Chapter 15
Don’t do it. Don’t do it. Please, for the love of all self-respect, do not do this.
I stomped on the shovel and tossed the dirt to the side, wishing I’d also asked Amber to pick up a headlamp for me while she was at the hardware store last night.
I could barely see anything.
Exactly. So turn around and go back home. Better yet, go chill at a coffee shop or something for a few hours until he wakes up.
It’s still not too late.
The sun was starting to rise, so my vision wouldn’t be this limited for very long. Plus, digging was fantastic exercise. Less than an hour in and six holes dug, and I’d worked up quite the sweat.
Good thing I hadn’t marked where, exactly, I’d buried the compostable bag. My biceps may have been screaming and cursing me for it right now, but they’d thank me eventually.
You’ll hate yourself if you keep going. I already hate you a little bit, and I—wait, what’s that?
I squinted down at the speck of bright orange peeking out from the dirt. At first glance, it looked like it might be a dead petal. But I didn’t remember killing a flower that color during my massacre.
I squatted, brushing the dirt away to make sure it wasn’t something weird or dangerous before I pulled it out. It was a small, beaded bracelet with the words PENNY PEONY printed onto the central beads.
My pulse did a little leap.
I remembered this thing.
I’d made this thing.
For Rosie’s birthday one year when I was…
six? Seven? She’d mentioned something about wanting to start using ribbons to mark her flowers because it would be so much easier to communicate their needs with the gardeners.
I’d misunderstood what she meant, thinking she only wanted to name them, so she could say things like, “Lydia Lilac needs pruning,” and everyone would know which plant she was talking about.
I’d made more than eighty of these bracelets with Mom’s help. It took us months, and Rosie was so elated with the gift that she’d moved her party outside so she and I could start distributing them among her flowers while my dad fired up the barbecue.
We’d eaten dinner in her garden. Sang a bunch of karaoke. Laughed and gorged ourselves on cake until our stomachs hurt. And before the night ended, she’d hugged me so tightly I thought my ribs were going to break, thanking me profusely for the lovely, lovely gift, claiming she’d cherish it forever.
She was really good at that—acknowledging the effort you’d put into something and making you feel seen, heard, and special.
I swallowed the painful lump gathering in my throat, my thumb brushing over the flimsy bracelet before I slipped it onto my wrist. She’d left without taking them with her, so I had no idea what this one was doing here or why.
I spent a full hour looking around to see if there was any more, kicking at patches of dirt when I thought I saw a bright color that stuck out. The higher the sun rose, the easier the task became, but it was still futile.
However.
After my second lap, an extremely familiar set of patterns started to emerge.
The placement of lanterns along the meandering cobblestone paths.
The empty space facing what used to be the rosebushes, waiting to be filled with an iron bench.
The large clearing in the middle that was missing an outdoor dining table…
I’d been here before.
Not just once, but a thousand times.
This wasn’t just Rosie’s garden. It was a bare-bones replica of the one she’d kept at my family’s old property. I hadn’t recognized it without all the decorations and water fixtures.
And in my anger, I’d unknowingly destroyed it.
I eventually found the hoodie.
It was buried a few feet away from the clearing, and the moment I heard the soft crinkle of its bag connecting with the end of my shovel, I yanked on a face mask and a thick pair of rubber gloves that went up to my elbows and got to work.
The poison ivy was removed using a pair of tongs, quadruple bagged, labeled all over with a red marker and several exclamation points, then tossed into the trash.
The hoodie went into the bucket Amber had picked up for me, along with a generous amount of heavy-duty detergent advertised specifically for removing oil residue and enough warm water to submerge the fabric.
I left it alone for thirty minutes, then repeated the process three more times before hosing it down and tossing it in the washing machine, where it would tumble in a heavy-duty sanitization cycle for the next four hours.
The only thing left was to make sure Dominic didn’t go anywhere near the laundry room and that he was distracted enough in the evening that he wouldn’t notice when I snuck upstairs and swapped one hoodie for the other.
Bonus points if I could get him out of the house so I could also start working on the garden.
“I need Thursday night off,” I said as soon as he sauntered into the kitchen, freshly showered and shaved, wearing a pitch-black, short-sleeve cashmere polo and pitch-black tailored pants accentuated with a pitch-black belt. His watch was silver, though, so there was that.
He barely glanced at me on his way to grab a mug, not bothering to question what I’d been doing here so early and unsupervised. “No.”
I leaned against the wall, cradling my own cup as I watched him shut the cabinet, walk to where the coffee machine was supposed to be, and blink when he found the counter empty.
His neck craned, head slowly turning in my direction. “Where is it?”
“Where’s what?” I asked, taking a long, slurping sip out of my steaming cup.
It was snatched out of my hands within seconds. He took one big gulp… and immediately proceeded to grimace and stick his tongue out. “Ugh, the fuck is that?”
“Herbal tea.”
“Tastes like dirt.” He gave it back to me. “I’m going to go grab coffee. Don’t—”
He stopped suddenly. His eyes narrowed. His head tipped to one side. “You’re trying to get me out of the house.”
I didn’t even blink. “I’m not trying to get you out of the house.”
“Why?”
“Why am I not trying to get you out of the house? I don’t know, why does anyone not try to get anyone else out of the house?”
“Is it rats?”
The only reason I laughed was because I wasn’t expecting rats to be his first theory.
“I can assure you, Dominic, that it is not rats. I’m still considering bed bugs, but you won’t have to worry about them until I’m long gone, and maybe not even then.
I still haven’t been able to find a service willing to facilitate the delivery and contamination. Unless you know someone?”
He started nudging me out of the kitchen. “You’re a menace.”
“Yet you willingly invited me into your home.”
I was guided down one of the restricted hallways I’d been specifically warned against entering, down a set of stairs, and into a massive underground garage lined with cars.
Gorgeous, shiny luxury cars, at least one of which money simply could not buy, the model was so rare.
My mouth popped open.
Dominic casually strode toward a cherry-red SF90 Stradale, and my chest fluttered when it purred to life, one sleek door gliding open. The hairs on my arms started to rise. My pulse was climbing, heat pooling over my cheeks as I allowed my gaze to roam over each individual car.
W16 Mistral. Bugatti. Black.
DB12 Volante. Aston Martin. Deep purple.
Ghost Series II. Rolls-Royce. Dark forest green.
Grancabrio. Maserati. Pearl white.
Two Lamborghinis. Two Audis. A sleek chrome motorcycle I couldn’t name. And a black Bugatti Divo that made my knees go weak.
“I’ll play you for it,” I blurted, failing to keep my voice level. “Thursday. If I win, I get the evening off. If you win, I promise not to plot against you using any sort of insect, rodent, or any other live animal for the remaining three weeks I’m here.”
His mouth ticked down, considering. “What game?”
I tried not to smile or show how giddy I was with sheer excitement. “Remember how you could never beat me at Mario Kart?”
He stared back at me for a second.
Blinked.
“I call the Ferrari,” we both said at the same time.
Dominic smirked, turning his back to me as he dangled something in the air. “And the tie goes to the guy with the keys—”
I snatched them right out of his hand and slipped into the driver’s seat before his uncaffeinated morning brain could comprehend what’d happened.
For safety reasons, we stopped to get him that cup of coffee on the way to the track.