Hallowed Ground by Hope Anika

Author:Hope Anika
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Hope Anika

fifteen

Ellie had kissed three men in her life. The first—a boy in her fourth-grade math class—didn’t count.

The second had been Pascal.

And the third…well, the third was a man who now couldn’t even bring himself to look at her.

Mon Dieu!

What a mess of it she’d made.

If she was honest—and she tried to always be honest, if not with the world around her, then at least with herself—she knew it had been a willful, deliberate mess.

Some part of her had wanted to kiss Sean. So she had.

Oh, it hadn’t been a conscious thought. She hadn’t planned it. But when the opportunity had presented itself—

Well. She’d jumped in with both feet.

And now she couldn’t forget. The hard press of his body. The demanding hunger in his kiss. The need that burned between them so hot and wild she’d never experienced anything like it.

And likely never would again.

A dream, she told herself. Just a dream.

She’d told him she was sorry, and she meant it. Mostly.

Because—honestly—part of her had been trying to shake him up.

To slap him awake.

She’s gone, but I’m here. I’m here!

Which was pure, selfish foolishness at its worst.

Three days left.

And here she was…mooning over a man she had no business even looking at.

Let alone kissing.

Sean had been silent the entire way back. Even when she’d told him he was overreacting, that it was just a kiss, he hadn’t spoken. He’d just given her a furious, searing look that made goosebumps wash across her skin.

Ellie didn’t know if he was angry with her, or with himself.

Probably both.

And now regret ate at her. Not that she’d kissed him—not really—but that it had distressed him. Because that was not something she’d have willingly done. Not to anyone.

But especially not to him.

Her friend.

So much for that, she thought.

And the loss was cutting.

She hadn’t thought that part of her still existed. Ethan’s disappearance had damaged her so profoundly, crushed from existence that part of her where belief and hope lived, that she thought she was like the robots in the movies she sometimes watched, a hollow, perfunctory entity devoid of empathy and emotion.

But it was not so. And that was not good news.

We’re done.

She wasn’t sure she would ever see him again.

Customs had recovered everything but Tillie, and she had no value to anyone but the family. The necklace had been the driving force behind recovery, and that was now in the hands of law enforcement.

For all intents and purposes, the job was pretty much done.

So there was no reason for him to again seek Ellie out.

Done.

A thought that deeply saddened her, which was unexpected.

And uncomfortable.

But there were other matters with which she needed to concern herself: namely, Mae.

The time had come to call Family Services, the thought of which hurt just as much as remembering the look on Sean’s face after they’d kissed.

Betrayal.

There was no other word for it.

A truth from which Ellie couldn’t hide.

And if the music of a child’s laughter in her home—a sound she’d not known she missed—made something that was dark and cold and hard within her soften and warm and turn to the light—well.

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