Page 45 of Other Side Of Never
I closed my eyes, flattened my palm over my tummy to calm the nauseating certainty that I had in fact injured Isaiah, and quietly exhaled.
“Why do you sound so worried?Are you like one of those millennial kids who balks at the idea of a voice call?”
I barked out a harsh laugh, my voice strident.“You’ve never called me!I thought it was an emergency!”
“It’s not,” he assured me, his voice soft.He waited a beat then all his words tumbled out at once.“Want to skip town for the day?I haven’t been to Mistlevale yet.”
It took me a moment to separate the avalanche of syllables into separate words, but one word stood out from the rest.
Mistlevale.
Exactly halfway between me and the life I left behind.I swallowed hard.Gary rarely ventured out to the charming Christmas town.He certainly never took me after the first couple of years we were together.
I shook my head.Why did I stay with him so long when he gave me so very little?
It hadn’t always been like that.
In the beginning, we were a family.His coldness crept in slowly, like summer nights cooling in preparation for autumn.The daytime heat made you forget the coolness of night until you woke up one day to find the trees barren and the earth covered in frost.
I huffed out an exasperated breath.The chances of running into him were slim to none.
“It’s okay, Bridge,” Kian’s warm voice assured me softly.“I understand if this is crossing a line.”
“What?”I exclaimed.“No!It’s not you—”
“It’s me?”he teased.
I snorted and drew in a breath.“Mistlevale’s a bit close to the life I left behind is all.”
Sage Ridge felt too close some days.
“No problem,” he answered immediately.“We can do something else.”
He would change his plans to spend time with me?
“What about the beach?”I quickly offered.I needed a buffer, something to brace me to breach the space between now and then.A little sea spray.“Can we go there first then head to Mistlevale?”
“Beach first, home to shower, Mistlevale for dinner.Deal?”
“Deal!”
When we parted ways after the beach later that morning, it was with Isaiah yelling back to me every ten steps.
He jumped up and down, his arm waving in the air animatedly.“I’ll see you later, Bridge!”
Spinning under his dad’s arm, he continued, “You’re coming, right?”
Cupping his hands around his mouth, he clarified, “To the Christmas place?”
Freezing in place, his hands smacking both cheeks, he yelled, “ARE THERE PRESENTS?”
I laughed as I turned around to wave one last time.
Kian’s wide grin as he looked back over his shoulder made me stumble.
Walking down a sun-soaked sidewalk, that tall, muscled, beautiful man, hand-in-hand with his small son bouncing along beside him, looking back over his shoulder with a happy grin?I’m surprised I didn’t completely humiliate myself by swooning like a Victorian maiden.
My heart burst to see him happy while my tummy dipped.The ache I had grown accustomed to carrying around Kian had deepened, reminding me not only of everything we’d collectively lost, but everything we wouldn’t ever be.
