Sacred Hart by A.M. Johnson Read Free Book Online

like everyone else, but most of the time he made me feel like his own son. He didn’t care about the ten years of hard time I’d done, or the things I had endured. He just wanted me to be happy. He wanted me to be normal, to have a love like Red’s, a life with a legacy like his. He wanted things I wasn’t sure I was capable of anymore.
    “Thanks, Ryan.”
    I nodded. Once he was gone, my grip on the counter eased. I reached over and turned on the radio. The light music drifted through the room and brought me back down to reality.
    Even though the roots I had were rotted, the soil contaminated with loss and lies, the hold they had on me was strong and steadfast. Moving forward… it felt impossible, and I wasn’t ready or equipped, just yet, to find my way out of the thicket.

Chapter Five
     

     
    On occasion, I drove past my childhood home, but each time I did the pain grew into something too big to harness. The large property laid fallow. The house was run down, the wood splintered, and the driveway was muddied and unpassable. My boot slipped in the muck as I stepped from my car. I took a few small steps to the weathered white fence. My hand rested on the wet panel; the rain was just a mist, a fog of moisture that penetrated through even the best of jackets, but it chilled and soaked everything in its path.
    Attending Mr. Bartley’s funeral today had brought all my old wounds front and center. I dropped off Cornelia, and instead of heading to my backup babysitter’s house to pick up Beth, I chose to come here instead. Being here, it helped me think, helped me work through most of the chaos in my head, and if I was being honest, it was Ryan that drove me here. When I was little, I used to bring home strays almost on a daily basis. The puppy dog eyes, the sickly underfed, the wild animal, the broken wing — I fixed things. It was in my nature; it was why I became a nurse, and this home housed all my past loves, my memories, and my heart.
    Ryan was a stray. You couldn’t look at him without feeling the overwhelming urge to help. Help how I wasn’t sure. His slight southern accent, his sad eyes, and the way he hardly said a word but spoke volumes with his expressions… it was enough to draw me in and make me crazy with wonder. Ryan was rough around the edges, and the storm in his dark eyes was overtly sexy but scary at the same time. He wasn’t like the men I knew. The small town boys or the upper crust educated doctors. Ryan was real, and I’d never had real. I’d learned my lesson with Adam after he left me lost, pregnant, and alone — you couldn’t judge a book by its shiny cover. The breeze picked up, and it was no longer the thoughts of Adam that were leaving me cold.
    The house that was once full of hope, love, and family was now dulled with isolation. When I moved to Utah, it was to make a new life. But instead, I was handed a different path, the path that brought me back here, brought me back home. I shouldn’t linger here. It made no sense to stay in the past. I closed my eyes and smiled as I thought of Beth, and my ridiculous little house with its crappy heaters and worn down appliances. My parents died. They died unexpectedly and too young. I missed them, and every day I’d have to remind myself I couldn’t call my mom for that recipe or ask my dad to help with the damn water heater, but I had Beth. I had a future, and it was a gift to live it. I couldn’t dwell in futures that didn’t happen or tragedies past. It would only make the air I was blessed to breathe murky, and I wanted more than a dishwater gray life.
    Ryan.
    I still had a heart, and I’d be lying if I tried to ignore how it beat faster when he was near. His hands had stories to tell. Those strong, worn, skillful looking hands, and the mystery behind where they’d been, what they’d feel like laced with mine — it was too hard to tell myself to stay away. Beth and I hadn’t been back to Red’s in a little over a week, but I