2. Tabitha
CHAPTER 2
TABITHA
TWO YEARS LATER
The yellow door before me is altogether too cheerful for a day like today.
Scuffs near the keyhole tell a story of full hands and rushed attempts to open the door. There’s a pink splatter over the canary gold at the bottom. Likely the only evidence of a grape-juice-box-meets-the-ground type of crime scene.
Milo loves grape juice.
His mom does, too.
Did.
Erika loved—past tense—grape juice.
Heat builds behind my lashes, and I blink away the tears. Crying won’t see me through this job. Since we got the call last night, everyone around me has been crying. I can’t start too.
If I start, I worry I won’t know how to stop. Then shit won’t get done. And that’s my job right now.
Take care of her little boy. Navigate my parents’ grief. Run my restaurant. Get shit done.
Numb is preferable. Especially having just left the morgue.
So I push the urge to cry aside, roll from toe to heel a few times, as though I might be able to rock myself forward, into motion.
Toward my dead sister’s abandoned home to collect her belongings.
I both need to go in there and dread going in there. My lips twist into a sardonic grimace. Erika would have gotten a real kick out of seeing me wringing my hands on her front step. Too chickenshit to even face what she left behind. I suspect she’s somewhere watching me with a grin on her face right now. She’d say something like, You just identified my body. Vampirism would need more than twenty minutes to take effect.
I chuckle at my own made-up joke.
She wasn’t perfect—hell, I’m not either—but her dark sense of humor was spot-on.
“Okay, Erika, I’m going. I’m going,” I mutter in an amused tone, digging out the spare key I’ve been holding on to for two years.
I had it made when I helped her move in here and haven’t needed to use it until now. Mostly because I thought she was doing okay. I’ve always known addiction is a lifelong battle. I just thought she was holding the line.
I thought wrong.
The key clicks when I slide it in, and the door gives way when I grip the handle and press my thumb onto the lever. Sucking in a deep breath, I wait to see if any strong smells register. Nothing comes.
Judgmental little bitch.
I can hear Erika taunting me, clear as day. Somehow, this imaginary interaction brings me a sense of comfort. As a kid, she’d have killed me for going into her room. Borrowing her clothes or makeup always ended in a cat fight.
But we also always made up.
I chuckle darkly and shake my head. “Okay, sissy.” My arm straightens as I push the door open. “I’m here, and I’m going to take your clothes and jewelry, and there’s nothing you can do about it this time.”
Milo will want her things one day. I want him to have memories of her. Good ones.
With that in my head, my foot finally leaves the ground, and I move to step into the house.
But a deep foreboding voice brings me up short, and I freeze. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”
My heart rate accelerates as I slowly turn away from the door. And then my eyes land on him.
Rhys.
Her landlord. The one who evicted her without a second fucking thought. One late payment, and he didn’t even bother to contact me. Instead, he gave her a week to clear out.
In a mad dash to keep a roof over her head, I swooped in and took Milo so she could focus on viewing new places in the area. But instead, she spiraled.
It wasn’t the first time she’d struggled with housing. When our parents kicked her out, she went on a binge that landed her in the hospital, clinging to life. And it’s been something that destabilized her ever since then. The worst was before Milo—she’d hit rock bottom after being kicked out of a house by her roommates.
I spent three sleepless days frantically searching Rose Hill for her. At the hospital. At the local police detachment. In the local shelter. Under the bridge that leads out of town. In that one campground near the river our parents always told us to stay away from. Once, when I found her dirty, and downtrodden, and slumped in a back alley, I promised myself I’d never let her end up there again.
It’s an image I’ve never been able to scrub from my mind.
But this time, I didn’t find her at all. Someone else did. She was in the basement of a house owned by people who didn’t even know her. There was mention of her arriving with a man that no one was able to identify. How she ended up at their party will always be a mystery to me.
What isn’t a mystery to me is that he’s the one who put her there. Rhys is the one who upended her fragile balance by kicking her out. It’s like she hadn’t even bothered looking for a place. She’d given up. Given in. And if he’d told me she was struggling like he promised, maybe she’d still be here.
In an instant, my urge to cry evaporates. Instead, the urge to rage on the hulking man standing on the front lawn, staring daggers in my direction, overwhelms me.
If Milo didn’t need me, I’d kill this big fucker with my bare hands and march myself to prison, convinced that I’d fulfilled my life’s purpose.
For now, I opt to clench my molars and glare back as I bite out as few words as possible. “I won’t take long.” I have three days to pack up all my big sister’s possessions, and then I’ll never have to set foot in this godforsaken town again.
The man’s head tilts, and a loose piece of dark hair flops over his forehead. It’s too long, and he’s used a touch too much product in an attempt to slick it back, making it appear almost wet. I focus on how unappealing that one lock of hair is so that my eyes don’t look at the rest of him.
The impossibly wide shoulders, the towering height, the dangerously dark eyes, the black tattoos that curl over his forearms, covering him from his wrist all the way up to where his T-shirt sits. It makes you wonder where else they go.
Yes, everything about this man screams sex.
I already knew that he was physically appealing. But now I also know that he’s indirectly responsible for Erika’s overdose. And I hate him for it.
“You can’t go in there.” His tone hedges no room for debate.
“Legally, I can go in there.”
He crosses his arms, which, with the size of his biceps, looks borderline uncomfortable. “Your name isn’t on the lease, and I never gave you a key. I doubt Erika did either.” A tendon pulses in his jaw, and the disdain in his gaze intensifies my anger.
“You doubt Erika did?” I repeat the words and nearly laugh as they leave my lips. “You’ve got a lot of nerve acting like you speak for her.”
“Says the woman who just announced she was going in to steal jewelry. We both know she wouldn’t want you in there.”
My mouth pops open. How dare he pretend he knows what terms my sister and I were on? “Are you fucking kidding me right now?”
He stands taller, like a sentinel guarding a castle. It infuriates me. Where was this sense of contractual integrity when he booted her without honoring the pinky promise we made?
That agreement may have been childish, but it meant something to me.
The asshole’s facial expression gives nothing away. His delivery is perfectly even. “Not a joke in sight. If you want to enter the unit, you’ll need Erika’s permission.”
I bark out a loud, disbelieving laugh and shake my head at him. “Right, well, since you’re the Erika expert now, I’ll just wait here while you head down to the morgue and ask her permission.”
The mountain of a man flinches as though I slapped him, but then he takes a stuttered step forward, eyes searching. “Come again?”
“My sister is dead.”
God, saying it out loud is a shot to the heart. My voice cracks, but I forge ahead.
“My emotional bandwidth is shot, and my desire to talk to you is nonexistent. I’m next of kin, so if you want to call the cops and have me removed from the property”—I wave a dramatic hand over the front lawn as if welcoming a crowd to a show—“please be my guest.”
With that, I spin and barge into the house. I’m about to slam the door in his face with a flourish when he’s suddenly there, crowding me, towering over me, one massive hand gripping the door and keeping it from hitting him in the face.
I can feel the heat of his body, sense the threat in his stance, and smell the cinnamon scent in his hair product.
“And Milo?” His voice is all gravel, and I swear there’s a threat in his rough tone. One I don’t fucking appreciate.
But I also recognize his concern for the small boy because I feel it too. Acutely.
I let my eyes crash against his, both confused and agitated by his distress.
What I see in his dark irises is an apocalypse of storms. Fire and brimstone. And I’m certain mine are no better. As his gaze traces my face, I let my hatred take center stage on every feature, wanting to show him I’m not standing down, no matter how much he stomps around like he’s the fucking man of the house or whatever this territorial show is.
I decide on as little information as possible, but enough to get him to leave. “Milo is happy and safe.”
A brief flash of relief touches the man’s features as he retreats incrementally.
A soft moment.
A perfect spot for me to strike.
“I pinky promise,” I add cynically.
And then I slam the door in his face.