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  2. Severed Heart (Ravenhood Legacy Book 2)

  3. Severed Heart: Chapter 8
Severed Heart (Ravenhood Legacy Book 2)

Severed Heart: Chapter 8

US PRESIDENT: GEORGE W. BUSH | 2001–2009
WALKING INTO THE house, I release the strap of my bookbag and am about to toss it when I’m stopped dead in my tracks.
Frozen at the entryway, my eyes fix on the family portrait hanging in the gap across the hall between my and my parents’ bedrooms. The sound reaches me again, disbelief turning into rage as my blood begins to boil because there are two things I’m certain of. One—my mom’s car isn’t in the driveway, and two—she’s at work.
This is confirmed a second later when a woman’s shrieks engulf me, a woman who is unmistakably not Regina Jennings, as her enthusiasm rings out.
“Fuck, oh, God, Carter. God, yes!”
He must be too drunk to realize the time, knowing good and fucking well I would be getting home from school. He has to be.
The woman’s enthusiastic groans and pleas sicken me, and shortly after, I’m granted the added bonus of slapping skin.
My instinct to act on my fury threatens to overtake me, and it’s the fear of what that might look like that has me pulling my bag back on and slamming my way out of the house, away from what’s happening inside it.
And what’s happening . . . is that my father is cheating on my mother in their marital fucking bed.
In the home she built for him, for us. Years of her love’s labor make up every room. It’s our haven and refuge against the outside world, and Dad might as well have lit a match to it. I feel that truth now as flames engulf me from head to foot.
Just like I feared, Carter Jennings disappeared somewhere overseas, and Master Sergeant Jennings took his place, invading the home Carter left.
Every hope I had that it could be rectified—and that he could be redeemed—leaves me as waves of memories surface, all involving my parents. The two of them stealing bordering-inappropriate, lengthy kisses next to the bonfire. The hysterical laugh that only my mom seemed to be able to draw out of him just before Dad pulled her to him and nuzzled her with adoration.
My mother is the best of women—a dutiful and doting mother and wife, a respected career woman, and a staple in the community. In recent years, she’s put up with more shit from Dad than any woman ever should for her husband—Marine or not—and he repays her this way?
Devastation fights with the rage for dominance as I realize I just lost every ounce of respect I have left for my father. Blinded by the ingrained image of our family photo and the accompanying noise I now and will forever associate with the sight of it, rage overtakes me, and I go black.
* * *
“. . . one, inhale, two, exhale, out, three,” the firm voice speaks. I know the source, the accent, familiar with the curl used around certain letters and words, but I gravitate toward the command inside them, leaning into it. “Count with me.”
“One,” she says.
“One,” I repeat.
“Two,” she says.
“Two,” I repeat.
“Three.”
“Three.”
“Again.”
We repeat the count as I ease back into a sense of familiarity from the space I’m in—some foreign, endless abyss. A darkness I drift further and further away from toward the voice summoning me back: “. . . your breaths and body are all that matters. This you control. One. Two.”
Breathing on count, I fixate on the solid, dark twin pinpricks behind my lids, ignoring all muted light surrounding it—no outside images or noise, only my body and each breath. Counting again and again as I slowly come to.
“. . . again. One. Two. Three.”
“One,” inhale, exhale. “Two,” inhale, exhale. “Three,” inhale, exhale. Within the next breath, I exist only inside the black and remain there until the next command is spoken.
“Open your eyes, Tyler.”
When I do, all surrounding light temporarily blinds me, and I look down to see Delphine standing directly in front of me, staring up at me keenly from where I hover above her short stature. For the first few seconds, we simply stare at one another, me speechless, shaken, and feeling transported. Especially since I have no fucking idea how I came to stand in the middle of Dom’s living room. Utterly stupefied, as I come further into myself, I note my state—heart rate steady, breaths even, the sweat on my neck and back has long since dried.
“How did I get here?” I ask Delphine, who stares back at me attentively. “I found you here,” she replies in a tone a little above a whisper.
“How long were we doing that?”
“Not sure, ten minutes, maybe longer,” she says in the same sleepy tone she used throughout the exercise, though her return stare remains intent.
“How did you know how to do that?” I ask, not exactly sure what that is.
“It is common for some and can be mastered with many, many hours of practice,” she relays calmly while seeming to search me for any sign of the opposite. Of any of the remaining rage I know that brought me here.
It’s then I realize how numb I am to what set me off other than what I’m currently experiencing—fear and . . . shock. Whatever the hell she just led me through worked miracles. The anger is still there . . . but distant—as if it’s in a faraway place that I can reach if I need it. It dawns on me then what it might be. “You mean suppressing emotion?”
She shakes her head. “Non, not exactly.”
I’ve read up about this. While something similar is a part of military training, it’s been a hard concept for me to grasp. From the minute the door closes between recruits and the outside world, they teach them to ignore their own free will, opinions, and comfort. They eventually put them and keep them in the mindset of survival mode, only thinking of the mission—the mission being the most important. So, while their tactic is not to suppress emotions because they don’t want a heartless military, the goal is to get them to compartmentalize the emotions for a later time for the sake of completing the mission.
I’m still a few years away from that training, but I can’t understand how this tiny woman in front of me is so familiar with it, to the point that she seems to have mastered it and guided me through it so flawlessly.
“The fuck?” I say aloud, still shaken. To my surprise, Delphine laughs. Memory kicks in of what waits at home for me, and my residual anger suppresses any return smile I could possibly give her.
“Is this how you escape?” I ask, knowing such a personal question to her will probably go unanswered, but she surprises me again with a reply.
“There is no escape. Your problem is still there, is it not?”
I nod.
“But maybe who you’re mad at has more of a chance to get away, at least temporarily.”
I don’t bother to defend that this wasn’t some teen angst drama I brought to her doorstep and that my home-life just imploded—though her joke indicates that’s her belief. Right now, I don’t have the energy to correct her. “That was some Jedi mind trick,” I tell her.
“Ah”—her eyes light—“you speak of Star Wars. I love Star Wars.”
This time, I can’t help but grin. “Do you?”
“Yes, I watch every time there is a marathon.”
Tilting my head, I take note of the playfulness in her eyes. One I’ve never seen before, though I’ve never been this close to Delphine. Not in all my years of knowing her.
Of course, I’ve noticed her beauty once or twice. It’s fucking impossible not to, but her behavior, along with her aggressive, cruel posturing over the years, has made it easy to ignore. As I stare down at her now, the adult lens associated with her presence in my life starts to dissipate as she comes into clear view, far more dimensional.
“Dom is at Sean’s . . . if you want to see him.”
“Thank you,” I say on autopilot as I drink in more of her details. Silver-gray eyes peer back at me, slight confusion marring her expression as I consider her for the first time, and not as a background presence or authoritative prop. Or the woman I habitually help Dom gather from whatever foundation we find her passed out on—last time, it was the backyard, and she was barely conscious.
Within seconds of my first real look at her, I take another greedy pass while a dozen questions start to accumulate, my curiosity running rampant. It’s when I’m tempted to sweep her again that I know I need to see myself out. And so I do, but not without pausing at the storm door and looking back as she walks into her kitchen. It’s only when her head starts to turn in my direction that I rip my eyes away and slip out of her front door.
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