Unbeloved Read Online Free Page A

later filled with stormy, sorrow-filled grays.
    Since my recovery I ’d done what I could to wash most of that color away, leaving behind my chaotic life in Miles City, Montana, and starting over in San Francisco, California.
    A necessary step in letting go, forgoing the brilliance for softer colors, neutral, relaxing shades. Because when you ’d lived through nearly dying, you learned to appreciate the quiet, calmer colors of life.
    Letting my cell phone fall into my lap, I lifted my hand, pushing back my thick mane of wavy red hair to finger the long , thin scar that ran the length of my skull.
    The lone bullet meant to kill me and the child I ’d carried inside me had failed. My son, Christopher, and I had thankfully survived. Christopher had been unscathed, but the trauma had left me with a blank canvas. For a long time, I’d had been without the knowledge of my life, who my children were, even my own name.
    Thanks to my great doctors, therapy, and a strong dose of luck, I ’d eventually regained the knowledge I’d lost. And when I had, I’d wished I hadn’t.
    They say that what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger, and while that might be true for some, for me it had the opposite effect. At first I couldn’t face what I had done, the pain I had caused so many, let alone face the people my actions had directly impacted.
    For shooting me, Chrissy had been convicted of first-degree attempted murder and had been sentenced to prison. And Jase had nearly taken his own life while in the throes of grief. Their three daughters had subsequently been left without their mother, with an incapable father, forced to transition into adulthood on their own.
    And Hawk, after finding out I ’d been shot, flew into a very public fit of rage that had shed light on Christopher’s true paternity. His disloyalty to his brother now exposed, Hawk retreated even further into himself, and his visits home to Montana became more infrequent.
    Unable to deal with the overwhelming sorrow and the crippling guilt I felt, unable to figure out how to move forward, I simply hid myself away, going so far as to feign ignorance even after my memories had returned to me.
    It had taken another near tragedy, this time involving Tegen, for me to finally see past my own nose, to realize that I’d spent my entire life in hiding. Hiding from my past, from my present, and any sort of future I might hope to someday have.
    Refusing to let history repeat itself, and done with hiding, I moved my son and myself to San Francisco, not only to see my daughter through her rough patch, but to start fresh.
    My wish was for the three of us to become the strong and solid family we always should have been, to live in such a way that didn’t cause anyone any pain, and for the opportunity to make new memories for us all, this time ones that would be worth remembering.
    It took some time, but eventually I got my wish.
    Since then, Tegen had moved back to Miles City, was happily married to Deuce’s son, Cage, and Christopher was living the peaceful and carefree life of a seven-year-old. Despite whatever resentments still lay between Hawk and me, he was a regular in Christopher’s life, which was all that mattered.
    Our son had that effect on us, no matter how strained our relationship with each other. Christopher was our Switzerland, a span of untouched land covered in wildflowers that stretched between two crumbling cities.
    Both my children were safe, they were happy, and they were surrounded by those who loved them. T here really wasn’t much more a mother could ask for.
    But like a glass that ha d shattered, while you could glue it back together, it would never again be what it once was.
    I was a shattered glass, glued back together. And my children, while their wounds had healed, had been cut by my jagged edges.
    Sighing, I turned my attention away from the window, back to the cell phone in my lap.
    It was Christmas morning. Christopher would be waking soon and yet