Page 21 of Shadows Relived
He was twenty. On the verge of everything.
And she’d wanted to give him all of her.
No part of her had been afraid. Not of him. Not of what came next. She’d looked at him and seen a future. Maybe not a tidy one. Maybe not a safe one. But it would have been theirs.
Then morning came. The sun broke over the windowsill, and he’d pulled away like she’d been a mistake.
“This is for the best,” he’d said, voice thick, eyes looking anywhere but at her.
She hadn’t even asked what he meant. She already knew. It meant goodbye. It meant I want you, but I’m leaving anyway. It meant he’d decided for both of them and never even talked to her about it.
And it was the same damn thing her father always said.
This is what’s best for you, Meaghan.
Trust me, sweetheart.
Let me handle it.
She was tired of it. Tired of men who claimed to loveher but never trusted her to choose her own life. Her own heart. Her own future.
Her jaw clenched as annoyance filled her.
Let them all keep saying what was best for her. She was through listening.
“Miss Harrington,” Sophie called out, dragging her out of her thoughts. “Can you help me draw Callen’s super suit?”
Meaghan stared over at the trio, not sure when they had given up the game and went back to coloring. “Absolutely. But only if I get to design the cape.”
“Pink!” Sophie screamed with certainty.
“Well, obviously.”
She sat down beside the children, pressing herself back into the now. Into this strange little sliver of stolen safety, where pancakes and crayons made up the armor keeping the fear at bay.
But even as she laughed and helped draw rocket boots on cartoon Callen, her heart kept drifting to the woods.
To the man who kissed like fire and silence all at once.
And to the secret that’s waiting for them. If only they knew where.
CHAPTER 10
BY THE TIMECALLEN pulled the SUV up beside the cabin, the woods had softened into that deep, early-evening hush that only the forest could conjure. The solitude wrapped around him like a worn blanket, thick with the scent of pine and smoke and something faintly sweet drifting from the cracked-open window.
He stepped out into the gravel and exhaled slowly, letting the tension of the drive roll off his shoulders. His arms were sore from gripping the wheel, and his jaw ached from clenching it. The bag of supplies weighed next to nothing in comparison.
But the moment he stepped into the cabin, a singular thought pushed everything else aside: He needed a drink.
Because chaos had a sound, and it lived in his childhood cabin now.
The kids were everywhere, and he had no idea how three kindergarteners sounded like an entire classroom running rampant in his cabin. Sophie was singing off-key in the living room, spinning in dizzy circles with a pillowcasetied around her neck like a cape. Willie hopped between furniture cushions, pretending the floor was lava, and Lucas was in a heated debate with Meaghan over whether or not melted crayons could be used as tactical camouflage.
Meaghan was trying—God bless her—to maintain some order, crouched on the floor with a construction paper crown half-finished in her lap, glue stick in one hand and a bandage in the other.
Crayons rolled across the hardwood floor as a paper plate hit the wall and fluttered to the ground. Someone knocked over a cup of juice, and a high-pitched shriek rang out, but Callen couldn’t tell whether it was in delight or dismay.
It was the sound of cabin fever. High-pitched. Inescapable. And relentless.
