Where Lightning Strikes (Bleeding Stars #3)(116)

My world spun on fast forward. In slow motion. Everything becoming clear.

So f*cking clear.

You sing my soul.

“You’d better go,” she finally said with a tender smile. “Brad’s the best guy you’ll ever meet, but even he has his limits.”

Nodding through the daze, I stood and brushed off the grass and leaves from my pants.

Brendon came hurtling back over. His arms were lifted over his head and there was nothing I could do but swoop him up.

I squeezed him and breathed him in like I’d done that night, and he giggled as he edged back and pulled at a strand of my hair, like he was remembering what his mom had told him, this strange connection filling up our air.

Energy and light and life.

This tugging pull. Tying me to him. Leading me to her.

“I’ll miss you, little man,” I murmured in his ear.

“I’ll see you soon,” he said as if he held a clue. As if he were telling me not to worry. That maybe that gaping distance between us had just become narrow.

Close enough to cross.

“Yeah…I sure hope so.”

Carefully, I set him down, shoved my hands in my pockets. Brendon went running to his dad who was already crossing the street, going straight for Brendon with love and protection in his eyes.

Whole and absolute.

Slowly, I began to back away, taking in the last couple seconds of my son I could get.

Kenzie’s and my eyes met. “He’s going to ask questions after you’re gone. And I’m going to tell him, Lyrik. I really hope you do the right thing with it.”

The words were subdued and filled with the promise as I continued to walk backward. “Whenever he’s ready to find me, whenever he knows what all that means, please don’t stop him. I’ll be waiting.”

She nodded, and I gave her the gentlest of smiles. I spun around and started climbing the small hill.

“Hey, Lyrik,” Kenzie called. She was grinning wide when I slanted my attention to her over my shoulder. “Whoever she is…she’s a lucky girl.”

I returned her grin, shaking my head.

I increased my pace, breaking out in a sprint as I ran for my truck.

Because Blue wasn’t the lucky one.

But if I managed to win her back? I’d be one lucky guy.





MY MOTHER SQUEEZED MY hand. It was a silent show of encouragement as she stood at my side. The world rushed around us, people traversing the busy downtown streets, while I stood stock still right in the middle of the sidewalk in front of the short stack of steps leading to the court building.

Sweat slicked my hands and beaded at the back of my neck.

Run. Run. Run.

It was that small, terrified voice that whispered the tortured plea within the confines of my muddled head.

Begging me to go.

To spare myself the torture waiting behind those doors.

Brave.

But it was the memory of that deep, haunting voice that convinced me to stay. The lingering warmth of his presence.

Funny how Lyrik had been the one to reveal my inner courage, to embrace it, to show me I no longer had to live behind walls when he’d just kept building his own.

Brick after brutal brick.

Deflecting and avoiding and protecting a mashed-up heart I’d learned kept so much hidden good. I knew it was there. Lurking in his ominous shadows.

That didn’t mean his savage heart didn’t hold the power to decimate.

I was still reeling from the fact he’d chosen to decimate me.

I’d thought we’d been so close…so close to finding who we were supposed to be. Together. But I guessed that was the problem.

Lyrik had gotten too close and it was too much.

This boy who didn’t have his heart to give.

But he held mine, anyway.

My mother squeezed my hand again. “We need to go inside.”

“I know,” I whispered, still unmoving.

She turned to me, her expression pure and understanding as she tenderly brushed back the long locks of my hair that whipped around my head, stirred by the wind.

Hair now so dark brown it was nearly black.

Red gone.

I should have known when Lyrik forced his way into my life she could never stay.

I’d dyed it back to my natural color. The color it’d been before I’d run. Before I’d masked and cloaked and camouflaged.

The same way it’d be when I climbed the stand and stood against Cameron Lucan.

No.

I’d realized since I’d come home I wasn’t ashamed of the tattoos that covered my scars or the way I’d dyed my hair.

But when he saw me sitting there, it wouldn’t be under veil or disguise.

It would be me.

Tamar Gibson.

The girl he’d so nearly destroyed.

In all those years of running, I’d never realized by hiding, I was allowing him to keep her that way.

Broken.

Hidden.

Submissive.

And as scared as I was to face him, he would no longer hold me down or hold me back.

“You can do this, Tamar,” my mother said. Emphatic. “I know you can, and I know it has to be one of the most terrifying feelings you’ve ever had to contend with. But you’re already more than halfway there. You’re here. You came.”

Tears welled, and I trembled a smile. In the two weeks since I’d knocked on their door at dawn, my mother had been my constant support. There for me when I’d needed someone to talk to and there for me in the silence when she’d known I’d needed to be left alone.