Lynetta raised her hand. She was good about sharing first. Getting the words flowing, instilling trust and comfort in the rest of the women who might be nervous and on edge. Exuding her own kind of peace in the way she shared the memories of her abuse as a child.
She wasn’t ashamed to admit she still dealt with the scars every day. But that didn’t mean she hadn’t overcome it and found joy in her life.
“I remember the very moment I’d had enough, and I couldn’t take any—”
She stopped speaking when timid footsteps echoed from the stairwell as someone made their way down.
It was very typical for a new member.
Many times, they came in late as if they weren’t sure they should be there at all, needing to convince themselves to take that step.
I put a welcoming smile on my face and shifted to look over my shoulder toward the stairwell.
My heart froze in my chest when my eyes landed on the figure standing on the last step.
Ice slicked down my spine.
Horror.
Dread.
Worry.
They twined through me like the roots of a tree breaking through the foundation of a home.
Destructive.
Unseen until the damage was already done.
That was what it felt like, sitting there staring at my little sister and having no idea why she could be there.
Her face was so much like mine.
It felt as if I was looking into a mirror.
Only her eyes widened in shame and disgrace and mine widened with questions.
Why are you here?
What happened?
Why didn’t you tell me?
I didn’t know. I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.
My lips parted on a soft cry while dread pumped through me with so much force I could feel the thunder of it in my ears. The hardest part was the impact I felt in my spirit.
As if a hammer had cracked me wide open, and everything I’d held true spilled out.
Knees shaking, I climbed to my feet. Metal screeched as the chair slid when I reached out to hold on to the back for support.
I slowly turned all the way around to face my little sister.
That was all it took for her to spin around and bolt.
Footsteps echoed on the concrete as she pounded upstairs. The sound of her escape was what finally shot me into action.
“Nikki.” Kathy hissed the warning, trying to stop whatever line she thought I was crossing.
I ignored her and shoved the chair out of my way. It toppled over. The reverberation of it hitting the ground echoed against the walls.
The sound only seemed to gather strength.
Distraught, I stumbled around it.
Everything felt as if it had been set to slow motion, my own steps slackened as I tried to process what was happening.
Because this felt like a nightmare. Like I’d wake up and realize it’d only been brought on by worry. By the reminder that the anniversary of Sydney’s disappearance was approaching so fast.
Too fast.
It always made everything raw and new.
But my eyes were wide open.
Too wide.
My spirit screamed that I’d been blind all along.
“Sammie,” I cried, chasing her up the stairs. I gathered the hem of my dress with one hand and clung to the railing with the other so I could make it up faster. “Sammie. Sammie, please. Wait.”
Tears stung my eyes. A knot grew in my throat, so big that I choked over it.
I couldn’t breathe.
“Sammie!” I shouted, her name strangled as it ripped free.
She was already shoving open the glass doors by the time I made it to the first level.
I raced after her and caught the door just before it closed, clamoring after her.
Her brown ponytail swished madly at her back as she rushed for her car that was parked on the street.
“Sammie,” I begged, scrambling that way, pleading with her to stop.
To look at me.
To tell me what was happening.
My fingers brushed down her back. She flew around as if she was terrified of me.
Tears soaked her face, but it didn’t do anything to conceal the grief.
“No,” she rasped. She put out her hand to stop me from coming any closer. “No. This . . . this was supposed to be confidential. Private.”
Angrily, she swatted at her tears. “Why are you here? You aren’t supposed to be here.”
Guilt blazed a path through me.
Clearly, she felt trapped.
Ambushed.
More tears streaked free, and she choked around the words, “It was supposed to be confidential. You . . . you aren’t finished with school yet. Why are you here?”
“Sammie,” I attempted again, my voice cracking. “I’m sorry. I’m interning here.”
I guessed when I’d told her I was almost finished, she hadn’t realized that I was actually overseeing a group. That I’d stepped out beyond the online classes to learn the things I could only learn by interacting with people.
I struggled to find the words to give her comfort when I felt so lost.
Bewildered and crushed.
Clearly, my baby sister had kept me in the dark about something awful.
I could feel it, radiating from her in waves of shame.
“Whatever is going on, whatever reason you’re here, I’m here for you. It isn’t your fault.”
She blinked and backed away. “You don’t know anything.”
Steadily, she kept inching toward her car. She opened the door. “Please . . . just . . . forget you saw me here.”
Then she turned, jumped inside, and drove away.
I stood there on the sidewalk as the streetlamps slowly blinked to life.
Stricken.
Broken and not having the answer as to why but knowing there was no chance I could ever forget.
* * *
Drained, I snapped open the door and was met by the silence of Ollie’s loft radiating back at me.
I didn’t really want to be alone, but I didn’t have anywhere else to go. No one to turn to. No one to talk to.
Maybe this load really was too heavy. All I’d wanted was to make a difference. Pour goodness into a cruel world. In some small way, make it better.
Now, everything felt so wrong.
It’d taken every single ounce of willpower I had not to jump in my car and chase after Sammie.
She needed time, and my pressing her for answers wouldn’t be doing her any favors.
I had to give her space.
It left me feeling mashed up inside. As if I’d been beaten and left for dead.
Wounds bleeding out when I didn’t have the first clue how they’d been inflicted.
The vibration of the band playing downstairs at Olive’s seeped through the floors and trembled the walls with revelry.
Voices carrying.
Laughter riding.
I’d never felt so brutally alone.
Heavy, sluggish beats drummed in my aching chest as I stepped into the space and let my purse drop to the middle of the floor. Not even caring where it landed.
I felt . . . stunned.
Dazed.
As if another piece of my world had broken loose.
I was happy, wasn’t I?
So was my sister. We were close.
I’d always believed it.
Where had things gone wrong?
My gaze was drawn to the bank of windows that overlooked the city below.
My sluggish heart drummed a wayward beat, a thrum of adrenaline through my veins.
It had nothing to do with the view and everything to do with the man sitting on one of the oversized loungers on the balcony.
He faced out, just his head and the expanse of his massive, bare shoulders in my view.
A shiver rolled, and I felt as if my spirit crawled right out of me to make its way to him.
There was
nothing I could do. It didn’t matter what had happened on Saturday. How much I wanted to protect my heart.
I moved.
Drawn.
The way I’d always been.
Toward him had always felt like the only direction I could go.
And tonight, that feeling was overpowering.
Helplessness streamed through me like an out-of-control current that was getting ready to go right over the edge.
A free fall into nothingness.
I kept my footsteps subdued as I inched across the floor, my motions measured as I slowly opened the glass-plate slider.
Ollie stiffened in the cushioned chair, but he didn’t say anything as I stepped out onto the balcony.
Distorted music floated through the muggy air, and that chill scattered. Binding deeper as I eased over to the ornate wrought-iron railing. I wrapped my hands around it and held on tight.
As if it might keep everything from splintering away.
His presence slammed into me from behind. Beat after beat.
Fierce.
Intense.
“Shouldn’t you be downstairs working?”
“Was worried about you,” he finally grated, blowing out a long breath toward the sky.
“I told you, you don’t need to worry about me.”
“Tell me how the fuck I’m supposed to do that when the only thing on my mind is you.”
His words were delivered quietly, though his voice somehow boomed in the dense, thickened air.
“Texted you earlier. Never heard a thing. Then when I came up to talk to you, you never showed. Went as far as calling Lillith to find out if she’d talked to you after your meeting tonight.”
He inhaled a deep breath. “Your meeting ended two hours ago, Nikki. No one’s heard from you since, some asshole broke into your apartment during last week’s meeting, and you want me not to worry about you? Think you know me better than that. I was about five seconds from starting a door-to-door search.”
There was a confession to his words. The depth of his worry and the lengths he would go.
I lifted my face to the mild breeze that blew through.
Cars accelerated below with small bleeps of their horns, and cicadas buzzed in the towering trees that reached to our level.
I wanted to dip my fingertips into it. To find the peace it seemed to offer.
But I felt as if I’d completely lost ground. Everything I’d been fighting for somehow felt like a sham.
Warily, I peeked back at him. The man sat in the chair, looking like the king of his own city sprawled out below him.
A conqueror.
A warrior.
Chest bare and abdomen rippling.
Eyes keen.
The longer pieces of his hair whipped around him like a flaming crown, the sides cropped, making the man look every bit the beast that he was.
Yet, there was something about him that remained so unbearably lost.
Sapphire eyes so soft I could fall right inside.
It took about everything I had not to drop at his feet.
I wanted to remain strong. Push him away. Remember how being this close to him only hurt me time and again.
But right then, the only thing I felt was weak.
A tremor rolled through my being.
Or maybe it wasn’t weakness.
Maybe I really just needed the one person who could fully understand.
My hands cinched tighter around the metal. “Do you ever wonder where our lives went wrong? Where we changed course or if we were just heading this direction all along?” I hedged, trying to find the best way to invite him into my heart.
Into my grief.
He huffed out a strained breath. “Every day, Nikki. I think about this shit every day. I think we both know exactly where it went wrong.”
I glimpsed him from the corner of my eye. He lifted a tumbler to his mouth, a half-empty bottle of amber fluid sitting on the table next to him. He took a long drink.
“It only gets worse when the date gets nearer,” he reluctantly added.
Yet, to me, it felt like a gift. His words, his heart, something he had refused to offer me over all these years.
“Fourteen years,” I agreed. “I can’t believe that much time has passed. I can’t believe it’s been so long since our foundation was ripped out from under us. It shaped us into different people,” I offered, praying he’d get it.
That I needed him to listen.
That I needed him to be there.
For me.
His grating words filled the distance that separated us. “It doesn't matter how many years go by, it feels like it was yesterday. Feels like I’m stuck there, and I'm never gonna get out.”
His confession was hardened with regret.
Muted in sorrow.
“I was there with you. But you wouldn’t let me be there for you. You wouldn’t let me stay.” My voice was a whisper that got swept up in the wind. It felt as if Sydney was caught in it, a ghost howling as she blew through.
I felt him flinch. The man hit by the weight of the reality, even when I knew he never wanted to face it.
“Couldn’t let you stay there because you didn't need to be in the middle of my mess.”
I looked at him from over my shoulder. My breath hitched.
My beautiful beast, who was so angry at the world, angry at himself, sitting there with his chin lifted and his nostrils flaring.
I knew he would charge into the distance and change it all if he was given the chance.
I knew he would be willing to sacrifice everything.
“If it was your fault, then it was my fault, too.”
“Don’t ever say that,” he spat, jumping to his feet.
Fire and rage.
They lit like a fury inside him.
My head slowly shook. “You know it’s true, Ollie. You can’t erase the fact that I was there with you. That we were together. That I’m every bit as responsible as you.”
“No. I was responsible for her. Just the same as I am for you.”
Those eyes blazed as he took a step forward, and he fisted his hand over his heart. “I was the one who fucked it up. I was the one who pushed things between us when I knew I was crossing lines I wasn’t allowed to cross. I was the one who sent her away.”
Grief lined his voice.
Emotion tingled my throat, and my eyes stung.
Part of me wanted to stop it.
Walk away and pretend all of this wasn’t crashing over me, threatening to bury me alive. The other part wanted to hang on to every second.
It was the first time in years Ollie had opened up to me. A door opened when it’d forever been closed.
“She would have understood,” I told him, knowing with all of me that she would have.
He turned his head, looking to the far corner of the balcony. “We had a pact.”
The memory it shivered around us. A reel playing in sync in our minds. The vow we’d made before we’d understood that one day we would grow and change and things would no longer look the same.
If I focused hard enough, I could still feel the cut Ollie had made on my palm.
“We were eight years old, Ollie. You were nine. Kids,” I told him. “We grew up. All of us changed.”
Slowly, he swiveled his attention back. Every muscle in his body was held in restraint. “And you know exactly what happened when we did.”
Grief pulsed through the silence that raged between us. So many things left unsaid for so many years. It tickled our ears and hammered our hearts as we finally brought our truths out into the light.
Tears stung my eyes, and I swallowed Ollie’s intensity and forced myself to speak. “Fourteen years ago, did I leave everyone else behind, too?” I whispered, the words a tremor.
A plea.
A confession.
“Was I so consumed by that grief, by that loss, that I let everything and everyone else fade into the background?”
Ollie’s face pinch
ed, and he was moving closer. “What are you talking about?”
“I missed it. I failed to see what was right in front of my eyes, Ollie.”
He was at my side. The magnitude of his presence nearly knocked me from my feet.
“What are you saying?”
“My sister.” The words broke on my tongue.
In that moment, I felt something crack.
Chip away.
Secrets slayed.
And all I wanted was this man to hold all of them.
17
Ollie
“My sister.” Her confession carried on the wind.
Like a never-ending echo of horror that would ride on the soundwaves forever.
Regret.
The kind I knew all too well.
Grief clustered in my chest as I looked down at her.
Tears streaking down her defined cheeks.
Nikki. Fucking. Walters.
The bane of my existence.
The one who drove me right out of my mind. Left me clinging to the edge of sanity. Made me weak in the damned knees and hard everywhere else.
She was a carrot dangled in front of me like a tease. Always right there, always just out of reach. A connection I couldn’t keep but wanted more than my next breath.
Because that was what she was.
Breath.
Life.
The goodness and light in the middle of my dark, dark world.
I wanted to lean in, press my nose to her delicate neck, and suck her down like a sweet, satisfying drink.
Sunshine and lemonade.
In the breeze, locks of that honeyed hair whipped around her head. A few errant pieces stuck to her face, those eyes so wide and innocent, and that mouth so goddamned deliciously pink.
It made her look like the girl I’d fallen so hard for.
She’d driven me crazy then, just like she was driving me crazy now.
Swore to God, the burn of that kiss from the other day was still flames on my lips.
“What do you mean, your sister?” My words were guarded. Careful.
Fuck. Maybe I didn’t want to know.
Because a sob tore from Nikki’s throat.
“I think someone hurt her.”
Rage. It was instant. The fury that banged through my being. It struck in the air.
As deadly as a thunderbolt.
I grabbed her and pulled her all the way around so I could fully see her. “Who?”
Fight for Me: The Complete Collection Page 84