Daylight was giving up its hold. It cast the world in shadows and mist and somehow set everything to slow motion.
A part of me felt detached. As if I were watching it happen from a distance. Removed from the reality that this man was really trying to take my son from me.
It had always been my greatest terror.
But I’d never known how great that terror could truly be until Evan started making these rasping, raking sounds.
Sounds I’d never heard him make.
His lungs brittle. As if my little boy was getting ready to crack.
Still kicking his feet, he stopped clawing at Dane’s arm and instead reached for me as if he were begging for a lifeline.
For me to save him.
To keep him safe the way I’d always promised him I would.
“Evan, it’s okay. Baby, it’s okay. I won’t let anything happen to you,” I rushed, meeting his eyes, promising him through that connection that I wouldn’t allow this to happen. That somehow, some way, I would stop this.
No matter what it cost me.
But Evan’s face . . .
It was turning a purpled, beet red. Unnatural. Wrong.
A different kind of panic set in. Stretching out my insides.
Dane spun away and started for the steps. I launched myself onto his back, clawing at his face, screaming in his ear. “You’re hurting him, Dane. Oh my God, you’re hurting him. Let him go.”
I was barely able to see through the haze that clouded my eyes.
This was where we’d come to a head.
Where we imploded.
Where this monster who held a thousand pounds of vile, ugly hate around his heart spiraled into a beast.
“You’re hurting him.”
I clawed and bit and kicked, but I knew I was no rival for Dane’s physical strength.
But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t fight with everything I had.
I yelped when I was suddenly jarred back, my arms I’d locked around Dane’s neck unloosed.
No.
But I was falling. Failing. I crashed onto the wooden planks of the porch.
“No!” The scream tore from my throat as I struggled to get back to my feet.
But it was relief that slammed me when I realized Evan had also been knocked free of Dane’s malicious grasp.
It was blinding, cutting relief when I realized it was Dane who was colliding with the ground one second after a fist collided with his face.
A stunned gasp ripped from my lungs.
Kale.
He was there.
Oh, God, he was really there.
Kale dove for him, pinning him down at the waist as he began to pound his fists into his face.
Over and over again.
Shouts and grunts and punches.
Knuckles against buckling flesh.
Dane kicked and grappled. But he was no match for Kale’s assault, and his wicked face quickly morphed into a river of blood.
Shocked, I watched wide-eyed and frozen as Kale beat Dane into an unconscious oblivion, my heart thundering so hard and my lungs rasping as I tried to process the scene.
It felt as if it took an age for my mind to catch up.
Kale had come back to me.
He was there.
Saving us.
I finally found a breath for my screaming lungs and managed to tear my attention away from Kale and Dane to look toward Evan. To give him a promise through my eyes.
That even though I’d never wanted him to witness anything like this—violence and bitterness and this savage, brutal war—I wanted him to know he would always be worth it.
My eyes found him where he’d been knocked to the lawn.
The second they did, my heart cracked in the center of me.
Evan was on his hands and knees. His expression was twisted in sheer, confused panic that had him seized.
Locked in pain.
It was one beat before his arms and legs gave.
My little boy fell to the ground.
Face down.
I screamed.
I screamed and screamed. But my screams were silent to my own ears. As if no matter how loud they were, no one would hear. No help to be found.
I crawled for him, half-rolling down the steps as I fought to get there. Everything was weighted, spindly tendrils reaching out from the depths of a nightmare to hold me back.
Because it felt as if I were slithering through quicksand.
Sinking.
Farther and farther away from him with each savage moment that passed.
It was a slowed motion I couldn’t breach.
My entire body shivered when I reached for him and flipped him over.
He rolled, completely limp.
I couldn’t stop shaking . . . shaking and shaking and shaking . . . when my hand fumbled out to press over his chest.
My heart. My heart.
This time, I heard it.
My scream.
The agony that tore out of me when I could no longer feel the beat of his little life.
My sun and my moon.
I couldn’t see.
Couldn’t hear.
And I swore, right then, all the stars fell from the sky.
“No,” I raked over a sob, my hand pressing harder. Frantically searching. “No. No, no, no. Evan, no. You aren’t going to leave me. I won’t let you. No. Please.”