The ceiling fan whirs like a taunt as I form my answer. “I don’t want to do that either. I mean, I enjoy playing guitar and singing. But not for an everyday career. Even a whole night can make my brain hurt. A lifetime isn’t appealing.”
He flops onto the bed—the whole mattress relenting to his formidable stature—and rips the pillow away from me. “Enough dancing. Why is this such a hard question?”
“If I say it out loud, it might make my dream seem small. And it’s never felt small.”
His whole face twists with compassion. “Nothing you do could ever be small, Little Moon. Simply because you did it. Everything you touch shines.”
Yep. He’s falling in love with me or getting buried. That’s all there is to it.
I lick my lips and glance away, far more nervous than I’d like to be. I’ve never told anyone other than Jax this.“You know I lost my parents young. It was especially hard, growing up without my mom. I adore my brothers. They gave me an incredible life, but what I want more than anything is to be a wife and mom and be present every single minute.”
His fingers clamp on to my jaw, angling my face toward him, and I catch an indiscernible glint in his cognac orbs. “There’s nothing small about that. It’s …” A sigh tumbles past his lips—not a relieving one, a lamenting exasperation. He sweeps his knuckles across my cheek before leaping off the bed. “There’s no job more important. Ivy, Celeste, my whole family would echo that. And you’ll be an amazing mom.”
All my insecurities about not really knowing what that role entails creep up, but I don’t want to fish, so I hang on to his, “Everything you touch shines,” sentiment and stay quiet.
After taking a seat back in the chair—one arm slung over the side and his toned legs spread wide—he glides his thumb over his lower lip as he stares at me. “How’d your parents pass away?”
I’m not sure why that surprises me. It’s a logical follow-up question. It’s just not an event our family typically shares. But I’m still swooning over the no-job-is-more-important viewpoint and the getting-to-know-each-other-better request, so I spill.
“Our house burned down.” That’s the simplistic explanation, but it doesn’t feel like it lends an adequate slant of devastation to the night that shaped me.
“Only your parents were home?” he asks, his tone so serene that it lulls me into a trip back there.
“Axel took us all to our lake house without my parents. He dida lot of stuff like that with us. It was late, so we were supposed to be settling down. Jax and I were in our pajamas on the bed while Cash was flipping channels and caught the news report. It was a massive fire, but Maddox was the one who noticed it was our house and made Cash stop. My first thought was that my stuff was burning. It was all I cared about. My dolls and toys. My six-year-old world. Most of it wasn’t important, except Mom’s guitar that she’d let me strum with her help. I still think about that.”
I clear my throat and shimmy upright to rest against the headboard, keeping myself covered while I indulge in a quick sip of the sweetened coffee. “Anyway, the reporter announced that they’d found people inside. I couldn’t make sense of it. Mom was supposed to be meeting us at the lake. So, maybe it was only Dad—still devastating, but different. Maddox started cussing, something about Dad having one of his whores at our house. I’d heard them use the word before, but didn’t really understand. Cash insisted that Dad had the whole resort, the club, that he’d never bring a woman home. But that reporter kept saying bodies.Two bodies had been found inside.”
The memory slithers around me, a chill escorting it as the ill-fitting pieces try to jam together. “I’m not sure how it all happened. Or how long we watched the coverage. My memories are likely mixed up and distorted. But the four of us were mesmerized by the flames until Ryker busted into the room, cussing and shutting off the television. He swept me into his arms, and as I cried against his neck and Jax hugged his waist, he kept promising that he and Axel would always take care of us. That’s all I remember.”
“I’m sorry you all endured that,” Ty coos, pulling me back to him. “Childhood trauma never really leaves us. I’m sure that’s been hard to work through.”
Other than some time on a therapist’s couch because Axel was obsessed with me being scarred by the loss and unhappy with my coping mechanisms, I’ve never discussed this with anyone outside my family. But Ty is no stranger to trauma.
“We had each other,” I say and immediately regret it becausethat is clearly not his story. “I mean … it was hard … the image never completely fades, but we’ve done okay, managed to grow from it.”
“You’ve done better than okay.” He pauses for a minute, his chest rising and falling. “Where was Axel that night?”
It’s the same thing I was wondering, but Ty asking it knots me into suspicion. He’s hunting for what I know. Which means he’s privy to the fact that there’s more to this story. And he’s here, what, under the guise of getting to know me? No. I’ve felt his genuine emotions, but he isn’t being transparent with his motives. Maybe he’s withholding answers, like everyone else.
Spotting my tank top, I grab it and slide it over my head while keeping the sheet over my chest. “Like I said, my memory is spotty at best. Probably in the other room.”
“That makes sense,” he allows.
“Besides,” I go on, “after Ryker set me down, I sprinted for the lake and dove off the dock.”
“You dove into the lake, fully clothed, in the dark. Why?” His lips twitch with mirth, which pleases me because my art of diversion is masterful.
My reasoning for that dive isn’t all that funny, I guess, but it served its purpose.
When I was tucked in Ryker’s embrace that night, I wished I hadn’t seen that damn news report, that I could’ve had even ten more minutes to pretend my parents were alive and that our family was whole. That my mother’s arms would still rock me, that her music would be my daily song. But since that wasn’t an option, I jumped into the lake with my pajamas on, wreaking a few moments of havoc so everyone had to put their grief on hold.
On the day my parents burned to ashes, I learned three things—not that I could have verbalized them at the age of six, but the seeds were planted nevertheless.
The first was that you were only guaranteed the moment you were in, which was both liberating and terrifying. Things left unsaid, undone, might forever be unsaid and undone, so why hold back?
That revelation led me to my second ingrained truth: Spending that lone snippet of time to confront something painful could only return pain. No other side of that pain was ensured, so wallowing must be limited.
And finally, my big takeaway arrived with an oomph. My mantra. Freedom could be found in both forgetting and leaping. Which is why I ended up splashing in the lake in the black of night, breaking our chains, if only for a few minutes.
