One Second After Another (The After Another Series #3) - Bethany-Kris Page 0,18
she was willing to ... give it all up.
Her protection from being who she was. The family she desperately missed. A career that had allowed her both healing and retribution for the wrongs done to her. The chance to start over, or to be someone else, even.
To learn what came after ...
All of it and more.
Penny was giving it up—or any chance of it by doing what she had done, really.
Still, as she lingered at the edge of the forest, ten feet beyond where the treeline ended on Naz and Roz’s property, she couldn’t help but think it was still worth it. For them, and their life, even if it was one without her.
And for her, too.
For her peace of mind. Something she never had—not while her mother still walked and breathed.
Soon, Allegra wouldn’t.
Penny needed to start over first. Go back to the beginning and remember. To know that for a time, before all of this happened, she was happy. Or ... she was starting to learn how to be happy in her own way. Until her mother ruined that, too.
Some things never changed ...
Lost in her thoughts and still staring at the only home she had ever known, Penny was too distracted to hear the crack of twigs from her left. That was, until a little voice said, “Hey, Penny.”
Whether it was the shock of someone saying her name, or just the fact that they had managed to sneak up on her in the forest behind Naz and Roz’s property, it still earned a reaction from Penny. She hadn’t heard the approach from her left until the new voice joined a silent conversation she’d been having inside her head while the memories raced for attention in her mind.
Despite her years of training to stand calm and steady no matter the situation, she let out a yelp and fell backward when she stumbled over an exposed root of a tree. The white strands of her hair made a curtain over her eyes as her palms hit the ground to catch her fall from turning into something much worse.
A quiet, child-like laugh rang out in the forest. The sound was almost musical and a total contrast to the way her heart thumped loudly in her chest.
“Sorry,” her new companion said, “I didn’t mean to scare you.”
Penny didn’t bother to get up, or even fix her hair. Instead, she pushed sideways and came to sit right on her ass, so she could stare directly at the guest who had joined her in the forest. He was maybe three and half feet tall, not quite four, if that. Dark hair. Soul-deep eyes. She found familiarity in the softness of his boyish features. Even the way his grin tilted a little more on the right side in a smirk she had seen time and time again.
She didn’t need to ask his name.
She already knew.
“Cross,” she said.
The boy shrugged. “Well, everybody calls me little Cross when they think I can’t hear. I don’t like that very much. But since Grandpapa doesn’t like being called Senior, I have to deal with it. Or that’s what he said.”
His words were clear. His sentences, smart. For his age, anyway.
“And you are, right—Penny, I mean?”
She stared at the boy, blinking as if he might disappear in the next minute. She was still trying to figure out why in the hell he was even in the woods. Where were his parents? Was this something he did on the regular?
Hell ...
Penny hadn’t seen his face since he was six months old. Not once in all the years since she left had she even been graced with a picture of the boy as he grew. She always wondered, of course ... did he keep his father’s features, or change to look more like his mom?
She missed a lot.
About him.
His first steps.
Those first words.
Even his first day at school.
“You don’t talk?” Cross asked. “Ma says you were always quiet.”
She swallowed hard, knowing what she needed to tell the boy because she wasn’t even supposed to be here in the first place. “I don’t know who you think I am, but I’m not—”
“Yeah, you’re Penny. I have pictures.”
So sure.
And true.
God.
Penny dragged in a quick breath. “You didn’t scare m—”
“Yeah, I did,” he interjected again, seemingly unbothered that he kept interrupting her. “Sorry. It was kind of funny, though.”
She couldn’t help the smile fighting to get out. He was quite the kid. It only killed her more.
“You know they’re looking for you, right?” Cross asked.