Page 110

She wasn’t a princess, but I knew spiders were where she drew the line. Had she seen one and run for the hills?
I knew now wasn’t the time for jokes, but amusement was a much better emotion than indecisiveness.
Indecision wasn’t something I was familiar with. And it felt weird and wrong that I didn’t know what my next steps were. I wanted nothing more than to just figure things out. Take a stand.
And make this whole situation go away. But everything I’d planned, everything I did seemed to take me down the wrong path.
For the first time since I was a child, I didn’t know what move to make. There were so many variables, and no matter what I came up with, I couldn’t guarantee that my plan would keep Mya one hundred percent safe.
I knew no decision ever could guarantee a specific result, but dealing with uncertainty wasn’t something I was comfortable with.
I wanted to hide Mya again, have her taken somewhere that no one would ever look, but she was pregnant, and I didn’t want her far from me.
Not to mention, I didn’t think she would take kindly to having to hide out in a jungle in South America or something similar. But my enemies seemed to be everywhere, and I didn’t want her to be collateral damage.
I sucked in a breath, feeling woozy all of a sudden. I thought about my mother…her death…wondering still after all these years if that’s what she had been.
And then I thought of a memory I didn’t often allow myself to revisit. A memory of a moment that could have changed the trajectory of my life. A promise that never came to fruition.
A promise that I still blamed myself for and that I never allowed myself to speak of. A broken promise that made my hands shake when I thought of it.
I couldn’t make a mistake. I couldn’t let what happened before happen again.
“Mya!” I called out.
“I’m here,” she called back sitting on the back porch facing the river. She looked tired and pale, I noted.
Guilt washed over me again. I did this to her. This was my fault. If anything happened to her or the baby?—
I stopped myself from completing that thought. Nothing had and nothing would.
I was going to protect Mya. Everything was going to be fine.
At least, that’s what I had to keep telling myself, because the thought of the alternative would have crippled me with fear and apprehension, and I couldn’t operate in fear.
“How are you feeling?” I asked, inspecting her with my eyes. There were dark circles under her eyes and her lips were cracked. “Did you drink anything today?”
I placed my hands on my hips and just continued to study her. Her hair, normally shiny, now looked dull, and when her eyes met mine, it was as if the light in them had been extinguished.
What had happened between last night and now? I thought that maybe she was finally starting to let her guard down and trust me. I had been wrong.
“Why did you lie to me?” she said not looking away from my eyes.
I frowned. Which lie? I’d told many since we’d been together. To protect her. But I knew she wouldn’t see things my way. “What are you talking about?”
She held her hand out then. She was holding my phone. I’d been out of it last night and tired. I didn’t even remember losing sight of it.
“You went through my phone?”
I didn’t have to ask. Her look said it all.
How much did she know? Normally, I wouldn’t store anything in my phone. No names. No numbers. No text messages, but I’d been so angry when she went missing and full of worry, that I sent messages and made calls that I normally wouldn’t have.
Had she seen those messages? The sadness in her eyes confirmed that she had.
“You lied to me. You said that you were leaving this business. Letting go of this life. You lied.”
“I didn’t lie.”