Where Lightning Strikes (Bleeding Stars #3)

by A. L. Jackson

  His expression turned somber. “But it was so much more than that. And as much as I wanted to launch myself across that courtroom and tear that piece of shit to shreds, I knew you sitting up there on that stand, doing it yourself? It’s what you needed. Even when I knew I wanted to be the one there if you needed me. To catch you if you fell, even when I knew my girl was gonna stand.”

  My girl.

  The air whipped into a frenzy.

  And that feeling blazed.

  The thrill.

  I shivered as it rolled over me.

  Wave after wave.

  “I need to tell you something, Blue.”

  “You can’t—” I attempted.

  He edged forward, so damned tall and strong and so ridiculously soft. Those dark eyes were tormented as he reached out and grabbed both my wrists, hauling me forward.

  And I felt so small and vulnerable.

  Caged.

  “Please…listen to me.”

  I struggled and he held tighter though his tone softened. “Listen to me, Blue…I need you to hear this.”

  I gave. So fucking weak. Because that’s the way this boy made me.

  He gathered me closer and his voice dropped to a whisper as he uttered the confession at my ear. “I have a son.”

  His words slammed into me like a freight train that had no time to slow.

  They just blew straight through me.

  Impacting everything.

  “Brendon.” It scraped from my throat as that awareness took hold. The name woven through his song. The heart of his story.

  The word was reverent when he murmured it back. “Brendon.”

  He shifted, still holding me tight as he stared down at me. “Told you I fuck everything up, Blue. I take the good things I’m given then crush them. First day I met him? That was the day I had to tell him goodbye.”

  Pain radiated from him. A crestless wave. Endless. “I got to hold him once. Once, Blue. I didn’t get to keep him. Fuck, I wanted to so bad…but I had to give him up because it was the only thing I could do. The best thing I could do for him.”

  Tears soaked my face as he kept talking, “I made him a promise…I promised him he’d be the last person I ever fell in love with. In some twisted way, I thought it’d make up for something, condemning myself to my own personal hell.”

  I was shaking. Shaking all over.

  My heart breaking.

  For him.

  For the child.

  For the girl in the photo.

  Just the same as it swelled with jealousy.

  “You have a son,” I whimpered.

  He tried to draw me closer, as if that might be the only way he could get me to understand. “How could I go and find happiness after I’d left him? How could I, Blue?”

  Edging back, his brow twisted and pinched, gaze relentless. “But then there was you. This beautiful, bold, brave girl. Think I knew from the get go you were off limits. That I shouldn’t touch you. That I should stay away. Because I knew if I did, I wasn’t ever gonna be the same. And I’m not, Blue. I’m not. Because you changed everything.”

  My spirit thrashed, stirred by a sudden gust of wind. Tension winding fast.

  His expression locked in sorrow. “Look at you…”

  He brushed his knuckles across my cheeks, sending a rush of chills spiraling through my senses.

  Body and soul.

  “All I fuckin’ do is make you cry. Hurt you more. But I’m done, Blue. So fucking done with that. I know you think my apologies don’t count for anything, but this one…this one is all I have to give. I’m so fucking sorry for the things I said. For the things I did. I won’t try to make excuses or pretend the way I treated you was right…but I need you to know I was trying to protect my heart because I thought it could only belong to my son.”

  My chest heaved and he drew in a ragged breath. “And there you were, breaking up all the broken, brittle parts and making room for something different. For something better. Waking me up from the dead. Making me realize what it’s like to feel again. Making me feel things I’ve never felt before. You were making room for you.”

  “Lyrik.” It was so soft. Broken like this boy.

  Energy swelled. The storm gained speed.

  The buzz before the strike.

  My entire body shook, all my hopes floating to the surface, clashing with my fears. With that image branded in my memory, the picture of him and the girl, the words he’d said when I found it.

  Not you.

  “If you still love her—”

  He gripped my jaw, forcing me to stop talking and to look up at him. “No, Blue. I don’t. It’s you. It’s you.”

  Lyrik suddenly dropped to his knees on the grass.

  An offering.

  “Do you hear me?”

  And for the first time, I was the one towering above this intimidating man.

  Wind whipped through. Gathering strength.

  It was as if nitrogen and oxygen had come alive.

  Every element in the dense air combustible.

  Explosive.

  Chills raced up my spine.

  “I don’t know how to trust you.”

  But God, I wanted to.

  I wanted this boy as much as I wanted breath.

  But more than that, I wanted love. The real kind. I wouldn’t settle for anything less.

  His words were hoarse. “Let me prove it, Blue. Let me show you that every night, I want to be the one making love to you, and when you wake up in the morning, I want it to be me who has their arms wrapped around you.”

  His tongue darted out. Nervous but sure. “And when you wear a ring on your finger, I want to be the one who put it there.”

  Emotion swam in those eyes the color of pitch. Twilight and the sunrise. “And when you become a mother, I want you to be holding my child.”

  I panted.

  Overwhelmed by this man.

  This time it was my turn to drop to my knees.

  Floored.

  Gone.

  His.

  He gathered my face in his hands. Thumbs brushed the tears from my cheeks. “I’m in love with you, Tamar Gibson. Do you hear me?”

  I hear you.

  I hear you.

  “Be with me, Blue. Tell me you’re mine. Because I don’t think I can let you go. And there’s a good chance my son’s gonna be a part of my life. Because it was you who taught me what it’s like to be brave. That if I was gonna move on, I had to face my past. Share it with me, Blue. My past and my future.”

  He buried his face in my hair, mouth at my ear. “Please…don’t tell me no.”

  My voice was a rasp. “I couldn’t.”

  With Lyrik, I never could.

  He gasped out in relief, and he pressed a thick lock of my dark hair against his nose and laughed out this disbelieving sound. Breathed me in. Then he inched back so those unyielding eyes could take me in. The softest smirk lifted at one side of his mouth. But it lacked the threat. Warmed me through.

  This intimidating, malicious man who was so utterly soft.

  His words twisted with awe. “You’re so damned pretty.”

  Then that mouth was on mine.

  Kissing me in a way that was wholly profound.

  Soft and deep.

  Slow and hard.

  With a promise he would never let me go.

  The air crackled with energy.

  Light lit up at the edges of my eyes.

  Intense and alive.

  With the force of a thunderbolt.

  Where lightning strikes.

  And I felt so small. Scared. Yet strong at the same time. Witnessing this beauty unseen. Touching on an experience I only thought I’d observe from afar.

  Love.

  It was blinding.

  Powerful.

  It turned out this boy was the perfect storm.

  “Say it again,” I whispered at his mouth.

  Lyrik pulled back. I watched the heavy bob of his throat. The heave of his
chest. The severity in those pitch-black eyes.

  “Blue, you sing my soul.”

  YOU’D THINK WITH THE guitar playing and all, I’d be good at this.

  Nimble fingers.

  Quick hands.

  Not so much.

  A chuckle left me just under my breath, and I bit my bottom lip in concentration as I weaved the fat needle through the fabric. Creating a patchwork design. Every shade of pink. Ginghams and calicoes and solids.

  So, yeah. Guys might call me a pussy considering I know the names of all those prints. But you know. My mom.

  I gripped the needle between clumsy fingers, trying to keep it straight.

  Brendon laughed like it was the funniest thing he’d ever seen. “Dad…you’re doin’ it all wrong.”

  “What do you mean, I’m doing it wrong?”

  Against the table in the kitchen nook where we were working, he leaned in closer. Place looked like an entire craft fair had exploded in here. So maybe the kid and I had gotten a little carried away at the store.

  Sue me.

  “You’re putting the ear on backwards.”

  “Crap,” I muttered under my breath, and he cracked up. I rustled a hand through his hair. “Where’s your grandma when we need her?”

  Dark, dark eyes widened in my direction. Full of mischief. “Good thing not here, because she’d be rollin’ her eyes.”

  My jaw dropped in feigned offense.

  The kid was a little whip. Testing just how far he could take that sarcasm at every turn. Couldn’t help it. I thought it was the cutest damned thing in the world.

  “I’ll have you know, I made that bear…all by myself.” I pointed at the ratty, mangled thing he still refused to give up. “It’s been lastin’ for years. How’s that for someone who has no clue what they’re doing?”

  “You got lucky?” he shot back with a lift of his brow.

  “Oh, dude…you’re so going down for that.”

  He was grinning, getting ready to run, when my girl’s voice came floating through the heavy wooden door separating the kitchen from the rest of the house. “Knock, knock.”

  Guess most wouldn’t describe it as sweet, considering it was throaty and sexy as all fuck, just the sound of it raising chills. But that didn’t mean it didn’t land on me like honey.

  “Don’t come in,” Brendon yelled, slanting me a wry grin.

  “Are you still not finished?” she called back.

  “Nope,” he shouted.

  I could hear her exaggerated sigh, almost see her smile. “All right then. I’ll just be out here…lonely…waiting…by myself…all alone.”

  “Someone’s feeling a little overdramatic,” I playfully said with a wink at my son, and Brendon snickered quietly.

  “Think she just likes us,” he said a little innocently.

  But fuck.

  Yeah.

  Guess I got lucky enough, that after everything I’d done, that gorgeous girl did.

  “Here, buddy, why don’t you weave this one through?” I suggested as I fed a piece of pink ribbon through the eye of the needle.

  Tongue darted out to the side, Brendon finished weaving the last bit through the bear, then helped me sew in the eyes and mouth with black thread.

  “You think she’ll like it?” he whispered.

  “Think she’ll love it.”

  Both of them.

  “You ready to give it to her?”

  He scrambled down. “Yep.”

  He hid it behind his back as we made our way across the huge kitchen. It was a little country, done as a throwback to Savannah where we’d met, the cabinets white and the island sage, countertops gray. Felt homey. Lived in.

  Really, the entire expansive place felt that way.

  Warm.

  Home.

  Never really thought I’d get one.

  Never thought I’d deserve one.

  Thought I’d messed up too many times. Ruined too much good.

  And somehow…somehow I’d gotten it all.

  I followed Brendon through the sweeping foyer. Night pressed in over the windows—the city resting below—twinkling through the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows in the living and formal dining rooms.

  We passed by and ducked into the den that seemed to be Tamar’s favorite spot in the house. Cozy with a fireplace and plush carpet. Walls covered in big blown-ups of some of her favorite shots she’d taken over the years. Some of lightning. Others of us and the rest of our families and friends.

  A ton of Brendon.

  As I rounded the corner, my damned breath caught in my throat.

  Didn’t matter how many times I saw her. It was always a violent jar to my senses. She was bold and brash, a flash of a million brilliant colors shimmering in the night.

  Erotic and seductive.

  Pure and sweet.

  Angel with a little demon woven in between.

  So maybe I didn’t mind it all that much when Red came out to play.

  Tamar West was all those things.

  This perfect contradiction who would always hold me in the palm of her hand.

  She was sitting crisscrossed on the floor, her huge belly resting in the well of her legs, wearing a black tank top that hugged all her curves, mouth curving up as she saw us walk in.

  Well, I was walking in. Brendon was running. He slid onto his knees on the floor beside her. “We finished your surprise!”

  She pushed her fingers through his locks of dark hair. “You did, huh?”

  She slanted me a glance that sent a ripple of affection through me.

  Gripping my heart.

  Filling me with joy.

  Couldn’t quite explain what it did to me to see her with my kid. Seeing the way she loved him wholly, took him on as a part of her because he was a part of me, as shocking and sudden as his emergence into our lives had been.

  A week after I went to Arizona to get Tamar back, I’d gotten a call from Kenzie that Brendon wanted to see me. That she and Brad had explained to him who I was, as well as someone his age could understand.

  We’d taken things slow so Brendon could get used to me being a part of his life. All of their lives, really. I didn’t want to go barging in like some kind of selfish bastard, demanding time I didn’t deserve.

  Honestly, I had been surprised Kenzie and Brad were willing to give any at all. But Kenzie had always been that way, kind and wanting the best for everyone, and she thought the best for Brendon would be me being a part of his life.

  During that first handful of months, we’d established a routine. I’d go over to take him someplace cool a couple times a week when I was in town and have him spend the night at our place at least once on the weekend.

  Even after two years, we still didn’t have some court-appointed visitation. I just respected Kenzie and she respected me, and we let things take their course.

  No.

  Didn’t get to see him nearly as much as I wanted. But I cherished every single second I got.

  Blue tickled his sides. “Let me see,” she playfully demanded. She was doing her best not to laugh.

  Brendon messed with her for a few seconds, keeping it hidden behind his back, before that same tender expression climbed across his face. Same look he got when you knew he was feeling something deep. He stilled before he pulled the bear out.

  A little gasp shot from her. Even though she knew what we were making, considering she’d seen the two my mom still kept in her kitchen a thousand times, and Brendon’s, which he never let out of his sight.

  Still, moisture gathered in her eyes, and she accepted it from Brendon’s cupped hands, moving to gently cradle it on her lap.

  “I love it,” she whispered.

  “Really?” he asked.

  “Really.”

  Not able to stay away, I climbed down beside them. Brendon sat on his knees where he hovered over Blue, and I lay low on the other. Just taking in the moment.

  “Do you know what it means?” he asked, like he was getting
ready to tell her the greatest secret.

  “Tell me,” she murmured back.

  “Grandma says it represents a family being stitched together by a new birth.” He traced his finger over the blocks of pink. “Each piece of fabric represents the people who make up that family, and the ribbon is the love that binds it all together. She says they’re really good luck.”

  A wistful smile pulled along her mouth. “It’s beautiful. I bet this is going to be your sister’s favorite bear.”

  He touched a bright pink patch. “This is you,” he whispered, and moved onto another. “And this is Dad.”

  His grin was wide and excited. “And this is my baby sister.”

  She smiled at him. “And where are you?”

  “Right here,” he said, touching the small block of fabric.

  Making this family whole.

  Seemed crazy after how many years I’d lived alone, committing myself to suffering day after day in debt for what I’d done, that all those hollow places would be filled. So full I could scarcely remember what they felt like.

  There was a piece of me that hung onto them, though. No. Not because I remained in that tortured hell.

  These two?

  They’d resurrected me from it.

  But I did keep them as daily reminders to be thankful. To never forget family was a blessing. Never to be neglected or disregarded or treated as anything less than the most important thing in life.

  Because that’s what they were.

  Life.

  We all just hung out on the floor for a bit, chatting, the hour growing late. “All right, buddy, it’s time for bed,” I finally said.

  “Ah man,” he exaggerated. “Are you sure you’re a rock star? Because you’re not any fun at all.”

  Like I said.

  A little whip.

  Girls were going to be putty in this boy’s hands. Of course, Sebastian didn’t appreciate it all that much when I suggested Brendon and Kallie were the perfect match, the two thick as thieves and kinda perfect every time they were together.

  Chuckling, I hopped up onto my feet. “Oh, dude, you’re really gonna pay for that.”

  He was on his feet and racing from the room, flying up the curved stairs leading to the second floor. I chased him, reaching out and just missing him every time.