A Stone in the Sea

by A. L. Jackson

  In a flurry, Kallie flung the door open and darted back out, her little feet pounding on the hardwood floors, becoming a distant echo as she barreled up the stairs.

  The moment she disappeared, my hand shot out to the counter to steady myself. It felt as if my insides were being contorted by the effort it took to pretend I still remembered how to fully breathe in front of my daughter. My head dropped, and I swallowed down some of the agony trying to work itself up and out, this overwhelming, shocking grief that I’d been completely unprepared for.

  It only throbbed in the well of my chest, pressing firm and fast and ferocious, the aftermath of loving too freely and losing too soon.

  God, it was the truth.

  I wasn’t prepared.

  Wasn’t prepared for how this was actually going to feel.

  Something bitter tried to take hold.

  Pretending.

  I guess Sebastian had me pretending, too. That was the part that hurt the most. He couldn’t even admit what we’d shared was real. Even if neither of us had been straightforward about the outside forces affecting our lives, that didn’t make it anything less.

  Footsteps slowly approached, and April eased up behind me and slid her arms around my waist, her concern wrapping me whole. “Are you okay?”

  No.

  I wasn’t okay.

  As much as I tried to act like I was, I was not okay.

  The realization hit me hard. Tears that felt as if they’d spent an entire lifetime being held back broke free. They streaked down my cheeks as a sob burst from that festering well, and I buckled at the middle, pressing my hand to my mouth as if I could push it all back inside.

  Eight days had passed since Sebastian had left me. Eight days of sleepless nights. Eight days of pretending to Kallie and April that everything was all right when inside I was completely coming apart. Eight days of skirting Tamar’s questions and dodging Charlie’s worry. Eight days of quietly succumbing to this broken heart.

  Eight days.

  Eight days.

  Eight days.

  Now there was nothing I could do to hide it, no longer anything I could do to avoid it.

  He had scarred me. I’d always known he would, but like a fool I’d embraced it, just a simple, silly girl who’d somehow romanticized it, thinking those marks would somehow become a balm. I had foolishly thought the memories would be seared so deep they would last, eradicating my loneliness, those stolen moments enough to preserve and endure and verify.

  But no.

  Those scars were nothing but a hole, one threatening to cave in and bury me alive.

  Chest shaking, I heaved over a sob, and April held me tighter. Her voice was rough. Low. Urgent. “I hate this, Shea. Hate him for doing this to you.”

  Her words were like fuel to the fire, and I shuddered with the grief that swelled and crested. Rushing over me. Wave after wave after wave. “He’s such a coward,” I gasped through the tears, angry, hurt, and confused. “Why couldn’t he just love me?”

  All those insecurities came flooding in, and my head was suddenly full of the pictures I’d binged on behind locked doors every single night, my desperate eyes feeding from them as I frantically searched page after page on the Internet.

  His face.

  His face.

  His face.

  All those girls.

  He’d told me he was no good, and it was evidenced time and time again—the life he led, the one he’d warned me of, paraded in front of me like insult. Like a quick succession of slaps to the face.

  “He is a complete fool, Shea,” April whispered harshly, as if she could break through to me, make me see. “He will never find a better girl. Anywhere,” she emphasized. “I don’t care who he is or who he knows. He is the one who’s missing out.”

  But that was part of the problem, because I already knew what he was missing. Knew the way Sebastian had looked at me as if he were memorizing, too, like he’d needed me just as desperately as I’d needed him, both of us having no idea what we were lacking, what we needed, until his intensity had called me home.

  I was angry that he’d left, that he’d been a coward. But now I was hurting for him, too. I knew I had filled a hole, if only briefly, for him. I knew he’d used me to hide from his pain, and I’d been willing to hold him, keep him, love him. Especially if it helped him heal.

  Even if it broke me.

  Slowly I shook my head, whimpering through the words. “He didn’t make me any promises he didn’t keep, April. I was the one who let myself go. I was the one who fell in love with him, knowing he was never going to love me back. Knowing he couldn’t stay.”

  I just didn’t know what it was he was returning to.

  I hated that he’d been so bluntly brutal when he’d again pointed it out, when he’d glared down at me with the intent to crush all those simple, simple dreams that had blossomed too full.

  Becoming too bright and vocal and vibrant to ignore.

  Until those dreams went spilling over to him.

  Hated he’d fucked me like it meant nothing then turned around and walked out.

  It made me feel cheap, just a foolish country girl who’d taken up his time while he was hiding away.

  April slid around to my front, pushing back the hair matted to my face, her head tipped to the side in understanding. “You’re too good, Shea. And it’s my job as your best friend to hate him for you if you can’t do it yourself. Someone needs to just because he made you feel this way.”

  Sympathy filled up the weight of her smile, and I choked over a stuttered laugh. “I hate him a little bit, too.”

  Hated the decision he’d made, the one that had caused him to walk away.

  “You won’t feel like this forever,” she promised. “You will find someone who’s going to love you back. Someone who loves you the way you deserve to be loved. Someone who loves Kallie the way she deserves to be loved.”

  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. I
t 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.

  While my face remained just above the surface.

  Where I brushed on beauty and light and life.

  Refilling my tray with another round of drinks at the bar, I angled back into the crowd where I delivered them, then set my tray on a table that had recently been abandoned, a slew of empties of all different sizes piled on the high-top table. Carolina George was playing my favorite song, the one that gripped me with melancholy, the one I always felt compelled to sing along to under my breath.

  But tonight…tonight while I cleaned that table with my back to the stage, I felt my mouth moving, the words slipping free. No one could hear me above the riot of noise, anyway, but there was something freeing in the form. Freeing in the fact that I was letting myself go.

  That gorgeous song trailed off in its somber finale while I slowly swayed, lost in it, lost in the power that struck like a chord in the dense air.

  Emily spoke into the mic. “We’re going to take a short break and we’ll be right back with you.”

  Applause lifted around me, and I ducked my head as if it would make me invisible, taking the time to tuck that feeling back deep inside my chest. I tossed a rag to the table, wiping it down while a rush of energy stirred through me.

  A clamor took over at the stage, spilling over into the crush of people who gathered at its foot. The high-pitched screech of feedback from a speaker set up on the stage sent my nerves racing, the confused rustle of bodies setting me on edge.

  At the mic, a throat was cleared. Deep. Deep. Deep. I realized the sound had hit my ears, but really I felt it. Felt all that strange intensity sucking the air from the room, rippling as a billow of curious energy through the crowd before it powered into me.

  Chills lifted at the nape of my neck with the light strum of a guitar.

  Words came rough where they were muttered into the mic. “Forgive me for stepping in this way, but I have something I’ve got to say.”

  My heart stopped dead before it took off at a sprint.

  Another light strum of guitar followed by the same voice that’d held me hostage in my living room weeks ago. The same voice that held me hostage in my dreams. The same voice that haunted and comforted and dwelled like a ghost in my mind.

  That beautiful, beautiful voice for a beautiful, beautiful man.

  Rich and soft, hard as steel, a velvet blade cutting me straight through.

  Life… Life passes by. Set in stone, but without direction.

  I… I close my eyes. Get lost in a storm, that I never saw coming.

  This…this wasn’t angry and aggressive like all the songs I’d listened to again and again when I’d been hidden away in my room with buds pressed into my ears, lost to his voice until I’d deciphered every violent word.

  No.

  Tonight it was sorrowful and filled with the same kind of hurt that had plagued me for days. These words fell over me like a dark cloak of regret, blinding my eyes and trapping me to the spot.

  Emotion fisted me everywhere—heart and lungs and soul—and a wave of dizziness rushed me as my legs shook.

  Slowly, I turned toward the source of the voice, carefully, worried if I moved too fast it might fracture this fantasy.

  My throat throbbed with the sight in front of me.

  Sebastian was on stage.

  Here.

  In Savannah.

  At Charlie’s.

  He’d dragged a stool up to the mic and had an acoustic guitar propped on his thigh, one boot hooked on a stool rung and the other bracing himself on the ground.

  A single spotlight lit him up, everything else darkened to a near black, because this man was the only thing I could see. His invasive presence struck me with all his severity. His arms corded and taut, the color imprinted on his skin twitching with tension.

  My gaze took in his face as if I’d glimpsed beauty for the first time, all sharp angles and defined lines and warped, harsh perfection. And that mouth…that pretty, pretty mouth just kept pouring out words that slammed into me, one after the other.

  Regret.

  Shame.

  Confusion.

  Lust.

  Those strange grey eyes roved the darkened crowd that couldn’t appear to be anything more than silhouettes, but it was as if he felt me, was seeking me out. I whimpered when they locked on me, finding me, and the tether that tied us together stretched thin, awareness erupting between us.

  Pulling.

  Pulling.

  Pulling.

  A tremor rumbled all the way to my bones, and I pressed my hand to my mouth as he told me things in a song that he’d never had the courage to say before. And they were honest and bold and packed with turmoil.

  Please… Please lift me up. Don’t have the heart to let you go.

  Don’t… Don’t make me say it. ’Cause I don’t know what these feelings mean.

  I was in so deep. Drowning in the turbulent waters that were Sebastian Stone.

  My face no longer breaking the surface.

  And I had no idea if I would make it out alive.

  As i
f he felt my torment, the song broke off in an awkward fumble and his face twisted in regret, sharp and defined.

  “Shea.” It sounded as a prayer. A petition.

  Curiosity rolled through the bar, shoulders swiveling and eyes searching as they tried to interpret what was happening.

  Sebastian never looked away when he slowly stood, setting the guitar in a stand, his movements determined as he slid off the front of the riser and dropped to the ground. The sea of bodies parted, his stride long and purposeful—and somehow cautious—as he made his way to me.

  And I stood there shaking, moisture gathering in my eyes.

  My heart beating wildly.

  Madly.

  He stopped a foot away.

  Swallowing hard, I turned and began to walk, knowing he would follow. I passed by the end of the bar and rounded the corner into the faintly-lit hall. I stopped midway, still facing away. The walls were narrow and the ceiling low, the heat of his presence torrid and red, and if it was possible, that intensity only grew as he slowly advanced from behind.

  “Shea,” he whispered.

  My hands fisted at my sides. “What are you doing here?” I demanded, my voice cracking halfway through.

  His answer brushed across the shell of my ear. “It’s where you are.”

  Simple, simple dreams.

  They were so easy to crush, but not so easy to kill.

  They flickered and flamed and danced and sang, and a shudder hit me with the force of them.

  The smallest piece of me wished that they had died because the rest were all-too eager to put all my faith into them.

  A big hand wrapped around my wrist. Desire and fear pumped fast through my veins. Slowly he turned me, gaze catching mine before he pulled me into the safety of his chest, his strong arms wrapping me tight. He smelled like warmth and man and mayhem.

  A breath left him that fell with the weight of relief.

  “Shea,” he murmured roughly into my hair.

  I clutched his shirt, and I was unsure if I wanted to scream and shout and yell at him, pound out all my pain against his chest, or lock my arms around his waist and beg him to never let me go.

  “I missed you,” I said, choking over the words. “I missed you so much.”