like Maisie and Shane and so many others. Like Bria had almost been. And her baby …
“Baby, you’re scaring us,” he said softly.
Us.
I could hear the footsteps behind me and could only imagine the line of my friends currently trailing us. Rhodes and Larkin. Katy. Dante, Tate, and Ryder.
People who loved me too much to let me suffer on my own.
“I’m okay,” I whispered back, still moving forward as I walked away from the heart of town and down a barely used side street.
“Stay,” I told Remy quietly as my feet turned down another road.
His hand squeezed around mine as he silently walked beside me.
Muscle memory led me back before I truly realized where I was. It wasn’t until the charred husk of the omega house came into view that I knew where I was going.
I freed my hand from Remy’s. “Give me a second.”
“Skye, what is this place?” I could hear the worry and confusion in his voice as I kept walking away.
I stopped a few feet from where the crumbling front steps would have been and simply looked.
The sky beyond the horizon was hazy with an impending sand storm. Dry lightning cracked through the sky like an ominous warning as I glanced around.
My mind could reform where walls and doors had been.
Walls that had peeling paint and reeked of the smells that seeped into the weathered wood over the years. The cracked glass of windows that never opened right. The front door with the busted lock.
I moved closer, tracing the jagged edge where the fireline had charred the foundation. Decayed pieces turned to gritty powder in my fingers.
I could see through the skeletal remains, into the backyard I had played in full of rocks and rusty nails. I would line them up like little girls did stuffed animals, arranging them in a way only my mind understood.
Rocks and rusty nails. Those were my childhood toys.
My fingers snagged on a loose board as I rubbed them across the foundation. It came free with a single tug, a splinter digging into my palm.
The flash of pain was grounding, steadying.
I dropped the board and it landed on something metal. I knelt and unearthed a crowbar from the rubble.
I tested the weight of it in my hand for a second before letting it swing downward with a satisfying crack that snapped a few of the floorboards like toothpicks.
My other hand closed over the end and I swung again like it was a baseball bat. I hit a corner of the house and debris went flying.
I swung again and the entire structure creaked as the post I’d hit dented. I hit a new spot, watching in fascination as a cloud of dust swelled up and was carried away.
Again and again. I swung harder and harder, destroying parts of the very house that had nearly destroyed me.
I pictured Maisie’s sweet face as I slammed the edge of the crowbar down onto a discarded pane of glass. Shattered fragments sprayed out, cutting my arms.
I pictured Mom’s face, pale and bruised as she crawled to the shower while I destroyed another post.
I lost count of the memories that purged themselves from the darkest parts of my mind. I swung until my arms ached from the force of it. I kept going until the crowbar fell from my numb fingers.
Remy was behind me before the first sob tore from my lips. He turned me away from the house, whispering something that couldn’t penetrate the incessant buzzing in my ears.
My friends stood in the distance, waiting and watching. Larkin and Tate were crying. Katy and Ryder looked just as heartbroken. Rhodes and Dante were doing their best to comfort them while not giving into their own emotions. Emotions they felt for me. Because they were willing to share the pain I felt to lighten my load.
I sagged against Remy, burying my face against his chest as I cried for the girl I used to be and she had endured.
After a second, he lifted me up, swinging me easily into his arms as he carried me away from my past.
46
Skye
The bump of the wheels touching down woke me up. My eyes blinked open sleepily and I found that I wasn’t in the seat I had started off in, but now in Remy’s lap with his arms serving as my seatbelt. Truthfully, his arms had less give than the federally approved belts did.
“Hey.” His warm voice rumbled out of him, creating a sweet vibration that echoed into me.