“No. She’s brilliant. She’s beautiful. She’s like a bright ray of sunlight. She’s . . . Her life growing up . . .” I stopped and swallowed the bile that rose in my throat just from thinking about what she’d been through. How my girl had suffered. “It was bad, Momma. Dark. As dark and twisted as a girl’s life can be. But she’s not a fool.”

My mother’s face fell. I could see her fighting back the tears in her eyes. “Oh, baby. I should have figured when my big-hearted, beautiful boy fell in love, he’d fall in love so completely. You never did anything halfway. You didn’t take your first steps, you took off running. You didn’t say your first word, you sang an entire line of a song. And you didn’t just take up for the underdogs at school, you got expelled for tying a bully to a flagpole. My baby has never done anything halfway. You do it with so much determination it blasts everyone else’s attempts out of the water.”

She walked around my mess and dropped down beside me. I felt the tears burn my eyes as she took my face in her hands and looked at me with so much love and heartache, because that was who she was. My mom hurt with me. She always had.

“You are a good man. The best. I love your stepfather, but even his doesn’t compare to the heart you have. You were the best thing I’ll ever do in this life. I can’t top creating you. Being your mother is a gift that brings me joy every day of my life. I’ll die knowing I left a man on this earth who will leave a trail of good everywhere he goes.” She stopped, and I knew there was a “but” coming. “But for the first time in your life, I am watching you let someone destroy you. I miss your smile and your laugh. I want those back. You’ve never let any obstacle in your life go unconquered. Why are you doing it now? If you love her, then go get her. No woman in her right mind can turn this face down.”

I reached over and wiped the tears from my mother’s determined face. “I need her to come to me. If we have a chance at a future, I need her to come to me. I’ve always taken what I wanted and conquered my trials, but nothing and no one has ever meant what she does. I can’t conquer her, Momma. I love her. I never want to make her do anything. Even love me. She has to love me all on her own.”

Momma let out a sob and wrapped her arms around me and held me to her. I closed my eyes and fought back the emotion threatening to let go. The last time my mother had seen me cry was when I was three and broke my arm falling off a trampoline. Even when Harlow had lain in a coma, I had cried in private.

I would never get over losing Reese. If she never came back to me, I’d be broken the rest of my life.

Reese

Another week passed by, and I managed to survive. It was all I was doing. With every day that went by, I felt like I was losing myself a little more. The horror of my past was slowly taking over. The progress I had achieved over the two years I’d been away was gone. I could no longer push away the memories of my stepfather.

Soon I would have to see a therapist. I wasn’t sleeping much at all now, and when I did, it wasn’t peaceful. The weight was falling off me, and I had dark circles under my eyes that I couldn’t cover up anymore. I needed help.

The only thing holding me back was that I knew I’d have to talk about Mase.

I couldn’t talk about him. It hurt too much.

“Reese Ellis?” a female voice asked. I put down the beers I was loading into the drink cart’s icebox and turned around.

An attractive older lady with dark hair that curled under in a shoulder-length bob stood looking at me as if she was studying me. I knew she wasn’t a member here. The worn-out jeans and boots she was wearing didn’t look like anything the ladies here wore. Then there was the cowboy hat that sat back on her head. That was a dead giveaway that she was out of place.

“Yes?” I replied.

She didn’t smile or say anything right away. She continued to take me in. Although she wasn’t glaring at me, she looked as if she wanted to shake me.

I glanced around to see if there was anyone else around or just us.

“I imagined you’d be beautiful, but just like always, when my boy does something, he does it big,” she said, and a sad smile touched her lips.

I didn’t know what she was talking about or who she thought she was talking to. Saying thank you didn’t seem like the right thing to do.

“Those dark circles and the empty look in your eyes tell me all I need to know. So let me tell you what you need to know,” she said, taking a few steps toward me. “I’ve watched my son fight battles for everyone he’s ever loved and win. When he was seven, his cousin got picked on at school by a bully. My baby found out. The next thing I know, I have to go get my boy from school because he was suspended for wrapping another kid around the flagpole with duct tape. I was horrified. Until I found out the kid was the one who had been beating on his cousin. Calling him names and knocking him down in the halls. That particular day, the bully had stuck his cousin’s head in the toilet, with urine in it, and flushed. After the duct tape, no one messed with his cousin again.

“When he was ten, the librarian at his school, who brought him cookies every day and always saved him the best books, was being let go because the school board said they didn’t have the budget to keep a full-time librarian. Mrs. Hawks was in her seventies, but she loved those kids, and my boy was her favorite. So my baby got a petition together and then got different businesses in town to pledge funds and donate to the cause. Mrs. Hawks didn’t lose her job. In fact, he collected so much money she got a raise.