Chapter 1
MINKA
Iwake in the dark with a start, soaked in my own sweat and with a headache pounding in the back of my skull. From unconscious to alert in a split second, I glance around my room and take stock of the space I know is mine.
I don’t remember crawling into bed. I don’t even remember trudging up the stairs after the hospital last night. But I do recall Doctor Cleary’s gentle touch as she slid Factor into my veins, her thumb on the syringe plunger despite my assurances I could do it myself.
You came to me, Chief. So you’ll allow me to do my job.
Lying impossibly still, I study the old, discolored curtains as they dance in the world’s faintest breeze, the window pushed wide open to allow me reprieve from the heat.
A screen sits in the frame, shielding me from the bugs that wish they could escape the outside, too, and the mosquitoes that wouldn’t mind feasting on my already faulty blood.
I take a moment to fill my lungs, to draw fresh air and expand my chest, then I exhale again and, steeling myself, I turn my head to Archer’s side of the bed.
It’s foolish. It’s the kind of wishful thinking small girls cling to as they picture a prince sweeping them off their feet, and it’s all for naught, because Archer’s body is not beside mine.
His strong, broad thighs aren’t, for the second morning in a row, wrapped around my legs.
My skin is sweaty, as it so often is, but it’s not because we’re touching from top to toe, overheating because we’d prefer discomfort over isolation.
Don’t come back to the house, Minka.
Sighing, I sit up in bed and study the shadows filling each corner of our room. My room. The room I continue to pay rent for, even after Archer’s insistence that we move into a perfectly suitable house in the hills.
Smartest decision I made this month. Grumbling, I crawl off the edge of the bed and set my feet on the floor, ignoring the annoying ache that rolls along my calves in waves.
If I’d listened to him and given up my apartment, I’d be homeless right now.
Or, more probably, sleeping amongst the forgotten office chairs and busted printers scattered across the fifteenth floor of the George Stanley building.
Could I sneak an entire bed up there without anyone else noticing? A fridge. A kitty litter tray, on the unlikely chance Archer would agree to a week-on, week-off co-parenting schedule for the bitchy cat I don’t even like.
I drag my hand up through sweaty hair, resigned to the fact that I must wash it this morning or risk Doctor Raquel’s pithy remarks and hardly veiled disgust. Bracing myself, I push to my feet and release a groan that originates somewhere in the far corners of my soul.
In the way, way back, where my pain has been relegated, and my heartache remains chained to the walls, such is my desperation for an hour, just sixty measly minutes, of blissful emotional paralysis.
I don’t think it’s so much to ask.
Swallowing the nasty taste on my tongue, a reminder I didn’t brush my teeth before bed last night, I turn toward the door and shuffle across the old, not-well-maintained flooring, over the threshold, and into the hall.
I crush the heels of my palms to my eyes, and turning left on instinct alone, I wander into the bathroom without crashing into the wall, close the door, flip the lights on, and open my eyes despite the harsh glare.
Right there, opposite me, is a woman with wild, knotted hair, swollen eyes, splotchy cheeks, and, if I look closely enough, a rough coat of yellowed ick covering my teeth.
I snatch up my toothbrush and smear a line of paste on the bristles, then, backing up, I push my underwear down and plop onto the toilet.
What time is it?
Dunno. But it’s still dark outside.
Is my life still on fire?
Yep. And the flames somehow burn hotter today than they did yesterday.
But can I brush my teeth, empty my bladder, and take care of those immediate needs so I’m not tempted to walk face-first into shark-infested waters?
Mmhmm. Guess I can.
I pee and wipe with my left hand, hastily scrubbing my teeth with my right.
I pout throughout it all, and when I’m done with both, I stand and flush, pull my panties up my otherwise bare legs, and, shuffling toward the sink, I hold my toothbrush in my mouth while I pump soap into my palm and wash both to combat how sticky and gross I feel all over.
I’m still wearing my shirt from last night, but not my pants. My shoes are gone, but the chain I wear around my ankle remains. Similarly, the chain around my neck, the one holding my wedding bands, both of them, sits securely against my chest.
The shadows plaguing my eyes could almost convince me I’ve gone a round with a prizefighter, and the elastic I used in my hair yesterday now sits askew, my ponytail off-center and flaccid after a post-infusion sleep.
Is leaving the hospital without paying for treatment similar to leaving the gas station without paying for gas?
Am I to expect the cops at my door sometime this morning?
And if I am, could I be lucky enough that they send regular uniformed officers and not, say, a couple of handsome homicide detectives?
Please.
Rolling my eyes, I fist my toothbrush and spit the last of the foamy white mess into the sink.
I rinse the bristles and set the brush in its cup holder, then I fill my palms with water and rinse my mouth out.
Filling my palms a second time, I drink straight from them, drenching my dry throat, and a moment later, enjoying the cold slide of liquid into my much-too-empty stomach.
Archer would be pissed if he knew how little I consumed yesterday. But then again, he doesn’t want me anymore. So maybe he wouldn’t be pissed at all, and the fact that I don’t know for sure destroys my sixty minutes of numbness.
In its place comes rage. At myself, for growing comfortable in a relationship never destined for me. At him, for swearing a commitment to this shitshow when I gave him a million chances to fess up and admit otherwise.
Slapping the faucet off and straightening my back, I swipe the moisture from around my mouth and wipe my wet palms on my thighs. Anything for a moment of cold on my otherwise broiling skin.
My stomach rumbles, but with every rumble, an uncomfortable slosh of water follows. Which means I sit perilously in that in-between space, where I know if I don’t eat soon, I’ve primed myself perfectly for a watery power-barf.
Flipping off the light switch and robbing myself of the pathetic view of my reflection in the mirror, I open the door and move into the hall, turning left, coffee, instead of right, back to bed, where I probably should be.
I step-shuffle from hallway to living room, from living room to the kitchen, guided by the light of Copeland City’s downtown district shooting through the single window by the television.
“Didn’t buy creamer,” I grumble to myself, snatching down a mug and setting it beneath the spout.
I spy my bag slumped by the door, and in it, I hope, my phone clings desperately to the last dregs of whatever battery life it has left.
Knowing it needs to go on the charger, I head that way and dig my hand in, blindly grabbing the device.
Then I turn again and plug it into a charger already waiting by the coffee machine.
Setting it on the counter, I grab the fridge door and swing it wide, temporarily blinding myself with the glaring interior light and hissing from the pain it elicits in the backs of my eyes.
Then my brain catches up as I remember… my fridge is busted.
There should be no light. Finally, my eyes and brain coordinate, focusing on the fridge’s contents, bursting and bright, the shelves overflowing with protein shakes, yogurt pouches, six different kinds of cheese, and right in the center, a Factor pack that sets my heart ablaze in every imaginable way.
Good. Bad. Devastating. Hopeful. Anxious.
“It’s too early,” a gruff, unhappy voice rolls across the room. “Fuck, Mayet.”
I scream and plaster my back to the chilled shelves, a head of lettuce tickling my neck while the light behind me does nothing to illuminate my intruder in front of me. “What the fuck?”
“Stop screaming!” Cato jumps up in the shadows on the other side of the couch. Then my apartment door bursts open, eliciting another scream from the depths of my chest as Harrison charges in and whips the lights on.
My whole apartment illuminates. My eyes swing back to Cato’s.
His drop to my exposed thighs. I’m in my underwear!
Then I scream again when he hurdles the back of the couch and sprints around the kitchen counter.
He crowds me by the fridge, shielding me from onlookers, but with his back turned to me.
“No one’s allowed to look at her fucking panties!
” He shoots a deadly look at my stunned guard.
“Eyes to the sky, Harrison! Why aren’t you wearing clothes, Mayet! ? Are you trying to get me killed?”
“Why are you here?” I whip a hand towel from the counter and splay it across my crotch. “This is my apartment!”
“Chief Mayet?” Stunned, panicked, panting a little, Harrison’s eyes stay rooted firmly to the ceiling. “Um… are you okay? Sh-should I leave?”
“You can leave.” I groan, hiding behind my brother-in-law. To cover my underwear? Or my trembling knees? “Please leave.”
“No. Wait.” Cato shoots forward two paces and points an accusatory finger in Harrison’s direction.
“You stay right there. You don’t fuckin’ look at her, but you stay in this kitchen and take detailed notes, so you can write a statement about how I’m not looking at her ass while she’s in her underwear. ”
“Oh my God.” I whimper. “Can my week get worse?”
“Anyone ever watch that Nicolas Cage movie?” Cato snarls. “The one where they all had to move as a team to keep the big floor disc thingy balanced?”