Unbeloved (Undeniable #4)(6)

I needed that now, his strength, him.

As my tears began to fall, I hurriedly turned away from my friends, searching out the most expedient way back to the solitude and emotional safety of the clubhouse.

That was when I saw her.

Standing at the far edge of the lawn, just outside the circle of gathered people, was Jase’s wife, Chrissy.

My tears dried instantly as my breath hitched and my stomach sank. She wasn’t here to attend the party.

It wasn’t the tears streaming down her pretty face that gave it away, or her disheveled hair and wrinkled clothing. It wasn’t even the wild look in her eyes. It was the simple act of her gaze meeting mine, really and truly seeing me for the very first time. She’d never looked at me before, only in passing glances, and always dismissing me.

She knew. She knew everything.

All these years of being thrust together, living in the same town, attending the same parties, both in love with the same man, yet strangers still.

Not anymore.

Her gaze dropped to my swollen belly. In a mindless instinctive reaction, I raised my hands to cover it. To somehow protect the life inside me from what I knew was about to transpire, to shield its innocence from the ugly secrets that were about to be ripped from the darkness and sent, screaming and bleeding, into the light.

Tentatively, I took a step backward and was about to take another when movement at her side caught my attention.

A flash of light.

A glint of metal.

Shrieking, I turned to run, but above my cry heard a booming crack. As if I’d been punched, my head snapped backward, knocking me off my feet.

Then I was falling and people were screaming. There was so much screaming, it was all I could hear, and yet it sounded far away, off in the distance.

“Dorothy!”

Voices echoed all around me.

Hands grabbed at me.

A face hovered directly over mine.

I knew that face, I knew her, she was my . . . she was . . .

Tears streamed down her cheeks and her mouth was moving, but I couldn’t hear what she was saying. I couldn’t hear anything. Why couldn’t I hear anything?

I tried to ask her why I couldn’t hear, but my mouth wouldn’t work.

Another face, a man with pretty blue eyes, appeared beside the woman, wildly shaking his head back and forth. I knew him. I couldn’t remember who he was or how I knew him, only that I knew him.

Like the woman, he too was crying and his lips were moving, but still there was no sound. I tried to lift my arm, to reach out to him, to . . .

My vision began to blur, distorting and warping the faces around me. I blinked furiously, trying to see, trying to understand.

Something awful was happening, I knew that much, something horrible. And these people, whoever they were, I wanted to help them.

But I couldn’t move, I couldn’t hear, and black spots floated over me, quickly growing larger, taking over my vision.

I was tired. So, so tired.

I just had to . . . close my eyes . . . for just a second . . .

Darkness enveloped me.

And then, there was nothing.

Not even darkness.





Chapter Two


Seven years later

I missed the snow. In Montana, it always snowed on Christmas.

In San Francisco, it rained instead. And rained. And rained.

Curled up on my living room couch, a cup of coffee in one hand, my cell phone in the other, I watched the rainwater as it sluiced down the glass in thick rivulets, distorting and blending all the colors of the outside world into one gray mass.

A sort of symbolism in relation to my life, a little too colorful of a life, I mused, twisting my lips sardonically. A life that had started out naive, full of pinks and blues, but as I grew older became full of brilliant reds and yellows, and then later filled with stormy, sorrow-filled grays.

Since my recovery I’d done what I could to wash most of that color away, leaving behind my chaotic life in Miles City, Montana, and starting over in San Francisco, California.

A necessary step in letting go, forgoing the brilliance for softer colors, neutral, relaxing shades. Because when you’d lived through nearly dying, you learned to appreciate the quiet, calmer colors of life.

Letting my cell phone fall into my lap, I lifted my hand, pushing back my thick mane of wavy red hair to finger the long, thin scar that ran the length of my skull.

The lone bullet meant to kill me and the child I’d carried inside me had failed. My son, Christopher, and I had thankfully survived. Christopher had been unscathed, but the trauma had left me with a blank canvas. For a long time, I’d had been without the knowledge of my life, who my children were, even my own name.

Thanks to my great doctors, therapy, and a strong dose of luck, I’d eventually regained the knowledge I’d lost. And when I had, I’d wished I hadn’t.

They say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and while that might be true for some, for me it had the opposite effect. At first I couldn’t face what I had done, the pain I had caused so many, let alone face the people my actions had directly impacted.

For shooting me, Chrissy had been convicted of first-degree attempted murder and had been sentenced to prison. And Jase had nearly taken his own life while in the throes of grief. Their three daughters had subsequently been left without their mother, with an incapable father, forced to transition into adulthood on their own.