Page 125 of Your Soul to Keep

More pictures on the mantle. Zoe, Gabe, and Dylan. Me, outside their circle, clinging to the perimeter, begging him to let me in.

Sweeping up the crumbs to hoard for my own.

He reached out his hand, a frown line forming between his brows.

No.

I backed away.

One step.

Another.

I raised my chin and faced him, my voice steady. Resolute. “I need to go now.”

His jaw dropped and his eyes widened with fear. “Shae,” he breathed.

I shook my head. I couldn’t go through it again.

I moved on autopilot. Everything that was me, curled into a ball, buried in the deepest recess of my mind.

“Don’t go. Please. We can talk this out,” he rushed on. “You told me not to walk away. Please don’t run, Shae.”

He was there.

He’d been there for all of it.

I shook my head, bile climbing my throat. “I can’t, Gabe.” I gestured at the mantle where the imaginary pictures would one day sit on display. “I can’t keep doing this.”

He looked at the mantle, his face contorting with panic and confusion. “What are you talking about?”

On the outside looking in.

I skirted around him, unlocked the door, and stepped out onto the porch.

Poor Shae.

I don’t think she can have children.

The ache of empty arms, arms that had grown used to the weight of the four-year-old girl who called me Mommy.

Gabe and Zoe would sit her down.

Explain with smiles on their faces to tell her the good news that she wasn’t just her aunt. Thebestnews.

I closed my eyes.

Mine big, big, mommy.

“Doing what?” he demanded, throwing his arms wide as he followed me out onto the porch where Zoe had stood not five minutes earlier. “She doesn’t mean anything to me!”

My hands rolled into fists, my lips thinning as my teeth gritted together.

I hate her.

Evading his hand, I turned and ran down the steps to the path, my only goal to reach my car before I began screaming.

“You’re a coward, Shae O’Neill,” he snarled.

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