the first floor, I was completely devoid of breath.
Sure someone had found their way back in.
Then I saw the back door was wide open, and a whole different type of fear took over. The thought of her wandering off. Getting lost or worse.
“Oh my God.”
I ran through it and into the sunshine that blazed down from the blue, blue sky, already suffocating in its heat.
“Bailey!” I shouted.
I ran down the porch steps and onto the back lawn.
“Bailey!” It’d shifted into a scream. Dread and terror and every fear I’d ever had slammed me.
Full force.
My thoughts streaked from the idea of someone taking her, hurting her, and went directly to the stream that ran at the back of the land, just on the other side of the thicket of trees that rose like a hedge around the property.
Terrified she’d wandered that direction. It was her favorite place to play, where she begged me to take her every day.
I flew that way, my bare feet pounding across the lawn, my robe flapping open as I hit a sprint, gasps raking from my lungs. “Bailey! Bailey!”
My voice echoed through the heavens, rushing through the leaves.
A howling plea.
“Faith!” His voice hit me like protection, and I spun around. Jace was sprinting around the side of the house. “What’s happening?”
“Bailey . . . I . . . I can’t find her. Oh my God, my baby.”
Those copper eyes flamed, and he flew around me, going directly for the path that led for the stream as if he’d had the very same thought as me.
“Bailey!” he shouted. His gruff voice reverberated back, held in the arms of the dense trees.
I started after him, only to freeze when the tiny voice hit me from behind.
“Mommy?”
I was trembling when I turned around.
Bailey was off to the right on the other side of the porch. Clinging to a red beach bucket that she played with in her sandpit, which was on that side of the house.
A cry raked from my throat. “Bailey.”
I staggered that way, and she started to round the porch.
I started running for her.
“Mommy?”
I scooped her up, knocking the full bucket from her hold, and crushed her against me.
Feeling her weight. The steady beat of her heart.
I dropped to my knees while holding her.
The adrenaline drained, and the terror that had bottled inside me burst.
Sobs ripped free.
Coming all the way from my soul.
And I realized how close I was to cracking. The pressure too much.
Little fingers were in my hair. “You cry, Mommy?”
“Button . . . Mommy was so scared. You’re not supposed to go outside by yourself.” The words were so clogged in my throat that I doubted she could even understand what I was saying.
You aren’t supposed to go outside by yourself.
It’s dangerous.
You aren’t allowed to leave me.
I felt the presence fall over us.
A shadow.
His intensity so thick I choked over that, too.
I hugged Bailey closer to me, refusing to look up, refusing to let her go. Her scent filled my senses.
Baby powder and lilacs and life.
My world.
That presence lowered to a knee, and I felt his fingers in my hair, brushing it back from my face. “Faith, sweetheart, it’s okay.”
My head shook frantically.
It wasn’t okay.
Nothing was okay.
“Come here,” he murmured. One of those masculine arms slipped around my waist.
So foreign and so familiar.
I gasped at the contact.
“I sowwee. I need dirt, Mommy. Don’t be sad.”
I squeezed Bailey tighter. “You scared me, baby. You can’t do that.”
She burrowed her head deeper into me, her little breaths coming out on the skin of my throat, her chubby fingers clinging to the lapel of the thin robe.
As if she could suddenly feel my terror.
“Let’s get you two inside.” Jace’s voice was rough when it fell on my ear.
He didn’t try to pry her from my arms—I wouldn’t have let him if he’d tried. He just helped me to stand with Bailey still wrapped around my neck.
The man lifted me from the ground with the arm he had around my waist, his other hand set protectively on Bailey’s back.
“She’s fine, Faith,” he murmured, his voice as thick as the sun I could feel burning against my skin, my hair sopping wet, my body suddenly feeling overwhelmed by the pressure of the muggy air.
My knees shook, threatened to give.
“She’s fine.”
The problem was that I wasn’t.
I wasn’t sure I was ever gonna be.
“You have her. You have her,” he quietly encouraged. He guided me up the rickety porch steps at the back of the house.
Steps that needed replacin’, too. Everything falling apart around me.
Everything.
And I had no idea how we were goin’ to survive. How we were going to make it past all of this.
Tears streaked down my face, and I dropped my head as I let him lead us back through the still gaping door.
Numbly, I moved through the massive kitchen, the one room that had already been fully renovated. My feet shuffled down the hall toward the front of the house.
All the while, Bailey continued to cling to me, probably feeling a little of her own fear, too.
The child was smart enough to realize she’d disobeyed; though, I knew she hadn’t realized what she’d done would elicit the reaction it had.
Too young and innocent to realize the danger she’d put herself in.
Too young to understand the threat and danger that loomed like the darkest shadow over our home.
I couldn’t make it any farther than the antique sofa that rested in the middle of the main living space. I sank onto it, still holding her, breathing her in.
My limbs began to shake. Trembles jerking through my muscles, a stutter at my very soul.
Bailey rested her cheek on my hammering heart. As if she were trying to soothe it.
Jace dropped to his knees in front of us.
I didn’t want to look at him.
Didn’t want to see the judgment on his face when he saw what a mess I was.
When he realized I didn’t know how to handle all of this on my own.
Those copper eyes stared back. Somehow hard and tender at the same time.
He set his hand on my bare knee. A jolt of hot energy blasted through my body. I squeezed my eyes against it.
“She’s safe,” he murmured. “She’s safe.”