Kiss the Stars (Falling Stars #1)(63)

Fuck.

What was the matter with me?

It was just a song.

I searched inside myself to find something that was fitting. Clearly none of mine would do.

I should have picked a random Carolina George song that Richard or Emily had penned. Something innocuous that meant nothing but I knew the words.

But I remembered . . . remembered the voice that had once sung to me.

The lyrics so contrary to what I knew.

But I thought maybe they had been meant for a child exactly like this.

Leaning forward, I took in a steeling breath and quietly began to rasp the words in a way I was quite sure they’d never been sung. A country ballad meant for a mother to her child.

I Hope You Dance by Lee Ann Womack.

The lyrics were low as I grated them from my tongue.

But I saw it—the way the song wrapped her in comfort.

A prayer that I meant.

A prayer that cut me apart.

And as I watched her drift to sleep from the sound of my voice, as I felt Mia’s spirit twining with mine, I felt something inside me break away. Something burst and come flooding out.

Darkness.

Joy.

Grief.

Hope.

If only I were worthy to give them that.





Twenty-One





Mia





Even though he was singing painfully low, his voice still flooded the room. The words gruff and hard and bleeding melancholy.

The song scraped from his throat with pain and grief.

The most brutal agony.

Lost faith and misguided intentions.

It seemed impossible his voice could come out sounding that way, and still the tenor of it be riddled with the greatest amount of hope. As if faith had found holes in the bricks of his fortress and worked its way in.

What it’d become was the most shocking kind of beauty. Something that spun both my spirit and relaxed my strain.

My body slowly swayed.

Drawn into the sound.

A deadly lullaby because before you even knew what had happened, you were enraptured.

Snared.

Hypnotized into believing that everything was going to be just fine.

Just like he’d done to my sweet, sweet girl. Exactly the way I wanted her to be. Soothed into a peaceful sleep where all the horrors of the day would be erased. Scrubbed from her memory and healed from her body.

We’d been lucky.

So very lucky that there was no way I could just consign it to chance.

Her wounds had been minor, but I knew what was left on her heart and mind was the sort of trauma that would leave a scar.

My gaze drifted to her, my heart in a clutch of agony and gratefulness.

I would never forget that moment—that single, bated second when I thought I’d lost her. That my child had been ripped away. Her life snuffed a century too soon.

Tremors rolled, and my stare traveled, drifting to the man whose voice had shifted to barely audible. Ragged, frayed words that whispered into her ears and filled her with calm. It was like he was offering everything he had to give, giving it away, any solace in his soul transferred to her.

Because there was no missing the outright misery that dented every line in his gorgeous face.

Eyes squeezed shut and his chest tremoring with the remnants of the song.

The tail-end of it drifted away as he begged for her to live with all she had.

To chase joy.

To always, always dance.

The lump in my throat grew to a fist, and I struggled to breathe around it, to clear the roughness when those eyes finally flickered over to meet with mine. “Did you ever want to be a dad?”

I shouldn’t have asked it. I was breaking about every rule that had ever been made.

Jumping right over respectful lines and clear-cut boundaries.

But this? This wasn’t a question for me. Wasn’t loaded because I was a single mother and wanted to somehow fit with him.

It was found in the torture that covered him in shadows.

The expression that took hold of his face made me want to weep. His words hit the air like the slice of a knife. “Once, Mia. Once I did. But guys like me? We aren’t made for the joys of this world. We aren’t destined for the good things. We are bred for destruction.”

My head shook in disaccord, unable to accept what he said. “I see your goodness, Leif Godwin. I see it shining out through all the darkness. I know it’s there.”

He laughed a gruff sound. “You’re just seeing what you want to see.”

My teeth clamped down on my bottom lip, my hand shaking like mad when I reached out and brushed back the longer pieces of hair from his forehead. “I see someone who is brave. I see someone who is fearless. I see someone who saved my daughter.”

A tremor raked through him at that, and I let my fingertips wander, gliding down the strong angle of his cheek. The man so beautiful he was making it hard to focus on what I needed to say without getting distracted by what I wanted. “But I also see someone who is hurting.”

He snatched me by the wrist.

I gasped.

“Pain is just a reminder of your sins.” His confession was nothing but a growl.

I searched his face.

“Of what you’ve done,” he rumbled.

My chest quivered at the rake of his harsh words. Blow after blow.

“Of what is to come.”