Where Lightning Strikes (Bleeding Stars #3)(86)

It wasn’t a question.

My mouth flapped open and closed, my mind still a buzzing whir of noises and realizations and hope.

“I didn’t mean to.” It spilled free before I could stop the admission, but as soon as I voiced it, I knew its truth.

I didn’t mean to fall in love with Lyrik West.

I’d run from it.

Fought it.

All the while he’d been the one to fight for me.

It was so difficult to reconcile. The boy who I felt as if I could go to for anything, the one who’d protect me with his last dying breath, up against the one who kept himself so shut off. Sheltered and fortified behind his own walls.

Light laughter rippled from her delicate mouth. “We rarely do.”

Her brown eyes softened as she tilted her head. “I doubt very much he meant to fall in love with you, either.”

Hope whipped into a frenzy.

I shook my head to clear it.

No.

She was wrong.

“I’m pretty sure I’m just along for the ride,” I told her, trying to blink away the moisture gathering in my eyes.

Weak.

That’s what he made me.

“Are you sure about that? In his entire life, my son has only brought two girls here. And the first one? That boy was head over heels in love with her.”

The pain ripping through me was the worst sign. It felt as if my chest was being shorn into a thousand tiny pieces.

I had to be an idiot.

But I knew the risk—coming here—I reminded myself. I learned a long time ago not all skies after a storm are painted in rainbows.

“Has he told you about her?” she asked.

Fiercely, I shook my head.

Her expression lifted in sympathy, but it was clear she wasn’t surprised, and she took a tentative step forward. My gaze was drawn back to the window. Outside, I saw Lyrik laugh, the tender way he looked at his sister and niece.

The pain within me only amplified.

“Tamar, I’d never tell you that about her to hurt you or make you feel like you’re less, and maybe I shouldn’t say anything at all,” Katy continued cautiously. She edged in closer behind me.

“I’m telling you because it means something he brought you here. More than something…especially after everything he’s been through. And I’m not one to go making excuses for my children. Lyrik made terrible mistakes with her. Mistakes he’s been paying for ever since. Mistakes I’m sure he’s going to be paying for, for the rest of his life. But he loved her. Loved her like mad. So often, that first love feels like it’s the most important thing in the world, when in reality, it’s only there to give us a glimpse…to prepare us…for what it’s really going to feel like when we meet the one we’re supposed to spend our lives with. Because it pales in comparison.”

My throat constricted. So tight. I tried to breathe around it.

Katy’s tender voice swelled in the room, as if she were lost to the same scene happening in her backyard as I was.

“You know, when Mia got pregnant…she wasn’t even eighteen. Lyrik was so protective of her. He’d always been. He would have dropped everything to come take care of his sister when that useless boyfriend of hers dumped her the day she found out about Penny.”

Knowingly, she grinned my way. “Little bastard, he was lucky Lyrik didn’t skin him alive.”

Her voice softened again. “When Penny was born, Baz had just gotten out of jail after all that trouble those boys went and got themselves into.”

God, I wanted to ask about that, too.

It was so much more difficult traversing something when you were going in blind.

“Things were just starting to move along for Sunder,” she mused. “Them gaining national attention and their label picking them up. Lyrik wanted to up and move us into a big house. Take care of us. But this has always been our home. And more important than that, Mia needed to find her own way, even though she’s still looking for it.”

Everything about her slowed in emphasis as her head inclined toward the window. “Same way as he does. And maybe that way has always been pointing to you.”

Stunned by her words, I turned to look at her. She’d only met me today. And I could almost hear forever whispering from her tongue.

My gaze trailed out the window. For a moment I stared, before something in my periphery caught my attention.

They were sitting below the window off to the left amid a bunch of other trinkets. There were two of them. The same handmade bears like the one I’d found in Lyrik’s apartment. The same kind he’d made for Sebastian and Shea’s son. These two were obviously well used, one plainly made for a boy and the other for a girl.

I could almost picture Lyrik as a wild, spirited boy running through the house with a cape on his back, his little sister toddling behind, trying to keep up, as they both dragged the bears along with them.

Make it if you want it to matter.

Overwhelmed by it all, I whipped around to look at her.

“What’s the song on his arm? The name?” I demanded it before I could stop myself.

Sadly, she shook her head. “Now that’s not my story to tell. But look at you…”

For a second, I recoiled, slammed behind a wall of defensiveness. A flash of Red.

But her expression was the furthest from judgmental. “Sweet girl…I see you…trying to cover up the things you wish you could erase.”