I’m standing now
On my own two feet
I don’t need you
To be complete
Alone I’ll stand
Alone I’ll be
I don’t have much
But now I’m free
When the words stopped coming, he’d managed a few rough verses. Needed work. Or not. The bitter truth of the words brought bile up to burn his throat. Tears smeared the ink on the paper. Reaching behind the front seat for his guitar, he paused. There in the back of the truck he found various mementos of his family.
No, not his family. Family didn’t abandon you.
With meticulous precision, he removed the reminders of the last time his family had used his Bronco for a day at the lake: a pair of his brother’s ratty tennis shoes, a book of his mother’s, his stepfather’s fishing gear, and lined them up on the bridge.
A shrine. He’d built a shrine.
Once he’d arranged every bit of history to his liking, he got in his truck and drove away.
Never once looking back.
The words formed melodies in his head.
7
Killian blinked bleary eyes and took a sip of orange juice. In the past, dragging his ass at this time of morning meant he’d stayed out all night, or hadn’t gone home yet.
Or wherever the fuck he’d lay his head. Now, sitting in the back yard of his house, sunlight glinting off the pool water, he suffered a hangover without benefit of getting drunk the night before.
Alcohol and an ass load of prescription painkillers didn’t mix. Possibly the one beneficial thing he’d learned from his dad.
He squinted against the sunlight and reread what he’d spent the last hour writing.
I walk in sunlight
Finally free
But I miss the darkness
Haunting me
I left behind
The hurt and pain
Yet long to feel
The shadows again
Friends we were
Friends we’ll be
