He stopped at the bottom of the five steps that led up to the porch.
Those hands stuffed in his pockets again. His hair that had been styled earlier had been tussled and mussed, no doubt the victim of those restless, big hands.
My breaths turned jagged as he stood there staring up at me, those eyes glinting beneath the moonlight.
His teeth clamped down on his lush bottom lip as he looked around the old, dilapidated plantation, expression intense, as if he were reaching out to caress a memory.
Rocking back on his heels, he tipped the potency of that gaze back up to me. “You always loved this place.”
There was something there in his words.
Something wistful and sad.
It sent a stake of anger to pierce my heart.
We loved this place, I wanted to shout at him. Beg him. Because it didn’t matter how many years separated us, the question still remained.
Why?
Why?
Why?
But asking would be wrong.
Misguided.
Nothing we shared in the past mattered anymore. And I hated that just him coming here could stoke even an ember.
My heart no longer belonged to him.
“What are you doing here, Jace?” A tremble rocked through the question.
He dropped his gaze to the ground, wary when he looked back at me. “I needed to check on you.”
Bitter laughter rumbled out, all mixed up with the fear and sorrow and grief that lined the inside of me. It came rolling out in a rush of anger. “Check on me? I haven’t seen you in ten years, and you needed to check on me at three in the mornin’?”
He blew out a sigh. “A lot has changed since then. I couldn’t sleep, knowing you were here alone.”
Gutting disbelief moved through me like a black, ugly storm. I’d always been the one who was the first to forgive.
But when it’d come to Jace, all of that had changed. The man had taken all the good and belief inside me and turned it into a mockery.
I couldn’t believe he thought he had the right to stand there, in that spot, acting as if he cared.
“And none of those things have much to do with you, do they?”
He eyed me, words hard. “Don’t they?”
“You gave up your place here, Jace. You did. You left, and you don’t get to come back when you find it fit.”
He flinched as if I was the one who was hurting him. As if he hadn’t left me humiliated and broken. Like the trash I’d refused to let anyone convince me that he was.
I’d been the fool, and I wouldn’t fall for his act again.
“Can’t stop myself from being worried about you.” His voice whispered on the wind, hitting me like knives against my skin.
“There’s nothing for you to worry about.”
He lifted a brow in challenge. “You sure about that?”
Looking off to the side, I bit my lip, realizing that Mack had most likely told Jace everything. I should have known I couldn’t keep it private when Jace and Mack had been as close as brothers back in high school, and now Mack was the one leading the investigation.
Still, I couldn’t stop the anger that slipped into my bloodstream at the thought of Jace being privy to any details of our lives.
I wanted to shut him out, put up every wall so he couldn’t see inside.
It wasn’t right for him to be afforded a view of my demolished heart.
It didn’t matter how much I wanted to keep Jace out, the words were scraping free. “My husband was murdered. Murdered in cold blood.”
Cold blood.
Is that what it’d been? It’s what I’d believed in the beginning. When Mack had shown up at my door and delivered the news that they’d found Joseph shot outside the grocery store, I’d been devastated.
It didn’t matter that the love I’d had for Joseph had been different than I’d ever imagined for the man I’d marry.
Ours had been a slow love. One that had grown out of friendship.
Joseph had been there for me when I’d needed a friend most. He’d picked me up after Jace had left me in pieces.
Losing Joseph that way had been a brutal blow.
A smack to the face.
Still, I’d been sure it’d been a cut and dry case of a man being in the wrong place at the wrong time.
But with each day that passed, I’d begun to question that. Began to question Joseph’s innocence. Began to question whether he’d unknowingly set Bailey and me on a course of destruction.
Grief clutching my spirit, I plowed on, needing Jace to know he wasn’t welcome. “You don’t get to come here now and pretend like you care.”
“He was my cousin, Faith. I have a right to know what’s happening.”
The fact they’d been family made my insides recoil.
My brows pinched in pain. “Do you? Do you really think you have the right? The right to show up here?”
He raked a hand through his hair, staring off into the distance, into the muggy breeze that rustled through the trees.
Finally, he turned back to me. “I know you hate me, Faith. You have every right to. You should hate me every bit as much as I hate myself, but that doesn’t change the fact that I’m here. That I’m going to take care of you. Protect you. Whatever it takes.”
If only I could hate him the way he assumed that I did.
I lifted a defiant chin. “The only thing I want from you is for you to leave.”
His posture was hard, his eyes harder.
The man hazard and peril the way everyone had warned.
“That is not going to happen. You should know me better than that.”
I moved for the door, pausing to look back at him from over my shoulder. “I thought I did know you.”
Retreating inside, I slammed the door, closing off the connection.
Every part of me started shaking, my hands barely cooperating as I fumbled through the locks as if they might be strong enough to keep him out. My lungs squeezed with each battered breath, and my heart rioted at the center of my chest.
I couldn’t let him in. Not ever again.
I sucked down a breath and turned for the stairs, climbing them quickly.
I stumbled to a stop three steps from the second-floor landing.
“Oh, sweetheart,” I whispered into the darkness, my sweet, sweet girl rubbing a fist at her sleepy eye, and that torn, tattered Beast hooked under her right arm.
Just the sight of it nearly dropped me to my knees.
“Don’t never weave me, Mommy.”
Only three years old, she still dropped the L in every word she spoke, her mouth not quite ready to form the sound, the lilt of it always sending a fresh wave of affection crashing through me.
But it was her fear of abandonment, the loss that was haunting us both, that nearly destroyed me.
I swept her into my arms. Love and adoration and the strongest devotion pumped through me like a river. Growing stronger and deeper.
My heart no longer felt as if it was goin’ to fail because I had my reason for living in my arms. My reason for fighting. My reason for surviving.
I pushed back the wild locks of her brown curls from her face and pressed a tender kiss to her forehead, murmuring against her baby-powder skin. “Never. Mommy would never leave you.”
She wrapped her tiny arms around my neck, squeezing me tight, her lips against my cheek. “Oh-kay.”
She yawned and snuggled tighter into my hold.
I hugged her closer and carried her toward my room. Part of me knew I was clinging to my daughter too tightly, feeding into her own fears of desertion and loss.
It was hard to stop when she felt like the only thing I had.
My very breath.
I set her on my bed, and she stared up at me as I took her in. Her pink cheeks were round and chubby, her lips full and red. Her dark eyes somehow grinned. “I sweep with you?”
“Yeah, baby, you can sleep with me.”
The problem was, I didn’t know who I was doing it for. Because I sighed out in relief when I snuggled up to her, pulling her chest to mine, our hearts beating in time.
In perfect sync.
“I love you, Bailey Button.”
She giggled at her nickname and snuggled closer. “I’s wuv you the most,” she murmured like a secret, her breaths quick to even out.
I held her in the darkness.
In the shadows.