Drowning to Breathe by A. L. Jackson Page B

everything about her felt powerful and strong.
    Stoic.
    Giving nothing away.
    God, I was just thankful she wasn’t the judge who’d issued the emergency injunction in the first place.
    From behind, I could almost feel Baz’s apology pouring from him. Could almost hear the words of self-flagellation churning in his head. He was probably pleading for me to forgive him. Asking me to heed the many warnings he’d given me that he would never be enough, that he would always drag me down and leave me in shreds.
    But, I wouldn't listen to those words. Especially when he'd been the only thing that had held me together over the last two days.
    Two days I’d been without my daughter.
    Two days of torment.
    Two days of agony.
    Two days of not knowing where she was. If she was scared or if she was safe. If she understood I was fighting for her or if she simply wondered if she had been abandoned.
    Two days of Sebastian holding me through it all.
    Promising he would fix this.
    Somehow I knew his thoughts now. The energy traveling between us was alive, and those devoted places in him flared with doubt, the man thinking he would have been doing me a favor had he just walked away.
    But in those days, while he’d kept me sane, he’d also filled me with faith. And I felt it now—sure in my heart Kallie would find her way home today.
    Certain Sebastian was exactly where he was supposed to be.
    Because somehow I knew he needed me just as desperately as I needed him. That the hollow place he had revealed in me had been created with the sole purpose of him filling it.
    And I knew…
    I knew there was a matching one inside of him.
    When Martin’s attorney finished, Nigel, our attorney, declined asking Martin Jennings any questions of his own. He had told me earlier our job wouldn’t be to prove Martin an unfit father. That would come later if he sought some sort of future custody.
    Instead, our job was to disprove the pictures, citing them as the lies they were, and bringing Kallie home.
    As his first witness, Nigel called Lyrik. Lyrik strode to the stand, wearing a tailored dark suit, the tattoos on his hands and neck standing out in stark contrast against the obviously expensive clothing, everything about him menacing yet confident.
    Nerves curled through my stomach.
    Nigel did nothing more than ask him what happened that day, where I had been, where Sebastian had been, gathering his first-hand account.
    “We were getting ready to grill some steaks. We’d been out playing on the beach all day, and Shea and Sebastian had just come back from a walk.”
    He lifted a dark, dark brow. “Kallie had been with us during that time, playing in the sand, burying Zee…”
    He gestured with his chin toward Zee who I knew sat behind me with the rest of the guys.
    With Charlie, Tamar, and April.
    Those who’d come together to support us.
    To bring Kallie home.
    “When Sebastian and Shea got back from taking that walk,” Lyrik continued, “Sebastian and his little brother, Austin, started tossing the ball around on the beach. Kallie was all excited, jumping around and begging her mom to take her out to play in the water.”
    His tone grew serious. “I remember hearing them both laughing out there, playing in the waves, and then all of a sudden, Shea was screaming she’d lost hold of her. Kallie wasn’t ever out there in the water by herself. Never. None of us would have allowed that.”
    “What happened then?” Nigel asked.
    “Sebastian went running to the water. Dove in.” He swallowed hard. “It felt like forever, but I doubt more than thirty seconds or so could have passed when he got hold of her. Pulled her out of the water and onto the beach. By then, I was already dialing 911.”
    “Thank you,” was all Nigel said before he took his seat.
    Martin’s attorney approached and basically asked him the same questions, but with his own innuendo, trying to cast doubt, to catch him in a lie.
    Lyrik’s story remained the same.
    Nigel