12. Rosie
Chapter 12
Rosie
L ana pauses her conversation with a customer to look at me as though I’m officially certifiable as I drop the takeout on the counter and call to Bambi to meet me in the back. My car is parked in the front, and there’s no way I can go out there again.
Bambi pops her head up from where she’s hemming a dress for a customer. “You look like you saw a ghost.”
“Definitely. Keys? I’ll trade and you can pick yours up on the way home?” I ask frantically.
Bambi doesn’t even question why I’m suddenly leaving when my shift isn’t over for another few hours. She just tosses out directions on where to find her keys and wishes me luck.
I’m overreacting, I know I am, but I’m so triggered by this whole day that I can’t seem to get myself under control for longer than a few minutes at a time. I’m pretty sure I had anxiety before my sixteenth birthday, but one of the side effects of that awful day is that I definitely have it now.
I errantly scratch my sweater over the scars on my chest, knowing they’re phantom itches. That doesn’t stop the sensation.
The drive home is dicey at best. I’m on the verge of a panic attack, and the fact that it’s over something as stupid as seeing Dane makes me want to roll my eyes at myself. I can almost hear my college therapist asking me if that is how I would treat a friend who I learned was triggered, but the reminder to be gentle with myself only does so much.
When I finally park in my grandmother’s drive, a little of the panic recedes. I take the moment of clarity to get myself together. Grandma doesn’t need to worry about me right now with how she’s feeling.
Inside, I find her on her kitchen stool, watching the oven. She’s dressed in one of the “house gowns” she wears to work in the garden, and her wide-brimmed hat sits abandoned on the counter.
“Did the garden get too hot?” I ask, peeking down to look at what she’s baking.
“Don’t you open my oven and ruin my cake,” Grandma Lily teasingly scolds.
“I would never,” I say, hands up in surrender. “Just wondering what you’re making.”
“My cheesecake. For the new neighbors,” she says as her egg timer goes off. “Will you turn off that oven? Are you on break? You know I wasn’t really going to drive.”
“I took off early. I’m wiped after painting this morning,” I explain as I shut off the oven. “You had lunch yet?”
“A nibble,” she says ruefully, which means she has probably been living off coffee and bacon.
“You stay sitting.” I pick around in the fridge, pulling out ingredients to make a quick sandwich for both of us since I abandoned my takeout out of survival instinct.
She ribs me about taking her to see the store window before she has to drive herself, and I tell her about the new collection while we eat at the bar in the kitchen. After lunch, she puts me to work helping her in the garden. It’s a game where she sits on the porch and calls out orders while I dig around in the dirt, but it helps the stress melt away.
I’ve carved out safe zones in my life. My grandma’s house and the part of downtown Knotty Pines closest to the college—two blocks of mostly handcrafted beer, bookstores, secondhand shops, and a small theatre—have been my little slice of the world. But anywhere past the marina and closer to the courthouse is off-limits. The country club crowd, including my estranged mother and cousin, tends to stick to the other end of town.
Dane Daniels ignored those imaginary lines and ventured into my territory, shaking my foundation, but the longer I spend in the sunshine and the dirt, the more I realize I’ll be okay. It’s not as if I have to go to the reunion or the town festivities, so the chances of running into Dane Daniels again are slim.
After gardening, Grandma goes to her nest to nap, and I find my way to the window seat in my room. Opening the window, I settle in with the breeze, my favorite rose tea, and my drawing tablet.
All afternoon, I hear the neighbors' deep voices as they continue to move in. It’s a soothing soundtrack while I work on a commission piece. Even though I can’t see them or make out what they’re saying, their chatter mixes in with the sounds of the birds in the backyard and the feel of the spring sunshine until my body settles.
Around five thirty, Bambi comes by to switch the cars. One look at me, and she folds me into a hug. The friendly contact makes me teary-eyed, and I pull back before I’m ready because I want to be done crying over my past.
“Wanna talk about it?” she asks, running her fingers through her pink waves and surveying the yard. “Or we could smash shit. Your grandma’s yard is too nice to destroy, but I bet Jace and Andre would let you use the garage and we could hit shit with a bat. And if that doesn’t work, we could get wasted and dance.”
I give her a watery laugh and take her hand. “Thank you.”
She squeezes it. “I mean it.”
“I know you do.” I take a seat on the top stair, and she wiggles in next to me, linking her arm through mine and putting her head on my shoulder. Bambi is a snuggler, and I rarely let anyone get close enough to touch, so I soak it in.
“I’m okay. I took my meds and worked in the garden. I also got a commission piece done for an online client.”
Bambi perks up. “Character art? Is it sexy this time?”
Besides working at Bambi’s, I dabble in digital art. It started when I discovered roleplay gaming in college and created my own avatar for my D&D token. People wanted me to do theirs. It’s more word of mouth than anything, but the social media account for it does bring in some steady commissions.
“Nope. It’s a map a Dungeon Master commissioned for a campaign his group is starting in a few weeks. It’s an orc village, so it was pretty fun to draw.”
Bambi hums, and we sit in silence as the night insects wake up. She doesn’t pressure me to talk, and that’s one of the things I love about our friendship. But eventually, the words want to come out.
I pull back from our cuddle enough to look at her. I close one eye—as if that will make the impact hurt less—and wince as I explain. “Dane Daniels was in Tanzy’s shop. I hid behind the bookshelves until he left and then word-vomited to Tanzy that I was hiding from him.”
She fights a smile, but it doesn't feel as though her amusement is at my expense. “Gods, I adore you, Rosie B.”
“Definitely what I took from this afternoon,” I joke. “I’m charming.”
“You really are.” She loses the battle with the smile she’s fighting, pulling me in for another hug, and murmurs in my ear, “I get it. Do what you gotta do for your heart.”
Bambi is an omega with a pack that adores her to envy-inducing levels. She’s beautiful, despite what she says about not being the pretty one. Like me, she’s midsize and heavily tattooed. While I escaped the mean-girl omegas by switching classes, Bambi was stuck with their fat-shaming and side jabs all through school.
Deep voices interrupt our moment, and Bambi perks up, trying to get a look at my new neighbors. She tenses, her mouth opening in appreciative shock, before she looks at me with narrowed eyes. “Alphas moved in next door? No way!”
I turn with her, but the angle isn’t all that great from the front porch with the trees in my way, and I still can’t get a better look.
“It looks that way. They arrived this morning,” I confirm.
She’s right that it’s a little unusual. My grandmother’s house is in the older part of downtown, blocks from all the renovated and beautifully manicured historic homes. In the last few years, a lot of packs have opted to sell the pack houses they inherit in favor of the flashy new constructions out by the lake in Waverly. The homes in this neighborhood are gorgeous but owned by elder packs and need a lot of TLC. It’s not every day a younger pack moves in.
“Think they’re from out of town? I wonder if they already have an omega,” Bambi guesses.
“Who knows? The glance I got this morning let me know they were fine .”
Bambi vibrates with excitement. “You should totally go over and introduce yourself!”
I blink at her, sure she has me confused with someone else. “Did you miss the part where I said I hid in Tanzy’s today from a guy?”
“Please! I’ve seen you work the bar. You pull just fine when you decide to.” She dares me to contradict her, crossing her arms.
Bambi’s pack are members of the Rut Riders, and her bikers own the Barn Owl, a bar out on the highway. It’s true that I’ve had a few good nights at their bar, but nothing that ever stuck.
“Maybe, but I’m not interested in going there,” I say. There’s no need to destroy my peace by stressing over the guys next door.
The new neighbors pass us in their trucks, and we both turn to stare, but the street is too far away from the porch for us to get anything more than profiles. I could swear one of them was Nash Wells. It sends a shudder through me, stealing my breath.
This isn’t the first time I’ve wished to see his face. My memory often sends me a ghost Nash in a crowd, always smiling and looking at me with this emotion I can’t name before the illusion fades into some other man who looks nothing like the alpha I lost. When I picture Nash, it’s always the version from the roof just before my world went to shit.
Even though he’s right up there with Dane on the list of people I don’t actually want to see, part of me longs for it. I don’t know anything about him now because I can’t stomach the thought of him moving on, even though we were nothing. I should want every kind of happiness for the boy who saved my life. And I do want that for him—I just don’t want to update my memory with a grown-up Nash who doesn’t look at me like he did on that roof that night.
No matter how many people I meet, I’m always searching for someone who makes me feel the way he did. I’ve had plenty of bed partners and dates over the years, but no one has ever come close to looking at me like that. His gaze, hot and sharp in my memory, stands above the rest.
“Hello, new neighbors ,” Bambi squeals next to me. She’s off, talking a mile a minute and dreaming up fantasies about running out of sugar that sound like the start of a bad porno.
“Let’s not get carried away!” I say as much to myself as to her.
It wasn’t Nash in that truck. It couldn’t be. And even if it was, him being my neighbor would be the absolute worst-case scenario. I’d have a front-row seat to watch him living without me. It's stupid. I never even had him enough to think of him as mine, but I do anyway.
My stomach cramps in protest, and I force myself to shut down the spiraling shitstorm of thoughts. It’s my imagination after being triggered earlier today. Calm down.
A motorcycle revs, and that makes Bambi lean in for another hug. “I gotta go, babes, but think about bringing them a nice cake.” She smacks her ass before hopping off the porch.
Jace pulls up to idle on the curb and gives me a friendly wave while Bambi gets into her car. If I had to guess, Jace has probably been parked down the street, keeping an eye on her. Her overprotective alphas never let her get far, but they don’t hover.
She backs out, and I wave one last time before heading inside to start dinner.
I need to burn sage or something because my life clearly needs cleansing. It's as though I've landed myself in a production of My Worst Nightmares: High School Edition.
But even after dinner and settling in the den to watch a movie with my grandma, I can’t shake the gut feeling that this ghost story isn’t over.