My spirit thrashed its own dispute, refusing the idea, because the only thing I wanted was him. Wanted him to be the one who loved me. The one who loved Kallie. Because I loved him in that way, in a way that was resolute. Complete. Whole.
Kallie came barreling back in. She stopped short when she saw the scene in the middle of the kitchen. “Momma?” she whispered, fear filling up her tiny voice.
For eight days I’d been protecting her from seeing me this way. Shunning all the dark when I was standing in her light. But I just couldn’t fake it anymore.
April nudged me back and murmured, “Go on, you better get ready for work or you’re going to be late. I’ve got her.”
Nodding, I turned to look down on my daughter who was staring up at me, confusion and doubt in her eyes. I crossed to her and cupped her cheek, ran my thumb beneath her eye. “It’s okay, baby, don’t be scared. Mommy’s just missing her friend.”
“Baz had to go back to work,” she said as if it was a suitable explanation for the unbearable ache I’d felt since he’d walked out, because that was the same explanation I’d given her every single time she’d asked for him in the past eight days, which was often, and her asking for him had just worn me down a little more.
“And that’s why I’m so sad…because I miss him a whole lot.”
Much too innocent to grasp any of this at all, she whispered her reassurance. “It’s okay, Momma. He’ll get off work soon.”
I forced a bright smile, deciding that for now it was best not to correct her because I’d barely just pulled myself together, and telling her he was really gone would suck me right back under. I dropped a tender, lingering kiss to the top of her head. “I have to get ready for work.”
A grin took hold of her. “You better hurry or Uncle Charlie’s gonna be mad.”
Heat permeated the muggy room. My skin sticky. My heart heavy. A haze filtered through the thick air, a tinge of yellow cast from the muted lights hanging from the rafters above. Carolina George was back on the stage, and Emily’s strong, hypnotizing voice languished from the speakers. It filled me with a yearning unlike anything I’d ever known. Tonight, the familiar nostalgia that wrapped me tight every time she sang was almost suffocating.
People were packed wall-to-wall in the cavernous space, the old walls alive with the secrets they held.
My eyes trailed a path up toward the darkened ceiling that seemed to go on forever, an eternal void that held my own secret, as if this place harbored what had transpired that night forever in its shadows.
Without a doubt, that night had changed me.
Sebastian had changed me.
Altered who I was, what I believed, and what I wanted.
It was somehow liberating and bound me in chains all at the same time.
What a sad, twist of fate it had turned out to be. Sebastian was more afraid of his lifestyle than me.
But I guess when you loved someone, you were willing to accept all the pieces and factors and fragments that made them up, the sum of those adding up to the whole, and you were left with no choice but to wholly accept the total of that creation.
And in the end, I’d been completely willing to accept everything that amounted to Sebastian Stone, to face what it may bring, as long as it meant I got to be with him.
Funny how Sebastian had helped me overcome one of my greatest fears without him even knowing it.
The night passed in a blur. Emily’s soothing voice was really the only thing I could decipher. The rest of the sounds were just barely acknowledged—words, nods, and forced chitchat, motions meant to get me by.
Whether I felt up to it or not, I had a job to do, and Charlie had stood beside me for so many years, supporting and protecting and encouraging, and I wasn’t about to let him down now.
Each time I approached the bar, he watched me with that gentle fatherly concern, and each second I adored him a little more.
Each moment I respected Tamar a little more, too.
Because while they’d been the ones to issue me cautions, telling me to be careful when I’d just turned around and endeavored to be the most reckless I’d ever been in my life, neither of them did anything but continue in that support, as silent as it was, because I couldn’t bear to answer their questions.
They really didn’t need answers anyway, because they were obvious enough.
Sebastian was gone and I was not okay.
Two days ago when I’d fallen apart in my kitchen, I’d accepted it, but I realized now that in time, that sharp ache would fade and become a permanent part of me, those feelings dulled and blunted, though somehow they would remain just as significant.
I’d also resolved I would never regret loving him. Maybe it was foolish, but that didn’t mean it wasn’t right, and I’d found myself certain that all those scars he’d left me with might become precious after all. Because I was clinging to every memory as if it were a receding wave, toiling and struggling to stay afloat in the murky waters that threatened to sweep me away in the undertow.