Page 45 of Lost in the Moonlight

Instead, I turned to a sketchbook, trying to capture even a handful of the other ideas that had swept through me during the day. A butterfly darting through the opening of a cave in a forest with a clawed hand reaching out to capture it. A woman blowing a kiss to a gnarled tree stump that morphed into a man. More images than I could keep up with.

When Sienna reappeared, and the floor-to-ceiling circular window behind her turned her translucent form into the fiery colors of the sunset, I started a drawing of her as well.

When she realized what I was sketching, she huffed at me, crossing her arms over her chest as she snarled,This isn’t about me, Lincoln. Go back to drawing her.

“Stop haunting me, and I’ll stop drawing you,” I told her, but I put down the pad and pencil.

Damn it!She stomped, looking so real and alive it was hard to imagine hernotactually being there.What will it take for you to really let me go?

How could I truly do so when I’d never paid the price the women in my life had? And yet, I was also tired of living in this shadowy in-between world. Alive and yet not. Moving forward and yet not. In a hopeful moment, I’d reached out to Felicity, the mirage of her beckoning to me before I’d seen the truth—she’d just been another tunnel to hell.

But Willow…she was a true light. Even with her secrets, even with whatever she was running from, she practically glowed with an inner goodness. I wanted to hold it, savor it, make it mine even if I wasn’t sure I’d ever earn it.

I made my way down to the bathroom to wash my hands, and my stomach rumbled loudly. After eating a microwave breakfast sandwich this morning, I’d gone all day again without eating. Looking at my image in the wavy, antique glass above the pedestal sink, I saw the wear and tear on my face. The dark bruising under my eyes. The pallor of my skin. I was going down a path that never ended well and needed to be righted.

When I came out of the bathroom, Sienna was furiously pacing the loft. She twirled on me, looking decidedly ghostly as she shrieked,There’s nothing for you to earn! No price for you to pay! Stop feeling guilty for surviving!

For the first time, she looked nothing like the girl I’d once loved more than my own life. She was much darker—Gothicand ghoulish almost—and her voice was shrill as she continued to yell.I adored driving, you idiot! You know that. I loved putting my foot to the pedal and feeling the spin of the tires on the ground. The idea of going anywhere enticed me! Being in charge did even more. It felt like freedom to me. Like independence and power. So even if you didn’t have the meds in you that night, I still would have taken the keys away. I still would have been in the driver’s seat!

My hand went to my brow. She’d said this before. It wasn’t new, and deep in my core, I knew there was a truth to her words. From the moment we’d learned to drive, she’d wanted to be the one at the wheel. So why had I held on so tightly to the notion it should have been me who died?

And the nonsense you feel over Lyrica? It makes me furious. She wanted you to be with my parents the night she was shot,she snarled.She knew it was important for you all to be together on the anniversary of my death. She didn’t begrudge you that time with them.

Before I could stop myself, I snapped back, “I’m the one who forgot the ice on my way out of town. She wouldn’t have been in that damn convenience store if I’d done the one thing she’d asked me to do!”

She doesn’t blame you!

I headed for the steps with my anger growing. At her. At myself. At fucking life.

I didn’t want to be stuck in this cycle. I didn’t want to have darkness always tugging me back into its haze any more than I wanted my insomnia to tug me awake. But sometimes you didn’t get what you wanted. Sometimes you just did the best with the cards you were dealt.

You let it go for a while,Sienna said.You let it go and had hope.

After Leya had been kidnapped because some fanatic thought her brown skin didn’t mix with my white, I’d had a moment where I’d realized I couldn’t control the evil of the world. And the way Leya had found love and goodness while right smack dab in the middle of it all had given me hope that I, too, could find happiness, if I let myself.

Felicity had entered at exactly the right moment. But any peace I’d found had been gone in a flash. She hadn’t dealt well with my insomnia, acting as if I had a choice about it and telling me to just take the damn sleeping pills. When I’d told her I couldn’t, when I’d told her about the hallucinations and my fear Sienna would return to haunting me, she’d tossed that aside too. “Excuses,” she’d said, giving me my first glimpse of the ugliness that existed behind her façade.

When I’d put the brakes on our relationship, she’d insisted on the trip to St. Micah to help us move past it even though she’d known I couldn’t go. I’d finally convinced Leya into letting me show her art at the gallery, and the opening had been that week. But choosing Leya and her art over Felicity had simply tipped the scales more. She’d given me an ultimatum. Choose her, all in, a life together, or it was over.

How she’d expected me to show up on the island with an engagement ring in hand after that was beyond me. But it was what she’d leaked to the press—that I was proposing and that we might even elope. She’d made sure I’d seen the articles too, texting them to me with laughing emojis, thinking they’d pressure me into giving her a ring. Instead, it had strengthened my resolve to end it.

And when she came back from St. Micah, pleading for me to reconsider, I’d almost wavered until Hardy had told me whatshe’d been doing with my phone and my computers and the investigator.

Don’t let Felicity’s ugliness hold you back, Lincoln. She was never worth it. But Willow, she can be the light guiding you home. She can burn away every dark spot until there are none left, if only you let yourself have it—if you can convincehershe needsyouas much as you need her.

I whipped around to stare at what was left of the teen girl I’d once adored. The only girl whose finger I’d truly seen myself slipping an engagement ring on.

We glared at each other for a long moment, but I didn’t respond.

Instead, I picked up the baseball cap from the window ledge where I’d left it and stepped out of the gallery, locking the door, and leaving Sienna behind.

The sun was gone, the twilight having taken over the town. Time for vampires and night creatures to creep from the shadows. I shook my head. No creatures here. No ghosts. Just my own damn conscience and too many days without food and rest.

Laughter and music spilled out on the street from the bar. Dancing with Willow earlier had lit me up from the inside out, made me crave losing myself in the movement of my feet and hips. But thoughts of entering that bar and dancing with a stranger didn’t tempt me. It was only a moonlit-haired baker I wanted in my arms.

I turned the opposite direction, striding down the almost empty street toward the Chinese place and the takeout I’d never gotten the other night after the incident with the guy in the glasses.

My eyes scanned the cars parked nearby. No gray sedan with rusty hubcaps.

---