Chapter One
Matt
There’s a bright, warm place men call home. I searched for it all my life. Thought I’d found it. Let myself roll in the warmth, believe I had reached my destination.
But it was snatched away from me.
So here I am now, standing in the early morning, staring at nothing. The house is big, the town small, a smattering of houses and trees scattered on the plain. The low porch overlooks the overgrown garden, and I gaze at it blindly, not quite sure how I got here. Maybe… through a dark, winding tunnel.
Over a deep, cold sea.
Along a long road going nowhere.
It couldn’t matter less. I’d never heard of Destiny, Missouri, in my life, and that was good enough a reason for me when I grabbed my two kids, stuffed everything I own in my truck, and drove down here.
Maybe it was the name. So fucking symbolic.
So here I am.
Nowhere.
I don’t know what I was looking for, or running from. The beginning and the end of the road are covered in mist. Everything is hazy. I feel as if I’ve been running for ages. Centuries, maybe.
I ran from my memories. I ran from the past. Then I ran from myself, and I still haven’t stopped. How can I? How do you escape what you’ve turned into?
Don’t be so fucking melodramatic, I tell myself.
But when a woman walking a small dog on the other side of the street lifts her hand in greeting, I freeze, stilling even more, until I might as well have turned to stone.
Eventually I step back, into the dimness of the house.
Might as well stop thinking useless thoughts and unpack. Settle in. Make sure the kids are all right.
I find them curled on the old sofa that came with the house, playing with Mary’s toys. Cole is solemnly imitating Mary’s actions—making the Barbie doll in his hand hop on the cushion between them.
Then he throws the doll to the floor and claps his hands.
Mary screams and shoves him.
Motherfucking hell.
I catch him before he topples over and lift him on my hip. A tremor is starting in my body, even though I’m holding him and he’s safe. I fight it, I always fight the way my body reacts to this deep fear, and it’s taking all I have not to let it show.
“He threw my toys!” she wails, pointing a grubby little finger at Cole who is sitting stiffly in my arms, his mouth downturned. “He always destroys my stuff. And I hate my bedroom. You said—”
“Mary,” I growl. “Stop.”
“But…” Her lower lip trembles, and her chocolate eyes fill with tears.
Fear mingles with guilt and anger, twisting into a heavy knot of rusty metal in my chest.
I should do something. Say something. But I don’t know what. Don’t kill your brother? Don’t wail like a mini banshee?
Don’t look at me as if I’ve shattered your world?
I set Cole down because my chest feels too tight, and my head is pounding too hard, trying to figure out a way to comfort them both. Not something I’ve had to do in years.
Taking care of others.
Not since the ground crumbled under my feet, taking me with it, into a pit so deep I couldn’t see the light.
And now you can?
Predictably, before I find the words or even move toward her, my five-year-old daughter climbs off the sofa and scampers out of the room, sniffling and sobbing.
F