Page 41 of Dark Surrender

No matter what… We can’t stay here. Not only is it unsafe, but it’s also a dump. Dee deserves better. She’s always deserved better. But Dad never let her have it. Now that he’s gone and I have an excuse to make her leave, I’m gonna take it. Sunshine may not hold a grudge over what happened to his son, but I can’t trust that any more than I can trust the weather. What I can do is use this rare, messed-up gift to get my sister far away from our past and hopefully into a real shower, for once.

Wish me luck.

I’m gonna need it.

CHAPTER NINETEEN

Dark

“Dad. Dad, wake up.” The most adorable voice dances through my dreams as someone pushes my shoulder. “Dad.”

Wait.

I crack open an eye.

Standing beside wherever the hell I am is a dark-haired, gray-eyed little girl. A little girl who happens to be my daughter. Where the fuck am I?

“Lily Pad?” I croak.

“Hi, Dad.” Throwing her arms in the air, the sweetest ball of energy does a silly dance in shorts and a rainbow tank top.

“Hi, baby girl. What’re you doin’ here?”

“You’re home.”

“Home?”

“At Kali’s.”

“What?”

Swallowing the disgusting taste in my mouth, I lick my lips to dampen them and exhale a heavy, painful-as-fuck breath before forcing my eyelids to get with the program and open wider. When they do, I’m assaulted with memories I don’t wanna touch with a ten-foot pole. The scent of lavender and those stupid smudge sticks fill the room. There’s a canary yellow crystal on my stomach and a bunch more on the nightstand.

Holy hell, I’m in my ex-wife’s house.

How did this happen?

Wait.

Dad showed up at the cabin, didn’t he? I guess that wasn’t a dream. I was put in the back of a truck, and now I’m here, but where’s Iris?

“You’re alive,” Kali teases from the open doorway of what is clearly one of my son’s old bedrooms. “Not that I had any doubt.”

I hum.

Sure, she didn’t.

Smoothing a hand down the front of her long, patchwork skirt as if she needs to be grounded in my presence, Kali closes her eyes, and her mouth moves, but no sound comes out before she reopens them and nods to Lily. “Why don’t you go down to see if dinner’s about done?”

“But…”

“No buts. Dad needs his rest.”

Shoulders slumping forward, Lily sighs as if Kali ruined her whole life.

“I could use a kiss on the cheek before ya leave me. Maybe that’ll help,” I add to cheer her up.

Being the good kid she is, Lily pecks me, and I tell her I love her before she does as she’s told. Kali gives her a tiny hug on the way out of the room, then it’s just me and the woman I loved for more than half my life. She looks good. Healthy. Happy. That makes one of us.