Deep in the Heart: A Contemporary Christian Romance Novel by Staci Stallings

Author:Staci Stallings [Stallings, Staci]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Spirit Light Publishing
Published: 2014-01-08T05:00:00+00:00

Keith absorbed that blow. For no real reason, he had never realized there was another driver involved. “It was his fault?”

On his chest, she nodded. “He was drunk.”

The breath he had been taking vanished. In its absence a hundred thousand pieces of things she had told him and things she hadn’t fell into place. He wanted to say something, but nothing would come. Her world had been ripped apart by someone else’s thoughtlessness, and in the next second the understanding of how many times that could have been him smashed into him. How many times had he told his friends he was perfectly fine to drive when the reality was he really wasn’t? How many bars had he left, never thinking of whose life was between him and home? Too many. That was for sure. “So do you know what happened?”

She was shaking a little, cold he suspected, so he reached over and pulled the little throw blanket from the couch edge. Gently he put it around her, the blanket sliding easily over the soft blue material of her robe. Once it was there, he slid his hand up and down her arm for reassurance that he was still there.

“He ran a stop sign,” she said softly. “There were no skid marks at all. They were both killed instantly. It was just a mess of smashed metal when it was over—nothing recognizable at all.”

“So you saw the car?”

Inexplicably she shook her head. “That’s what everybody said, but they never took me to see it.” Her voice sounded hollow as if there was no feeling beneath the memories. “It’s so weird. I’ve gone through that night a million times in my head. Sometimes I’d wake up in the middle of the night, and I’d try to picture the accident. Who was where. How dark it was. The lights. The sounds. I don’t know. It’s like if I could find something that could’ve been changed, something that didn’t add up, it would bring them back like it never happened. Like if I could somehow find some evidence that God had overlooked that He would have to reverse His decision and let them come back.”

She exhaled at that thought. “Pretty stupid, huh?”

“No. You’re just trying to make some sense out of something that doesn’t make any sense.”

The hollowness returned to her voice and her breathing. “He was supposed to get time.” She squinted into the memories. “Manslaughter something, but he paid his way out of it.”

Once again, Keith’s breathing snagged on the statement. “He walked away?”

She nodded. “Just like I did. Only I never got over it.” Her hand pulled the robe’s belt out slowly and then let it drop. “I wonder if he ever did.”

The story wound through Keith, pulling up memories as it went. “That’s why you drove Greg home.”

“Huh?” Her head moved, and this time she sat up although she swayed with the movement.

Now, looking at her, sitting there, there was so much he wanted to say but no real way to say it all.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.