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Raven took my hand and squeezed it, and she leaned in close, her voice as quiet as mine. “Maybe you don’t have to be that anymore. Alone. You know I felt it the first day you walked by my store. Your spirit aching to find what it’s been missing.”
Emotion crested, and I struggled to breathe around it.
The softest smile pulled at the side of her mouth. “And maybe what it’s been missing is us.”
Air whispered from my nose, and I squeezed her hand tighter. I wanted to hold on. To believe what she was saying.
Before I could say anything, she leaned in closer, and the gentleness in her voice shifted to pure suggestion. “Besides, it looks to me like my brother wants to claim you. That is if he didn’t already.”
Speculation raised her brow.
I released a shattered scoff, and my mind spun through the bare moment when his mouth had been against mine.
The heat that had nearly razed me to the ground.
The terror that had come barreling in on its heels.
“That’s not going to happen.”
The door swept open behind us, and that energy came blistering back in, so strong it nearly swept me from my feet.
I attempted to guard myself against it, though there was no stopping the ragged exhalation, the way goosebumps lifted on my skin as I felt his approach.
Raven looked behind me before she was grinning back my way. “I’m not sure I would bet on that.”
NINETEEN
CHARLEIGH
“That was delicious,”Raven said as she pushed out the door into the wash of the sun that was steadily climbing the eastern sky, the pinks and blues and purples giving way to the fullness of blue.
“It hit the right spot, didn’t it, Auntie?” Nolan agreed in his adorable lisp, the child holding my hand as he led me out as if we’d always shared this connection.
Raven glanced back with that big smile on her face. “The best spot.”
Nolan giggled and glanced up at me. “Did it hit all the right spots for you, Miss Charleigh?”
Emotion trembled, this piece inside me that pulled me one direction and pushed me another. The entire breakfast I’d had a hard time rectifying the shift. The decision I’d made last night to run when I’d been gripped by grief and sorrow and fear.
Fear of so many things.
Of what might be lurking for me in the shadows and what had seemed to be waiting for me right here.
Friendship and a semblance of belonging.
I had no idea what to make of it or how to embrace it. But asNolan held my hand, trotting along at my side as we all stepped out onto the sidewalk, I didn’t want to let go.
“How about you, Daddy-O?” Nolan asked from over his shoulder toward where River followed us.
River who’d seemed too large to be contained by the small café.
“Pretty danged good way to start the day.” River’s voice was a coarse scruff.
The whole time, he’d sat a bit away from the table, slung back in the chair with his massive legs stretched out in front of him.
So cruelly casual that I’d barely been able to eat or drink, my mind unable to stop whirring with the memories of the way it’d felt to have his lips against mine. Big, big hands touching me. The way I wondered if…
I’d put a lid on the dangerous thoughts that had begun to boil, hoping it might be enough to extinguish them. Though with the way I trembled when he edged closer behind us, I feared the only thing trying to suppress them did was stoke the need.
