Back to Yesterday
by Pamela Sparkman
Publication Date: May 2, 2016
Genres: Adult, Historical, Military, Romance
Purchase: Amazon
Dear Charlie,
You were right. I was wrong. I’ve never been more wrong in my life. There – I said it. I’ll say it a million times if you just come back to me. Come back to me. Please! I was so wrong. I do love you.
Sophie
EXCERPT:
I don’t know how long I stayed curled into Charlie’s chest while he soothed away the ache, or how long the storm lasted. I don’t know how long it took him to carry me the six blocks to my house, or how long he sat with me while I drifted in and out of sleep on the sofa. I don’t know how many times I felt his touch, or how many times I heard him say…I love you.
But I do know how many times I wished I could have said it back.
Or maybe I couldn’t. It was an infinite number.
When I awoke, Charlie was asleep on the floor beside the couch with a blanket and pillow I could only assume he had gotten from my mother. I watched his chest rise and fall and I matched his breathing patterns, breath for breath. Inhaling and exhaling, keeping time with his. An invisible force, an unexplainable connection, tethered my heart to his, and I hated it and loved it.
“He refused to leave,” someone whispered.
I sat up and spun around to find the voice. My dad sat in one of the armchairs across the room. “He refused to leave,” he whispered again. The streetlights that filtered in through the window illuminated his face enough so that I could see the tilt of his head and the compassion in his eyes. I opened my mouth to respond, but he echoed the same words again, only this time he added, “Hear what I’m saying, baby girl. He…refused…to…leave.”
This time, the words knocked the breath out of my lungs. “Dad,” I choked.
“He refused to leave,” he repeated. Each time he said it, it was quiet, unassuming, yet relentless.
“Stop,” I begged.
“He refused to leave.”
“Dad.”
“He refused to leave.”
A fat tear rolled down my cheek.
“He refused to leave.”
“You have to stop,” I pleaded.
Dad went quiet and I silently thanked him for the reprieve. I laid my head back down and folded my arm over my eyes.
“Go back to sleep, baby girl. I’ll see you in the morning.”
I listened until his footsteps had carried him upstairs and I let out a shaky breath. Years of hurt had managed to catch up to me that night and I didn’t know why. I had been numb to it, putting all of my emotions into a box and keeping the lid closed, and now that lid had been opened, I desperately wanted to slam it shut, lock it away in a closet, and throw away the key.
I lay there for a while trying to unravel how I had become so unsteady, however, my swollen and puffy eyes grew heavy and sleep was fast approaching.
I was just dozing off again when I heard a whisper in the dark say, “I refused to leave.”
About Pamela Sparkman
I grew up in Alabama and have always been an avid reader. The older I got the more in love with books I became. So, I’m admitting that I am sort of a nerd. The only reading I don’t like are those math word problems. And I’m okay with that because no one has ever asked me in real life… “If I give you two bananas and take away six apples, how long will it take the southbound train to collide with the northbound train if Johnny left his house at midnight?” It just doesn’t happen. So, yeah, books are my thing. Oh and music. All kinds. Love it!
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