Curtain Call (The Jewel Project #7)

53. Secrets to the Grave

It felt right to be there again.

All those months spent in different safe houses, isolated from the world now felt like a dream. A dream in which Maxi had floated by like a ghost, her feelings numbed, watching everything unfold with mild curiosity.

There had been love in the dream, true. Family, children and reasons for joy. But it belonged to another world, a world she could not access, could not be a part of as much as she tried. A world worthy of a better person, not of her. Never of her.

Because Kyle had been right. She was a horrid person, had always been. Maybe Davyn had seen more in her, but whatever potential she'd had, it had died the moment she decided that fear was more important than love. She wasn't brave. She'd never been brave.

Her heartbeat thumped in her temple and her breath caught in her throat.

The fear, the sheer terror made her feel so much.  It was so familiar, something she'd carried around for the longest time. The only constant in her life, so much so that living without it felt impossible. 

Her children and grandchildren had never felt as real as the blood pumping through her veins right now.

You're in danger.

She knew that. She knew the risks and the consequences of her choice. She also knew it was the only option she truly had. Because without it, she didn't know how to live.

Without them.

Her tear-filled eyes rested on his name, forever carved in stone. She wasn't sure why, but all her life, she'd loved him. The thought of him and the future they could have had. Davyn had been right. Kyle had made the right choices.

Davyn could have been Kyle. She could have been Kay, brave and sure of herself, by Kyle's side in spite of everything. Because the more Maxi saw what her children were facing, the more she realized she could never handle a life like that.

Had things been different, had she never married Freider, maybe she could have. Maybe that tiny seed that Davyn saw in her, the bit of her soul he fell in love with, would have grown and bloomed into something worthwhile.

And still... In some way, she had loved Freider as well. If he had lived and stayed by her side, she could've faced the rest of her life, living in the muted fear she was so familiar with. But with them both gone, she was nothing but a tender leaf carried by the wind.

As things were, Freider could rot in hell. But Davyn...

Tears snaked down her cheeks and she drew in a sharp breath. She'd lived without him for over thirty years. But having him back and then losing him again hit her harder than anything. She'd spent months wondering why. Then she'd discovered it was the hope.

As long as she knew he was out there, with the fear, she also had hope. Hope that maybe one day he would return and take her away, finally make her happy. She'd been waiting for a happiness which would never come.

Her entire life had been nothing but a battled between fear and hope. She'd kept herself hidden away so well that now, when she could finally let herself out, she realized that person had died, smothered and starved. And she needed that person. She needed her soul.

The trembling in her hands intensified as she waited. Davyn's name seemed to haunt her. She couldn't even look above it, at her own son's name. He was alive, he was in good hands. He was happy. And he'd been right. She never needed him, she needed his father.

"Why did it have to happen like this?" she whispered in the wind.

But she knew the answer. It had been her. Her choices, her fear, her weakness which had ruined everything, which had turned Davyn and Freider against each other, made them who they were.