Sorrow (Cape Frost #1)

1

It’s cold in here. It always is, and I always hate it. It doesn’t matter how many blankets I burrow under, I still feel the chill down to my bones.

Cape Frost is aptly named.

It’s also isolated, polarizing, and utterly boring unless you’re into breaking laws. Unsurprisingly, I’m not.

Our only claim to fame is Bleak River which never freezes no matter how cold it gets. Some say it’s because of all the dead bodies, some say it’s a freak of nature. All I know is that it’s loud, creepy, and almost always a crime scene.

It’s so common that when Boo comes in with mud on his Carhartts up to his knees, I don’t even have to ask why. “How many this time?”

“Just one,” he mumbles. “Nice change of pace.”

He looks as cold as I feel with snow in his short beard and pink fingertips as he pulls his gloves off. The dull gold shield on his chest falls off for the hundredth time, clattering to the ground and resting on its bent clasp. I unbury myself from my burrito of blankets to grab it for him. The air feels almost violent on my bare legs. “Detective Chad Radley, you’re a mess.”

“Don’t call me that,” he says, also for the hundredth time. He earned the name Boo after reading To Kill A Mockingbird sixteen times one summer, and ever since then, he’s refused to acknowledge his government name. Suits me just fine. “Hayes will be here soon. Do you mind cooking for him too?”

“I mind very much, actually.”

“Samara.”

“Don’t full name me,” I snap. Somehow my body temp drops even further. I may hate this town, but it’s nothing compared to how I feel about Hayes Sarro. He’s nothing but sorrow in a 6’4, brown-eyed, clean shaven, sharp-jawed, devilishly handsome package .

He’s also been tormenting me since I was a little girl.

“Please?”

I’m too fucking cold to argue. “I guess.” Moving slowly, I brush past him from the cluttered living room to the outdated kitchen I hate to cook in. “Did his latest girlfriend dump him for being an asshole?”

“No. Girls love assholes unfortunately,” my brother chuckles. “On the contrary, this last one was trying to trick him into knocking her up.”

My jaw clenches as I yank our rusted old pan out of the cupboard. “I bet she did.”

“You sound jealous.”

“Hah!” I scoff, even as my stomach comes alive. It’s not my fault my brain immediately wondered what it would feel like to have him come inside of me. It’s not because I’m jealous, it’s because I have no experience in that department. It’s normal to be curious. “I just mean the girls around here are nuts. You’d have to be to want to procreate with him.”

“Is that a bra, Samuel? I’ve seen bigger tits on an alleycat.”

“What are you doing tonight? Oh wait, I forgot who I was talking to.”

“You’re so flat a priest would fuck you. ”

Yeah, a girl would have to be insane to go anywhere near him.

Boo laughs. “I don’t disagree. You’d have to be nuts to want to procreate these days at all, let alone with someone like him. Women need to realize he’ll never love them and move on.”

It’s incredible they don’t. I’ve never met a man so blatantly cold in my life.

Shutting down, I grab a pack of thawed ground beef from the fridge and a can of Manwich. I’m not a bad chef, but I’ll be damned if I ever bring out my best for someone like Hayes.

“Manwich,” my brother says with a huff. “I’m gonna go shower, let him in for me when he gets here. They said it’s supposed to start sleeting.”

I hear the trickle of the shower over the sizzle of the meat, but the downpour that starts outside drowns them both out.

When Hayes knocks, I go temporarily deaf.

I bite back a grin when he knocks a little louder thirty seconds later, then lose that battle when he pounds on it after another moment. “Come on, it’s pouring out here, assholes! ”

I lower the heat just a little and walk over to the door, pausing an extra few seconds before I open it. “Sorry, we don’t accept beggars.”

“Beggars?” he repeats in a growl, shoving his way inside so quickly I stumble backward. “Should have known it was you in charge of getting the door. You’ll be late to your own funeral.”

He bends closer and shakes his hair out like a dog, spraying water and ice crystals all over me.

I don’t care how hot he looks soaking wet, I still want to spit in his sloppy joe.

“Well, you’re about as welcome as a funeral, so that tracks.”

“Always a pleasure. Remind me why you’re still single? I can’t seem to remember.” His smile is venomous as he looks me up and down, eyes lingering on the hem of my shorts in a way that doesn’t match his expression. I knew I should’ve put sweats on, but I swear the room is already heating up. Probably all the hot air escaping his stupid mouth.

“Who said I’m single?” I counter. “Take your boots off before you track more mud all over the floor. Dinner’s almost ready.”

I take the opportunity to shoulder-check him — well, I hit his side with my shoulder, the bastard is still a foot taller than me — and make my way back to the kitchen where I grab the buns.

It’s almost a shame they’re fresh.

Each clunk of his boots hitting the floor makes me blink, but I refuse to flinch. I refuse to show him he affects me at all.

“Are those sloppy joes?”

I feel him moving closer even though he’s hardly making a sound now, silent like a predator. “Yes.”

“Hm.” He opens and closes the fridge like he’s right at home and then speaks again. “And I said you’re single. If you weren’t, you wouldn’t be making sloppy joes for your older brother and his friend. You’d be out with him.”

“Not every night.” Fuck, there’s color rising to my cheeks and I hate it almost as much as the cold. “We just started talking.”

“What’s his name?”

I glance back to find him leaning against the counter with a beer in one hand and his eyes staring through me.

Like I’m not even here at all.

I don’t need to tell him anything .

Sucking my cheek between my teeth to keep my own mouth shut, I stir the slop and cut the heat.

His chuckle is all I hear before my idiotic brother joins us and grabs a beer of his own. “Dinner ready? I’m starv—”

“Samuel was just telling me about her new boyfriend. Have you met him?” Hayes cuts in, making me wish I could either sink into the floor or get away with flinging this scaling hot pan at his head.

“Boyfriend? She doesn’t have a fucking boyfriend. Wait,” Boo stops. “You talking about that football player you’ve been drooling over?”

Okay, maybe I’ll hit him with the pan and hope it ricochets and hits his fuckwad friend, too. “Do you want food or not?” I snap.

“She’s really touchy about it.” I can hear the amusement laced in Hayes’ tone, only making me angrier. “Football player though, huh? You mean to tell me your little sister — lover of rocks — is trying to date a jock? Where is Rocky, by the way?”

If murder were legal, I’m pretty sure I could pull it off. We live in the middle of goddamn nowhere in a town so poor we don’t even have a welcome sign, and he has the nerve to make fun of me for collecting rocks as a kid. Maybe it’s a little weird that I named one and took it everywhere, but we didn’t exactly have any stuffed animal factories around. Some of the wealthier families got them, but not us. Never us.

Meeting his eyes, I scoop some of the sloppy joe mix onto a bun and hold his gaze as I slowly spit on it, slap the top on, and hand it over. “Rocky is still in my room, and I won’t let you make me feel bad about that. I made the best of a bad situation, and if you think there’s something wrong with that, you can go fuck yourself. I’m not a helpless little girl anymore.”

There’s a fire in his eyes that makes a chill spread up my spine, but to my surprise, he steps forward to take the plate out of my hand like nothing happened.

My brother didn’t seem to see what I did thanks to his cellphone, but that means he has no idea what his best friend is eating as he takes a huge bite without breaking eye contact. “Not bad,” he mumbles around it. “But I’ve had better.”

“Don’t be a dick,” Boo responds with a sigh. “Just say thank you.”

He has no idea Hayes was talking about my fucking spit. I’m completely speechless as he takes yet another bite before he mumbles, “ Thank you,” and walks away to the living room.

I’ve had better.

Maybe I deserved that. Maybe I’ve deserved every single thing he’s ever said to me, but he deserves a lot worse than I can ever give him.

I don’t bother following them.

I eat my sad little sloppy joe in the safety of the kitchen and check my phone like there’s a single chance in hell that Nate texted me.

He didn’t, which just proves my brother and that walking fuckstick right.

Luckily for me, they never have to know. I think I’ve suffered enough.