Chapter 14 Dove
DOVE
Liv had been prancing around, offering her usual running commentary, her sequin-covered clothes glinting under the morning sunlight as she boldly declared herself queen of the two-lane highway, standing in the middle of the road and playing a game of chicken.
Except, of course, the cars went straight through her.
Ellis had shuddered and looked away, determinedly avoiding the sight.
I watched her for a second longer than I should have, something that was becoming a bit of a recurring habit lately. She stood beside me, squinting at her Polaroid camera and muttering something about lighting settings.
Her hair was half up, a few loose strands falling against her cheeks while the rest was twisted into a claw clip, the red tones catching the morning sun.
She wore a pair of cute khaki shorts and a fitted black tee, her white sneakers gathering Kansas dust. I wondered if I’d wake tomorrow morning to find them looking untouched again, like the day hadn’t dared to mark her.
Her sunglasses were perched on her nose as she fumbled with the camera.
She looked... good. A good that came from being just slightly at ease.
Not totally unbothered, because that wasn’t exactly the Ellis Langley MO, but the tension had softened again, just like it had yesterday morning.
Then again, it had all fallen to shit just as quickly.
She had even smiled—genuinely—at Liv over breakfast, and the sight of it had nearly knocked the wind out of me.
Things felt... different.
Yesterday had knocked us off whatever course we were on.
I wasn’t stupid. Ever since the field, when I watched her scream at the universe like she expected it to scream back, something had shifted.
The way she sat beside me afterward, leaning into me so slightly I could’ve imagined it.
The laundromat, where she opened up about growing up sick—and, God, that moment when I placed my hand over hers and she looked at me with a fire blazing in her eyes.
Her face had been so raw. As if she hadn’t realized how badly she needed the contact until it happened.
Even at the drive-in, things had changed.
The air had been filled with something electric—something I hoped I wasn’t imagining.
Sure, Halloween wasn’t exactly a romantic movie, and Jamie Lee Curtis screaming on screen wasn’t the soundtrack to anyone’s idea of a date, but the way Ellis had forgotten herself in that moment, clutching my arm like it anchored her to this world. ..
Only to release me like I’d burned her.
Was I imagining something that wasn’t there?
I gazed at Ellis as she began lining up her shot, pure concentration on her face. She’d barely looked at me over breakfast, choosing instead to engage with Liv, an unexpected development, considering her usual steadfast refusal to do so. Was she avoiding me?
Or was she feeling something too?
I hated this.
I’d sworn this sort of thing off when my ex, Sarah, and I ended.
I’d vowed to keep things light and flirty.
Simple. Because I didn’t want mess again.
I couldn’t deal with the pain where someone ripped out your heart and stomped on it before prancing off into the sunset, leaving you with the broken remains of who you used to be.
I’d stopped building futures with people in my head because I was tired of having them yanked away, or never quite living up to whatever unfair bar had been set for me.
Never being good enough.
Well, Ellis wasn’t a fling or a crush. She was just... complicated. Worn and frayed at the edges. Layered in ways I was only starting to understand.
She’d clearly had it rough in the relationship department. This Alexis girl intrigued me to no end. I was dying to ask more questions, to dig into that scar tissue she carried. God, I wanted to learn everything about her. I wanted her to want to tell me.
The most dangerous fucking thing I could do was want a girl like Ellis Langley, because I’d known from the moment she walked into my shop that she wasn’t a safe bet.
And the more I got to know her, the more I dealt with her prickliness and constant urge to keep people at arm’s length, the more certain I was that she didn’t know how to let people stay.
So of course I was attracted to her, I thought grimly. I was the girl who always fell for people who left.
“It’s ready,” she said suddenly, looking up with a satisfied grin. “This’ll have to be a selfie, can you do it again? You got the better angles last time.”
As she handed me the Polaroid camera, her fingertips grazed mine. Her full, soft-looking lips stretched into a smile, and that dangerous little flickering spark inside me grew just a bit bigger.
I already knew once this photo developed, the terror would be clear in my wide eyes.
I took my time scattering Margaret here, biting back a smile as Ellis discreetly positioned herself behind me, trying to check the wind without my noticing.
This small piece of Kansas now held the spirit of a small piece of Margaret, and my heart felt a little lighter as I watched her disappear on the breeze into Kansas.
As always, Liv took the ceremony seriously, head bowed and eyes closed. Ellis joined in with more of a pained expression, her eyes darting around for anyone who might catch us in the act. The Chain of Rocks fiasco would forever be on her mind.
I grinned to myself at the memory.
Margaret would have loved it.
My heart had slowed a little as we began the drive to Catoosa, me behind the wheel so Ellis could work on editing some videos to post once we stopped for the evening.
Music hummed low through the speakers, the soft, sultry voice of Lana Del Rey filling the car.
Ellis muttered, “About an hour and a half to Catoosa, give or take.”
I drummed my fingers against the wheel as I reminded myself to do a card pull for TikTok soon. I couldn’t let my channel fall by the wayside and lose the progress I had been making.
Liv was stretched along the back seat, once again using Maraget’s bag of ashes like a pillow, and she stretched like a cat soaking in the sun, and I half expected her to ask for the roof to come off again.
She didn’t.
Instead, she said, “Dove, I want to know more about you.”
I glanced into the rearview mirror with a frown. “Me?”
Liv arched a brow, and I could practically hear the sarcasm in her expression, like she was saying, Yes, obviously you.
Ellis looked up from her screen with a slight frown, green eyes flickering with interest.
“Well, what do you want to know, then?” I asked, feeling anxious.
I mean, I’d spoken to Ellis before about the shop, answered her tentative questions about my art.
.. What else was there that Liv wouldn’t already know, or hadn’t somehow overheard in her ghostly way?
“My credit score?” I added with a snort.
“Or my star sign? Gasp, my body count? Liv, inappropriate. Even for you.”
Liv snorted. “No. Tell me about that weird uncle, for a start, the one who was cheating on his wife while we were stealing the ashes.”
I groaned loudly and shook my head. “God, not Bill.” His name sat in the air for a moment, and I allowed myself to sit in the usual soaked bitterness that gathered in my mouth whenever I had to say it.
“The man is a judgmental douche who could learn a thing or two from the book he clings to. He literally acted for years like Margaret didn’t exist, and then the moment she died, he was suddenly all about tradition and ‘honoring her properly.’ His idea of that was to stick her in a jar next to a man she hated in life, and probably in death, too. ”
“That’s psychotic,” Ellis mumbled, wincing.
“Yeah, well, it felt like an I won move more than grief. Like he finally had the control over her he’d always wanted.
He made me sick.” My voice was sharper than I meant it to be, and I huffed out a breath and shifted gears.
“And my mom? Pfft. Don’t get me started.
She was never Margaret’s biggest fan. She was never into the ‘woo-woo,’ as she called it.
She hated the shop. Hated that I loved it.
She’s a corporate lawyer. She was climbing the ladder before I even hit middle school. ”
Ellis was watching me now, her phone forgotten in her lap. Liv rested between the two seats, eyes on me.
“I mean, really, she spent most of my childhood working, and Margaret basically raised me. She taught me how to pull cards, how to read and interpret them. Mom hated it, but apparently not enough to actually be around more.”
“What about your dad?” Liv asked with a frown.
“Don’t know him,” I said with what I hoped was a casual shrug. “He was never around, never mentioned, and I just... sort of knew not to ask. Margaret never brought him up, and Mom definitely didn’t. I could just feel it—I just knew not to.”
Silence met me, and my palms started to sweat.
“But it wasn’t just Margaret who raised me,” I said, my mind moving to Ida and Diana as I smiled softly.
“Margaret was in a poly relationship with these two women—Diana and Ida. Ellis, you met Ida at the store. Diana died about five years ago. But, God, just growing up around them, being raised by three powerful women…” I shook my head in wonder.
It did flash in the back of my mind again that I needed to tell Ida about the ashes.
“Margaret sounded so cool,” Liv said with a dreamy sigh. “A medium, and she had her own harem—like, come on.”
Ellis laughed nervously beside me.
“Okay, well, that was the warm-up,” Liv said suddenly, her voice a little breathless. “What about relationships?”
I barked a laugh. “Why is that important?”
“Please. It’s girl talk,” Liv said, her voice dipped in a sweetness I wasn’t sure I trusted. “Humor me, okay? We’ve passed so many state lines together no. It’s practically cosmic bonding.”