Liabilities Read Online Free

adamantly with my hands folded over my chest. I moved out of the confining room and into the larger classroom. My hand lovingly ran across the top of the wooden desk I’d sat at so very long ago.
    Stepping out into the night, I found the dark all encompassing.  It was so very different than the city of lights that never slept. Tonight the stars and the moon were hidden by a blanket of clouds. I stood in place, looked up and breathed in deeply. The air was so very different here, free of smog and other pollutants.
    “You miss it,” Turner said, breaking into my thoughts.
    Slowly, I lowered my head, but not so much. Turner was far taller than me. “Maybe,” I confessed. “You?”
    A tiny smile crept onto his face, reluctant and weary. “I missed you.”
    A wave of emotion ran through me making it hard to ignore the gorgeous guy in front of me.  Despite my protest a minute ago, I couldn’t help what happened next. As inadvisable as it was, I reached out a hand to touch his cheek. He leaned into it. In that moment, all the memories we shared together flashed in my mind in a nanosecond collage. But it was remembering the first time he kissed me that had me unconsciously on my toes leaning up to meet his mouth. It was a bad idea for many reasons. The main one, Kalen, was no longer in the picture. I’d effectively ended things. And Kalen would be better off without me, or so I told myself.
    Turner felt like home and it was easy to lose myself in his touch, his embrace and his kiss.  When he pulled back, his easy smile was on full bloom. He took my hand in his like a school boy and walked me home. Like many, many times before, he stayed just off the porch. He watched me as I gripped the door handle and looked back at him one more time before I entered my childhood home.
    I didn’t have to look far to find my parents in our tiny four room house. They waited for me at the dining room table which was in what we called our great room. It was the main area which included our living room-kitchen combo. The other three rooms were my parents’, the boys’, and the girls’ bedrooms.
    The only light came from the fire in the hearth and the candles on the table. I didn’t need the light to remember what this place looked like. Built by my father’s hand and other members of the community, it was still solid and functional. Everything had its place.  As sparse as it was, it was homey and more inviting than Lizzy’s parents’ posh apartment.
    The timber used to build this place was kept natural, free of paint inside and out. The floors and ceiling boasted the same. A wood burning oven was positioned on one side of the house, and the hearth on the other. We didn’t have a refrigerator because our house held no electricity. We did have an icebox, which literally meant that a block of ice kept it cold. A few cupboards and a small work table made up the rest of the tiny kitchen.
    Two long sofas were fashioned from wood with handmade cushions that sat across from each other. The hearth created division between them. In the middle of the two rooms was the long table worn with loving nicks when as kids we played games and from accidental flicks of forks and knives. There at the end of the long table, perched like a king because he was head of the household, was my father.
    His beard was long and fiery although I knew grey streaks blended into it. He sat with my mother whose dark locks were also muted by time.  Even in the candle light, I could see my parents’ age, but time had been kind to them.
    “Sit, Bailey,” my father commanded. I hadn’t expected a hug. My father wasn’t that type of guy. I just complied. His instruction was always to be followed no matter what.
    I sat across from my mother, meeting her subdued smile.
    “So tell me, daughter mine, what brings you home.” His voice held no amusement or his face a smile, but it wasn’t anger that fueled his words. My father, one of the leaders of our community, was