Chapter 2
BECKETT
“Please, Beckett? She’s gone through a lot lately. I just need you to get her in the door.”
My little sister genuinely sounds desperate. I’m torn between being smug about it and holding it over her head in the future, or just flat out saying no.
“I know it’s a bad time of night to ask, I get it. I wouldn’t ask if she had any other option. We can’t let her stay at the motel in town. Did you know it got resprayed for bed bugs last week? Howie said it’s the third time in two months. Wild.”
“I remember seeing a lot of exterminator trucks there when I went to the feed store, now that you mention it.”
“It’ll be so quick, Beck. You gotta hop out, open the door, and your good deed for the year is done.”
I groan, knowing she’s right. It won’t actually take long, and it won’t throw off the nightly routine much.
The crux of it is who the favor is actually for.
Clover Kerington. The bane of my existence since I was ten years old.
She and Brynn both had their sixth birthdays on the same day at the same kids’ arcade, and they immediately got attached at the hip.
From there, our moms also became best friends, and that’s what led to me dealing with Clover for every holiday, every special occasion, and every vacation until I was old enough to move out.
Even then, she was still there for those things; I was just able to escape more easily.
She moved away when they turned 19 for her big job opportunity, leaving ol’ Ashstone Ridge in the dust, and I thought I had seen the last of her.
Here I am, thirteen years later, rolling up to Brynn’s to save the day.
My windshield wipers are going full blast. It’s suddenly started pouring rain, but I’m not in a huge hurry to get there. Sadistic of me?
Maybe.
When I turn into the driveway, the high beams of my truck land on a girl lying in the middle of the sidewalk.
Cackling. The combination of my truck lights, Brynn’s outside lights, and the rain makes it hard to really make out her details, but I know it’s her.
No one else would be in the rain laughing like an idiot in this temperature.
I keep the truck on when I slide out, heat blasting. It’s barely into spring, so it’s still pretty fucking cold out, especially at night. I pull my hoodie up over my head and jog towards her.
“Clover?” I shout over the rain, getting her attention.
“Hey, Beck,” she says. “I’m so sorry, I know this isn’t what you had plan-”
I cut her off. “No. It’s not what I had planned, but I’m here.” I continue to walk past her, heading towards my sister’s front door. She might want to stay in the rain, but I sure as hell ain’t going to.
I get up to the porch and pull my hood back down. I wipe the rain off my face with my sleeve before I dig around in my pocket for the keys.
“Why didn’t you use the hide-a-key?” I say loudly, hoping she can hear the irritation over the rain.
“I tried,” a voice says behind me, and I jump.
“Jesus Christ, Clover,” I exhale. “You scared the shit out of me.”
“Sorry,” she says meekly. She points to the upside-down fake rock that Brynn’s key hides in. I use the term hides very, very loosely. “It didn’t work.”
“Sounds like user error,” I say, grumbling. Of course, Clover would fuck up using a key. Right in her area of expertise: being a goddamn mess. I slide my key in. “Watch carefully, maybe you can learn something,” I say confidently. I pause for dramatic effect and turn the key.
It does nothing. “What the fuck,” I say, looking at the lock.
“Oooh, ahhh,” Clover says dramatically. “I absolutely learned something, Bucket. How to look like an asshole 101. Thanks, teach.”
I bristle when she calls me Bucket. She hasn’t called me that since we were kids, and she would always do it to piss me off.
It’s like I had a secret panel of buttons all labeled with ways to aggravate the shit out of me, and she was the only one with the manual to it.
I try to relax my jaw and let go of my tension.
I’ve been doing really well at letting things roll over me, practicing patience and empathy.
She’s about to ruin that streak.
“That key looks old,” she says, peeking over my arm at it. I’m not sure why I move in front of her view, like I don’t want her to see it. Why am I being so defensive?
“Yeah, I’ve had it for like ten years, Clover.”
“Do you wanna try the new one?” She looks up at me. It’s crazy how she was almost as tall as me at one point, and now she barely comes up to my shoulder. Brynn towers over her now, too, and Brynn’s only 5’5.
“The new one?” I ask, coming back to the conversation.
“Yeah. The one for the locks she put on after Gaslighting Grayson.”
I scrub my hand over my face. Brynn told me a couple of months ago that she did that, but I never remembered to get the key from her. Fuck.
“Did you know he stole her slow cooker?” She stares at me with a solemn expression.
“I actually didn’t know that,” I say. “Huh. Why would you want someone else’s slow cooker?”
I walk to Brynn’s living room window, trying to think of ways to get into her house.
“Honestly, no idea. If it’s the one I think it was, it’s been a fire hazard for like seventeen years,” Clover rambles on as I wedge my fingers under the window and pull, hoping for once in my life that she was irresponsible enough to leave it unlocked.
She wasn’t.
I pull out my phone and shoot Brynn a text.
You never gave me the new key, dipshit.
Message not delivered.
She’s still on the plane. Brainstorm time, Beck. “Where’s your car? Why are you here?”
She gives me a blank stare. “Well, that’s rude. First of all, my car is at the house I rented.”
I’ll admit, I did come off more gruff than intended.
I perk up at this information, though. “Perfect, I’ll just take you back to your place.” I didn’t know she was back, like living here. I figured she was visiting.
“My keys are locked in it.”
“Did you lock yourself out of your house, too?”
“I wish.” She sighs, looking defeated. “The water main wanted to be a natural wonder of the world.”
I stare at her, trying to translate what she said.
“Jesus, Beck. It burst. There’s water all over everything. Well, not that I really had much, honestly. Either way. Ruined and waiting on the sketchy landlord to text me back.”
I glance at my phone. 9:42 pm. It’s getting too late to mess with all the bullshit tonight.
“Sorry, Beckett. Thanks for trying. If you could drive me to town, I can get a room there. I’ll give you gas money. I mean, I will anyway, since you came all this way.”
Why the fuck does she always ramble? It’s never just to the point. “I’m not taking you to the fucking motel, Clover, and I don’t need your gas money.”
I think about dropping her on my parents’ doorstep, but I know her. It’ll make her feel super low. Do I care, though?
Apparently, I do.
“Come on. It’s late. I have stuff to do, and you aren’t staying at the bedbug and breakfast.”
She actually laughs. Like . . . a real laugh.
It takes me by surprise, honestly. Obviously, I knew she could laugh.
Everyone can. On top of that, her laugh specifically kept me awake longer than I wanted to be for the majority of my life.
It just rarely happened because of me, unless she played a prank on me.
Even then, it was at me, not because of me.
There were a few times, though, in the backyard . . .
Nope. Not going there.
“Where are you taking me?” She sounds unsure.
“I’m not a stranger, Clover. You don’t have to worry, I’m not gonna murder you or whatever.”
“I don’t know. That kinda sounds exactly like what a murderer would say to a murderee.”
I grumble, rubbing my temple.
“Murderee. Lord. Get in the fucking truck, Clover Jane.”
Her eyebrows arch, taken aback for a second before giving me a dumb salute.
“Yes, Sir, Bucket, Sir.”
I don’t understand why the sound of her calling me Sir makes me uncomfortably hot suddenly, but I’m glad it’s dark. I know my face could rival a tomato in color right now.
She spins on her heels, grabs her backpack, and we run to the truck.
We are both soaked. This is one of the many times I’m incredibly grateful for heated seats.
We sit there for a moment, both trying to shake off the shock of the temperature change.
It’s dark in the truck because I have the cab light off, but a streetlight is reflecting off of Clover’s backpack, which is sitting on her lap. Does it have a window? Weird.
“You can put that on the floor if you want,” I offer. It’s the only thing she has that’s dry right now.
She hesitates for a moment. “Uh, no thanks, he’s fine.”
He’s?
Her backpack meows.
“Clover. What the fuck is in your backpack?” My tone is straightforward, and I level her with a stare.
She acts completely innocent as she turns the backpack around.
It does have a window.
And a fluffy orange cat.
“Beckett, meet Purrlock Holmes. He’s my cat.”
I audibly groan.
“You have a cat in this truck and didn’t tell me?”
“You owe a dollar to the swear jar, Daddy. Can I see the kitty?” A tiny, sweet voice pipes up from my backseat.
I’m still locked on Clover’s face and see her eyes widen. By a lot. She looks in the backseat and sees my six-year-old there, happy as a clam, and smiles at her.
“Of course you can! And he owes a whole dollar? Wow! That’s a lot of money.”
She turns the backpack around as my daughter explains to her that the f-word is a dollar because it’s— in her words— a “doopsy”. Even when I try to tell her the word is “doozy”, she’s not having it.
“You’re right, it is a doopsy.” Clover leans over the console in between my seat and hers, plops the cat backpack down next to the booster seat, and turns to face me.
“Beckett, what the fuck is in your backseat?” She whispers, barely audible to even me.
I clear my throat this time, mimicking her answer, my turn in the hot seat.
“Clover, meet Lennon. She’s my kid.”
Clover’s eyebrows scrunch together as she mockingly uses the tone I just used on her.
“You have a kid in this truck and didn’t tell me?”
I put the truck in reverse and don’t respond. Only the sound of Lennon talking to Purrlock fills the truck for a few minutes. We drive through town and Clover watches out of the window. When I don’t turn at the last chance red light, as the locals call it, her head whips towards me.
“Where are we going, Beckett?”
She sounds slightly alarmed, which is ridiculous. I’ve known her our whole lives, and my kid is in the backseat talking to her cat. Those sound like wildly inconvenient things when it comes to murdering someone, and I tell her that.
I turn my head towards her briefly at the stop sign before the road turns gravel.
“You’re going to crash with me.”