A truck motored by, and she jumped, stumbling into her first step.
Don't look at the street. Her gaze caught on the bushes lining her porch. Jesus, they'd doubled in size, blocking the bench she hadn't used in two years. The wood seat was weathered, neglected, forgotten.
Dammit, she couldn't dwell on that, on any of it. A terrible pressure already pushed against her ribs. She bent into the next step, dizzy, fighting for breath.
Ignore it. She ground her molars. Two steps, eight percent of the way there.
Tremors assaulted her body. The landscape spun around her. The mailbox. A passing car. Open windows on houses. A woman walking her dog. Everyone showed up to watch the freak show.
God, she was so fucked up. This should've been a thousand times easier than being crowned Miss Texas. She was wearing her heels. Her curls shimmered around her arms. She could take the third step. Just like on stage.
She raised her leg with the grace that came from years of discipline. Suddenly, as if her foot had landed in the spotlight, she turned on her pageant best. Fingers relaxed and together, shoulders back, chin up, bright eyes, and big smile, she held the pose. The persona strengthened her stance. She was the best. Knowing it meant winning it. She was doing it.
The honk of a slowing car scattered her delusion. She flinched, blinked. Bright green lawns, twittering birds, and the scent of hot asphalt knocked her back to reality.
She glanced down and took in her ridiculous pose. Decked out in heels with one leg bent and a hand on her hip? Her smile slipped, and her ankles teetered.
Stop it. She held her arms at her sides. Tingling numbed her fingers, her sense of control slipping.
Why couldn't she stop these reactions? She wanted this step, needed it. Move, dammit.
Spots blackened her vision. The pressure in her chest... It was stifling. She couldn't breathe. Oh God, her body was giving up on her, overheating, growing heavy. The ground tilted.
She squatted to avoid collapsing and fell back on her ass, shaking uncontrollably. “Noooo.” She cried out in anguish and curled into a ball. Make it stop hurting. So scared.
The open crack of the door wavered through her tears, an arm's length away. She crawled on elbows, stiffened by chest pain and gasping for air. She dragged her body over the threshold and kicked the door. It shut with a thunk, silencing the cars, the windows, the witnesses. She folded herself into the corner of her cage and wept.
Eventually, she peeled her tear-soaked face off the oak floor and leaned against the door. The sun no longer glowed through the cracks, and she was no closer to the mailbox.
She'd have to try again.
As if. She was still strung out and trembling like a mouse. She'd only fail.
Yeah, but she always felt that way.
She could call Zach. He might feel well enough to drive over.
Maybe he would. Or maybe she could do it herself and feel better for it. Nighttime might conceal her from onlookers.
But the predators came out at night.
Fucking ridiculous. Everyone went out after dark. Except her.
Forget it. She'd tried once already and failed.
But she'd stepped outside. Three huge steps. Not four. That was the opposite of giving up.
Damn right. The corners of her mouth relaxed. They might've even curved up a little. She rose on quivering legs and walked to the bedroom. She needed to change clothes and fix her makeup. Maybe it would take her all night to walk twenty-four steps, but she'd do it. The alternative was unimaginably worse.
For a while, Van pretended he didn't miss her. Not her fierce looks or her hot, wet pussy or her beautiful agony. The ache she'd left behind should eventually seal up and scab over like the wound in his shoulder.
But it didn't. It inflamed and festered until he had woken weeks later, twisting in sweat-soaked sheets and fucking his fist, unable to think about anything but Liv Reed.
That was a year ago, and still, she possessed his thoughts every second of every day. He imagined the satisfaction she must’ve felt when Mr. E died. The quiver in her arms as she hugged their daughter. Her thighs spreading for that cumgargling bible-basher, the fuck who had stolen his place in her life. That shit really fucked with him.
Stagnant air coated his skin in a wet sheen as he locked up his 1965 Mustang GT Fastback. To think the humidity in Austin was relatively mild this time of year. In a couple months, the heat of summer would suffocate his nightly walks.
The hood of his sweatshirt sloped over his forehead, his chin tucked discreetly to his chest. The street's only source of light flickered overhead, months overdue for repair. Somewhere in the distance, the trill of a frog warbled through the silence, calling in the darkest hour of night.
If he were a man with uncontrollable urges, he would've grabbed Liv the night she'd killed his father. When he'd followed her from the police station to Joshua's farm, the bullet wound painful but patched up, he could've snatched her from the cocksucker's bed and taken her to Mexico with him. If he were a psychopath, he wouldn't have been able to stop himself.
Instead, he gave her six of the seven million they'd earned in slave trafficking, the gift alerting her he was still alive. When he'd healed from the bullet, he'd looked for her in the one city he knew she'd be.
Surrounded by one-story bungalows, he strode across the suburban Austin street, dangling a grocery bag from one finger. He cut between two houses as if it were a Sunday stroll. As if it weren't past eleven on a Friday night.
His strides fell in harmony with his pulse, steady and confident. He'd cased the neighborhood long before he'd claimed this route. He knew the names, habits, and lack of awareness of every resident for two blocks. Knew the elderly occupants on either side of his shortcut had been tucked in bed for hours.
Past the overgrown side yard, ducking beneath the low-hanging hickory behind the houses, he followed the path he'd taken hundreds of times. If he weren't trying to pass unnoticed, he might've whistled one of Liv's favorite tunes.
She loved their child so selflessly, he knew she'd never take Livana from Mr. E’s wife, the only mother Livana had ever known. Though he’d known his daughter’s location since the day she was born, he’d only ever seen her through the lens of a camera—Mr. E’s video footage her first six years and his own camera the last year.
Christ, he wanted to meet her, to touch her angelic face, to hold her tiny hand, and look into her brown eyes and see them smiling back. But she lived with Mr. E’s widow, who hadn’t been part of his father’s slave ring but was wrapped up in the aftermath of the police chief’s death. Authorities didn’t know Van existed, and his freedom depended on maintaining that anonymity.
It'd only taken him a couple weeks to find Liv in a modest rental house minutes from where Livana lived. No surprise she hadn't spent the money he'd given her. Perhaps she'd never touch it because of where it came from and the memories that clung to it.
Which was why he'd kept one million. It served as a parachute should his daughter need it. Livana had come into the world same as him—born of a slave and a slave owner. He would do whatever was needed to ensure she didn't end up like him.
But he didn't mistake his intentions as selfless generosity. He didn't want the fucking money. He wanted Liv. He wanted his daughter. Whether he deserved them or not, he would have his goddamned family.
Loose, curling bark snagged his hoodie, and the ground covering was redolent of sweet peppermint as it stirred beneath his sneakers. He broke from the trees, sheltered by the black sky, and crossed the backyard of his destination.
The single-story house faced the street one block over from where he'd parked. Though no one lived there, he approached the back porch with tightening muscles, ready to slip away at the first sign of life.
Three windows and a glass door broke up the monotony of weathered brick. Heavy-duty shades blocked light from escaping. The shades hadn't moved, not once, in the six months he'd been coming to Liv’s neighborhood. A lawn service mai
ntained the small lot of grass, but there were no flowerbeds, no lawn furniture, no inhabitants.
His black hoodie and dark jeans blended with the backdrop of the unlit house as he checked the locks on the rear windows and door, looking for a disruption in the pattern, any indication that someone had moved in.
All clear, he approached the south side that would take him to the front porch and the bench that awaited him. As he rounded the corner, he dug his heels into the wet grass, flattening his body against the vacant house.
One of two windows on the house next door cast a warm glow between the foundations. His pulse sped up, and an excited warmth of energy swirled through his stomach. Liv lived next door to the abandoned house.
He crept toward her illuminated window. His crouched position below prevented a good look at the inside, but he knew it was her kitchen.
The dark window beside it drew his attention. Her bedroom. Was she in there now? Removing her clothes? Humming a seductive melody? He closed his eyes briefly as his dick pulsed against the tight confines of his jeans.