Page 114 of Braving the Storm

Chapter 39

Antoine and Cris have made it their business to reinforce just how important it is I play their game. This house echoes with nothing but soulless wealth and the footsteps of vapid, power-hungry people who drift in and out occasionally with my husband, but for the most part, I’m back to my meaningless existence.

The only solace I can seem to find is that I’m protecting Storm, even if it’s tearing my heart into a thousand fragmented pieces in order to do so.

If misery had a face, she would be painted in my likeness.

Missing him is my constant companion. It lingers on my heels like a morose shadow, clinging to me as I randomly find tears rolling down my cheeks while pouring a coffee into the white Bone China mug I want to smash against the matching polished white countertop.

I wake up with damp cheeks and have to bury my face in the pillow as I scream until my throat gives way and my body turns limp.

There has to be a way out of this nightmare, but right at this moment, my well of inspiration has run dry. I’mdefeated and the only course of action I can take for the foreseeable future is to rot in this place.

Appeasing my sister and my insipid husband while protecting the man I love with every fiber of my soul. That’s what the seconds, minutes, and hours of what it means to be Briar Lane amount to.

Somewhere, somehow, a spark still glows inside my chest, reminding me that there must be a way out of this. The only problem is that the longer I spend suffocating and slowly drowning in this fishbowl, the fainter that glow becomes.

I worry about the day I wake up and it’s extinguished itself completely.

What then?

What happens when that tidal wave of inky black comes to claim me and drag me to that place where I just give up?

As I curl my knees against my chest, sitting on the ground beside my bed, I hear his rumbling chuckle. I feel his fingers graze the side of my face, touching me with a tenderness I’ve never experienced before. Not for any particular reason, other than reaching out to grace me with an affectionate brush of my skin. Just because he wants to.

I glance down when the soft vibration in my hand nudges me like a dog seeking out a pat.

Another message has arrived.

The sight of which sends the faintest, tenderest flutter of a delicate wing hidden away inside my stomach.

Antoine allowed me to keep my phone; I’m sure he knows if I have access to it—or, more accurately, still have access to Storm—the one-sided contact is more painful than any punishment my own husband could inflict on me.

These messages are both the only thing keeping me sane and the worst kind of torture rolled into one. Each new arrival has me scrambling to open it, inhaling each word like those miniature characters on screen are my own personal oxygen mask, and staring at the steadily increasing string ofunanswered texts that I could practically recite line by line, word for word.

He checks on me.

Talks to me as if I’m sitting right there on the bench seat of his truck as he drives with one wrist hooked lazily over the wheel.

Not like I’m the heartless bitch who vanished, leaving only a note on the kitchen bench. Two words that broke me to sign indelibly onto paper through streams of tears.

I’m sorry.

He deserved so much more than that, yet it was all my torn, fractured heart had to give in that moment. The only way I knew to prevent him from attempting to follow me.

The wonderful man he is, Storm sends me photos of the cabin, the horses, and all the simplicities of life in the mountains that I miss with a cavernous ache inside my chest.

Last night’s messages almost cracked my determination to be strong and not give Antoine any reason to go public with his bullshit and twisted untruths. My resolve almost shattered as I lay in bed watching the dots bouncing on the screen, waiting as he took an infuriatingly long time to write his thoughts. They’d stop, pausing, while my heart sank, believing that this time he’d finally given up trying to communicate mid-message.

Except, when the vibration finally came through, and the bubble popped up on screen, fat tears began to roll freely as I read over his sweet words.

Storm:

I don’t know why you left, but I’m right here.

Whenever you’re ready to come back, this home is yours.

As I lay therelast night, sinking into the gloom and fending off the dark thoughts threatening to come back to take over, he kepttalking to me. Almost as if he could sense I was floundering there, curled on my side, my sanity splintering, losing my damn mind with loneliness and hopeless heartbreak.