Into the Fading Twilight (Starlight Grove, #2) (49)

Today had been amazing, but it had also been a lot. A lot of people. Activity. Emotions. And if there was one thing I was never particularly good at, it was feelings. It even made me twitchy when Brae told me she loved me.

I was sure I had my super-stable childhood to thank for that one. Memories of my mother’s voice flickered in the back of my mind.

“Stop your whining. No one cares.”

“Enough with the crying already. No one likes a baby.”

“Do you think I give a shit how you feel?”

Shoving off the wood, I tried to clear my mind, but it was hard when I was reminded how good family could be. My father had mostly been negligent, absent, and uncaring. But my mother? She lived with unquenchable anger in her. And I was the most frequent recipient of it.

But not anymore. Anger didn’t live here. I flipped the lock on my door and turned to take in the apartment. My apartment. It was the first time I’d ever had my own space. I could do whatever I wanted to decorate it and wouldn’t have to ask a soul. There would be no yelling or cruel voices. There would only be peace, safety, and freedom here.

Moving deeper into the space, I caught sight of a bag on the bed. It was pale purple with tissue paper and a note sticking out of it. I plucked the card from the bag.

To help you make yourself safe. Welcome home. –K

I traced that K with my eyes, memorizing the lines of it. I had the bizarre urge to hug the card to my chest, but I refrained.

Pulling out the tissue paper, I peered inside and frowned. I tugged out the first item that looked like an adorably angry key ring. It looked like a pink kitten, but the ears were sharp points, and you could put your fingers through the eye holes.

Next, there was a tiny bottle of pepper spray. A purple Taser. A silver whistle. And a package that read Emergency Alert Button.

Kol had given me an arsenal. So I would feel safe. Not because someone else made me safe but because he’d empowered me to give it to myself. And that meant more than he would ever know.





Fingers wrapped around my throat, digging in and cutting off my air supply. I kicked against the thin mattress, trying to claw at the arms pinning me, strangling me. But it was no use. It was as if the man didn’t feel an ounce of pain. It was almost as if he liked it.

“I’m the one who decides if you live or die. I’m the one who lets you breathe or not. Me. No one else even cares about you. I’m all you have now.”

My eyes flew open as I thrashed in the bedding. A soft glow came from the bathroom and the moon through the window. It was just enough light to see my surroundings, but it took a few jerky inhales for me to remember where I was.

The new apartment.

I tried to even out my breaths.

“You’re alive. You’re breathing.”

I replayed Kol’s words in my mind, using them to paint over the ugly ones from the man. From Travis. But was it Travis? I wasn’t sure.

“Memory or imagination?” I whispered into the dark.

Throwing the blankets off, I crossed to my closet. I dug through an open box until I found a sweatshirt that read Namaste in Bed. It was from my past life. It didn’t really feel like it fit me anymore. I had certainly abandoned my yoga practice, and sleep was hardly my friend.

Pulling the sweatshirt on, I headed for the stairs. Once I reached the bottom, I took the back door out onto the deck. The moment my bare feet hit the wood planks, panic gripped me.

Darkness. So much of it, I worried it would swallow me whole. That I would get lost in it and no one would find me this time.

“You’re alive. You’re breathing.”

I forced myself to stare it down, the darkness. I had to make peace with it because I’d never escape it altogether.

I kept breathing as I walked deeper into the shadows, across the deck, and to the wide steps that surrounded it. I lowered myself to the middle stair and let the cold seep through my sleep shorts.

And then, I stared into the dark.

I made myself study it. And as I took it in, a little of the panic eased. Because it wasn’t just endless blackness—it was an infinite array of grays. Darker spots and lighter ones, kind of like Kol’s eyes. That eased the panic even more.

The back door opened. There was no squeak of hinges, but I could hear the lock unlatch and the knob turn. I didn’t look back because I knew who it was.

Because he always came. My trauma calling to his, maybe.

Kol lowered himself to the step next to me. Leaving about a foot between us. Gray sweats and a worn the Boot tee clung to his form, making me want to curl into him. The fabric of the T-shirt was nearly see-through in places.

I swallowed hard and stared back out at the shadows in front of me as he stared into the darkness, too.

I wasn’t sure how much time passed. Five minutes? Fifteen? But he finally spoke. “Hard to sleep in a new place?”

“I have nightmares,” I admitted. It wasn’t something I shared. Brae and Dex knew because I screamed sometimes. Thankfully, Owen slept with a sound machine that seemed to block out everything.

Kol’s large form stiffened, his fingers tightening around the wooden step. And then I felt his gaze on me, the telltale gentle roughness of it. “Memories?”

Of course, he would ask the most important question.

“I’m not sure,” I told him honestly. “Could be. But it could also be my mind making things up from the information I’ve been given.”