When Clyde Parker, the wayward son and the rotten-apple of the Parker family-tree, storms his way back into Avery Fields, he sets out a flurry of butterfly effect in Dawn Marshal's life.
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CALEB PARKER DIDN'T KNOW a lot of things.
"We should talk..."
He didn't know those very words would shake him to his core. Pull the rug from right under his feet and knock him out senseless.
It was five minutes before Caleb Parker would have his bloodied heart ripped out of his chest and offered on a silver platter. It was five minutes before his life would be in shambles, whirled over by a tornado of revelations.
They sat on the hammock on his deck which overlooked a sky splattered with the hues of dusk. If her mind wasn't in turmoil, she would've admired the sun slowly melting into the clouds. Their knees were brushing against each other, the warm sensation overwhelmed her. She had betrayed this man, this man who had made a world out of her.
She had to resist the urge to puke in her mouth.
Her hands were folded on her lap as Dawn Marshal fought an inner battle. She chewed on her bottom lip, uncertainty and doubt fogging her mind as her unevenly chipped nails picked at the lacy hem of her sundress.
She didn't know how to address the elephant in the room.
He tucked a strip of stray hair behind her ear as he watched the smile slowly drop from her lips like petals falling off a wilted flower.
Her knees were angled to a corner, she fidgeted with her fingers with her eyes drooped to her feet. And the distance between them were filled by the tall brick walls she mentally built to keep him afar. She had the tendency to confine herself, escape to her panic-room when things got hard. Some days, Dawn Marshal reminded Caleb of his half-brother for he too would grow distant and shut himself out from him.
While Caleb knew he didn't deserve a sliver of his brother's trust. He would certainly do anything in his power to keep Dawn's trust in him.
He caved his fingers through her walls, scared for a second that if he reached out to her he would only clutch into a fistful of air. He cupped her face in his palms, scared that she will dissolve in his arms.
Holding Dawn Marshal was like holding water, no matter how hard he held on, it would still slip through the cracks of his palms.
His eyes burned into hers with such intensity that she had to turn her gaze away. "Dawn, nothing you could say would change the way I feel about you." And perhaps, that was the goddamn problem. Dawn Marshal could stab Caleb Parker in the back and he would still apologize for bleeding all over her clothes. Nothing she could say would make him love her any less and no matter how hard she tried she couldn't love him back.
How could she when her heart belonged to another?
"I love you," his mouth whispered but his eyes pleaded 'Don't leave me...'
Tears prickled down her cheeks. The sunset bounced off her eyes. "And I thought I'd loved you too, you know for so long I deluded myself into thinking I could love you but turns out I couldn't."
