by Lila Felix
We stopped at the railing where the walk overlooked the Mississippi River and gave us the best view of the bridge.
I stepped sideways, needing to distance myself from her or I’d never get it all out.
“I need to tell you some things Ash.”
She smiled her never failing contagious grin, and it made it hard to continue.
I swallowed hard, readying myself. “I’m not gonna dance around it. You know who I am. You saw the worst of me before you saw anything else. I just don’t want you to jump back in this with me thinking that I’m completely better. I’m not and it will be a long time before I ever am. I just want you to weigh your options. Don’t get stuck with me if you think everything is gonna be roses, ‘cause I can pretty much guarantee that they won’t. I guess what I’m saying is, if you want to bail, do it now. Don’t waste anymore of your life on me if you don’t want to.”
Her knuckles were white on her right hand as she wrung the railing back and forth as I spoke. Her face had blossomed red, not the faint pink blush I’d come to expect after we kissed or said something faintly naughty. This was the cherry red of an angry woman—I thought. I’d never seen her angry. But when her finger needled my chest when she started ripping into me, I knew for sure.
“Breaker James Collins you are seriously pissing me off. Who do you think you are that you can just dismiss me after all we’ve been through because you’ve decided to have some kind of post-loco pity party? In what world have I made you think that I’m just gonna bail on you? If I was gonna bail, I would’ve done it the day your snooty assed mom sat at her polished desk and basically told me to handle you. But at that point I’d already fallen for you a little, you were so damned sad.” Her voice had come down increment by increment as she spoke. By the time she finished, it was a mix of whisper and whimper.
“I’m sorry. I just wanted to give you a fair chance to back out.”
She grabbed the front of my shirt and pulled me to her with more physical strength than I thought she had in her.
“Back out? Back out? I think you need some damned perspective. You’ve always assumed that this was all about you. Let me set you straight. You see the parts of me that I’d learned to hate and called them heaven. You listened to the words that others complained about and begged me to talk to you more. You see me Breaker. The world sees my voice and my incessant blabbing and my clingy social skills, but you see me. So this isn’t all about you, your Highness.”
I couldn’t stand to see her this upset so I did the only thing I knew how to distract her. I kissed her until I felt her body let go of its resistance and melt into me. I pulled back, and looked her deep in those chocolate eyes.
“You’re stuck with me then for a long time. I’m not talking about months here Ash. You’ve got me for good.”
“You know what just happened?” She said, smiling through her tears.
“What?”
She ran her thumb over my lips and pecked me once, a whisper of a kiss, “Finally Breaker James, finally, I knocked and you answered the door.”
“I wasn’t listening before. I will listen for your knock from now on—I promise.”
We spent the rest of the night just reveling in being back together. There was so much more I wanted to say to her. So many more things I wanted to ask her. But as I stood there, overlooking the river, content for once in my life, I realized that I had a life now. I had the hope of a life with her, not because of her.
~~~
We dated for almost a full year before I asked her to marry me in front of our friends and family at her graduation party. She accepted and I knew that whoever gave Ashland the middle name Hope did it for a reason. She touched everything and everyone with her love and gave them hope for something more.
Epilogue
Ashland Hope Collins
Five years Later
He was in the damned greenhouse again. The flowers were now grating on my last nerve. I sighed to no one, “Who am I kidding there isn’t very much that doesn’t crawl all over my nerves lately.”
He worked from home, which was ironic to say the least. He’d gotten his M.B.A. from LSU and worked for his dad’s software company. I was a vet now. Breaker’s dad set me up with my own clinic and I’d paid him back every cent. But I had been put on maternity leave by my doctor early since I was wider than the broad side of a bus and could barely walk.
I got up and waddled to the kitchen for a glass of milk. I was told to drink tons of water because of the swelling but even water gave me heartburn and I was so tired of my throat being on fire. The older lady next door told me it meant the baby had lots of hair. She told me that every single time I saw her. I wanted to remind her that all mammals had hair, but I refrained.
I laid on the couch and propped my feet up. They felt like water balloons that I’d overfilled and were close to bursting. I flipped the channels incessantly before settling on some show about crooked waiter and waitresses caught on camera.
Breaker and I were not looking forward to the labor. Me, because I really didn’t find the idea of pushing a human out of my body appealing. Him because after all this time he still got the creeps at hospitals. But he would have to suck it up, squeezing another person out trumped his hospital phobia every time.
He didn’t have to see Dr. Mavis anymore, which was good since she’d retired last year. He was still hesitant about crowds but would tolerate them if it was somewhere I wanted to go. Not that I wanted to go to the hospital but again, he’d just have to deal with it.
See what I mean? I’m such a meaner lately.
I heard the back door open and close. He placed a vase of orange roses with magenta tips on the coffee table across from me.
“You need anything?”he asked, smiling. What in the hell was he smiling at?
“No. Why are you smiling? I don’t see anything to smile about Collins.”
“You don’t?” He looked a smidge disappointed in my response.
I was on the verge of crying for no reason—again, “I see cankles. I see hairy legs because I can’t reach them to shave. I see this maternity dress barely stretched over my belly, which either means I’m too big or they lied about the maternity part of this dress which makes them filthy, filthy liars. And I’m so sick and tired of crying for no reason. And I’m tired of knocking back Tums like they’re actually helping me. And I know you see the ugly, don’t lie.”
“There you go again, all out of perspective. I see a stomach swollen because it’s keeping our baby safe and warm. I see puffy feet and ankles because you insist on making me go to Sonic for loaded chili cheese curly fries that are full of salt—not to mention the cheesecake milkshakes. But I just can’t tell you no. And I offered to shave your legs for you but you said no, mumbling something about me not wanting to touch you anyway—complete bullshit by the way. So that one’s null and void.”
Ugh, he was so sweet, even his sweetness pissed me off.
“You know what else I see when I look at you?”
“Whale? Manatee?”
“Of course not. I wish you could see yourself through my eyes.”
“What would I see?”
He sat on the floor by my head, next to the couch, and kissed me gently. He was so careful with me lately and I really had no room to complain. But the wretched words just seemed to tumble from my mouth without restraint.
“This family is what we worked so hard for. You and me and Ellis,” he rubbed my stomach and it always made me feel better, his warm hands on my stretched skin. We’d decided to name our son Ellis, it was the first and only name we’d come up with. “Every time I look at you. Every time I see you rubbing your belly. Every time I see the ultrasound picture on the refrigerator. I take a second and just look at the glory. You taught me that. We’d finish something and then we’d take a step back to look at the glory. So take a step back Ash—all I see is glory.”
The End.
AnguiSH Playlist
Self-Esteem / The Offspri
ng
You Were A Kindness / The National
Aurora / A Silent Film
Tell Me Baby / Phosphorescent
Pull Me Down / Mikky Ekko
I Will Always / The Cranberries
Plowed / Sponge
Curse Me Good / The Heavy
Lithium / Evanescence
Human Emotions / Digital Daggers
Pain / Three Days Grace
I Talk Too Much / Just Jack
Lonely Boy / The Black Keys
My Medicine / The Pretty Reckless
Honest / Band of Skulls
Love is Blindness / Jack White
Shell Suite / Chad Valley
I Owe You This / Chad Valley
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Now a preview of Scorched Treachery the third in the Imdalind Series by Rebecca Ethington:
Scorched Treachery
By Rebecca Ethington
Imdalind Series, #3
Chapter One
It was the same dream. Always the same dream. I had been having the dream since Cail first marked my skin with the curse, the night Ilyan saved me from my father. After about twenty years I began wondering if it was some repressed memory, but I didn’t have blonde hair. My hair was dark, it always had been.
This dream mostly featured a beautiful little girl dancing in a meadow. She danced through the tall grasses with flowers in her blonde hair. I sat and watched with some guy who sat next to me. I would like to say the guy was handsome, but he wasn’t Talon, and no guy could hold a candle to Talon. Talon was tall and built like a football player. This man was sinewy, his coloring lighter. Besides, the mystery guy from my dreams was dressed like Henry the eighth and there was nothing attractive about that, he looked like a peacock. It didn’t look good then, and it wouldn’t look good now. Not like anyone would dress like that now.
The dream always started the same. I sat next to the man in my dreams as he talked, his mouth moving but no sound coming out. But then, the dream would morph. The girl, the man, and I would move from the meadow to a village, then to a marble lined room, and then to the darkness. It was in the darkness that I would begin to hear sound. It was the only sound the dream ever had; the screaming of the little girl as Edmund tortured her.
I would hear the screaming and see the man as he fought to save her, but in the back of my mind I knew I was fighting too. That was the only reason I never believed the girl was me. Because I was watching her, I wanted to save her.
The dream was the reason I never consented to try to have children with Talon. Not only was pregnancy a weird and uncomfortable prospect, but I was scared of what Edmund would do to a child. It was the same reason no one else had children. They were afraid of what Edmund would do to them too. Everyone had seen what Edmund had done to his own children. It wasn’t worth the risk.
The dream had always ended in the dark room, up until a few weeks ago when we first heard the screams of the woman in the tunnels below Prague. The woman yelled and begged and screamed. We could only listen as the woman pleaded, as she fought against those who attempted to make her give away Ilyan and Joclyn’s location.
No matter how hard we looked, we could never find them. The failure in locating them combined with Ovailia’s choice to keep the information from Ilyan, led to her removal as the další v příkazu, placing Talon in the ruling position. Something I was really not happy about.
Now he was gone all the time and the screams of the woman still echoed through the halls.
So the new ending to my dreams stayed. The screaming moving from one person to another before I would wake up and be allowed to scowl at the high ceiling of our room.
Except this morning that didn’t happen. This morning I was rudely awoken by the blasting of Ilyan’s phone playing ‘Hall of the Mountain King’.
Wait.
Ilyan’s phone.
I rolled over and kicked Talon, my magic surging through him. He jerked as I zapped him, my not-so-nice way of waking him up shooting him out of bed.
“Wyn,” he grumbled at me before he settled back into the bed for a moment, only to jump when the sound of the music hit his ears.
Talon’s fingers crawled toward the phone as he sat up, while I chose to stay laying, my eyes focused on him.
Yes, it was the middle of the day where Ilyan was. Yes, he was free to call whenever he wanted. But the fact that it was the middle of the night and he was calling the white phone that was a direct connection to Talon and not his shiny flip phone set my nerves on fire.
Talon grabbed the phone and pressed it to his ear, the skin connection triggering the magic and connecting the call.
“Ilyan?” Talon asked his voice drowsy but still on edge, my mood mirrored in his clipped words.
I waited, unwilling to move, hoping for something exciting – but knowing, absolutely knowing, that nothing positive was going to come out of this call.
“Princess Mudgy.” Talons voice was low, the statement making no sense to me. But I knew it shouldn’t. For all I knew it was a code word and if it was a code word...
I watched Talon as he listened to Ilyan talk, his shoulders knitting together more and more, his body language spelling danger to me. Talon stayed silent as Ilyan spoke, his voice a buzz through the phone before the line went dead. Talon never said anything more after the code words, the silence only knitting my nerves together more. He lowered the disconnected phone to his lap, his movements tense.
Talon didn’t turn to me, he didn’t say anything. He just sat with the phone in his hands, his knuckles white from clenching tightly around the small white box. I watched his wide shoulders flex, the tension never leaving and found my own fears growing.
The silence was painful. I wanted to hear, I wanted to pry, but I knew it wouldn’t be right. I placed my hand on Talons back, almost willing him to turn, to smile, but knowing it wasn’t going to happen.
“Meet you in my dreams,” Talon said, still not looking at me as he lay down and pushed his body against mine.
I was seriously on edge now. Whatever happened was huge enough that neither he nor Ilyan were going to put voice to it where they could be overheard. I lay down next to Talon and closed my eyes, letting the magic of the Tȍuha take me away to meet with him. My mind pulled right into his, the large expanse of the Münzenberg Castle Courtyard surrounding us.
Wispy projections of people walked around us, as Talon’s memories fueled the Tȍuha. The castle was whole and intact as it once was centuries ago, the cobbles of the road pristine. I was never alive in this castle’s time, but this was Talon’s mind, what he envisioned our Tȍuha to be.
“Talon?” I asked as he wrapped his arms around me from where we stood in the middle of the courtyard. His tense muscles strained against me as he held me, the movement not helping to ease my stress.
“They were attacked.” My body froze, my eyes flying open in shock. The stress that flowed between both of us was too much to contain and the people around us zapped into vapor, colors floating through the air as they disappeared, leaving us alone.
“Are they all right?” I asked. I didn’t want to hear the answer, I didn’t. I didn’t need to hear of injuries or brutal battles. I could already feel what hearing this had done to Talon.
He had reacted the same way a few years ago when Ilyan was captured by Edmund’s men. Talon had felt like a failure. Talon had been raised to guard Ilyan. It was his job, but Ilyan had dismissed him when he took me as his mate. No matter how much he tried, Talon could never move past what had been his entire life up until a hundred years ago. I knew he was doing it now, putting the words of blame into his own head, even though there was nothing he could have done.
Ilyan was far more powerful than even Talon. If I
lyan couldn’t protect himself than there was nothing that could be done. Except now there was Joclyn too, and I had no idea if she was capable of protecting herself or not.
Talon shook his head no in answer to my question, and while I felt my stress lessen a bit, Talon’s only increased. His muscles tensed, his arms pressed uncomfortably into me as he lifted me off the ground to his eye height. I wasn’t surprised to see the sparkling gloss in his brown eyes, the threatening tears trying to escape from him.
“It’s not your fault,” I said before he had a chance to let the words become a weight against him. He nodded once and held me against him again, his hold tight as his breathing slowed before he lowered me back down to the ground, releasing me.
He pulled away, the wetness gone from his eyes, his composure back. While it was nice to see Talon’s true emotion at times, more often than not I really wanted my big strong guy around. That was my job, build him up when he is down, and always love him. And I would always do that.
“Does he know who betrayed him?” I asked as Talon moved away from me, toward the large carved stone bench we always sat in. I followed him, my bare feet slipping against the slickness of the cobbles that lined the courtyard before sinking into the hard unrelenting seat next to his.
“No,” Talon answered simply. His hands bringing my feet onto his lap as he began to trace the dark marks that graced my left foot, their jagged swirls matching the ones that ran along the entire left side of my body.
“He wants me to watch for signs that someone might know what happened before we announce it. It’s probably our best chance at tracking them down.”
