CHAPTER ONE #4
I’ve seen that movie where the idiot opens the book he shouldn’t and gets everyone killed. I’m not going to be the one who unleashes unimaginable horror into the world.
Instead, I move to what I think is a safer spot. A set of drawers built into the TV unit.
“Please don’t be anything weird.” I close my eyes and pray.
My prayers are answered when I find papers. Bills and old letters. Nothing crazy.
I blow out a breath and turn.
And freeze.
On the end table next to the sofa is a framed photo. It’s so normal compared to everything I’ve seen so far that I can only stare for a long moment before I find my feet and walk over.
My fingers brush the cold, metal edges of the frame. Carefully, I pull it out and study the photo pressed behind the glass.
I remember this picture.
I remember the afternoon it was taken. I remember because I have the same picture on my dresser in a frame very similar to the one in my hands.
Not surprising. Mom took this photo. She made several copies, including one for me and one for her own albums. Most likely, she thought Aunt Laura might like one and sent it to her.
What surprises me is that it’s displayed. The only photo in the entire house.
I want to feel touched by the gesture, maybe a little smug that I was the chosen one, but given what I know about Aunt Laura and what I’ve seen so far, this had to be a mistake. She probably meant to toss it and forgot. That makes more sense.
Photo in hand, I move to the sofa. My gaze wanders over and along the faces I haven’t seen in ... God, how long has it been?
Long enough that Aunt Laura remarried for a third time and I never saw them again. Without that connection, it was like our time together ceased to exist.
To be fair, they moved with their dad to the opposite end of the country.
Also, I was barely eighteen ... nineteen, maybe, when the picture was taken.
Kellen had nearly been thirty. Lukan twenty-seven, and Roan twenty-five.
Give or take. Old enough that they had no reason to want a doe-eyed teenager around.
Not that anyone would believe that when looking at the photo of us standing beneath a shady oak. Squished together even though there was plenty of space.
Aunt Laura was still married to Dan — her second husband — when we all met up for our annual family gathering in Sugarloaf Park. Her three children from her first marriage and I had never been close. They have always been too much like their mother.
Rude. Entitled. Obnoxious.
But Dan’s sons...
They did things to my insides I have never told a soul.
Even though our time together was brief, they were family.
We became friends. Nothing more. Their affections were always strictly plutonic where I wanted more.
Secretly. Alone in my room at night. But even I knew that kind of relationship was impossible and highly frowned upon.
Still if I had known this would be the last time we’d be together, I probably would have done things a whole lot differently.
Not exactly sure how, but...
I study their faces.
I study mine.
Without context, we almost appear intimate on a level we never were.
I’m in the middle in my light, cotton sundress with the spaghetti straps and tiny, purple tulips scattered across the slightly dirty fabric. My hair is a dark mane tangled around my flushed cheeks by the wind. I remember fighting with the strands, trying to keep them out of my face.
I remember I had an elastic earlier that morning. It held the heavy weight away from my blue eyes. But something happened to it after my walk through the woods.
In the glass, my reflection frowns as I try to remember that single moment from that day.
The black void that continues to mask my memory.
I thought I was gone a few minutes. I hadn’t gone far.
I spotted a ring of flowers off the path and gone to have a closer look, but when I returned, everyone was in a panic.
Mom was nearly hysterical. It had been hours, she said.
The crease between my brows deepens as I fight to pull the rest through. But all I recall after that is my Uncle Kevin finding me wandering around on my own, barefoot, hair tangled with twigs and leaves. My dress was stained with dirt. My cheeks were red and blotchy from crying.
But Mom helped clean me up and we all concluded I must have gotten lost and scared.
Still it wasn’t fear that kept me awake at night.
It wasn’t fear turning food into ash in my mouth.
It took years and several therapy sessions to diagnose the crippling weight of depression compressing the life out of me.
Grief.
Loss.
But up until Aunt Laura’s death, I haven’t lost anyone. Still, everything in my life felt empty. An endless cataclysm threatening to drown me.
Not that you could tell in the photo. And perhaps they did it intentionally to cheer me up, but in that moment, captured forever beneath glass, Kellen is behind me, a looming tower of muscles and deep, penetrating eyes the warm brown of espresso beans.
Roan and Lukan, equally enormous, equally beautiful with their finely chiseled features and matching dimples stand on either side with their arms hooked around my middle.
That whole moment is still a blur, a hazy dream that replayed in my head a million times over the years and I still can’t believe it happened. If I wasn’t holding the proof in my hands, I’d think I made it up in my head.
Roan and Lukan slipped up next to me, possessively anchored their arms around me and pulled me close.
And while I was comforted by their proximity, Kellen pressed into my back, captured my hips.
The act had caught me off guard. It shows on my face tipped up to his, blue eyes wide, lips parted in surprise.
And his face, tilted down like he’s contemplating whether or not to kiss me.
And that’s how Mom captured us.
Me caught between the three men who unexpectedly vanished from my life not long after this photo was taken.
Last I heard from Jenna, Aunt Laura’s eldest daughter, Kellen got married a few years back.
Roan was engaged and Lukan had a girlfriend.
They’d all moved on without me. Which is fine.
As much as the fantasy was fun, I no longer desired them. Or anyone.
Feeling that familiar pang of darkness, I quickly set the photo back on the end table and look away from it. I turn my attention to the room and the nine million candles, charms, and bells still left to count.
The thought alone has me dropping back against the cushion, exhaustion weighing me down.
I need a minute.
Between the long drive and the magnitude of my task, I just need to recharge my batteries.
Yawning, I recline on the stiff cushions and close my eyes.
Just for a second.