The Longing Read online

  The Longing

  by Bridget Essex

  Synopsis:

  Sydney is haunted by her past.

  Raised by a strict, religious family, she was sent to gay conversion therapy as a teenager when she was caught kissing a girl. Now only nineteen, she's trying to start over with a new life and a new name, but you can't escape the past...

  Caroline is the most stunning woman Sydney has ever seen. Every night, Sydney hears her singing from her apartment window, and every night, Sydney's heart aches with something indescribable. When Caroline offers singing lessons, Sydney jumps at the chance to be in the captivating woman's presence...but her desire for Caroline can't be hidden. And Caroline is over twice her age.

  Through Caroline's gentle instruction, Sydney finds her voice again. The broken girl feels like she's starting to mend. But her infatuation with Caroline is reaching a fevered pitch...

  Will Sydney lose everything if Caroline finds out the girl is in love with her?

  Provocative, passionate and achingly raw, THE LONGING, the latest romance from best-selling author Bridget Essex, explores the unbreakable human heart in a love story that you'll never forget.

  "The Longing"

  © Bridget Essex 2017

  Rose and Star Press

  First Edition

  All rights reserved

  Please don’t pirate this book.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons or werewolves, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Dedication:

  For the love of my life.

  You saved me with your love and you make life worth living.

  I am forever grateful to you. I love you and will love you.

  Always.

  And this book is especially dedicated to Laura Vasilion.

  If intense hardship and pain creates a diamond, then every part of you glitters.

  I’m honored to know you, and I love you to the moon and back.

  This one’s for you, with my whole heart.

  Contents:

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Epilogue

  More from Bridget Essex

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  Sydney pressed her palm to the locked door and tried to stop shaking.

  It was the same every night. She’d get home, wrap her arms around her dog, Max, so tightly that sometimes he squeaked in protest, and then she’d lock the door. She’d lean her back against the old metal thing, and she’d draw Max, even though he was very much not a lap dog, onto her lap as she fell to the floor.

  And she’d try not to panic.

  Doors, to Sydney, were frightening things. They were lockable, it was true, but anyone with a key could get in, and if you didn’t have a key, maybe you could break it down, and then… Well, then what?

  Doors didn’t guarantee safety.

  And Sydney needed to feel safe.

  So she’d hold Max, soothed by his slightly pudgy bulk, the big dog all elbows and limbs as he tried to settle against her, and then he’d sigh, putting his big head down onto her thigh, and she’d sigh, too, gripping his thick fur.

  And she’d try to breathe evenly.

  It took a while, every night after she got home, to feel even a little bit comfortable. She’d have to check her apartment, top to bottom, and sometimes, on nights when the anxiety bit at her heels like sharp-toothed mice, she’d even check the cupboards in the shabby kitchen. The cupboards were much too small to hide anyone, but anxiety isn’t logical. You can’t explain things to fear.

  She'd assure herself, again and again, that no one was in her apartment.

  And, even then, she rarely felt safe.

  She didn't feel safe tonight.

  It’d been a bad day. Sydney worked at the mall, at a clothing store named Martin’s, within walking distance of her apartment building, the Hamilton. Martin's was having its annual “Christmas in July” sale. This meant that there were deals and markdowns similar to those offered on Black Friday. Shoppers tended to get a little frantic and possessive, and if the doorbusters ran out, or if the store had no more shirts in stock in the customer’s size… Well, that’s what Sydney was there for: to scream at.

  Usually, she took it all in stride. She told herself that these were middle-aged straight women in unhappy marriages whose only pleasure came from buying half-priced clothing. It was an uncharitable thought, but it got her through her shift.

  Today, though, a particularly nasty woman had asked for the manager, and had requested that Sydney be fired on the spot.

  Because the floral-print, off-the-shoulder shirt she’d wanted was sold out in her size.

  The manager, a nice, older man named Mr. Raglan, had diffused the situation, calling another store in the city and finding her the right-size shirt, but it had left Sydney frazzled in the break room, trying to force her hands to stop shaking, trying to persuade her lungs to take regular breaths instead of the pants that usually led up to a panic attack. She’d taken her meds, but it seemed to take extra long for the drug-induced calm to drape its languid arms around her and help her feel like a human again.

  Being yelled at brought back memories of Before, brought them back in cruel, vivid Technicolor, and those memories destroyed Sydney. To be plunged wholly into that past fear… It was debilitating.

  So when Sydney got home, even though she’d checked her apartment all over, even though she’d looked through every cupboard, including the one below the sink…she still didn’t feel safe.

  She buried her face in Max's fur and tried to take a deep breath in and a deep breath out—but couldn’t quite manage it.

  Max whimpered, nuzzling his big nose under her hand and panting a little, because the apartment was quite hot. Sydney wouldn’t be able to afford her electric bill if she turned on the air conditioning, and, anyway, the unit in her apartment never worked. She’d told her landlord about it when she first moved in, and the woman hadn’t done a single thing to fix it.

  “C’mon, buddy,” Sydney sighed, standing up and running her fingers over her rumpled slacks. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  At the very mention of the “W” word, Max went from sweet concern for his owner’s unhappiness to the ecstatic, furry embodiment of joy. He practically vibrated in place while Sydney took the leash from the hook by the door and clipped it onto his collar. She grabbed her purse and keys, and together, they went out the door and down the long hallway leading to the Hamilton’s courtyard.

  Surprisingly, there had been a lot of apartments to choose from within Sydney’s budget when she moved to Pittsburgh. She’d been a little worried (well, maybe a lot worried) that she and Max might have to live on the streets while she got back on her feet. But the move itself was fairly seamless. When Sydney walked through the Hamilton apartment's old metal door, the heavy weight in her chest seemed to lessen, if only slightly.

  She’d leased it on the spot, because in every other building she’d visited, there had been something about the place that felt bad, wrong, unsafe, this feeling that made her skin itch, just below the surface.

  Here, for better or for worse, she was home.

  The courtyard of the
Hamilton was a lucky bonus. She hadn’t even known about it when she signed the rental agreement. But after she moved her meager belongings—two boxes and a suitcase—into the apartment, she’d taken Max for a walk, and there, in the middle of the U-shaped building, was a green space.

  An enclosed, overgrown garden.

  Someone had once cared about this garden, and dearly. There were old rose bushes in bad need of a pruning, a million peonies, already done with their blossoming for the season, listing their greenery this way and that, and clematis was everywhere: the rich, purple flowers climbing the brick walls, reaching for the sunlight. Paired with a tall fence and a wrought-iron gate that you had to open if you were approaching the courtyard from outside the building, it was the perfect sanctuary for Sydney and Max, and they looked forward to spending time there every single day.

  It seemed that the rest of the occupants of the building didn’t care about the courtyard as much as Sydney did, because she was usually alone there. Perhaps it was because the garden was so overgrown. Sydney and Max had beaten down little paths in the flowers and riotous meadow weeds, but—for the most part—the little haven seemed like a private secret, and utterly wild.

  And it made Sydney feel safer, even, than her apartment.

  Spending time there was a balm for her aching heart.

  Sydney and Max trotted down the steps and let themselves out the glass door of the apartment building and into the courtyard. Sydney did a once over of the garden, and seeing that the gate was firmly closed and that there was no one else around, she let Max off the leash.

  The dog shook himself happily and set out on his favorite path, exploring, sniffing each plant with gusto, marking his territory with a spontaneous joy that usually made Sydney giggle. But today, she found that she couldn’t raise her spirits high enough to smile.

  She wanted to laugh at Max’s clown-like antics, but, instead, she picked her way along a particularly overgrown path until she reached the brick wall of the building. Already, the sun was hidden behind the nearby cathedral, St. John the Baptist, but the bricks had soaked up the warmth of the day.

  Sydney had worked the late shift, so it was twilight. So much of the day had slipped away, and she’d done, well, nothing. She’d worked, and she knew that those hours would contribute to a paycheck, and this paycheck would lead to her and Max being able to eat. And she certainly wasn’t complaining about that.

  But the truth of it was that Sydney hadn’t done anything that truly mattered.

  She closed her eyes, breathed out, and let her mind drift back. Not to the bad place, not to all the pain and hate and harm. Not to Before. No, no, not there. Further back, back before all the bad had happened…

  Back when Sydney sang.

  Once, a very long time ago, Sydney loved music. “Loved” might be too weak a word. Music consumed her, had made up the very blood and bones of her, and every single moment of her day was spent learning it, practicing it, letting it move through her until she, herself, felt like notes and chords, as beautiful as a song. Sydney didn’t often feel beautiful, but when she sang…ohh. There was beauty in every part of her as the music filled her.

  She’d started with the choir at her parents’ church. Every Sunday, she sang her heart out. Eventually, she took up odd jobs around the church to save up for voice lessons, and she had paid the old lady at the end of Fontaine Street to teach her how to use her diaphragm, the muscle deep in her belly, to control her breath, how to hold notes, how to sing with vibrato, how to use vocal exercises to try for higher and higher ranges and to make her voice capable of singing songs she’d never imagined she could reach…

  But that was a long time ago. At least, it was for Sydney. Though she was nineteen now, and—technically—these years were not that long ago, she felt so much older, felt far removed from what had come Before.

  Before.

  Sydney drew in a deep breath and shut her eyes tighter. She tried to focus on the heat of the bricks, the sound of Max rustling around in the undergrowth. She tried to concentrate on anything aside from the pain, because she’d thought a little too much about her past. It was dangerous, she knew, to think about it at all, but, for a moment, she’d remembered singing, and it had been sweet, that memory.

  Until the other memories came rushing in.

  But as the panic and fear began to flood Sydney, like water rushing over her head…something else trickled through, deep into her consciousness, and Sydney opened her eyes.

  Someone was singing.

  She could hear it clearly, as if the person’s window were open, could hear every word of that lovely voice, as if the woman herself were standing right next to Sydney. Sydney listened, her mouth open, her heart rattling against her ribs, as the notes of the song, and the words, washed over her.

  “In the sweet by and by, we shall meet on that beautiful shore…”

  Sydney had sung that song, too, a long time ago. She sang it quite often in the choir. But she’d never sung it quite like this. The woman’s voice was pure melody, and Sydney realized that her breath had caught in her throat. But she couldn’t breathe now.

  All she could do was listen.

  There was a musicality in the woman’s voice that made her sound like, well, an angel. People compare singers to angels all the time, but Sydney had never done so before. She’d thought about angels a lot, growing up as the daughter of two preachers, and she’d come to the conclusion that angelic voices must be unearthly in their loveliness, the most pure sound. Angelic voices weren't something a living person would ever hear.

  But Sydney was hearing it now.

  And she was almost certain she was still alive.

  Sydney listened, and Sydney held her breath while she listened. The voice rose and fell with every note, transforming the simple hymn that Sydney thought she knew like the back of her hand into an extraordinary composition. No longer was it just mournful, full of a soft hope, run through with the undercurrent of death separating you from all you love: now it was a deep, poignant, passionate song of longing.

  The sort of longing that Sydney had never felt, had never allowed herself to feel.

  But she was feeling it now.

  Her heart stuttered against her chest as a heat began to rise inside of her. A heat that was not borne of bricks and sunlight but began in the darkness of her depths. Sydney felt that melodic voice fill her.

  She loved the woman who was singing.

  Loved her with a fierceness that frightened Sydney.

  She didn’t know what the woman looked like. Didn’t know her name. But, in that moment, Sydney loved her with a purity that could only come from her soul.

  In truth, Sydney didn’t know if she believed in souls anymore. The very concept was tangled up in everything she’d run away from, everything that had come Before, so even thinking of the word was enough to make her uneasy. But as she listened to the woman’s voice, she knew there was something sacred at work, something Sydney couldn't understand.

  There was always a hunger, deep inside of her, a hunger she couldn’t quite quell, no matter how much she ate, no matter how much she drank—when she could get a hold of alcohol. No, it went to the very marrow in her bones, this craving, and she didn’t know how to appease it. When she looked at the pretty women on the streets, in their high heels, with their perfect hair and perfect mouths, Sydney felt a stirring deep inside of her. She liked to look at their legs: the shape of their calves was something she wished she could press her lips to, inhaling the scent of a woman’s skin like it was its own perfume.

  But Sydney never acted on any of these desires, never asked women out, never went to places where she thought other lesbians might be. She didn’t join online groups, and she didn’t look at the personals in the newspaper.

  Sydney, instead, lived like she was the only person in the world.

  It was safer that way.

  Still, the ache existed, lingered...

  And the ache deepened now, as she listened to th
at voice.

  Sydney wanted to know who was singing.

  She wanted to know her.

  She wanted to taste her, touch her, caress her—with her mouth, her fingers, her tongue.

  Sydney wanted.

  And that wanting was terrifying.

  She opened her eyes, realizing that her hand was pressed over her heart. All of this, from a voice? From hearing a stranger sing? No. Like most of her aches and pains, Sydney was going to ignore these feelings, because to face them seemed an insurmountable challenge that she was simply not capable of confronting. So, instead, a little shakily, she prepared to take Max back inside.

  “Max?” she called out.

  The singing voice did not falter—if anything, it became stronger, lovelier, and Sydney’s heart constricted, squeezing blood through her veins much too quickly. She took a deep breath, stepped forward. “Max?” she called again.

  Max always responded to her voice, always came bounding over to her. Even if there was a particularly lovely (to a dog, anyway) thing to sniff, he’d tear himself away from it, because Max was, above all else, loyal.

  But Max did not come.

  Sydney’s brow furrowed, and she began to trace the different paths in the courtyard. After a few minutes, she’d covered all of it.

  And Max just wasn’t there.

  A wave of panic reared up, far above Sydney, and then crashed down on her, washing over her. Where was Max? Where could he possibly be?

  Max was all that Sydney had, and she loved him more than her own life—and now he was gone.

  Her anxiety ate her up: She wasn’t capable of making rational decisions, as much as she wished she could, so when she reached the front gate of the courtyard and found it ajar, she was in danger of falling apart.

  If Sydney fell apart, though, she wouldn't find Max. Because if there was one thing Sydney had learned over the years, it was that no one would ever help her with her problems. The concept had been reinforced from birth that she was the only one she could depend upon. She was the only one who could find her dog. So she took a ragged sob of air into her lungs and pushed herself out, through the open gate, onto the sidewalk and the busy street.