In Her Space Read online

  In Her Space

  Copyright © 2018 Amie Knight

  All rights reserved. No part of this novel may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted without written permission from the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. This Book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. If you would like to share this book with others please purchase a copy for each person. This Book In her Space is a work of fiction. All names, characters, places, and occurrences are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to any persons, living or dead, events, or locations is purely coincidental.

  Editor: Emily Lawrence of Lawrence Editing

  Proofreading: Julie Deaton of Deaton Author Services

  Interior Design and Formatting: Stacey Blake of Champagne Book Design

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Epilogue

  Epilogue

  Preview of The Line

  Other Books

  Acknowledgements

  About The Author

  For anyone who’s ever looked at the stars and wished.

  Present

  “HOW MANY?” SHE PUSHED THE hair off my forehead and kissed the wrinkle there before lying back down. The blue blanket was soft beneath us, but the ground was hard and cold. The stars sparkled overhead and a slight chill in the night air came off the ocean. I could smell it, the whiff of salt and briny fish. It smelled like home.

  I bit my lip, pretending I hadn’t thought about this a million times already. Because Liv loved when I teased. And I loved making her happy. “Probably three. Two boys and one girl.”

  Her head was on my chest, her entire body glued to the side of mine, one of her legs thrown over my hips, but that didn’t stop her from pinching my side. “Why only one girl?” Her voice was incredulous.

  I raised my eyebrows. “Because that’s all I think I can handle.” I laughed.

  “Oh, I don’t know, Nova. You seem like you would make a great dad. I could see you with three girls, all flouncing around you in pink, frilly dresses, demanding you tell them stories about the stars.” She was smiling with her whole face, lit up from within.

  And I saw it, too, clear as day. Three brown-headed angels in pale pink with their momma’s hair and button noses, but with my momma’s blue eyes. The vision made my heart sing in my chest. It also terrified the shit out of me. Three girls with girl drama. And how many bathrooms would I need and what happened when they all got their periods? At the same time? Because I heard chicks did that.

  “I don’t know. I think two boys and one girl would be perfect. They’d take care of her. Protect her. Keep boys away from her. She could have her own bathroom.”

  She giggled. “I see you have really thought about this.”

  “Mmm,” I mumbled noncommittedly.

  “Okay. Two boys. One girl. What will you name them?”

  I kissed the tip of her nose and whispered, “That’s easy.”

  She rubbed her smile across mine. “Well, don’t keep me waiting.”

  I held up my hand in front of our faces, ticking off one finger and then another. “Hunter and Nash for the boys.” And finally, the third finger. “And Columbia. She’ll be my girl.”

  A tiny line formed between her brows as her lips pinched together before she asked, “Where did you get those names? You don’t hear those every day.”

  I rolled over until I was on top of her, my elbows bracketing her head, one knee between her thighs. “Where do you think I got them from?”

  That tiny line was back. She pursed her lips. I wanted to taste them. Always. They were pink and juicy and all mine. Suddenly her face lit up and then she rolled her eyes and shook her head. “The stars.”

  Her cheeks were pink. Her hair was down and feathered out around her head. I ran my hands through it and smiled down at her. “You know me too well.”

  She blew out a long breath and pinched my side again before hugging me to her, wrapping her arms around my back, her legs around my waist. “Tell me what they will look like,” she whispered in my ear.

  I tried to take some of my weight off her, leaning up on an elbow, but she wasn’t having any of it. She only dragged me back to her and wrapped her limbs around me tighter. “Don’t even try it. I need to feel all of you when you tell me about our future children.”

  I smirked into the mass of hair in my face. “Our children, huh? I thought I was talking about my children.”

  She pushed on my chest until I could see her face. “Don’t mess with a woman and her future children, Adam. That shit is not funny.” Her eyes dared me to argue.

  My smirk turned into a full-on smile at her cranky words. “Don’t cuss. You know I don’t like it.”

  “Then don’t be a dick.”

  This time I laughed out loud. “Okay,” I said, leaning back down on her and putting my mouth to her ear. “Hunter and Nash will look like me, of course. Dark hair, but they will have your eyes. Deep caramel eyes that twinkle when they smile. They’ll be quiet and thoughtful like their dad and be fiercely protective of their baby sister.”

  Her cheek smiled against mine.

  “And Columbia?”

  “Hmm. Columbia? Let me see.” I paused for dramatic effect. “Well, she’ll be gorgeous like her mother. She’ll have your beautiful thick hair, but she’ll have my eyes, like my momma. She’ll need her brothers’ protection because she’ll be strong-willed and have a little too much gusto like her mother.”

  Liv laughed. “There is no such thing as too much gusto.”

  “Says the girl without fear.”

  A silence followed that had me leaning up on one elbow and looking down at her.

  With a grave face, she said, “Oh, I fear plenty.”

  I rubbed my thumb across her bee-stung lips, the proof I’d been kissing her only minutes ago. “Like what?”

  She looked away toward the bridge, to the island. “I don’t know,” she said in what seemed like a daze. “Sometimes I worry this is all a dream and I’ll wake up and you won’t be here and I’ll be alone in this world again. Sometimes I’m scared I’ll lose you and when I think about that, I can’t breathe. You’re all I have,” she finished on a tortured whisper that obliterated my heart, shredding it into a million pieces. Small tears formed at the corners of her eyes that made my gut clench. I kissed them away. I’d never leave her.

  “Shhh,” I soothed. “You’ll always have me, Liv. I’m not going anywhere,” I promised vehemently.

  “You swear?” She held her right pinky up to me.

  I stared at her confused.

  “Pinky swear?” she asked, thrusting her pinky finger at me again.

  I brought my own hand up and circled my pinky around hers. “I pinky swear, but, Liv, pinkies or not, I’ll always be here. Remember, it’s you and me against the world.”

  She beamed up at me and I could see the reflection of the night sky in her eyes. “Me and you against the world, Nova.”

  I shot up in bed with a miserable groan. My stomach twisted in pain as I was thrust into a reality I could only hide from in the precious moments of sleep. I always woke up quickly and this time was no exception
. The realization that I was not there in that field beneath the stars with my Luna bathed me in a thousand tiny needles of agony. Pain ricocheted inside, wounding me again and again as I realized I lied. I’d left her. Not willing, but it didn’t matter. It hurt all the same.

  I pushed the heels of my hands into my eyes hard. It never failed. I always woke up right then. When she was looking up at me with those hopeful, dreaming eyes full of stars. But it wasn’t just a dream. It was a memory. One I carried around to comfort me. To torture me.

  No, I wasn’t lying in that field of stars with my girl. I rolled over on my hard bed and tucked the threadbare blanket around my body and stared ahead two feet in front of me at the toilet and sink hanging off the wall, the smell of piss a constant reminder of my circumstances. The scratch of my orange pants chaffed my skin. The bunk groaned as the inmate above me rolled over in bed.

  Three concrete walls and a set of bars eighteen hours a day. That was my life now, not that it was really a life.

  I rolled over in my bunk, praying for sleep to take me again. I counted backward from a hundred and squeezed my eyes closed, hoping like hell I’d return to the stars and the field and my Livvy, my escape if only for just a few more hours. My reprieve from the horror of my daily life.

  And as I drifted off, I slipped into a field of dreams and a sky of hope. To the only place I wanted to be—in her space.

  Ten years later

  “ADAM NOVA, THE REVOLUTIONARY INVENTOR of the epic, virtual reality, star gazing app, LUNA, that has taken the astronomy world by storm is here with us tonight to discuss his plans for the Madison Planetarium,” the reporter on TV announced.

  LUNA. I wondered if he did that on purpose. To torture me. Or so I’d always remember. Either way, it sucked. It didn’t matter. I’d never forget.

  I leaned closer to the TV, waiting for just a small glimpse of him. It had been so long. Ten years since I’d seen him in the flesh. Pictures in articles and magazines didn’t count. My old boy, Harry, let out a whine, but I hardly noticed.

  “What in actual hell are you doing right now?” Raven asked, all of a sudden standing right in front of the TV I was attempting to watch.

  I huddled my Ben & Jerry’s closer to my body in a show of solidarity. We would not be separated, no matter how she tried.

  “Your daddy wasn’t a glass maker, Rav. Move the hell out of the way.” I waved my spoon around like a maniac. She was ruining my moment.

  “This is not happening,” she mumbled under her breath before she turned around and snapped the TV off. I looked at her like she’d lost her damn mind. And how the hell did she cut it off without the remote? I didn’t even know you could. I narrowed my eyes at her. “I was watching that.”

  “No, girl, you were sitting there in your dirty PJs, with your greasy hair, looking worse than a homeless person, eating Ben & Jerry’s out of the carton and obsessing over a man you haven’t spoken to in years.”

  Well, that was a mouthful, but she wasn’t wrong.

  I nodded. “Okay. So, what’s the problem?”

  She flopped down onto the couch next to me and I eyed the remote on the table and then my ice cream. It was the remote or the Ben & Jerry’s. It was too close of a call and I took entirely too long to make the decision. Raven grabbed the remote off the table and stuck it in the couch cushion behind her. Foiled!

  “You need to get a grip, Liv. You’ve been like this since you found out he’s coming home.”

  Harry laid his big body in Raven’s lap. She rolled her eyes. She claimed she didn’t like dogs, but funnily enough, Harry had taken a shine to her. And it seemed she couldn’t help but love him, too. As evidenced by her stroking the top of his head while he balanced his massive body in her small lap.

  I was like what since I found out he was coming home? Crazy? A maniac? Like a lovestruck teenager whose unrequited love was going to be in the same small town as her? Check. Check. Check. I’d only known two days. You think she would give me time to adjust. Because clearly a decade wasn’t enough. But I didn’t think twenty would be either. He was coming home. It was rocking my damn world.

  I looked down at the ice cream and spoon in my hand, deciding that deflection was the best answer in this scenario. “I don’t know. I seem to have an excellent grip on this rocky road,” I sassed.

  Raven rolled her eyes. “Hardy har har. You’re a riot.” She moved her socked feet up into my lap and Harry gave an old man grumble at her movement. “You’re gonna share that, right?”

  I shook my head and dipped my spoon for a bite before I lifted it to my mouth. Creamy chocolate iciness coated my tongue. “Nope.”

  She pointed a black-tipped finger at me. “That’s dirty. I bought that ice cream, asshole.”

  I took another bite of ice cream and shrugged nonchalantly. “I bought that TV, so it looks like we’re at a crossroads.”

  “Listen, Liv. You don’t need to be sitting here watching TV and pining away and worrying over Adam. It doesn’t change that he’s home. It doesn’t change that he bought the planetarium or a house on the island. It doesn’t change what happened all those years ago.”

  And fuck if I didn’t know that. I didn’t quite understand what had happened. I went away to boarding school and came home the next summer and Adam Nova was in prison. I didn’t know what had happened after I left. I only saw the first punch, which wasn’t Adam at all. Raven hadn’t heard from him. I hadn’t heard from him. And José, Adam’s father, had picked up and left for California to live with his brother. The whole situation was terrible. And the unanswered questions were limitless.

  Even though I didn’t have the answers I wanted, and even though there was a lot of shit still up in the air, one thing was for sure. That night, it had been my fault. If Adam hadn’t taken me to that ball, he wouldn’t have gone to jail. He wouldn’t have been incarcerated for three fucking years. The guilt nearly ate me alive. Dreaming came with a price and Adam and I had both paid for it. Dearly.

  It wasn’t that I didn’t want Adam to come home. But it had been ten years. And I didn’t have a clue what I was going to say to him. What he was going to say to me. I was plagued with nerves. Hence the local news and ice cream marathon.

  But I was a sassy avoider, so I did what I did best, steering clear from the topic at hand. “Well, then I guess you don’t need any of this delicious ice cream.” I held the carton out and danced it around in front of her face.

  “You’re like five right now.”

  “Turn the TV back on,” I deadpanned.

  We glared at each other while Harry looked back and forth between us.

  “No. You don’t need to see him on TV. You need a game plan for when you see him at the planetarium.”

  Jesus, I couldn’t think about that right now. Maybe I would give up my job running the youth program at the planetarium. I couldn’t stand to see him every day. Not when I knew he didn’t want to see me. Not after what had happened. What I had done. I couldn’t even look at the stars anymore. How would I face him?

  Now, that didn’t stop me from watching him on the news or reading articles or pretty much stalking him all day every day. No, that was very different than seeing him in person.

  “I’ll quit working there.” The thought of that absolutely devastated me. Those kids were my whole world. They were the reason I got out of bed every day. They were my it.

  When I came home that summer and Raven told me Adam had gone to jail, I’d promised myself a lot of things. And one of them was I’d stop dreaming. I’d stop hoping, and I’d start doing. Those kids. They were my everything. They were me doing and not dreaming. I couldn’t give them up, not even to avoid the love of my life.

  I was all in my feelings when Raven caught me unaware. She snatched the ice cream from my hand while I was having a weak moment. While I was monologuing. She was an evil genius like that. “No, you won’t.”

  She was right. I totally wouldn’t because I loved those kids and the only way they got to be
there was if I was there. Otherwise, they’d be out getting into trouble and getting involved in gang activity. My whole program there was about keeping these underprivileged kids off the streets. Off the Streets and Under the Stars wasn’t just the name of the program. It was the purpose, the intent.

  I sighed. “You’re right, I won’t.”

  “So, what are you going to do?”

  “What can I do? Nothing. Maybe he won’t be at the planetarium much. Maybe he’ll be like a silent owner. Maybe he won’t recognize me.” God, I was really freaking reaching. It was pathetic. I mean, my hair was shorter. My body had filled out and I’d finally grown into my boobs.

  She shook her head at me and snatched the spoon from me this time. See! Evil genius. Taking a big bite of ice cream, she said, “But you know he will be at the fundraising event tomorrow. Cat told you she’ll be introducing him as the new owner. The press is going to be there. The good news is it’s going to be great exposure for your program. The bad news is you have to face him.”

  Fuck. My chest hurt at the thought of seeing him again. Of him shunning me, or possibly being angry with me. He had every right. He’d lost it all because of me. My stomach turned.

  “Well?” She pointed the spoon at me.

  “Well what, Raven?” I was done. So over this conversation. I wanted to eat my feelings, I mean, my ice cream, and watch the news in relative peace. Tomorrow I’d worry about the event at the planetarium. The place Adam had made love to me when I was just sixteen years old. The place I’d had the most romantic night of my life. The place I freaking worked at now.

  “What are you going to do?”

  I raised my shoulders and dropped them. “Enjoy the view?” And God, I’d bet it’d be good. I hadn’t seen him in person in so long, but I’d seen enough of him in news articles to know that long gone was bad boy Nova and in his place was hot man Nova. “Now give me my ice cream.”

  I held my hand out and Raven passed the spoon and carton over. “Fine, but only because you’re pathetic right now, and my sensitive heart cannot take it.”