Artifact by Bowes K T

Author:Bowes, K T
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: english civil war, artifacts, death and bereavement, romance and drama, romance and comedy, new zealand maori, church history 1500s 1600s britain, cozy womens fiction, multiracial romance wwbm bmww, small town english romance
Publisher: K T Bowes

Chapter 13

Ed had started it and so it was right that he should end it. Reluctantly and long after he had known that he should, he pulled away from Jayden’s welcoming lips and with a sigh of regret, turned away from her to collect himself. Jayden faltered helplessly, realisation dawning as she stood vulnerable and naked in her bra and skirt by the dining table. The ugly spectre of Abandonment laughed at her from the corner of the room, opening its filthy maw and leaking her destruction for the second time in her life. “This is wrong on so many counts,” Ed struggled to meet her clear, sparkling eyes.

Jayden’s face, which only moments ago had been tender, yielding and responsive, closed with a snap in front of him, locking him out with shades of rejection and hatred. It seared his desire with a jagged, defender’s blade and left him feeling breathless and empty even though she had said nothing.

Ed strode over to the stairwell feeling a mixture of clown and torturer. He shut the front door gently after him, worrying about whether Jayden would come to lock it, but hearing the snap of the lock and the drawing of bolts as she must have followed him down the long staircase.

Jayden ran back upstairs, jolting her elbow with each step taken, forcing her up the next staircase to vomit spectacularly in the toilet of her ensuite. The sickness stayed with her for most of the night, releasing her only to lie on the bathroom floor in a painful ball for a few hours. The pain was physical, manifested in dry retching and stomach tearing heaves but it was also emotional. The awakened seventeen year old Lily did not like the severe, guarded woman she had become and was desperately trying to break free from Jayden’s enforced imprisonment of her. But out with her leaked a whole world of trouble, formerly dealt with and locked safely away. With Lily came the memory of Wes’ dirty hands on her young body, his ruthless enjoyment of her against her will and the muffled screams which bounced off his sweaty collar bone. And the face of her daddy as he had burst in to save her, his final look of compassion and dismay for his daughter only, as Wes’ blade slid into the generous, loving man who had named her, mentored her and died for her.

At five in the morning when the retching finally stopped and she felt safe enough to leave the bathroom, Jayden sat in her lounge with a cream woollen throw wrapped around her bare shoulders. A notepad rested on the sofa cushion next to her and her shaking right hand gripped a blue biro. The grinding of the bones in her left arm had long since told her that it was broken and the blue and purple hues had leaked through onto both sides of the joint. She knew that she needed to get it fixed, but she had to do this first.

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