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Melody.

Compression after compression. That fucking flat line. “You did this. You did this. She’s dead because of you.”

Evan’s sweet face flashed.

Lifeless.

“I can’t do this.”

Not again.

Hope tightened her hold, refusing to let me go. “You don’t get to do this, Kale Bryant. You don’t get to just walk out. You promised.”

My eyes squeezed closed again.

Looking at this girl and knowing I couldn’t keep her was the most brutal tease I’d ever endured.

Just another fucking failure.

Her words dropped to a wispy plea. “Where did you go, Kale? Where did the man go who is wonderful and generous and kind? The man who ten minutes ago told me he’d be right here, waiting for me? Where is he? Follow me back . . . come back to me . . . because I’m right here. I’m right here.”

Grief crushed me on all sides.

Pressing down.

Destroying.

Because if I could, I would follow her anywhere.

“I’m sorry,” I forced out, because I was. So fucking sorry.

I twisted my arm free from her hold and stepped back.

Her expression twisted.

Horror and grief.

The hurt so blatant.

“You promised,” she begged on a breath.

My head shook, and I slowly backed away, looking at her standing heartbroken in her kitchen.

A cascade of red hair, tearstained cheeks, bloodshot eyes.

The girl the best thing I’d ever seen.

I committed it to memory.

What I did. The ruin I inflicted.

Hope had spent years fighting the stigma that her son wasn’t enough.

But that stigma was meant for me.

Because I would never, ever be enough.

I spun on my heel and bolted.

Out her door and into the fading light.

I stumbled across the porch. Gasping for a breath, the entire world spinning and the ground canting to the side, crumbling out from under me.

I wheezed, desperate for relief. But all the air had been sucked from the sky.

A hollow, vacant vortex that consumed everything in its path.

27

Hope

The walls of the entire house shook when the door slammed closed.

A violent blow.

Or maybe it was just my insides ripping apart.

Collapsing and imploding.

A raking sob tore up my throat, and I bent in two. I wrapped my arms around my waist as if it might be enough to keep me standing.

But it wasn’t.

A rush of dizziness swept through me like a landslide, and I lurched forward. My hands barely caught on the counter before I fell to my knees.

A loss so intense pounded through me, and my head dropped between my shoulders, mouth parting in a guttural cry there was no possible way to contain.

“Kale,” I whimpered.

Thoughts swirled in my mind. Confusion thick. My emotions had been yanked from the highest high to the lowest low.

What just happened?

I couldn’t make sense of the sudden shift.

I didn’t know how he could do this to me.

Could do this to us.

He’d promised he wouldn’t leave.

That he’d be there.

That he’d stay.

After he’d sworn he knew what was on the line.

And he’d left me.

Over a name.

Over that vile, cruel name.

My insides twisted again, my stomach revolting, just the same as my spirit. Because this was wrong.

All of it was so very wrong.

The numbers weren’t even close to adding up to the correct sum.

A switch had been flipped, and I had no idea what had been the trigger.

Because I’d grown to know this man in the most intimate of ways. I knew I wasn’t just being blind or naïve for the sake of falling for a gorgeous man.

I’d seen him for who he truly was—kind, generous, and devoted.

And that man I’d grown to know was not the one who’d just gone running out my door.

He’d been terrified.

White as a ghost.

A slow dread sank over me like bitter cold.

The horror that had been scored on his face flashed behind my eyes. As if he’d stood right there in the middle of my kitchen and come face-to-face with an apparition.

A demon.

Or maybe the devil himself.

That fear I’d so often seen rise up in him, shuttering that beautiful, unselfish heart, had never been so clear than right then.

He’d demanded Dane’s name as if my soon-to-be ex-husband was a disloyalty to him.

As if a name alone held the power to confuse and contort and destroy.

If a name alone were enough to send him running, what would he do when he found out the whole truth?

A thunder pounded on the front door.

Shocked, a breath heaved from my lungs, the sound made up of relief and confusion and deliverance.

Because there was the man, who I trusted implicitly, yanking and pushing. Dragging my fragile heart through the mud.

But I had to realize this was all new to him. I’d asked so much of him in such a short period of time. I hadn’t been exaggerating when I’d warned him my life was so very complicated.

As much as I wanted it—craved it—deep down, I knew the man had stepped into a position he might not have been fully prepared to take on.


Tags: A.L. Jackson Fight for Me Romance