“Actually, make it three.” Faith clicked her tongue. “What did the note say his mom dropped off.”
I nibbled on my bottom lip. “It’s not really something I feel right talking about. It’s really deep, and nothing really to do with us or me. More so what he’d gone through overseas.”
They both nodded. “But, how do you feel about him now?” Mags asked.
My heart fluttered at the thought of him. “Hearing his voice makes my knees weak. Seeing his face sends me into overdrive. I can't help but feel this way about him. It’s like he never left. His eyes are deeper than before. I remember how his hands brushed against my hand as we walked down the school hallway. He’s my soulmate. I knew it back then, and I know it now. Even if that sounds ridiculous.”
Faith knocked my knee with hers, and heat rushed to my face as I realized what I’d just said. “But hedidleave, Eve.”
Tears swam in my eyes. “I know. But I can’t ignore how I feel. I won’t. I have a chance to have him back in my life—at least in some form. I’ve missed him, so much.”
It sounded ridiculous, to be hung up on a man who up and left ten years ago. But he was more than a high school sweetheart or a fling. We connected on a deep level and understood each other more than anyone else. It killed me not knowing what he went through while he was gone. It was stupid to have ever tried to move on from him.
“Well, I hope you can work it out. I know how much you loved Flynn.” Mags smiled, hesitating before she continued, “I have some news… it’s about Gerald.”
“Gerald.” That name left a bitter taste in my mouth as bile lurched, burning my esophagus.
“He’s back in town. Just got out of jail.”
Her words sounded far away, and I felt the panic begin with the same damn cluster of spark plugs in my abdomen. My hands trembled as a paralyzing fear spread through my body like icy, liquid metal. “He’s in town?”
Faith scooted closer as Mags reassured me, “He can’t contact you or be within a certain distance of you. Your restraining order is still active for another year.”
I gulped. A year, and then I would have to get it renewed.Fuck.I squeezed my eyes shut. Gerald was a monster in human form. I could still feel the physical and emotional pain he was responsible for.
I shook my head and got up from the swing. “He doesn’t have any hold over me anymore.”
But if that were true, why did panic take hold of me when I heard his name?
Mags jumped to her feet with a grin. “Damn right!”
“He can’t hurt you anymore, Eve.” Faith climbed to her feet.
I took a deep breath. “Think the pizza’s here?”
Faith shrugged. “Let’s find out.”
We went back inside to join the guys and the little one. As much as I attempted to push the thoughts of Gerald to the back of my mind, he pushed through and haunted my thoughts. Even after a year of therapy and being out of his grasp, the mere thought of him shackled me with the same fear that kept me tethered to him for so long.
Iloathedthe woman he made me become, and I would not go back to being the shell of who I really am.
Dread crept down my spine as my stomach filled with lead.Where the fuck were they?I thumbed through the envelopes I had hidden under the old bench in the hayloft. I had a thick stack of forty-three letters. Only thirty-nine were accounted for. I checked, twice.
Adrenaline flooded my system; saliva thickened in my throat, and beads of sweat trickled down my brow. Those letters contained my deepest, sickest fucking secrets. They shared my personal feelings and every shitty detail of what I’d done overseas. Nobody could read them—not even who I addressed the letters to,especially not her.
Fear sat on my chest like a cement block. Emotional scars were written on those letters like a narrative, telling down to the last fucking detail of my life in the Army. Every soldier needed an outlet, a coping mechanism. My outlet was the letters. Ineededthem.
“Flynn? Are you in here?” Ma’s voice bounced off the barn walls.
My brows bumped together, and it clicked. Ma had seen those letters when I came home, and she watched me storm off to the barn. I was on autopilot, wasting no time as I bustled down the hayloft. Ma’s eyes were crinkled at the sides as she scrutinized my surely fuming state.
My shoulders moved up and down with my ragged breathing. “What the fuck did you do?” I seethed.
She flinched, her eyes wandering toward the stack of letters in my hand before she met my gaze with a guilty expression. “They were addressed to her. I thought… I thought I was helping.”
“Helping? You just fucked everything up!”
“Flynn, I’m sorry. I just thought—”
