4. Harley
Harley
The truck engine ticks softly after I shut it off. I sit there gripping the steering wheel anyway.
My apartment complex looks exactly the same. That should comfort me but instead nausea crawls up my throat.
The cracked pavement stretches between faded parking lines. Somebody’s busted lawn chair still sits outside Building C with one leg bent weirdly inward. Wind rattles dead leaves against the curb. Somewhere nearby a dog barks sharp and frantic enough to make my pulse jump.
Normal. Everything looks painfully fucking normal.
Meanwhile I feel like someone peeled my skin off and shoved me back into my old life unfinished.
The drive only takes a few hours, and I’m barely less of a mess by the time I pull into the parking lot.
My shoulders ache from gripping the wheel too tightly the entire way.
I keep checking mirrors without meaning to.
Every dark SUV sends adrenaline slamming through me.
Every motorcycle makes me think of pursuit.
But nobody follows me, at least not that I can see. The thought doesn’t help much.
I stare up at my building.
Home.
The word feels strange now.
Nathan somehow managed to keep my apartment and, according to him, had it restored too. Replaced the ruined wooden door with a steel one. Handled the rent. Handled the bills. Handled everything while I was locked away losing my fucking mind around wolves pretending not to be monsters.
I don’t know how he did any of it. I don’t know why he bothered.
The steering wheel creaks under my grip.
I haven’t paid rent on time. Haven’t shown up to work in over a month. Just vanished off the face of the earth. My gas station job is absolutely gone. What little money I have left in the bank probably won’t even cover groceries for long.
Holy fuck. What have I done? The panic starts rising again. I’m gonna end up homeless. Starving. Crazy. Dead.
My chest tightens violently.
And Ryder—
The thought blindsides me hard enough I actually flinch. What if Ryder came looking for me while I was gone? I close my eyes briefly.
Shit.
We aren’t close exactly. Eleven years between us sees to that. By the time I was old enough to really remember things, Ryder was already half-grown and halfway gone. Drifting in and out of my life whenever the mood hits him.
But he’s all I’ve got. And I’m all he’s got.
I never know where he is. Don’t have a phone number half the time. No address. No clue whether he’s sleeping on couches, running scams, getting arrested, or living like a king somewhere.
Ryder blows through life like a tornado wearing boots. But he always comes back eventually, usually every few months at most.
What if he came by while I was gone and thought I abandoned him? The idea hurts worse than I expect so I shove it away immediately.
Not now. I can’t deal with Ryder and monsters and trauma and money and the fact I almost miss the compound all at the same damn time.
I slap myself hard across the cheek.
“Stop it. Be a fucking man and deal with it all.”
My face stings.
Good. Pain helps. Pain is simple. Unlike everything-fucking-thing else in my life.
So much has happened…
“Nope.”
I shake my head hard enough to make dizziness wash through me. I cannot start down that road. I need to focus on parking and getting upstairs and talking to the manager. Acting like a normal person instead of someone held prisoner by supernatural psychopaths for weeks.
My stomach rolls. God, I hate Mr. Rutlidge. Oddly enough, thinking about that greasy asshole helps ground me. Anger feels easier than fear.
Rutlidge’s creepy eyes. His cheap cologne. The way he “accidentally” brushes against me whenever he can get away with it. Weird married bastard acting like every younger guy around him exists for his entertainment.
The duffle bag has fallen to the passenger-side floor so I have to lean over and wriggle to pick it up. That’s when it dawns on me I never buckled my seatbelt, and I’m damned lucky to be alive and not ticketed.
I have to get my head out of my ass, like right now.
I climb out of the truck and heat presses against me immediately. Arizona sunlight bounces hard off concrete and metal. Sweat prickles along my spine under my shirt.
The property manager’s office should still be open so I head toward it before I can lose my nerve. The office looks exactly the same. I don’t know why I expected everything to be different just because I’m different now, on the inside at least.
Rutlidge sits behind his desk in a shiny silver suit that probably looks expensive to him but ridiculous to everybody else. His beard still looks like roadkill glued to his face.
His eyes narrow the second he sees me. Then he leers.
“Well, well,” he drawls. “Look who’s back. Did your sugar daddy get tired of you already?”
I stop dead in the doorway.
“What the fuck are you talking about?”
Jesus, what did the shifters tell him?
“Oh, please.” Rutlidge smirks and smooths a hand down his lapel. “You disappear for weeks without telling anyone. Then somebody buys your apartment and the one beside it, completely remodels the place, pays everything off, and suddenly here you are looking like you’ve been rode rough for weeks.”
His eyes drag over me slowly. “And you have a nice, new place all decked out and all bills paid. The title is even in your name, and I’d really like to know who you blew to get the company I work for to sell those units—”
“Fuck you.” Rage explodes through me so fast it almost blanks my vision. “I’m not anyone’s whore, not anyone’s boy toy, so just—fuck you.”
Not my best comeback, but judging by Rutlidge’s expression, it lands well enough.
I turn and walk out before I do something genuinely stupid. My shoulders stay stiff all the way back into the sunlight. It isn’t until I stop outside the office that my brain catches up.
I don’t have keys. Or paperwork. Or proof of anything.
Only the duffle bag.
Breathing hard now, I crouch and yank the zipper open, then freeze.
Keys. A handwritten note. Papers. A cellphone.
And stacks of money.
Actual stacks.
“What the fuck?” I squeak.
My stomach drops.
There’s a note tucked beneath one bundle.
My vision blurs suddenly and I scrub hard at one eye before grabbing the keys.
Anger crashes over me hot and ugly. Are they paying me off or what?
Should I keep the money? God, if I wasn’t so fucking poor I’d shred it all, or give it to the homeless shelter and tell the shifters to fuck the hell off.
I slam the bag shut and take off toward the stairs.
By the second flight of stairs my lungs burn. By the third my legs shake. I stop on the landing and lean hard against the wall, dragging in air that smells like dust, old paint and somebody’s fried lunch drifting out from under a nearby door.
I open the duffle just enough to pull out the handwritten note because apparently, I enjoy torturing myself. The paper is folded neatly. Nathan’s handwriting is neat too, easy to read, nothing like my own illegible scrawl.
I read it once.
Then again.
Then a third time because the words don’t make sense.
The note’s short, the writing neat and easy to decipher, not like my own illegible scrawl. I fight the urge to cry. My emotions are all over the place, my head totally fucked up. Maybe I’m going crazy.
The money, the apartment, all of it is a gift, including the damn truck.
Titles are in the bag, and even the utilities have been paid several months in advance.
All of them, gifts from Nathan—and Marcus, Nathan had written, but I doubt that surly bastard would have given me anything but a glare.
If nothing else, I’m supposed to consider it compensation, like I’d sued the shifters for the hardships I’ve suffered.
“Oh fucking hell.”
The sound barely gets out. I don’t know what the hell to think about any of it.
It pisses me off, but God, I needed the help.
I shove the note into my back pocket and keep climbing before I can start crying in a stairwell like some tragic movie character.
By the time I reach my floor, sweat soaks the back of my shirt.
My door waits at the end of the hall and the sight of it almost takes me to my knees. I sink down against the wall opposite my apartment before I even realize I’m moving. The duffle thumps beside me.
For a few seconds I can’t see the hallway at all.
I see Joshua instead.
His evil fucking grin. His hand closing around my arm. The bedroom light behind him.
My shirt half off because I thought—
“No,” I whisper.
The memory keeps pushing.
I squeeze my eyes shut, but that only makes it worse. I remember the sound of my old door giving. Wood cracking. My own voice, thin and confused, before fear truly landed.
There are blank spaces after that.
Big ones. But I’m fine with them because I don’t want to know what my own head buried. Nothing good lives in blank spaces.
The past is the past, and I haven’t had to struggle with my memories quite so much while I’ve been holed up with the shifters, maybe because I was too busy worrying whether they’d kill me.
Definitely not because I felt safe.
The sheer idiocy of that makes me laugh out loud. It comes out high and nervous and completely unhinged. I clap a hand over my mouth.
Jesus fucking Christ, I’m losing my mind.
“Well, why not?” I mutter against my palm. “Fuckers took everything else I had, might as well give them that too.”
The titles in the bag are just papers. The important things—my pride, my security, my belief in reality and ignorance of the supernatural—those things are fucking gone.
Now I have what they gave me. What they let me have.
My life included.
I don’t know how long I sit there staring at that steel door. Long enough for my legs to start tingling. Long enough for a neighbor’s TV laugh track to erupt through the wall and make me flinch hard enough my shoulder hits plaster.
Finally I force myself up.
“Fuck it. Fuck it all.”
I cross the hall. Every step makes sweat break out fresh across my skin. My heart pounds. My vision pulses at the edges. I shove the key labeled top into the first lock and nearly sob when it fits.
Three locks. Top. Mid. Bot. Bot almost makes me laugh again. I turn each key with fingers that don’t want to work and the final tumbler clicks. I wipe my forehead with my arm and grab the knob.
For a second I just stand there.
Then I open the door and I gape like a total fool.
The apartment looks nothing like mine.
It’s larger, which it should be since Rutlidge said they bought the unit beside it too. The wall is gone. The space opens wide and bright, warm golden floors.
I step inside and shut the door fast, but I only set one of the locks, because what if someone else is in here?
My eyes hurt from staring.
“Wow. Just, I don’t—”
Talking to myself might mean I’m off my rocker to some people, but I’ve been doing it since I learned to talk. I’ve been lonely for a long time and the sound of my own voice helps alleviate that somewhat.
“The wall is gone.” I check the living room first. Then the kitchen as well as I can without moving away from the door. Only once I’m reasonably sure no one or thing is lurking and waiting for me to move so they can off me, do I edge further into the living room.
The place is beautiful.
The little one-bedroom is now a sprawling—to me at least—apartment, or home, maybe, since I actually own it. Unless the papers are fake, but I’ll worry about that later. Besides, why would Rutlidge say anything about me owning the place—or had he?
I shrug, my attention caught by a gorgeous cream rug splattered with shades of blue and brown. I don’t know jack about decorating. Most of my stuff comes from garage sales or trash piles, but I’m positive that rug costs a pretty penny.
I snort. “Right, like there were any pennies involved in the price. Had to be hundreds of bucks. Guess I’m being bought off after all.”
It irks me, but I can’t stop looking. The floors have been redone, the cracked crappy tiles pulled up and something that looks a lot like real wood installed instead.
The warm golden glow of it makes the place lighter, or maybe that’s the golden tones the walls have been painted.
The couch is covered in a Southwestern-patterned material, that mix of blues and browns and cream combined with yellow-gold and peachy-orange.
Maybe I should have paid attention in art class.
I might have learned the colours’ real names then.
“Whatever, it’s pretty, even if I’ve always steered clear of the whole Southwestern design stuff.”
It just seems clichéd, living in Sedona and all, what with it all around me, but I wonder if I haven’t just been being stubborn, because I kind of like the way my apartment looks, with Native American pottery on tables and in nooks and crannies—I’ve never had nooks and crannies before!
The kitchen table is the perfect size for me, and made of the same colored wood as the floor. I think the table is real wood, though. The chairs too.
How did I get in the kitchen?
I spin around, astounded that I’ve wandered in without even being aware of it. But the warm colors, the soothing tones and the sheer prettiness of the place just draw me.
Until I look towards the bedroom.
I’ve been in there with Joshua Dobson, thinking I’ve brought home a guy to keep me company for the night. Dobson seemed, well, weird, but I was so lonely—
“Stop,” I squeak, pressing a hand to the base of my throat.
Dobson waited until I began to undress, then he smiled this twisted smile and just gripped me right there—
“No, no, no!”
I back up until I hit the table.
I can’t look away from the bedroom.
The door is open, and it doesn’t look the same at all, but it’s still the bedroom.
Maybe it isn’t where my nightmare started, because that truly began when I picked Dobson up—or got picked up, whatever.
I thought I was going to die a vicious death that night, and my relief that I didn’t was short-lived, at least while I was held captive.
“Don’t think about it. Fuck it. Don’t think about it!”
I tear my gaze away and look around the kitchen.
I set the duffle on the table, then open it and take out the envelope that says Titles.
Holding it in my hand, I walk around the kitchen, opening drawers and cabinets, finding everything stocked with items, food and kitchenware I’ve never had and never would’ve been able to afford.
Were the shifters trying to buy me off? Or were they, as Nathan says in the note, truly sorry I was hurt? Did it matter?
“Yes.”
Though I can’t say why.
I finally look in the fridge, then the freezer, and I’m trying to figure out what the hell I’ll do with so much food when my mind just blanks, like the electricity cutting off right before a storm hits.
Then I crumple on the floor and sob as I clutch at my head, the nightmarish memories slithering out to torment me on that pretty gold floor.