It hadn’t been touched since I’d left when I’d headed to college.
High school pictures were still tacked to the walls and played partner to posters of my teen idols. My twin bed was still made up in the same quilt my grandmother had made for me after I’d picked out the colors for the patchwork pieces when I was thirteen.
The room was filled with small white furniture—a dresser and a desk and a nightstand that had a pink lamp sitting on top of it that matched the quilt.
From where I was propped against the headboard, I looked around, running my hands up my arms, fighting both the fear and anger at Reed and the buzz that still lingered from what had happened earlier this afternoon at the salon.
A quiet hum that drove the possibility of sleep from my mind.
More intense where it glowed beneath the bracelet around my wrist.
What I needed to do was sink down into my bed and put a pillow over my head.
Block it all out.
Maybe I was just delirious, still angry, my spirit rejecting everything Reed had implied, everything he stood for, the chains I was anxious to be free of.
Maybe it was that flicker.
The idea of more.
I glanced at my phone.
Just as fast, I jerked my attention away and questioned whether I’d lost my sanity.
Apparently so because just as fast I picked up my phone from the nightstand.
Quickly, I typed out a message to the number I’d gone and memorized like it was a theorem on my next high school calculus test.
Seemed fitting considering I felt as if I was officially back to that age.
A young girl who wanted something more. To experience what it felt like to be alive. Exhilarated and excited. To be touched and loved and adored.
Me: Thank you for what you did today. I wish I could have truly expressed to you what it meant to me. I want you to know it meant everything.
Somehow, none of those worries seemed to matter when I pushed send with a rush of butterflies taking flight from my skin.
Fluttering and flapping and the threat of an eager grin crawling across my lips.
His name and number had been nothing but a slip of temptation in my hand.
Part of me knew I shouldn’t. That I should just let it be.
But sometimes that loneliness came on too fierce. When I could feel my spirit moaning from within, the worries growing more severe at night, in the moments when I felt utterly alone.
Or maybe I was already addicted to the way he made me feel. To the way I could feel those crazy-colored eyes raking over me, filled with the promise of the most decadent kind of sin.
It’d be a pleasure unlike anything I’d ever known. I knew it. I’d felt the promise of it radiating from his skin and vibrating from his body.
I could still feel that gaze touching me from across the space. Maybe the only reason I sent that text was because I wanted to experience it for a moment more.
Silly girl.
But sometimes, fantasy was the only thing that kept us moving.
I sat on the edge of my bed like a girl waiting to be asked out to prom, holding the phone as if I could will it to buzz.
Five minutes passed, and he hadn’t texted back.
Disappointment pooled in my spirit.
I tried to push it off. It was for the best, anyway.
Even harboring the idea of something happening with us was sheer recklessness.
I wasn’t the type of girl who threw caution to the wind.
Tossing my phone onto the nightstand, I flipped off the lamp and tugged the covers over my body.
My old room fell into darkness. Those sweet, innocent faces raced into my mind the second I pushed everything else out. I needed to regroup. Make a new plan of attack.
Figure out how I was going to get us out of this mess.
Maybe I’d messed up to begin with. Done everything wrong. But sometimes the only thing a mother could do was go with her gut, and I didn’t know how to regret that.
I guessed that, if I was looking at the situation, I was lucky to be here at all. Lying in this bed with my babies sleeping in the other room. The worst part was that he got to see them at all, that I’d been granted temporary custody, but he still got them two days a week.
As if he was even the one taking care of them. Wanting to see them.
But for the time being, they were mine. I just had to make sure they stayed that way. Could only pray that I was strong enough to see this through.
I jolted when my phone vibrated on the nightstand. A flash of light filtered into the room.
I reached over and flipped on the light switch, pushing up to sitting in my tiny bed as that ridiculous excitement I’d been feeling earlier sprang back to life. In a big, big way. Because there it was. A text from him.