I just closed my eyes.
Kenzie squeezed my hand until my pulse stopped racing.
And for the first time in days, maybe weeks, the rage loosened its grip, not because it was gone, but because it finally had somewhere to point itself.
Somewhere to go.
A direction.
A spark.
The beginning of something that would become a storm.
Chapter 50 - Tessa
By late April, the world had started to thaw, but I hadn’t.
Snow melted into mud.
Fence posts reappeared where drifts had swallowed them.
Birds returned to the fence line and sang as if nothing had happened.
But I still felt lost in the anger.
Like I was drifting from room to room without touching anything, eating only when someone barged in and forced a plate into my hands, and waking up every night from the same nightmare of headlights and shattered glass.
Today was supposed to be simple.
Sit on the porch.
Drink the meal replacement my doctor ordered me to consume at least once a day.
Try to breathe in a way that doesn’t hurt.
The baby shifted under my ribs, a slow roll that should’ve filled me with wonder, or fear, or something other than this dull, aching emptiness.I placed my palm on my belly automatically, feeling nothing.
And then I heard it.
The crunch of tires on gravel.
I froze, not expecting anybody and definitely not expecting...
A Bronco,Nate’s Bronco, was pulling into my driveway.
For a second, my vision went white.
My lungs lifted in my chest like they were trying to get out.
I gripped the porch railing so hard the wood groaned.
No.
No.
No, it couldn’t be.I wasn’t delusional.I wasn’t hallucinating.I knew he was gone; I saw him go.
But grief is a sick, cruel thing, and for one split second, my body, heart and soul betrayed me.
