I PULLED TO A stop at the curb and cut the engine. A smattering of stars hung in the darkened sky. They peeked through the spindly branches adorned with the few remaining leaves that had long since turned red and gold, those tall trees stretching out to brush the high eaves of the historic white house that rested in the heart of Savannah.
A feeling of ease and welcome swept through me. Like everything dialed to wrong had suddenly been set to right.
You’d think after years of traveling, out on the road living in a damned van trying to make it big, five days wouldn’t make a man homesick.
You’d be wrong.
Lights glowed from within the windows of the old, majestic home. The sight of the porch swing where I’d spent so many nights rubbing Shea’s feet and talking to her belly after we’d tucked Kallie into bed quickened my heart, that front door calling out for me like my marrow had become ingrained in the wood.
I stepped from the Suburban in the same second that front door swung wide open.
A streak of blonde flew down the sidewalk. All those wild, wild curls struck like white flames in the moonlight.
“Daddy!”
My quickened heart damned near burst.
I hustled around the front of the truck and scooped Kallie up just as she was hitting the end of the walkway. I swung her around in circles, lovin’ the feel of making my Little Bug fly.
She squealed and clung to my neck. “Daddy, don’t you dare drop me!”
I hugged her close. Squeezed her tight. “Never.”
She settled and stilled, like she was washed in a wave of comfort as she tucked herself into my chest. I could feel her little heart going boom, boom, boom as she found her own ease.
“I missed you so much,” I murmured into those untamed locks at the top of her head.
“Me, too,” she whispered back.
She flashed me one of those brilliant smiles. Though now that smile was missing two front teeth. Considering Christmas was rolling up fast, I couldn’t help but relentlessly tease her about it in song.
One-hundred percent not my fault.
Uncle Ash started it.
Go figure.
I hooked Kallie to my side and let my needy gaze travel to the doorway.
Shea leaned up against the jam.
She was wearing a tank top and some of those short, short sleep shorts she liked the wear, a cascade of blonde falling down her shoulders, those tempting strands a couple inches longer than they were when I’d married her just over a year ago.
Her adoring expression screamed so many things. I missed you. I need you. Home—this is where you’re supposed to be.
Like her dial had also been shifted to right.
My wife was cradling our tiny son, rocking him in her arms as her head tilted to the side in the softest welcome.
That sweet, sexy mouth tipped up at the corners.
Shea.
Shea.
Shea.
My spirit never got tired of singing it.
With Kallie still tacked to my side, my feet were moving.
Drawn.
Had been since the second I’d seen her.
I’d just had no idea that being drawn to all that dark, into her light and heavy and soft, was drawing me right into life.
My boots thudded up the wooden steps, becoming a heavy echo as I crossed the porch.
Tenderly, I caressed across my son’s head before I moved to settle my hand on Shea’s neck. Her pulse thrummed like content and thunder beneath my touch.
She exhaled something that sounded like relief. Ease and comfort and perfect harmony.
“You have any clue how much I missed you, baby?” I asked, voice raw. Coarse with five days of pent-up need.
She peeked at me, driving me mad with that coy, playful grin. “Um…about half as much as I missed you?”
Chuckling, my thumb set to tracing her jaw, my famished eyes roaming her gorgeous face.
A familiar stir of devotion ran hot in my veins, words dropping even lower. “You think so, huh?”
“Mmhmm. Considering I didn’t stop thinking about you for one second while you were away, I’d think giving you half would be generous.”
The girl was teasing me with the soft, seductive lilt of that Southern drawl.
My entire body hardened, thinking just how fucking sublime it was gonna be to get lost in hers.
Sleek legs and hungry hands. Complete. Body and soul.
Couldn’t wait.
“Have to say, think you’re way off base, Mrs. Stone. Got to L.A., and there I was, missing my family for three extra hours. Torment.”
I smirked. Time change and all.
The laughter that trekked up her throat was flirtatious, and she started to sway in my hold, while she kept our son in the protective cocoon of her arms.
“And we had to wait for you three extra hours to get here tonight. Torture,” she fired back with another grin.
My insides fluttered like all those butterflies Kallie loved to talk about.
But this?
This was ripping wings.
A battering beat of loyalty and dedication and need.
I prodded my girl’s chin, lifting her to me so I could dip down and kiss the one who’d seen this inside me.
Someone worth something more than sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. Someone better than one-night stands and an empty soul.
The one who’d trusted in it.
Believed in it.
She received me with plush lips, soft and sweet and tender, the briefest flash of her tongue fueled by desire. I lingered there, kissing her a little deeper than maybe was modest. But fuck, who could blame a man who had a girl like this?
Kallie giggled, little body wiggling in my hold, plucking me from the salacious direction my thoughts went strayin’.
“Daddy,” she sang like she was givin’ me a good scolding with that precious voice. “Too many kisses.”
I cut her a guilty albeit unremorseful smile, before I dropped my forehead to my wife’s.
Emotion grew thick, this feeling swamping me as I turned my gaze down to the child we’d created.
God.
He was incredible.
A miracle.
Connor Julian Stone.
I dropped a quick kiss to Kallie’s temple. “Let me say hi to your brother, okay, Little Bug?”
Never wanted her to feel like she now came second. Like she were less when that was impossible.
Like she totally got it, she nodded in her sweet way. “’Kay.”
I set her on the ground and turned back to my son.
Wide grey eyes locked on mine, and Connor gave me this gurgling sound and a lopsided, crooked smile.
God, felt ’em both right in the center of my chest.
“Hey there, little man,” I said quietly as I lifted him from Shea’s arms.
I held him out in front of me. Just needing to take him in.
Then I brought him near, softly kissed the corner of his mouth.
Tiny fingers dug into my face as he curled into me, one of those giggles he’d just figured out how to make bursting free and sinking right into me.
Joy.
So much joy.
“Were you a good boy for your momma?” I cooed.
Nope. Couldn’t help that, either.
My kids had me all wrapped up, twisted and tied and tangled in baby blue ribbon and pink butterfly bows.
A ripple of gentle laughter floated from Shea. “He’s always good…just as soon as we make it through the two a.m. feeding.”
Hated knowing things got rough for my girl when I was gone. I lifted a brow in question, rocking Connor slowly where he was all tucked up like a frog stuck to my chest. “April hung around while I was gone, yeah?”
After Shea and I’d gotten married and Austin had set out on his own, it didn’t take us all that long to figure out L.A. wasn’t going to be the place we raised our kids. The guys…they were always careful with my girls. Protecting them the way I trusted them to. Cooling shit off and acting like responsible adults while Shea and Kallie were around.
And there was no doubt about it. Shea and I would’ve made a home wherever the world took us. But these old walls called to us, echoing the sounds of Shea’s childhood and shouting out the hope of our future.
Like somehow Shea was made up of Savannah and then Savannah had gone and sank right into me.
This was where we wanted to be.
April had found a place of her own a couple miles away. She was usually all too eager to stay with my family when I had to be out of town.
“Most of the time.” Shea arched a brow, eyes going wide as if she was keeping back all the juicy details, and mouthed, “She met a boy.”
“No?” I countered, incredulous.
“Yes.” She uttered it like was the most scandalous thing trending on Facebook.
Kallie hopped around beside me, tugging at my arm to get my attention. “Yep! Yep! Yep! Auntie April stayed for two whole days and we had a sleepover in my room since Connor sleeps in her old room.”
Her tone got serious. “But she said she didn’t mind. Not at all. At all!” Her prattling shot right back to double time. “It was so super fun! Almost as fun as I had at Marley’s sleepover on Friday. Daddy, did you know I got to ride on Marley’s bus all the way to her house?”
Those words flew from her tongue at warp speed, an adorable tumble of excitement and adventure and country flare. Now that she was in kindergarten, that chatter seemed to come nonstop, her days with her new friends supplying her all kinds of new stories to tell.
Some would ask if someone like me would bore of it.
Get impatient and antsy and irritated.
Hell no.
Every single word was precious.
Never minded getting caught up in the whirlwind that was Kallie Marie Stone.
Well.
Almost.
Stone that is.
Papers were well under way. Ones that would legally make her my child.
Two months ago, the court had finally severed that bastard’s parental rights, finding him unfit to be a parent. As if he would have ever wanted to step up and assume that role, even if he wasn’t going to have his pretty-boy ass locked behind bars for the rest of his miserable life.
Kallie didn’t even slow down, just jumped along at my side when we all wandered inside. She grinned up at me the entire time. “And her mommy helped us make our own pizza and let us have ice cream and we stayed up almost the whole night. Marley says Tommy is her boyfriend, but Momma said I’m too little to have a boyfriend so I don’t have one. Not until I’m thirteen, right Momma?”
I slanted Shea a look that I knew came with a warning. Over my dead body. Hell, I probably wouldn’t even allow it then.
Shea laughed. “Don’t worry, Daddy Bear. That’s a long time away.”
“Not long enough,” I mumbled.
Shea popped up on her toes and brushed a kiss to my mouth. “Why don’t you get these two tucked in while I finish up the dishes?”
“Oh, man! Do I have to?” Kallie pouted.
Shea just shook her head. “I let you stay up an hour past your bedtime so you could be awake when your daddy got home, and you promised you’d go right to bed once you got to see him. Remember?” she drew out, the graze of her knuckles down Kallie’s cheek a gentle encouragement. “You have to get up for school in the morning.”
“I know,” Kallie conceded.
Knew I’d be getting in late, past Kallie’s bedtime, but I’d left the second I could get out of L.A., eager to get home. Desperate, really.
“Why don’t we get your baby brother into bed? Then you can read me a story. How’s that sound?” I offered.
Curls flew when Kallie nodded. “Okay, Daddy!”
Stepping forward, I dipped down and gave Shea another kiss and a quick squeeze to her hip. “Later,” I whispered.
Shea hummed.
Yeah. I’d be showing my wife just how damned much I missed her. I’d put bets down she’d be amending any assertion about me missing her half as much as she missed me.
We climbed the stairs. I held my son, chest to chest, my arm secure across his tiny back and head, my other hand one with Kallie’s.
At the top of the landing, my attention went right to the wall of photos I couldn’t help but study the first morning I’d woken up in Shea’s bed. The morning I’d had every intention of running.
Little did I know, I’d be running right back to Shea.
Find love and bring it here.
Those words were inscribed in black cursive letters along the top of the wall, like a vocal statement of what the stilled images hanging on the wall proclaimed.
All the original pictures were still there.
A wedding picture of Shea’s grandparents graced the center, the frame surrounded by others that showcased the people Shea adored. People who’d helped to shape her into the magnificent, caring, gentle woman she was today.
I grinned at the young picture of Charlie sitting off to the side, back when he’d barely been a man and not the scruffy old guy now slinging drinks at his bar down the street.
Of course there was the one of Shea holding Kallie as an infant in profile. Seeing that picture the first time had unleashed some kind of fear in me, a fear I was dragging all my ugly onto sacred ground.
Tainting and marring and ruining.
But Shea had turned that vision around.
Wanting more, more, more.
Filling me with good. Or maybe she’d just discovered it.
I gently bounced my son as my gaze moved to the picture of Shea’s mom still on display. Yeah, she’d been responsible for so much negative in Shea’s life. But she’d ultimately been the one who’d set it in order. The one who’d put herself on the line and accepted responsibility. The one who’d provided enough information that the judge had issued a warrant to search Martin’s house. The one who’d stood up at the sick bastard’s trial and testified.
The one now serving ten years in a women’s prison back in California.
Her testimony had helped convict Martin Jennings of drug trafficking and extortion. But that didn’t even come close to grazing the tip of the iceberg. The rest of his vile practices had been lurking just under water.
He got life for the murder of Donny Alstinger.
The part I still couldn’t stomach? What was always gonna haunt me?
They’d found evidence of plans to have Shea extinguished, the first time stopped by Mark’s intervention.
The second had been in the making—first getting me out of the way so he could easily access her. With Lester running for governor, they couldn’t risk the condemning evidence Shea had against them coming back to bite them.
Just the thought, the possibility, sent pangs of anger and fear spiraling through me.
Lester Ford was currently standing his own trial.
Added to that?
Martin Jennings’s conviction in the murder of Mark Nathanial Kennedy.
Fucking agony.
Truth was, it’d always been agony. Didn’t matter how he was stolen from the earth. He wasn’t here and somehow we had to learn to live with that reality.
Martin had thought himself untouchable. Out of reach. Above the law.
Knew in my heart it was Mark who’d finally knocked him down.
Martin being responsible for Mark’s death had compiled all that bitterness and hate. But somehow knowing Mark had stood up for Shea, that he’d dared to try and protect a girl he didn’t even know—the one who’d ended up becoming my entire life—eased something inside of me.
It filled me with a mournful gratefulness I’d honor my best friend with for all my days. Even though he’d been so damned lost, he’d always had something brilliant inside him. A light he’d never let shine. A goodness he’d never set free. A peace he’d never found.
Not until he found something good worth fighting for.
Guess he and I had a whole lot in common after all.
Even with the score of evidence that’d come down on Jennings, there hadn’t been enough of it to prosecute him for anything related to my brother.
But Austin was okay with that.
He just wanted to move on.
Grow.
Without a doubt, that’s what he was doing, the kid out there on his own figuring out who he wanted to be.
Once a month or so I’d receive a letter from him. Every time I read his pained words, they just about broke my heart in two. Yet at the same time, they somehow healed a part of it, too. So many of his internal struggles and newfound joys were scrawled across the pages as he openly bared his soul to me, exposing all his thoughts and worries and hopes.
Sometimes facing our pasts was more painful than letting old wounds lie. It was easier just to leave them buried by years of callus and scars that never quite healed. Because ripping off those scabs? It exposed what was seated deep, everything festered and compressed and ready to erupt.
But churning under that decay was a spirit poised to flourish.
Crazy that even though I hadn’t seen him since he walked out the door back in LA., hadn’t spoken to him in all that time other than through letters, I felt closer to him now than I ever had.
My eyes traveled to the newer pictures that had been added.
There was a huge canvas-style one of my family, taken on Shea’s and my second wedding day. It’d taken place in the old church where Shea’s grandma used to take her on Sunday mornings, in that special place where my girl had fallen in love with singing.
We were standing on the steps just outside the ornate wooden doors. I was wearing a dark suit and Kallie looked like a princess in her white, flowy dress with a ton of flowers woven in her curly hair.
And Shea…
Shea.
She was wearing a white silk strapless gown, hair twisted up on her head, pieces falling out and brushing her slender shoulders. Her belly was round with our boy and the happiness on her face was the most brilliant thing I’d ever seen.
So stunning it verged on devastating.
Didn’t matter how many times I looked at it...how many times I looked at her…the reaction was always the same.
Overpowering.
Connor fussed, and I made a shushing sound and bounced him softly. “Think we need to get your baby brother into bed. What do you think, Little Bug?”
We moved on toward his room. Kallie skipped along, glued to my side, voice a whisper. “I think we better. He’s gotta be so, so tired. Momma kept him up so long ’cause she knew you were gonna want kisses ’fore he went to sleep.”
I cast her a smile and proceeded to press a bunch of soft kisses to Connor’s face.
“Like that?”
“Yep, just like that.”
A nightlight glowed from within, the walls painted a muted blue, musical notes and lines of lullabies painted on the walls.
Fitting, yeah?
I lay my son in the center of his crib. A small cry rattled from him, and I spread his blankie over him, the one he always had to have.
He fisted the satin edges in his tiny hands and pressed it to his face, drawing his legs up around it like he was giving it a welcoming hug.
So fucking cute.
I palmed the top of his head, and he leaned into it as he looked up at me with sleepy eyes. “Goodnight, little man.”
Hand-in-hand, Kallie and I tiptoed out. The second we were out the door, I swept her up. The way she tried to hold in her squeal, this sweet, subdued laughter rolling from her, melted me a little more.
Kid always had me a puddle at her feet.
Always so thoughtful.
So good.
So much like her mom.
Still wondered every damned day how I got this lucky.
“Did you brush your teeth?” I asked.
Her eyes went wide, before she shook her head as if she’d committed some sort of horrible crime. I set her back on her feet. “Run in and get it done.”
“I’ll do it super fast.”
“Not too fast,” I warned as I paused at the bathroom doorway, arms crossed over my chest as I watched her climb up the step stool.
I nearly jumped out of my skin when she slipped.
There was a huge part of me that wanted to swoop in and make it better. Protect her from anything and anyone who could possibly harm her. Freak out and beg her to tell me she was okay.
But I didn’t. I held it in and let her deal with the short fall that clearly hadn’t injured her. Let her learn, because when she climbed up again, she did it more carefully.
Maybe that’s something I learned from my baby brother. You can’t grow wings if you’re forbidden to fly. He’d been right when he said I’d protected and protected and protected until it was suffocating. That sometimes I inhibited rather than sustained.
And God. Only thing in this world I wanted?
For my family to grow. For them to experience life in the best ways possible. With me always standing at their sides rather than in front of them.
But when they needed me? In whatever capacity? I’d be there. Whether with a watching eye or a father’s fury, I’d be there.
Kallie finished, rushed right back out and to her room, hopped into her bed.
I knelt down at her side and listened to this amazing kid sound out the words that she was just learning, the butterfly book little more than a picture book with a couple of small words for her to make out.
“The end!” she said emphatically, all kinds of proud when she close the last page.
“Whoa, you read the whole thing? When’d you get so big?”
“Daddy,” she admonished, “I’m growing and growing. You know in only four months I’m gonna be six and I’ll be in first grade and then I’ll stay at school all, all day.”
I chuckled.
My little hurricane.
I put her book aside and pulled her covers to her chin, dropped a kiss to her nose.
“Goodnight, Little Bug.”
She beamed up at me. “Goodnight, Daddy Bug.”
My heart skipped a wayward beat.
Apparently, I’d gotten a promotion.
“I’ll see you in the morning, sweetheart.”
She clutched the top of her covers, smiling up at me. “’Kay.”
Flipping off her light switch, I left her door open a crack, the way we always did, and headed straight for the stairs. Itching to get to my wife.
I hit the ground floor. At the end of the little hall, I nudged open the swinging door leading to the kitchen.
And there she was, dancing around on bare feet as she wiped down the countertop, singing just below her breath with that amazing voice.
Quietly, I slipped in, edged up behind her and wrapped her in my arms. For a flash of a second, she startled, before she relaxed into my hold.
I leaned closer, my cheek embracing hers before my mouth made a pass down the slope of her neck and back up to her ear. “How many women are in this world? And somehow…somehow I found the one that was meant for me.”
Shea might as well have purred as she leaned back, hair brushing at my chin, face upturned and capturing me in the warmth of those eyes. Words flowed with her undying, beautiful faith. “I never said I didn’t believe in soulmates. Don’t ever forget you’re mine.”
Her statement had pleasure rumbling through me like the roll of distant thunder, her body pressed closed to mine.
“Come here. I have something for you,” I whispered, brushing a piece of hair from her face.
Slowly, she turned in my hold, lips full with that adoring smile.
She yelped when I suddenly lifted her against me, laughed as I spun her around and then propped her up on the edge of the island. I was quick to wedge myself between her knees.
Right where I always wanted to be.
I gathered her left hand in mine and brushed my lips over the intricate weave of diamonds and platinum she boasted on her ring finger.
It was no replica like she’d requested the morning after our wedding.
It was the real deal.
Her grandmother’s wedding ring.
It was part of the evidence that had been found stowed away in Martin Jennings’s safe. Proof he’d been responsible for the assault on her.
Yet another charge the scumbag had fallen to. He’d been so full of pride and pretention, so narcissistic, he’d kept it like a prize in the safe in his office.
Shea gazed down at it when I pulled back. “It’s so beautiful.”
I kissed it again. “Even more beautiful on you.”
She just smiled, tilted her head, like her awe of me went as deep as mine went for her.
Still was hard to make sense of. Someone wanting me for me.
All bullshit and money and fame aside.
She didn’t want it.
She wanted me.
“So what’s this surprise?” Shea’s eyes suddenly glimmered with mischief, a flash of excitement.
I fished my phone from my back pocket and thumbed into the file, keeping one hand on her side. I quirked a smile up at her as I turned the speaker as loud as it would go and set it on the counter at her side.
Then I pushed play.
The soft strum of my acoustic guitar.
She gasped when she recognized the song. Eyes that had been looking at my phone swung up to meet mine.
Adoration and grace.
“Sebastian.”
Fingertips felt along my face, fire to my skin and comfort to my spirit.
She pressed her mouth to mine. Nothing obscene. Just the pressure of her lips as wonder poured free.
God, she was sweet.
So damned sweet.
The chords deepened a fraction, a shift of the music like static electricity scattering through dense air.
That pounding, pulsing energy.
It was the polished song that’d seeped from us on our wedding night. Like it’d always been hidden somewhere inside the two of us, waiting for the right moment to be cut free.
The one she and I had mastered then sat down with the rest of the guys and recorded it months ago, before we made the permanent move back here to Savannah.
You would be on our album releasing in two months.
Sunder featuring Shea Stone.
No.
Not Delaney Rhoads.
Just like she’d told Martin.
Delaney Rhoads had died a long time ago.
This song was nothing like what Sunder normally put out. There was no anger or hate. No screaming lyrics or smashing beat.
It was slow reverence.
Creeping awe.
Love.
Pure, unadulterated love.
From my phone, my voice wove with the chords. Deep. Naked. Exposed.
You.
Came like a storm.
In the distance.
Coming closer.
You.
Took me whole.
Broken pieces.
Mended perfectly.
Leaning in closer to my girl, I began to quietly sing along with the elevating chorus that played from my phone, my raspy voice a low, pleading rumble.
Our breaths mixed on ragged pants as we got lost in the promise of the words.
Don’t want to look back.
Don’t want to move forward.
Just want to stay.
Right here with you.
Forever.
Just want to stay.
Right here with you.
Forever.
My nerves pinged like lightning bolts, a zing of ecstasy striking me through when her siren’s voice slowly lifted into the recording, low and sultry, Shea singing With you forever three times over. A layered, honeyed harmony, her voice braided through mine.
Redness rushed up Shea’s neck when her melody infiltrated the space. Delicious color paintin’ her cheeks in innocence and modesty dabbled with awe. Ever so subtly, she began to move her mouth, tipping her face up toward mine as I sang down to her and she sang up to me.
Didn’t matter how many times I’d heard it. I still felt my axis shift when the chorus drifted out and into the delicate frame of her verse.
You
Like standing in quicksand.
Slowly sinking.
Deeper and deeper.
You.
All I was missing.
Lonely hollows.
Completed flawlessly.
I wound Shea’s hair up in my fist, tugging her head back as I hovered over her, nose-to-nose, breath-to-breath. Intensity that would never dull blistered between us. Voices deepened in the same moment they gained power, twisting and twining as the momentum escalated, the roll of the drums and the beat of the bass, a pounding furor that trembled in the air and vibrated from our tongues.
Don’t want to look back.
Don’t want to move forward.
Just want to stay.
Right here with you.
Forever.
Just want to stay.
Right here with you.
Forever.
When the song hit the bridge, Shea’s voice rose above mine. Her time to shine. Bold. Glorious. Gushing beauty. A river of serenity. A voice unlike anything any of us had ever heard.
Be still, right here with me, for eternity.
Be still, right here with me, for eternity.
A shining star always so content to hide.
But no.
Not today.
Not tomorrow.
Not when the world got a real taste of this amazing girl.
What would it bring?
I didn’t know.
It was like I could feel the clock ticking down on my days with Sunder.
So much had changed in the last year. All of our lives were going down paths none of us had anticipated. Karl Fitzpatrick had warned me settling down with Shea would be the downfall of Sunder.
Maybe it had, because none of Sunder really knew were we stood, each of our lives taking paths none of us had anticipated.
Truth was?
I’d rather be right here.
Making beautiful music with my wife.
Reveling in the truth of our words.
Savoring in the tenor of our kisses.
Relishing in the crescendo of our bodies.
I’d rather be right here.
Writing the lyrics to an everlasting song.
The End