More of You: A Confessions of the Heart Stand-Alone Novel

by Jackson, A. L.

  Faith ran her fingers through the little girl’s hair. “I don’t think pink is the best color for outside, Bailey Anne.”

  Bailey Anne.

  The air jetted from my lungs.

  Agony.

  My body rocked forward, slammed by the shock, every cell constricting with excruciating pain.

  Obliterating.

  “Pink is the best cowar always,” she said, drawing out the words in a strait shot of sweetness.

  I blinked and tried to see through the memories that were nothing but torment ringing in my ear.

  Focus on what the little girl was saying rather than feeling like Faith hadn’t just driven a knife into my back.

  Shit.

  This was not good.

  Not what I expected.

  Definitely not what I signed up for.

  “I want a room that’s aww pink.” She was peeking out again, acting shy while also staring at me, clearly trying to figure me out.

  “Is that so?” I manage to ask around the thickness in my throat.

  “Wif unicorns because they’re magic.” She whispered the last word like it was a secret. Chocolate eyes, just as genuine as Faith’s, widened at me in guileless awe. Like she was wondering if I believed in it, too.

  Sadness slammed me so hard it nearly bowled me over. It got mixed up with this overwhelming feeling of possession. Of protection.

  I was going to make sure these two were safe. No matter the cost. Even if being here was gutting me.

  Faith would hate me in the end, but she’d always been worth the sacrifice. That hadn’t changed.

  “How about we save the pink for your room then?” I offered.

  It came out a promise. The stupidest thing I could say.

  Because her smile went brilliant, filled with a mouthful of tiny teeth.

  “Oh-kay.” She craned her head to peer up at her mother’s face, her words an amazed whisper. “He said he make my room pink, Mommy.”

  Faith gulped, staring at me like I’d punched her.

  Apparently, both of us were getting the fuck beat out of us.

  Blow after blow.

  But it was the wounds inflicted that couldn’t be seen that always scarred the worst.

  I wanted to erase hers.

  Soothe them and keep them.

  Take them on as my own.

  Just as I felt the scars written on me growing thicker.

  “Jace—”

  I knew what she was getting ready to say. I shook my head to cut her off and held the cans up higher, both of them swinging from the handles. “White or stain?”

  She glowered at me, but there was something different in the depths of her gaze. Something close to amusement. An old kind of understanding.

  The slightest smile pulled at her mouth. “Seems to me like you’d already know the answer to that.”

  Satisfaction welled in my chest, and I laughed out a surprised sound, shocked Faith would give me that inch.

  “Now, if you’ll excuse us, I need to shower.”

  She leaned down and swept her little girl into her arms, spinning on her heel, and heading back through the door without another word.

  Her daughter peeked back at me from over her mom’s shoulder, shy but still curious.

  Bailey.

  I gulped and then jerked when the door slammed shut, jarring me out of my stupidity.

  Ten

  Faith

  The old pipes squealed as I shut off the showerhead. It sent the steamy bathroom into silence.

  A dense, vacant kind of silence.

  I peeked my head out from behind the shower curtain. “Bailey?” I called.

  More of that silence echoed back.

  Instantly, the paranoia set in. The horrible feeling that someone might be lurking, lying in wait.

  I hated it.

  I knew I was letting my mind run wild. But how could I not?

  Still, it couldn’t have been five seconds ago when I’d glanced out to make sure she was still playing on the carpet in my bedroom, right outside the open bathroom door.

  It was her spot while I showered. One she knew she wasn’t supposed to leave.

  Her pile of toys was still there, a Barbie and a book and her favorite blocks scattered all over the floor.

  Unease rippled, and I swallowed around the alarm that bleeped from somewhere deep in my consciousness.

  “Bailey,” I called again, a little louder this time, panic rising to the surface.

  Nothing.

  Throat closing up, I squeezed my eyes and tried to refuse the instant fear that wanted to suffocate me.

  Bleed me dry.

  I hurried out of the shower, not taking the time to towel off before I grabbed my robe from where it was hanging on the wall and shrugged into it, tying the belt as I headed out my bedroom door.

  I went straight for Bailey’s room.

  The door was open.

  She wasn’t there.

  More of that unease slithered across my flesh. Scenarios I didn’t want to see flashing through my mind like a horror story.

  But Jace was just outside. My rational mind told me that Bailey had only gone exploring.

  That didn’t sit all that well with me, either. The trouble she could get herself into.

  This house?

  It was huge.

  Which was why I tried to keep her corralled. It had been much easier when she’d been younger and the play gates kept her restricted. But it had started to get more and more difficult to keep her in one area.

  She was curious and inquisitive. Smart in a way that made me incredibly proud and scared me a little too. The child so intuitive.

  That also meant sometimes she wandered, roaming the house and playing through the little worlds that were so vivid in her head.

  It hadn’t worried me so much until those notes had started coming. Until someone had been in our home.

  I backed out of her room. “Bailey,” I called down the rambling hall, my voice bouncing off the wooden floorboards.

  No answer.

  Quickly, I started to search through the second-floor rooms where we were staying until the third-floor rooms were renovated.

  Eventually, the third floor would serve as our own, personal living space and the second floor would be guest rooms.

  If that ever happened.

  Each step I took incited something frantic in me as I searched under beds and old furniture and behind curtains.

  She wasn’t there.

  Dread crawled across my still wet skin.

  I was fighting tears when I got to the end of the hall and stepped over the baby gate that was supposed to keep her contained on this end of the house. Quickly, I searched the rooms on the other side of the hall.

  It was just as quiet.

  Flying back out, I took the third story steps to the top floor where she wasn’t allowed to be, shouting out her name.

  “Bailey? Where are you, Button? Please come out. This isn’t a good game.”

  It was dim and dark up there, sunlight barely breaking through the thick curtains that covered the windows, a thick coat of dust covering every surface.

  The top floor had hardly been touched since we’d moved in, the area one large space and crammed full of the old furniture that had been left there from more than a century ago.

  In a frenzy, I rushed through it, searching.

  Desperation took over.

  My blood running thick, pulse thumping in my ears and slogging through my veins as I raced back down the third-story steps.

  I took the staircase for the bottom floor, and my limbs started to shake as I moved through the living room, the office, the parlor, the formal dining room.

  I shouted her name.

  Over and over.

  It echoed back.

  Dread spiraled through me, my soul screaming out, no.

  No.

  Not my baby. I wouldn’t let anyone hurt her.

  By the time I made it to the huge, country kitch
en set at the very back of the house on the first floor, I was completely devoid of breath.

  Sure someone had found their way back in.

  Then I saw the back door was wide open, and a whole different type of fear took over. The thought of her wandering off. Getting lost or worse.

  “Oh my God.”

  I ran through it and into the sunshine that blazed down from the blue, blue sky, already suffocating in its heat.

  “Bailey!” I shouted.

  I ran down the porch steps and onto the back lawn.

  “Bailey!” It’d shifted into a scream. Dread and terror and every fear I’d ever had slammed me.

  Full force.

  My thoughts streaked from the idea of someone taking her, hurting her, and went directly to the stream that ran at the back of the land, just on the other side of the thicket of trees that rose like a hedge around the property.

  Terrified she’d wandered that direction. It was her favorite place to play, where she begged me to take her every day.

  I flew that way, my bare feet pounding across the lawn, my robe flapping open as I hit a sprint, gasps raking from my lungs. “Bailey! Bailey!”

  My voice echoed through the heavens, rushing through the leaves.

  A howling plea.

  “Faith!” His voice hit me like protection, and I spun around. Jace was sprinting around the side of the house. “What’s happening?”

  “Bailey . . . I . . . I can’t find her. Oh my God, my baby.”

  Those copper eyes flamed, and he flew around me, going directly for the path that led for the stream as if he’d had the very same thought as me.

  “Bailey!” he shouted. His gruff voice reverberated back, held in the arms of the dense trees.

  I started after him, only to freeze when the tiny voice hit me from behind.

  “Mommy?”

  I was trembling when I turned around.

  Bailey was off to the right on the other side of the porch. Clinging to a red beach bucket that she played with in her sandpit, which was on that side of the house.

  A cry raked from my throat. “Bailey.”

  I staggered that way, and she started to round the porch.

  I started running for her.

  “Mommy?”

  I scooped her up, knocking the full bucket from her hold, and crushed her against me.

  Feeling her weight. The steady beat of her heart.

  I dropped to my knees while holding her.

  The adrenaline drained, and the terror that had bottled inside me burst.

  Sobs ripped free.

  Coming all the way from my soul.

  And I realized how close I was to cracking. The pressure too much.

  Little fingers were in my hair. “You cry, Mommy?”

  “Button . . . Mommy was so scared. You’re not supposed to go outside by yourself.” The words were so clogged in my throat that I doubted she could even understand what I was saying.

  You aren’t supposed to go outside by yourself.

  It’s dangerous.

  You aren’t allowed to leave me.

  I felt the presence fall over us.

  A shadow.

  His intensity so thick I choked over that, too.

  I hugged Bailey closer to me, refusing to look up, refusing to let her go. Her scent filled my senses.

  Baby powder and lilacs and life.

  My world.

  That presence lowered to a knee, and I felt his fingers in my hair, brushing it back from my face. “Faith, sweetheart, it’s okay.”

  My head shook frantically.

  It wasn’t okay.

  Nothing was okay.

  “Come here,” he murmured. One of those masculine arms slipped around my waist.

  So foreign and so familiar.

  I gasped at the contact.

  “I sowwee. I need dirt, Mommy. Don’t be sad.”

  I squeezed Bailey tighter. “You scared me, baby. You can’t do that.”

  She burrowed her head deeper into me, her little breaths coming out on the skin of my throat, her chubby fingers clinging to the lapel of the thin robe.

  As if she could suddenly feel my terror.

  “Let’s get you two inside.” Jace’s voice was rough when it fell on my ear.

  He didn’t try to pry her from my arms—I wouldn’t have let him if he’d tried. He just helped me to stand with Bailey still wrapped around my neck.

  The man lifted me from the ground with the arm he had around my waist, his other hand set protectively on Bailey’s back.

  “She’s fine, Faith,” he murmured, his voice as thick as the sun I could feel burning against my skin, my hair sopping wet, my body suddenly feeling overwhelmed by the pressure of the muggy air.

  My knees shook, threatened to give.

  “She’s fine.”

  The problem was that I wasn’t.

  I wasn’t sure I was ever gonna be.

  “You have her. You have her,” he quietly encouraged. He guided me up the rickety porch steps at the back of the house.

  Steps that needed replacin’, too. Everything falling apart around me.

  Everything.

  And I had no idea how we were goin’ to survive. How we were going to make it past all of this.

  Tears streaked down my face, and I dropped my head as I let him lead us back through the still gaping door.

  Numbly, I moved through the massive kitchen, the one room that had already been fully renovated. My feet shuffled down the hall toward the front of the house.

  All the while, Bailey continued to cling to me, probably feeling a little of her own fear, too.

  The child was smart enough to realize she’d disobeyed; though, I knew she hadn’t realized what she’d done would elicit the reaction it had.

  Too young and innocent to realize the danger she’d put herself in.

  Too young to understand the threat and danger that loomed like the darkest shadow over our home.

  I couldn’t make it any farther than the antique sofa that rested in the middle of the main living space. I sank onto it, still holding her, breathing her in.

  My limbs began to shake. Trembles jerking through my muscles, a stutter at my very soul.

  Bailey rested her cheek on my hammering heart. As if she were trying to soothe it.

  Jace dropped to his knees in front of us.

  I didn’t want to look at him.

  Didn’t want to see the judgment on his face when he saw what a mess I was.

  When he realized I didn’t know how to handle all of this on my own.

  Those copper eyes stared back. Somehow hard and tender at the same time.

  He set his hand on my bare knee. A jolt of hot energy blasted through my body. I squeezed my eyes against it.

  “She’s safe,” he murmured. “She’s safe.”

  “I safe, Mommy,” Bailey whispered, so quietly. Her little fingers fumbled over my chin like an apology.

  Images flashed.

  The pictures of Joseph that I’d demanded of Mack.

  Demanding that he show me, because I’d refused to believe what had happened to him was real until I saw it with my own eyes.

  My mind flashed with the warning of those notes.

  The doll floatin’ in the tub.

  All the questions.

  All the fear.

  And I didn’t know if I would ever truly feel safe again.

  Eleven

  Jace

  The shrill sound of the drill digging through wood echoed through the kitchen. My hand was cinched tight where I held the power tool, teeth gritted, my shoulder turned as I bore down.

  All I could feel was the sticky apprehension that clawed at the walls.

  Clawed at my insides.

  The drill hit, burrowing out the spot, and I set the drill aside and began to install the hardware high up toward the top of the door where it’d be out of reach of curious fingers.

  I’d already taken the same care on the other two doors that led out
side.

  Unease rumbled through my consciousness.

  No one was getting inside here.

  Not on my watch.

  Problem was, I’d never get the chance to erase what was at the heart of it.

  What dimmed those chocolate eyes to a murky, black desperation.

  What marked her in scars that would never heal.

  I did this.

  Guilt screamed through my mind, and my shoulders tensed when I heard the floorboards squeak behind me.

  I finished securing the last screw into place and then bolted the lock at the top, making sure it worked, metal screeching against metal as I slid it home.

  I could feel Faith watching as I did. Her presence crawling across the floor and climbing my legs.

  Sinking in.

  The way she always had.

  Carefully, I shifted a fraction, enough so I could peer back at her.

  She’d come to a stop in the kitchen entryway. Wearing fitted jeans and a long-sleeved tee. Her hair dry and tied back into a ponytail.

  A goddamned vision.

  Angelic.

  Beauty.

  Filling me with the kind of awe that made me want to drop to my knees and sing.

  Or maybe confess all my sins.

  She looked between me and the new lock that had been installed. Sorrowful gratitude moved through her expression.

  I gave an uncomfortable shrug.

  “No one’s getting in or out of here without you knowing,” I promised.

  I mean, fuck, I couldn’t handle it. That overbearing feeling again.

  Whatever the hell it was I’d felt when I’d come around the corner of her house and realized Faith was searching for her daughter.

  The fury that had laced my blood, a burst of rage combusting with desperation.

  At first, I’d been intent on hunting some fucker down, then I’d seen where Faith’s mind had gone—to the stream at the back of the land—the threat of that much more realistic than the idea that someone had slipped by me when I’d been working out front.

  I wasn’t supposed to feel this way about Faith’s kid.

  About Joseph’s kid.

  Wasn’t supposed to care.

  The fact she even existed felt like a cruel joke.

  And there the little girl was, getting under my skin. Grin after tiny grin.