***This excerpt contains spoilers. DO NOT READ if you have not finished the previous book in the series***
CHAPTER ONE
Ash drifted down around me like snowflakes from the night sky as I watched the women’s shelter smolder.
It had been my safe haven for nearly a year after I fled to New York—a place for my body and spirit to heal—and now it was gone.
I knelt on the sidewalk in a state of numb disbelief as firemen scoured the rubble for bodies. I didn’t want to watch them collect the tiny remains of children, but I couldn’t pull my eyes away.
“Sweetheart.”
The soothing Southern drawl drew me from my thoughts, and I looked at Marx as he crouched in front of me. His green eyes—the vibrant shade of grass in the early spring—shimmered with concern.
“You’re hurtin’ yourself.”
I didn’t realize my fingers were clenched into white-knuckled fists in my lap until he pried them open, revealing the bloody grooves my fingernails had made in my palms.
“This isn’t your fault,” he said. “I know you’re blamin’ yourself right now, but you didn’t cause that fire.”
I stared at the bloody crescents on my palms as I spoke, my voice oddly hollow. “He killed them. Because of me.”
I could imagine my foster brother lighting the match that set the shelter ablaze. He would’ve stood by to listen to the screams and to watch a piece of my life crumble.
Collin was cold and calculating, and he had learned a long time ago that the best way to hurt me was to hurt the people who matter to me.
He targeted the shelter because I had felt safe there, and because I had grown to care about the other women. I may not have started the fire, but flames of guilt still scorched my insides.
Marx cupped my face in his hands. “That doesn’t make it your fault.”
My gaze slid past him to the cloud of dark smoke that clung to the night sky, and a tremor crept into my voice. “They’re all dead, even the children.”
Faces flashed through my mind, and I had to draw on the emotional barrier I had created as a child to wall off the rising grief. I didn’t have the strength to deal with it right now.
“I know,” Marx said, his tone somber. “Let’s get you back to my apartment where it’s safe.”
He didn’t wait for me to argue or agree; he gripped under my arms and lifted me up, setting me gently on my feet.
No place on this earth is safe, I thought. The shelter had been a safe place, until its walls became a flaming cage that trapped everyone inside.
I glanced at Jordan, who was leaning back against a parked car, his blue eyes reflecting the grief I couldn’t let myself feel. He had met some of these people just a few weeks ago; he had stood outside this building with me when it was still whole.
“We have a survivor!” a distant voice called out.
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This book was amazing, but a hard read. I’ve never gone through the pains Holly has, but people I cherish have. I resonate deeply with Marx and Jordan here. It is so hard to keep faith in the hardest moments, but while Holly isn’t real, stories like hers are, and this is so encouraging. John 1:5 #Eveninthedarkness