Fate (Steel Brothers Saga #13) - Helen Hardt Page 0,1

Dad. I wanted to let you walk your only daughter down the aisle. I selfishly wanted it for myself, too. But I’m not ready to let this go yet. I don’t know if I’ll ever be ready.

Her brothers were harsher, especially Ryan. I don’t blame him. I lied to him from his birth about his true parentage—only one of my many sins against my children.

Time.

Just time.

Time to ponder.

Time to ruminate.

Time to relive.

Time to self-loathe.

But never enough time for what I want most in the world.

Redemption.

Chapter One

Daphne

Forty years earlier…

I had the dream last night.

Two months had gone by since the last time, and I’d allowed myself to think I was better.

My heart beat like a bass drum against my sternum.

You’re just nervous about leaving home, Daphne. College will be fun. The best time of your life. No reason to be scared. No reason. No reason. No reason.

A knock on my bedroom door, and then my mother’s voice.

“Wake up, sleepyhead!” She cracked the door, peeking in. “Breakfast is ready. We need to leave soon. Are you all packed?”

“Yeah,” I said softly.

She opened the door and walked in, her forehead wrinkled. “You okay?”

I nodded. She worried so much. Between my half brother, Larry, and me, my parents had more than most to handle.

I hardly knew my half brother. He was three years older than I was, and he lived with his mother—Lisa, my father’s first wife. I’d never met her. Larry was almost done with college and planned to go to law school. He’d mastered his demons, apparently—those things that had sent him into therapy at a young age and seen him through countless arrests as a teenager.

Now if only I could master mine.

The dream. The damned dream.

I couldn’t tell my mother. She’d freak out, worry herself sick. My beautiful mother had permanent bags under her eyes thanks to me, and I wasn’t about to add to them today.

No, today I was leaving her.

She deserved to live in peace.

My dorm room was small but cozy. My roommate, Patty, hadn’t arrived yet. We hadn’t communicated at all. I just got a postcard in the mail from the university telling me her name and that she was from Iowa. I’d lived in Denver all my life and was going to college in Denver as well.

I couldn’t go far away from home, not after what I’d been through. I needed a safety net.

“I’ll help you make your bed up,” my mother said.

“It’s okay, Mom. I’m capable of making a bed.”

“Then why don’t you ever do it at home?” She laughed.

It was a nervous laugh.

She considered me fragile, and she worried, but she was trying to give me something normal. After high school, you went to college. That was normal.

But I wasn’t fragile. Not anymore. I kept up with my high school classes despite my hospitalizations. I’d always learned quickly and easily, and that was a godsend when I ended up missing most of my junior year. I worked hard and was able to graduate on time.

I returned for senior year. Everyone at school believed I’d spent junior year abroad in London. Everyone at home walked on eggshells, wondering if I’d break again.

But I hadn’t.

I hadn’t broken.

I was okay. Okay enough to leave home and begin college.

I remembered everything now. Never lost time, and never escaped to an imaginary world in a cloudy haze of medication. I knew what was real and what wasn’t. I’d worked hard with my therapist to put the pieces of junior year back in place, but in the end, the puzzle remained unfinished. I just didn’t remember most of the year.

Everything else was good, so it was time to accept that my amnesia wouldn’t be cured.

The dream I’d had last night popped into my head.

The images always began to form but never completed. Maybe this time—

The door to the room swung open. “Hi there! I’m Patty. You must be Daphne Wade.” The bubbly redhead stuck out her hand to me.

“Oh, yeah. Hi. These are my parents.” I took her hand and gave her a firm handshake, like my father always taught me.

“Mr. and Mrs. Wade, great to meet you. This is my mom, Lila Watson.”

Lila was an older and slightly overweight version of Patty. The same red hair, bubbly personality, and everything.

“Are you ready to go?” Patty asked me.

“Go where?”

“To the mixer, silly. It’s a welcome-back thing, and upperclassmen guys always go to check out the freshman girls.”

My father wrinkled his brow. “Upperclassmen are here already?”

“Yeah. Well, a lot of them anyway,”