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Chapter four

Caspian

Since the day Lakelyn moved away from Hallowridge, I had waited for her to come back… for good.

Not to visit, not to drive into town for a week, or drop my son off with Mama and disappear before the weight of this city dragged her under.

I knew every time Lakelyn crossed the county line. I couldn’t explain how, but I felt her before I ever saw her. Something shifted deep within the house the moment she got close, almost as if the mansion recognized her presence right along with me. The air moved differently through the empty halls, the heaviness that usually clung to the rooms eased, and even the cold that had become part of these walls seemed to retreat.

After those first searches, Lakelyn had never come back inside. She hadn’t stepped foot on the driveway, let alone walked through my front doors. Until today, she hadn’t even slowed down long enough to look past the iron bars.

I stood in the shadows of the second-floor master bedroom, watching through the heavy glass as the pearl-white truck pulled along the curb.

The first person I saw was my son. He had his face pressed flat against the tinted glass of the back window, staring up at the roofline with an expression so entirely mine it made something ache in a chest that no longer had a heartbeat.

I had known about him for years because Mama brought him to the house every time him and Lakelyn came to visit. Mama would walk him across the grounds, pointing up at the balconies, telling him stories about the man I used to be before everything went dark. Sometimes she would sit out near the fountain and talk aloud to the empty air, like she knew I was listening.

I was.

I heard every damn word.

Seeing him with Lakelyn, though?

That hit differently.

Watching them together stirred a hunger in me that went deeper than whatever pulled me between this world and the next. That boy was mine down to the marrow, from the way he carried himself to that stubborn frown when Lakelyn told him no.

I almost laughed.

Damn girl had spent five years raising a mirror image of the man who wrecked her life.

Lakelyn looked different, but not in a way that made her seem older. She had simply grown into herself, carrying a confidence and a hardness around the edges that life hadn’t forced her to develop six years ago. There was more strength in the way she carried herself now, like the world had tested her enough times for her to stop bending so easily. And somehow, after all that time, she was still fine as hell… maybe even finer.

That irritated me more than it should have.

Six years of silence, six years trapped inside this stone cage, and she still possessed the exact face that used to ruin my mornings and the same mouth I had bruised with kisses.

I watched the exact second her eyes drifted up the stone facade and locked onto my window.

I saw her freeze.

For one heartbeat, I thought she actually saw me.

I took a step forward, leaning toward the glass, letting the shadows peel back from my face.

Her eyes went wide, fear and disbelief draining the color from her cheeks… then she blinked. And just like that, whatever shape I had managed to pull together dissolved.

That was the curse of it.

I couldn’t hold form long enough during the day… not in the harsh light, and damn sure not with her standing on the other side of the gate. But Lakelyn had felt me. She had been closer to me in that single moment than she had been in over two thousand days.

Then my son threw the back door open and hopped onto the asphalt before Lakelyn even realized what he was doing.

A smirk tugged at the corner of my mouth because I already knew that little nigga was about to give his mama hell.

Lakelyn was out of the driver’s seat damn near as fast as he was, panic sharpening her voice as she called through the iron gates. “Kaidence!”

He wasn’t trying to run away; he just wanted to see the house… our house.