I sank onto my bottom on the rug, hands shaking as I opened the note.
The words were drawn in pencil, sharp and choppy, the blocky handwriting one I would never forget. My heart fisted in my chest.
Faith,
The first time I saw you, I wanted you. I guessed I’d always chased after the things that weren’t mine. I’m so sorry for that. But I don’t regret it.
Do you remember the day we got married? Look at that picture, Faith. Look at me. It was the most honest day of my life. But even that honesty was tainted because you never really belonged to me.
I could never regret you. The only thing I wish is that I’d done it all differently.
Look at that picture, Faith. What you see there, it’s the truth.
Joseph
Uncertainty flooded into my broken heart, a river of it gushing in to fill the cracks and crevices, carving out a canyon of questions and confusion.
I’d never belonged to him?
What was he saying?
Frantic, I flipped the sheet over, looking for something else. For something more. Needing to know what it was he was trying to say.
But that was all that he’d left me.
I wanted to cling to the letter as if it offered some sort of comfort.
But there was something about the words that felt like a warning. As if something sickly crawled from the page and sank through my flesh, filling my consciousness with dread.
As if he were warning of what was to come.
Did he know he was gonna be taken from us? Did he know he was leaving Bailey and me in danger? Had he done something to make it that way?
Is that why he said I’d never really belonged to him?
Grief fisting my heart, I sat on the floor, having no idea what direction to go. So lost, I felt disoriented.
My spirit quivered within its confines, and I forced myself to shake off the thoughts that felt like some kind of morbid betrayal.
That was right when I heard the sound of a car engine turn up the drive.
I told myself to get it together. The last thing I needed was for Jace to find me this way.
Pushing to my feet, I edged toward the window and peered through the drape.
That fancy black Porsche pulled to a stop in the round drive.
I rushed into my bedroom next door, where I shoved the key and note into a drawer, finding the barest comfort in the fact Joseph had left behind a relic that he knew would speak to me.
An old key.
As if maybe he too had once wanted to be able to unlock a different world. One different than he’d been living. I was just terrified to know what kind of world he’d actually been involved in.
I edged back into the hall and popped my head into Bailey’s room where she was playing quietly on the floor. “I’m just going to let Jace in, Button. I’ll be right downstairs if you need me.”
“Oh-kay, Mommy,” she drawled, not even looking up from her dolls and blocks.
I bounded downstairs, not sure why I was running right toward the disturbance that rumbled in from out front.
But there I was, working through the locks, including the new one up high that he’d added, in a rush to open the door.
Once I had, though, I forced myself to slow as I stepped onto the porch, the breath leaving me without me giving it permission to.
Slowly, I moved over the unstained temporary boards, just watching as Jace stepped out of his car and rounded to the back to the hatch that slowly lifted.
He leaned forward and then pulled out a suitcase and a small overnight bag.
Emotion stretched tight. Tugging at all those places that I’d so long ago forgotten about.
The hope I’d had for this boy.
The belief that one day, things would be better.
“You did good for yourself, Jace,” I found myself calling, voice soft though filled with pride, wondering why I couldn’t stop myself from saying it.
Offering it.
But there were some things that were too important to ignore. It didn’t matter that the cost of him attaining them had been him leaving me behind.
An even softer huff left his nose as he pushed a button on his key and the hatch began to lower. He watched it go, not looking my way until it was secure. “I seem to remember someone telling me that I would if I wanted it badly enough.”
A chill of something flashed across my skin, cool in the muggy evening. I rushed my palms up my arms as if it might stand the chance to chase away the unease.
“I used to believe we could achieve anything if we wanted it badly enough. That we could close our eyes, and if we imagined it fiercely enough, we could will it to be,” I murmured, not even sure he could hear.
Jace started up the walk, slowly taking the porch steps, those coppery eyes on me. He leaned in when he got to me, his tone coarse. “It’d kill me if you stopped.”
He hesitated there. An inch away. Filling my senses.
Cloves and expensive leather and need.
I blinked, cleared my throat, tucked a strand of hair that’d gotten loose behind my ear. “Come on, I’ll show you to your room.”
Jace followed me inside.
I went right for the grand staircase, which was the centerpiece of the entire house. My hand slipped up the railing, holding tighter and tighter as we edged upward, his presence expanding with each step that we took.
If I let him, he’d fill this house. Take over everything.
I had to be careful. Guard myself from harboring the idea that this was anything but temporary.
Hitting the landing, we went left, and I stepped over the baby gate that blocked the end of the hall.
Jace chuckled a rumbly sound. “We might need to add a few extra inches to the top of that gate.”
I released an affectionate sigh. “She seems to figure things out when she needs to.”
“That’s because she knows she can, just like her mother.”
His words were fueled with his own belief, and my footsteps slowed until I was no longer moving, just standing two steps ahead of him facing away in the narrow hall. “Her mother’s older now, and she’s learned the hard way that’s not always the case.”
He was suddenly right there, so close he might as well have been touching me, his heart beating so loud I could feel the pound of it at my back. “Maybe she needs someone to remind her.”
My eyes slammed closed.
As if it could stop the wave of emotions from slamming me, so overwhelming, they almost knocked me from my feet.
Belief enveloped me, a shroud of the words we’d shared when we’d snuck out to meet in the middle of the night.
As if he’d captured them in the palms of his hands when I’d given them to him, carried them through all the years, and then softly blew them back my direction at the exact moment I needed them.
I cleared the roughness from my throat, shook myself off, and forced myself to keep moving. I stopped at the first door on the right and pushed it open.
Turning to face him, I stepped off to the side and gestured inside.
“This is you.”
He stood in the hall, unmoving, staring at me with all that potency. So big and enthralling. That mystery I’d always wanted to discover, his gaze almost too much to take.
He pointed to the room directly across from it. “Huh, I would have been sure it was that one.”
A sharp wheeze filled my lungs at the forwardness of his words.
Presumptuous and brash and cruel.
It was a room I’d scarcely been able to force myself into in all the years I’d owned this home.
I was suddenly assaulted by images that I’d tucked way down deep inside.
Of that night.
Our bodies in the shadows, a twist in the moonlight. Before the sun had broken and we’d lost everything.
Heat burned on my cheeks. “Jace. You can’t do that. Say things like that.”
“Why?”
Was that anger in the word?
As if it had been my fault?
As if I hadn’t begged him to stay?
“It’s not fair . . . you coming into my home and stirring up ghosts.”
His face pinched with frustration and remorse.
Severe and dark.
“You think I can come here and not think of it? Not think of you?”
I could feel the anger pulling across my features. “You did perfectly fine the last ten years.”
He flew forward a step, stealing my breath. “Is that what you think? That I was fine?”