Page 142 of Burning For You

“I’m more comfortable in my house writing. All these fires are when it’s dark. Right?”

She looked at Ash though she knew the answer. “Yes.”

“Then I’m fine during the day. This person, whoever he is, he’s a coward. He’s doing it all under the cover of night. He’s not going to come out during the day. It’s not happening.”

Tate and Keegan’s jaws were set. They weren’t happy she was making sense for them.

“We can have patrol cars circling,” Tate said. “It will help some.”

“Not with as fast as a fire spreads,” Corbin said. “We saw that at the last one.”

“That was different,” she said. “He’s not going to come after me in the daylight. And I keep saying he. Maybe it’s a woman.”

“Statistically, that’s thin. You know it,” Tate said.

She did. But she was grasping. Anything to make this go away.

She blew a breath out. “I’m not sure where to go from here. I’m not sure anyone is. I want it over with,” she choked out.

Then the tears followed.

She hated to show weakness like this more than anything else in life.

It brought back all her memories as a young child and her biological mother yelling at her to cut the shit. To get thick skin. That life was hard and tears didn’t get you through.

“Come with me,” her mother said, taking her hand and pulling her up the stairs to her old room.

She let herself be led. Let herself be taken care of.

It was different this time.

She didn’t feel the need to fight back.

To hold everything in.

To worry that they were going to send her on her way if she didn’t turn out the way they wanted.

Instead, she sat on her old bed and let Carrie Lancaster hold her like she knew Carrie wanted to do thirteen years ago.

Back then, Skye wiggled away. Avoided eye contact. Tried to be tough.

She wasn’t tough anymore. She was tired and weak, and the fight was just out of her.

Out of her wanting to run. To find something she thought she should have.

But she had exactly what she needed in her life right now.

It’d always been here right under her nose and she’d resisted it for so long.

Not anymore.

“I’m so sorry. I feel as if I brought this all to your family.”

“Nonsense,” her mother said. Carrie had become her mother decades ago. The other mother in her life was just Jenny now, even if it felt disrespectful to call her by name. Which was why she didn’t. And why she rarely thought of her first set of parents at all.

“It’s hard to think of it that way. I should have never tried to take on more when I moved here. I should have come home a long time ago. I’m happy now. Happier than I’ve been in forever. But I always had to fight for more. To prove to myself and everyone else I could do it alone.”

Her mother was rubbing her back. Letting her talk. “That has always been a problem you’ve had to work out on your own. I’ve tried to let you, but I can see that maybe you’re just beat down.”