Kiss the Stars

by Jackson, A. L.

And I tried to hold us both together.

  To keep us from falling apart. But we were already sinking in his devastation.

  With the fury that seeped from his pores.

  Rage.

  Hatred.

  Violence.

  Maybe it was the first time I truly saw them in him.

  That dark, dark intensity fierce in the night.

  True and real and terrifying.

  His wounds deep.

  Forever bleeding.

  He set his hand on my cheek, his thumb rushing across my bottom lip. “Do you get it now, Mia? Do you get it? What I’ve been trying to tell you? Why this can’t happen? I already lost what I’d been given to protect. And seeking retribution is all I have left.”

  The weight of his confession crushed down on my chest.

  He blinked hard, his hold tightening on my face. “And then you look at me. You look at me, and I don’t know how to walk away. Don’t want to hurt you.”

  “Then don’t.”

  “I can’t make that promise.”

  “Can you try?” I was begging. I didn’t care. Because I could feel it—what this had come to be. What he had come to mean.

  “And what if I fail you, too?” The question was pure, gutted grief.

  “What if you don’t?”

  * * *

  I woke up, startled, dread slicking my skin as I shot up to the empty bed beside me. Sheets and blanket rumpled, a divot in the mattress from where he’d lain when we’d fallen asleep.

  He was gone.

  Agony lined my insides.

  But little voices were flowing into my room, and I knew I didn’t have the time to wallow. I forced myself from the bed, aching in a way I wasn’t sure I knew how to handle.

  Knowing he would be gone.

  That he’d given too much.

  But after last night? I had a new understanding of what he’d meant when he’d told me he had nothing left to give, even though I ached for him to find refuge in me.

  In us.

  And at the same time knowing seeing my children just might hurt him too much.

  I pulled open the door only to stop in my tracks.

  Gasp leaving me at the sight.

  Leif was in the living room with my children.

  Greyson on his back and trying to tackle him to the floor, Penny giggling as she explained to him how to play the boardgame that was set out in the middle of them. Leif tried to balance Greyson on his back and listen to Penny at the same time, and both Brendon and Kallie were there, adding in their instructions.

  Warm, brown-sugared eyes found mine, like he felt me before I’d even stepped into the room.

  Heartache.

  Affection.

  The small room crowded.

  Overflowing.

  Abounding with something greater than I’d ever felt.

  Love.

  Thirty

  Leif

  It was getting harder and harder to separate.

  Time. Space. Devotion.

  Who the fuck I was supposed to be.

  There I was, sitting propped up on her bed strumming at my guitar like that was where I belonged.

  Wearing nothing but the jeans I’d pulled back on from where they’d been tossed onto the floor.

  Discarded while I’d gotten greedy.

  While I’d gotten lost in her sweet body again.

  Another summer thunderstorm rumbled the walls, quick flashes of bright light blanketing the windows, the disorder almost a calm.

  Every blip of light illuminating the girl who was curled up next to me.

  That tight, sweet body exhausted and spent.

  Her face sheer bliss where she slept.

  Kudos to me.

  Girl was radiating this joy that couldn’t be missed. Emitting that light that pressed into the dark.

  Had been this way for the last week. Neither of us able to get enough. Reaching for each other every chance we got.

  Pure, straight-up gluttony.

  No chance of gettin’ full.

  I glanced down at her, girl on her side, facing me. Waves of black hair strewn around her, and her heart beating this pace that sucked me straight into peace.

  That feeling gripped my black, bitter soul.

  Vacancy screamed.

  Begging me to just let go.

  Had the stark, striking need to play.

  To get lost in her decadent harmony.

  Girl a song.

  Surrender.

  I let my fingers play across the neck of my guitar as the other hand quietly strummed. My voice barely broke through the still of the night.

  Moved.

  Desolate.

  Would give it all up,

  If it would keep you from coming apart.

  Are you falling?

  Are you flying?

  Tell me, baby,

  Is it worth dying,

  For everything you’ve been living for?

  Is it, is it worth dying, for everything we’ve been fighting for?

  I fumbled through the chorus, the words I’d been searching for catching in my throat.

  Felt like I might as well have been touching her.

  Adoring her.

  Girl lying next to me a revelation. Something I never saw coming.

  How did we get here?

  Is it ecstasy?

  Blasphemy?

  Can you live in this bitter truth?

  Is it rhapsody?

  Heresy?

  Lying here next to you?

  Could barely get the lyrics to scrape free, their truth bottled deep, vying to be heard.

  Recognized.

  Accepted.

  I jolted out of the stupor when my phone lit up on the nightstand. The ringer had been silenced, and the flash dragged my attention to it.

  My chest tightened when I saw who was calling.

  Unease.

  Anticipation.

  Being careful to keep quiet, I slipped off the bed, setting my guitar aside and grabbing my phone before I quietly slinked out of the suite and out into the hall like a motherfucking snake.

  A cheater living a double life.

  No surprise there.

  But there was no room for an audience.

  Not for this.

  No chance I’d risk any one of them colliding with my past.

  When I was out in the silence of the hall, I accepted the call, not knowing if I should be sagging in relief or sitting on edge.

  “Brax.” Kept my voice quiet. Hushed in the night.

  “Yo, man. How’s it?”

  Perfect.

  Amazing.

  Torture.

  “Good,” I told him rather than dolling out the treachery.

  “You got news?” I forced out the question, turning to stare out the bank of windows that ran the hall.

  Pool was a dark, deep pit. Water a toil of energy.

  Trees tall, dark shadows that thrashed in the night.

  The yard nothing but desertion and rapid blips of light.

  He blew out a weighted breath, confession laced with caution. Like he hated to be the bearer of motherfucking bad news. “Got news, but I’m not sure you’re going to like it.”

  I waited.

  He stalled.

  “Just tell me, man.”

  Reluctance filled his admission. “Think it’s your mom who knows, brother.”

  Bitterness surged.

  Malice curled my hands into a fist, nearly crushing the phone. “You sure?”

  He exhaled, his voice quieted in secrecy while a party raged somewhere in the distance behind him, fading as he paced away from the mayhem of that world. “Can’t say for certain. But she cornered me earlier. Asked a bunch of pointed questions. Think she knows that I know where you are.”

  Worry and frustration coated his words. “You’ve been gettin’ reckless, man. You want to stay hidden, yet you’re strutting around in the limelight like you don’t have a damned care. You knew it was gonna come down to this. But
maybe this is exactly what it needed to come down to.”

  “What did she say?” I bit out.

  That she wanted me dead, too? Reiterate her loyalty to Krane?

  No fucking thank you.

  He hesitated. Like he had something different to say. “She’s claimin’ she’s worried about you. That she wants you to come back. That the two of you need to talk, lay it all out.”

  Loathing left me on a hard laugh. “She wants me, she can come and get me. Besides, what could she possibly have to say? What could she possibly do that would bring back my family?”

  The betrayal sliced through me so deep that I was pretty sure my guts spilled out onto the floor. Mess on the ground nothing but a snarl of venom and discord.

  Could feel the conflict halting his answer. “She said if I talked to you, to tell you that she would never have hurt them, and that she sure as hell would never hurt you. That she misses you.”

  “Bullshit.”

  “Is it though, man?” He sighed, paused, wary before he continued, “She said half a shipment has gone missing. Same as before, and she sure doesn’t sound like she’s on his side.”

  Rage slithered beneath the surface of my skin. Hatred lashing with every violent pulse.

  “He’s back at it, brother,” Braxton said, voice grim.

  “Then it’s time to end him.”

  And if that meant my mother going down with him? So be it.

  “We need to rethink how we do this. Think about it, Leif. It doesn’t fuckin’ add, your mother and Keeton. And my gut doesn’t lie. She was telling the truth.”

  Rejection of his statement battered my insides.

  As fierce as the wind that battered the window outside.

  Her betrayal vile.

  “Just . . . think about it, Leif, before you do something you can’t take back.”

  Ruthless laughter tumbled off my tongue. “Too late for that.”

  “It’s never too late if the deed isn’t done. Don’t mistake that.” He huffed out a sigh. “You’ve been living for revenge for a long, long time. I get it. I want it. But don’t let it fuckin’ blind you.”

  “It’s the only thing I’ve ever been able to see.”

  Until the only thing I could see was her. The angel in the attic.

  Guilt spiraled.

  Cut and slashed.

  Unable to say anything else, I ended the call and pressed my hands to the flat-plate glass, phone pinned to the window. Sucking for a breath.

  I glanced up just as lightning flashed.

  Torrential rain poured from the sky and pummeled the ground.

  Pool a riot of aggression that toiled and churned.

  But it was the dark figure standing on the opposite side of it staring back at me that ripped my heart from my chest.

  Vengeance filled the bleeding void.

  The memory of his face something I would never forget.

  Lightning flashed again a second later.

  Shadow was gone.

  I blinked.

  Narrowed my eyes as I focused to see through the blear of the rain.

  Motherfucker.

  Nothing.

  Now I was seeing things.

  Karma, that bitch, playing tricks.

  And I knew, without a doubt, I had lost my mind.

  That the threads I’d been clinging to had snapped.

  I jumped when I felt the movement from behind, and I whirled around.

  Penny stood in the doorway, her eyes squinted with sleep and her hair matted to a mess.

  “Penny . . . what are you doing awake?” Words were gruff. Barely breaking free.

  “I think I had a bad dream.”

  Heart still thundering somewhere outside of my body, I looked back over my shoulder, letting my eyes scan the yard.

  Nothing.

  Reluctantly, I turned away from the scene of my own nightmare, the ghosts so close to catching up. “Let’s get you back into bed.”

  She nodded, and I tried not to feel like some kind of trespasser when I followed her into her room, not to feel like an intruder as I lifted her covers and resituated them over her when she lay back down.

  And I tried with all of me not to feel like I belonged right there when I gently brushed my fingers through her hair, stared down at her cherub face, the small girl nothing but trust.

  “I’m sorry that you had a bad dream.”

  “Do you have them, too?” she whispered into the night.

  My nod was slow. “Sometimes, Penny. Sometimes I do.”

  Every fucking day and every fucking night.

  “You make it better when you’re here.” Her eyes watched me like she knew—the child with the ability to see all the way down into who I was.

  I just don’t want to make it worse.

  My soul screamed it. A prayer. A petition.

  I ran the pad of my thumb across the dent in her brow. “You make it better for me, too.”

  A smile played around her mouth. “That’s good. You make my mom happy, Leif, and I think she might make you happy, too.”

  What Braxton had revealed spiraled through my mind.

  The debt that was left to pay.

  What I owed.

  The sin I’d committed.

  Penny set those dark, dark eyes on me.

  Full of trust.

  Full of affection.

  My spirit thrashed.

  Because the only thing I wanted right then was to be good enough.

  Thirty-One

  Mia

  There was a knock outside the main door.

  Heavy.

  Filled with implication.

  I couldn’t stop my grin. The speed of my heart that decided it was a fine time to take off at a sprint. The excitement that blazed as I tossed the shirt I was folding onto the bed.

  I poked my head out into the living room. “It’s open.”

  As if I would ever shut him out.

  The door already rested open an inch, and he nudged it the rest of the way, the man filling up the doorway as he leaned against the jamb.

  Looking like the most decadent sin.

  Smirk riding on his lips while his jeans rode low on his waist. Though today he was wearing a button down, sleeves rolled up his masculine, sinewy arms.

  I worried there was literal drool running down my chin.

  That gaze raked me over like he was seeing the breaking day. “Trying to wreck me again, I see,” he grumbled in that low voice.

  Today it was a tease.

  I never knew if I was going to get him gruff and hard or light and playful.

  Didn’t matter.

  I’d take him either way.

  He’d been mine for the last three weeks. No questions. No reservations.

  Together.

  Our days and nights shared in the most blissful of ways.

  Testing and playing in those deep, dark waters.

  The fear hanging over our heads had dissolved into vapor.

  Back in L.A., an arrest had been made for a string of robberies. All of them had happened over the last month, and all of them within a ten-mile radius of the gallery. The detective was currently working to connect the man to the gallery’s botched robbery and Lana’s death.

  Since there had been no more close calls or threats, we had to believe everything that had happened here had been coincidence. Our nerves frayed. Relating every single bump in the night to the trauma that we had sustained.

  A sliver of unease rolled through my being.

  Honestly, I still couldn’t come to terms if it was right, if it was selfish and self-centered—finding this joy after Lana had been gone so soon.

  The bigger part of me had to accept that beauty was born of the ashes.

  That healing was found with those that most understood.

  This man had suffered the greatest loss.

  If he’d let me, I’d spend the rest of my life proving that love could come after tragedy.

  I knew we weren’t close to that.
<
br />   So often, he would get sketched out and withdraw.

  But each time, he just came closer.

  My blindingly beautiful falling star.

  A giggle slipped free as he stalked a foot into the room.

  God, he made me feel like I was.

  Free.

  As if I’d found everything I’d been missing and hadn’t known to look for.

  “It’s only fair, since you wrecked me the day that I met you,” I told him.

  I shimmied farther out into the room. Wearing a pair of cut offs that were short. A tank without a bra. No shoes on my feet.

  A needy growl rumbled in his chest.

  “Just what do you think you’re up to, Sunder Princess?” A smirk flirted around his sexy mouth.

  I turned, wiggling my butt just a bit, knowing that was all that it would take to get him to follow. I released a roll of light laughter as I talked to him from over my shoulder, “Um . . . laundry. You know, super princess-y duties.”

  Leif laughed.

  Laughed that sound that was quickly becoming my drug. “So high and mighty, aren’t you?”

  I giggled more, a needy breath leaving me when he planted his hands on my hips from behind, his face pressed into my neck.

  Tingles rushed.

  I slowly spun around in his hold, hiking up on my toes and stealing a sweet peck of a kiss. “I sure hope you don’t want me for my money.”

  He nuzzled in deeper, his nose running the angle of my jaw, words a whisper that quickened my heart into a frenzy. “We’ll just have to live destitute together.”

  God, I wanted to hold him tight, confess it sounded like the perfect plan. That I would live every day with him however we were going to be. Just as long as we were together.

  But I forced myself to ride on his lightness. To play along with his tease. I nipped his chin with my teeth. “What are you talking about, Drummer Dude? You are going to be a superstar.”

  Brown-sugar eyes danced, the man taking me by the hand and slowly spinning me around right in the middle of the room.

  I nearly fell straight into a swoon.

  “That what you want? A superstar?” he rumbled in his rough, magnetic way.

  My face pinched in emphasis. “No Leif, I just want you.”

  And there went my cool. Melted on the floor where I was a puddle at his feet.

  * * *

  Greyson was burning up. Crying and crying, hair drenched with sweat. “I sick, Mommy. I sick.”