He would have taken custody and tried to make my boys think I was the villain.
So I swallowed the urge, shoved it down deep, right next to every scream I’d ever bitten back.
Not for Scott.
Not for me.
But for them.
For my babies upstairs, sleeping soft and innocent, dreaming in the house their mother was fighting like hell to keep whole.
Still, my body didn’t care about any of that.
It yearned for Dominic.
His mouth.
His hands.
His cock.
His groans.
It remembered the stretch and fullness and the way Dominic stared at me like he was happily drowning within my soul.
God. . .I miss him already.
Soon, we made it through the backyard—or rather, we almost did.
That's when I saw her.
Mrs. Patterson.
In her backyard.
At midnight.
Shit.
My blood turned to ice.
I stopped so abruptly that Scott's weight nearly toppled us both. I grabbed his arm tighter, steadying him before he could make noise.
"Shh." I pressed a finger to my lips, my other hand gripping his bicep hard enough to bruise. "Don't make a sound."
Scott's glassy eyes tried to focus where I was looking. "Wha—"
"Shut up." The words came out as barely a breath.
Through the gap in our fence, Mrs. Patterson moved like a ghost through her yard. She wore pale pink slippers and that same floral housecoat from earlier—but for some reason now it looked different.
Haunted.
Wrong.
In one hand, she clutched a flashlight.
In the other, her Bible.
