Then I would go.
Leave and never return.
I forced myself into the rental car, my sight bleary as I hit the road. I headed in the direction of Ian’s condo back in Charleston, figuring I’d crash there.
Streetlamps blazed and glimmered from above, and I blinked hard, trying to erase Bailey’s little face that started to take hold of my mind.
Flash after flash.
Jace, you sway aww the dragons?
I could hear her little drawl pleading with me so clearly that it was like she was right there, whispering in my ear.
My heart hammered in my chest. This bam, bam, bam I could feel all the way to my soul.
I squeezed my eyes closed against the assault and tried to convince myself they were fine.
Safe.
Tried to remind myself of what I’d done. How deeply I’d fucked up.
It didn’t matter.
Bailey’s little voice was there.
Mommy and Bailey and Jacie.
Wrapping and winding and prodding.
I didn’t know how to go on. How I was going to survive from here. Because nothing had ever hurt more than this.
Losing both of them.
Who knew the love of your life could grow into something bigger? That it could magnify and compound and become this vast, stunning need that glowed at the center of you.
What made it worse was this sticky feeling that skated my skin, crawled over me like a disease, drenching me in sweat.
I tried to force myself to drive to Ian’s place.
Instead, I was flipping my car around and heading back toward that tiny town. Pushing harder on the accelerator.
Drawn.
Drawn back to where I shouldn’t go.
I sped through the city and hit the road that led back to Broadshire Rim.
My mind was already back there at that massive house.
Our sanctuary.
The place where our dreams had been made and crushed in what had felt like the same moment.
All those memories collided, pushing and pulling and screaming out for reclamation.
Hurry.
That word sounded through my mind like the clanging of a gong.
I gunned the accelerator, sweat dripping from my temples.
What the fuck was happening to me?
Maybe this was what it was like to have my sanity slip right through my hands, dripping through my fingers like the finest sand, spilling all over the ground.
A frenzy around me.
Spurring me on.
Driving me faster.
Harder.
I skidded around the last turn and barreled down the dirt road that ran the back edge of the town. I forced myself to slow as I drew closer to the old house.
I wasn’t welcome.
It didn’t stop the devotion that burst in my blood. This feeling that wouldn’t let me go.
Moonlight clung just over the line of towering trees that hugged the narrow lane, stretched thin and tossing the night into a thousand pulsing shadows.
It didn’t matter that everything was still.
Silent.
I could feel the energy.
Throbbing.
Thick and foreboding.
Screaming through the bottled hush that held fast to the air.
Cutting my lights, I slowly started to ease the car down the drive. I came to a stop halfway down the lane.
Swallowing hard, I reached into the glove box and pulled out my gun, ensured it was loaded before I stepped out into the humid night and tucked it into my jeans at the small of my back.
The soles of my shoes crunched beneath me as I hastened through the night. The barest shot of relief hit me when I saw Felix’s cruiser parked at the circular drive in front of the porch.
I should turn around.
Go.
But that feeling wouldn’t release me.
All around, bugs trilled and branches rustled.
The quietest howl that screamed.
Unsettled.
Distressed.
I swallowed around the lump that grew heavy at the base of my throat and eased around Felix’s car.
I peered up at the house.
All the windows were blacked out. The thickest kind of night echoed back.
There was something about it that felt off.
Wrong.
Like the peace of the place had been stripped from the walls.
Anxiety pulsed. Mixed with the driving, pulsing urge to race across the porch and bust down the door.
The door.
It struck me right then, and my gaze flew that way when I realized what it was that had made everything feel off.
It was darkened, obscured by the sway of the shadows that moved across the covered porch. But when I looked closely, I could see that it was sitting open a crack.
Terror cinched down across my chest.
A vise.
Constricting.
Without another thought, I was moving, trying to keep my footsteps as quiet as possible as I crept up the porch steps and across the planks.
I craned my ear, listening.
Silence echoed back.
A dark kind of silence. Something grim and wicked and evil riding on the dense, dense night. Like I could taste it, pull it into the well of my lungs.
Violence skated my skin and twisted through my insides.
I’d told Faith I would do whatever it took to keep her and Bailey safe.
I’d meant it.
I’d never meant it more than right then when I realized I could scent it.