Heartbreak Bay (Stillhouse Lake #5) - Rachel Caine Page 0,3

a girl with a lot of damage, but I do have faith in her. She’s not broken. At least not any more than the rest of us. And it’s exactly right for Vee—the same age as my daughter—to have talked Lanny into sneaking out and clubbing, against strict house rules.

“Maybe I should take it out on Vee,” I say. “Without her, Lanny wouldn’t be taking these kinds of risks.”

“Look in the mirror and tell me where she gets her risk-taking gene again?”

“Well, Vee’s enabling her.”

“I’m not saying what they get up to is safe, but at least we know that Vee’s a survivor. She’ll fight like hell to protect Lanny. You know that. And you’re going to have to let Lanny live her life, eventually.”

I do. That’s the hell of it.

I knock the all clear on Connor’s door, and Sam and I settle on the couch in the living room. I feel rather than hear his long sigh. “Girls,” he says. “God, I love them, and at the same time I have no idea what to do at times like this. Is that stupid?”

“Normal,” I say, and lean into his embrace. “Girls are tough at this age. Regretting signing those papers already?”

“Never. Not for a second.” He moves hair back from my forehead, a gentle touch I would have flinched away from a few years ago. But now, it soothes something inside me. “Were you that tough at her age?”

I have to laugh a little. Bitterly. “I was a good little rule-follower with strict churchgoing parents. I didn’t even own a pair of blue jeans. No drinking, no drugs, no boyfriend, no clubs.” I’d hit eighteen—or more accurately, eighteen had hit me—like a runaway bus. I’d been utterly unprepared for the charm onslaught of a controlling older man who targeted me the way a lion targets a slow gazelle. Melvin Royal had been the ideal suitor, according to my parents. He’d played the role to perfection because he knew exactly what he wanted: a captive child-wife he could isolate and train as he wanted her to be.

And that’s who I became. I’d worked so hard to lose any semblance of who I was, who I could be, and became exactly what Melvin Royal required. I’d thought that was happiness.

Until it all collapsed in such horror. Then I had to find out who I really was. What I could really do.

Sam kisses my temple, and I blindly turn toward him until our lips meet. I don’t like thinking about my earlier life. Melvin’s whisper is always there, far too close. The kiss turns deeper, sweeter, and I focus on it to try to push away the memories.

Until he breaks it with a regretful sigh and leans his forehead against mine. “I need sleep,” he tells me. “Sorry. Early lesson in a few hours.”

“I know,” I say. He’s working currently as a flight instructor, teaching private clients on small aircraft, but he’s also taking classes of his own and getting recertified on commercial jets. Busy man, but he’s here, against all the odds. And I’m no longer afraid to say that I love him.

Like everyone in our house, the two of us are damaged. He’s the brother of a serial killer’s victim. I was a serial killer’s wife. Our traumas hit head-on the day a drunk driver crashed into the house I shared with Melvin Royal, and that accident uncovered not just Sam’s sister’s body but a path of horror that stretched out for years.

That crash made wreckage of both our lives, but in very different ways.

We’ve come to terms with the legacy of Melvin Royal from both sides, and built a relationship over that dark, angry scar. It still bleeds, sometimes. And it always, always aches.

“Go back to sleep,” I tell him, and kiss him again. It’s regretful, but sweetened with the promise of a future. He hugs me and slips back to bed.

I’m too restless to try to rest, tempting as it is; I’d only toss and turn and disturb him. I head quietly back to our office. Benefit of a new house: more room. Sam’s got his desk, I have mine, and as I shut the door and turn on the lights, it’s another déjà vu moment: my battered old desk, my old filing cabinets, a clean and different room wrapped around them.

I’ve mounted pictures on the walls. Some are of places, some are of people. My kids and Sam, surely. My very select group of friends in happy