“Yes!” Daisy shouted. “That’s a great idea. I got new colors. You wanna see?”
“I sure do.”
Sensing she was getting ready to hop out of the swing like the daredevil she was, Richard slowed her, saying, “Whoa, there, flower girl. Slow your roll, wild child.”
Curling her nose, she tipped her head back to look at him where she still swayed on the swing. “Are you my boss?”
I thought it was some kind of tease.
He brushed his fingers through her hair. “What do you think?”
“Well, you gave my mommy a ring. I think that means you must be my dad.”
Richard looked over at Lily and me.
Lily smiled and she stepped away like she was departing from the scene.
Richard wavered before he dipped down and kissed Daisy’s head, and my heart nearly tripped out of my chest. “I’ll protect you with my whole life, Daisy. Love you. Warn you if you’re doin’ something that’s not safe and be there to encourage you through all the adventures you have in this amazing life.”
“That’s what daddies do, right?” She tipped back farther, squinting up at him.
He nodded. “Yeah, my sweet flower girl, that’s what daddies do.”
They stared for the longest time, me caught up in their moment.
Lost to it.
Swept away.
Forever falling.
Richard looked up at me like he felt me staring.
Daisy giggled. “Hey, Mommy, you better get over here, I think my daddy wants to give you one of those sloppy kind of kisses. The private kind,” she mock whispered to my sister.
She hopped off the swing and came barreling our way.
“Can we have popcorn, too, Auntie?”
Lily caught my eyes, gave me another soft smile, before she took Daisy’s hand. “I would love that. How about a movie so your mommy and daddy can talk for a little bit?”
“You mean kiss? You know they got all the amor, amor, amor.”
She waved an indulgent hand.
Spinning it.
Stirring it.
The love going round and round.
Shimmering in the air and filling our lungs.
Lily sent me a wink and they started up the porch steps, Daisy prattling on as they went inside.
Richard took a step forward.
“Come with me.”
I eased down the slope until he was taking my hand and leading me down the trail as darkness crept across the heavens.
He weaved us through the rows of flowers.
Roses and lilacs and lilies.
A field of violets.
A thicket of roses.
The crickets came to life and the soft sounds of the night began to sing.
Peace.
Hope.
Love.
Richard turned around, stopping to bring us face-to-face where flowering bushes grew up all around us.
“What are we doing?” I whispered.
Richard smirked and wrapped me in the strength of his strong arms. “I want to dance with the prettiest girl in the place.”
The smallest grin teased at the corner of my mouth. “I’d better not.”
“And why’s that?” he said with the slightest laugh.
He’d already started us into a slow sway.
“Because then you’re gonna think you can take me home, and I’d have to go and disappoint you because that’s not going to happen.”
I gave him the same line I’d given him that first night.
The night he’d made a liar out of me.
The night he’d stolen my breath and my body.
When he’d kissed me and pillaged my heart.
Thank God, it’d listened.
His smile softened, and he brushed his fingers through my hair, angling my head back as he gazed down at me. He cupped my face. “Moonflower,” he whispered, his nose tracking my cheek, his mouth moving for my ear. “We’re already home. Exactly where you know we’ve always belonged.”
Epilogue One
Violet
Sunlight teased through the brand-new leaves adorning the branches of the soaring trees that danced in the late spring breeze. The sun casting its rays down to the earth, touching our skin in a kiss of warmth.
Comfort and sorrow.
Comfort and sorrow.
They spun and billowed and blew.
Bittersweet.
We surrounded my daddy, Lily and me, each of us clinging to one of his hands, and Richard and Daisy stood off to the side of us.
Mama had left us four months ago, on the second day of January. Like she’d stayed for one last holiday. To fill our souls and hearts and our minds with the last of her wisdom. With the true, untarnished joy of who she was. With so much love that it would last us for the rest of our days.
My daddy trembled with the grief, with the massive amount of devotion that would hold him forever.
Daisy came skipping up to her grave with the bouquet of flowers she and I had picked this morning.
“Do you like these ones, Nana?” she said. “Mommy and I picked ’em special because they remind us of you. The most beautiful in all the world.”
Then she stood up and started to sing with her arms stretched toward the heavens, her beautiful little voice off-key. “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine, you make me happy, when skies are gray…”
Daisy giggled and spun, reaching for the small yellow bird that flitted and dashed overhead. “Look it, Mommy! She heard me! She heard me! Just like she said she would.”
I stifled a sob, and Lily and I squeezed our daddy’s hands tighter when he couldn’t keep his at bay.
We flanked him, holding him up.
It was such a strange thing to stand in the sadness and the joy.
To miss her but not to despair.
I glanced at Richard who was watching us. Sage eyes soft and knowing.
Fierce and sure and secure.
Daddy edged forward and knelt at her grave, whispered his fingers over her stone, set the single yellow rose on top of the ones that Daisy had left, and he murmured, “I hear you, too.”
* * *
Richard paced out the line where we were on the opposite hill from my childhood home. He grinned back at us where the rest of us stood huddled together in the fading rays of the day as he carried the roll of architectural plans around like a prize.
“The wraparound porch will extend out to here.” He paced the next line, his voice nothing but excitement. “All the way out to here.”
My gaze traveled to the right. Over the rolling hills and acres of flowers that blossomed and flourished across our land. The magnificent tree sat in the distance. Standing beneath the sun that sagged low in the sky and lit it up in the most awestriking sort of beauty.
Pinks and purples and reds wisped with the melting blue.
That joy filled me to overflowing.
Sometimes I feared it would be too much. That I was gonna burst from it.
Impossible to fathom the depths of what I’d been given until I’d lost it and it’d been reclaimed.
That hole in the perfect shape of Richard filled, but when it’d been filled, he’d pushed deeper into those crevices, carving out more space, taking me whole in a way I hadn’t before grasped or understood.
Not until I was given a full picture of his devotion.
The measure of his loyalty and the span of his love.
“Can you see it?” Richard said, waving those hands again high above his head. “Two stories with a pitched roof. Five bedrooms.”
He cut me a smirky glance at that, his gaze drifting to my belly that was barely beginning to swell with our child.
Daisy went dancing his way, flailing her arms, too. “And my room’s gonna be right here, right, Daddy?”
He swept her up and tossed her into the air. “Yep, right here!”
“And my baby brother’s gonna be right next to me, right? And I’ll get up and get a bottle for him and everything.
I’m awesome like that, you know.”
I barked out a laugh.
Yeah.
She was pretty awesome like that.
Daddy wrapped his arms around mine and Lily’s waists, pulling us closer. He planted a kiss to Lily’s temple and then turned to do the same to mine. We both settled our heads on his shoulders.
“My beautiful daughters. I am so thankful.” He stared out across at Richard and he muttered, “El regalador de alegría.”
The giver of joy.
No longer the thief.
No longer misunderstood.
“Now you’re gonna have to put up with my messes,” Lily teased, looking up at him. “Once we finally kick Violet here out, and I get her room permanently.”
“I’ll take it,” he said with a grin.
“Yeah, Daddy, me, too. I’ll take it.” Her voice was laced with a raw, tentative happiness. My sister was healing slowly, her hope growing like the flowers that bloomed around us.
The light dimming so we could all stand under the stars and the rising moon.
And we rejoiced in it.
This joy.
This peace.
In the faith that we’d fallen and landed exactly where we were supposed to be.
Epilogue Two
Richard
“What are you grinnin’ about?”
From the doorway, I stared down at my wife who sat on the edge of our bed in just a tank and underwear. That black hair tied up high on her head.
So fuckin’ pretty I felt her like a straight shot to the heart.
Those eyes holding me snared.
Enraptured.
Thunderstruck.
“Sometimes I still can’t believe you’re standin’ there,” she whispered into the swimming darkness that lapped in her old bedroom, the moonlight pouring in illuminating her silky skin.
I clicked the door shut behind me after I’d just tucked Daisy in.
Our daughter.
Our world.
This life more than I’d assumed or dared.
“And where else do you think I would be?”
The flicker of a smile lit at the corner of her delicious mouth. “Well, I’d think you could be a bit closer,” she teased.
“Hmm…that so?” I rumbled as I moved her way, pulling off my shirt as I went, because fuck, I was done wasting time.
Second I got to her, I cupped a hand on her cheek, glancing at the suitcases sitting against the wall. “Are you ready for this?”
Tomorrow, Violet, Daisy, and I would be leaving for Savannah, Georgia where Carolina George would be recording out at the Stone Industries studio on Tybee Island. We’d be spending the summer at the mansion they used to house their artists.
Our house built right here on this same property while we were gone.
We’d been lying low for the last six months.
Giving Violet time to grieve.
To be there for her father.
For Lily to adjust.
For Lester’s trial to come and pass.
The threat gone.
Put to rest.
Emily had given birth four weeks ago, and it was time to get back to work.
But we were doing it on our terms.
The entire band and their families would be staying at that house on the island, and we were treating it like an extended summer vacation.
Leif and his wife, Mia, and their kids.
Emily and Royce and my gorgeous baby niece, Amelia.
Of course, Maggie would be coming along, too.
Not to mention Rhys, the crazy bastard.
A Riot of Roses was scheduled to record in the middle of our session, since Royce was going to be there, anyway.
It was gonna be wild.
Promised chaos.
Was still a little reticent to rip Violet and myself from this peace. The hedge of healing we’d been surrounded by for so many months.
We’d been so far removed from the glitz and the limelight, the roads and the shows and the life I still desperately wanted but worried would still be a shock.
“More than ready,” she said, assuaging the lingering fear of what that hunger had cost. “I can’t wait to see you in your element. To see you shine. Superstar.” She mouthed the last.
My heart trembled.
“Things are about to change for us in a big, big way. Once that album comes out, all bets are off.”
“And that’s exactly what you all deserve. Where Carolina George has been headed all along.”
“Never wanted to get there unless I could take you with me,” I admitted as I crawled over her and pushed her back onto the bed.
That energy surged.
A flash of heat.
A seal of perfection.
“Then let’s fly there together,” Violet whispered.
I straddled her, both of my knees on the bed as I peeled up her tank.
She lifted her hands and helped me to free it, a sigh leaving her sweet, sweet mouth.
I hissed when I tossed it to the floor.
Girl laid out.
Those tits peaked and pebbled.
Shivers raced her flesh. So soft and right.
“Stunning,” I said.
She scooted up until she was in the middle of the bed, and my hand was going out to splay across that miraculous little swell. The evidence of our son just beginning to show.
“Still can’t believe it,” I murmured, words so low as they rumbled into her childhood room.
I’d thought I’d been sentenced to desolation.
A lifetime of solitary confinement.
And somehow, I’d been given this.
I gazed down at her, and Violet lifted her hand and set it on my cheek, those eyes shouting so many things.
Awe.
Love.
Life.
“I’m so happy. I never knew I could feel a joy like this.”
“You are the meaning of it.”
She yelped, then giggled when I suddenly whipped her around until she was straddling me.
The girl made quick work of my jeans, and I edged up so she could pull them free.
Two of us like this.
Constantly tied.
Connected.
This insatiable need consuming us with a perfect-sort of greed.
A flawless give and take.
She pushed up to standing on her bed, and she wiggled out of her panties, and I nearly died right there.
Miles of lean legs.
Girl magic where she stood over me.
Carved of glass.
Fragile and fierce.
My fairy girl.
“Ride me, baby.” I sent her a smirk.
She grinned as she climbed back down to straddle me and took me in a swift stroke that stole our breaths.
Her hands flew out to balance herself on my abdomen, my muscles flexing and bunching and firing.
I reached up and wound a hand in her lush hair as she worked her spell on me. “I love you, Violet.”
Thunderbolt eyes gazed down at me.
“My wife. My moonflower in the darkest night. You will always be the song of soul.”
“My husband. My sun that ushers in the day. You will always be the beat of my heart.”
And our spirits sang together. Our bodies one. Our love abounding.
Breath to breath.
Soul to soul.
Where she fell into my darkness, and where I would forever stand in her moonlight.
* * *
THE END
Thank you for reading Falling into You!
I hope you fell in love with Richard and Violet’s story of second chances, forgiveness, and love!
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Also by A.L. Jackson
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Falling Stars
Kiss the Stars
Catch Me When I Fall
Falling into You
Beneath the Stars, Coming Early 2021
Confessions of the Heart
More of You
All of Me
Pieces of Us
Fight for Me Series
Show Me the Way
Follow Me Back
Lead Me Home
Hold on to Hope
Bleeding Stars Series
A Stone in the Sea
Drowning to Breathe
Where Lightning Strikes
Wait
Stay
Stand
The Regret Series
Lost to You
Take This Regret
If Forever Comes
The Closer to You Series
Come to Me Quietly
Come to Me Softly
Come to Me Recklessly
Stand-Alone Novels
Pulled
When We Collide
Hollywood Chronicles
A collaboration with USA Today Bestselling Author, Rebecca Shea
One Wild Night
One Wild Ride
About the Author
Falling into You Page 41