Chapter 1
One
My body came with a lot of terms and conditions I did not agree to.
—Birdee’s secret thoughts
Birdee
Thank God for small-town police stations.
Otherwise, I didn’t think I could make this happen.
I had only one goal.
Get a meeting with the woman that I’d once called Mom.
I had to talk to her and see what she knew.
The thought of her ruining Mable’s life any more than she had…
My eyes blurred as the police station transformed into a hotel room. The hotel room was small, outdated, and was in desperate need of some new carpeting.
Carpeting that was soaking up the blood.
So much blood.
Rivers of it.
Oceans.
It rose up from the pale brown carpet to slowly rise over my new shoes.
I loved these shoes.
They were perfect for the winter.
They…
“What are you doing here?”
I blinked, startled at the dead woman talking to me. “What am I doing here?”
“Can’t you just let me die in peace?” she asked. “You were the worst mistake of my life.”
My stomach clenched at the age-old adage.
“You say that all the time, and I know you mean it,” I found myself saying to the corpse.
“I tricked your father into having you.” She smiled then, the blood filling her mouth and nose now, the only thing visible were her cheeks and her lips. “I switched my birth control pills with placebos. They looked exactly like the ones he watched me take every morning.”
Of course she had.
“You were my ticket out of my shitty life,” she said. “A perfect scapegoat that’d have shiny, bright new credit.”
I gritted my teeth and counted to ten, hoping that it would help me control my temper.
It didn’t, and before long, I was screaming.
I blinked, and all of a sudden I was standing over her with a door in my hand.
“What are you going to do with that?” she scoffed. “You gonna slam it in my face?”
I raised it up high over my head, ready to bring it down on her throat, when she started to laugh.
Blood boiled out of her mouth like a long snake, aiming right for me.
“You don’t have the guts to do that,” my mother hissed. “You’re going to do what I say, or I’ll make your life a living hell. How bad do you want your sister’s man to stay out of jail?”
About as bad as the fact that I was contemplating murdering the woman that’d been with me since childhood.
“Do it,” she taunted. “Kill me.”
I woke up before I could hurt her, gasping for breath and staring at the ceiling above my head in confusion.
Would I ever stop dreaming about the time that Mable, Cody, and I had killed my mother?
It was never quite the same dream.
Sometimes it was me watching as Cody held the door.
Other times it was a replay of the exact event where my mother had launched herself at Mable.
When she’d done that, I’d intervened and tripped her.
Just as she’d started to go down, Cody opened the door, and my mother fell against the door with a sickening crack.
There would have been no problem had Cody not opened the door at the exact right time.
Or she’d fallen in a space that was open.
The three of us had left, and I’d been feeling guilt at killing my own mother ever since.
Even if she’d deserved everything that came to her.
My mother had been an awful person.
From the first moment that I could remember clearly, she’d told me that I was a waste of space. It’d never stopped—the verbal abuse.
And at some point during my young life, my mother had started to take out loans and lines of credit in my name. When I’d gotten too many, she’d then started to take out loans in Mable’s name.
Overall, we’d discovered that my so-called “mother” had taken out over a million dollars in loans. Of that million in loans, she’d somehow paid it all off.
I’d only found this out thanks to Romeo’s friend, Apollo, who’d done a deep dive into our background.
He was a computer guru who had a way with computers, which was the complete opposite of me.
“Jesus, what’s wrong with you?”
I looked over at my best friend, Shade, who sat on the opposite end of the couch from me.
Shade and I had been friends since we were kids. He was the one person that I’d always been able to count on, and truthfully, I probably wouldn’t be alive without him.
“Nothing,” I grumbled as I sat up from Shade’s couch, wiping my eyes with my fists. “Why’d you let me sleep?”
I’d promised him that I would spend time with him today, and I’d fallen asleep instead.
“Probably because you look like you’ve gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson,” he said. “And you haven’t been sleeping. You know you haven’t. You needed some shut-eye, even if we were supposed to be watching a movie.”
I looked out the window to try to gauge what time it was and saw the darkness glaring back at me.
“Shit,” I said as I scrambled off my butt. “I gotta go let Brawny out.”
“Brawny will be okay if you want to…” I shook my head, knowing he was going to say “leave him alone.”
I stood up and stretched my arms up high over my head. “I can’t. Mable entrusted me with his care.”
Mable and her fiancé, Romeo, were out of town for the weekend visiting Oregon. There was a weekend event that was for cottage bakers—people who sold food out of their homes—and she really wanted to go to it.
I’d promised them that I’d watch Brawny, and I’d been doing a damn fine job of it until right that moment.
I was surprised when Mable had asked me and not Cody, my half sister.
Cody’s mom was married to my dad, and from a young age, my mom had done everything in her power to alienate me from my father after my father had dumped her.
And, to my complete stupidity, I’d believed my mother’s lies about my dad for the longest of times. But my mother wasn’t just feeding me lies about my dad. My mother was also feeding Cody, Mable, and my father lies, too.
Lies that centered around me being a conceited, self-serving bitch.
A name that I’d lived up to because I’d thought that they were all awful people—including my mother.
For the longest time, I’d been completely alone in the world, constantly waiting for one more person to pile on the hate.
Now, after learning all that my mother had done to make the people’s lives that she was supposed to love as miserable as possible, I was slowly trying to force myself to extend an olive branch to my family.
It’d come easy with Mable and Cody, seeing as we’d trauma bonded over my mother’s murder.
My father and Grace, Cody’s mom and my stepmother, however?
That was harder than I’d thought it would be.
My dad harbored a lot of guilt with how little he’d tried over the years to bridge the gap that I’d put between the two of us. He was constantly trying too hard.
And me, being fiercely independent and unable to let people in? Well, let’s just say that it was harder than it probably should be, considering.
“Well, you owe me a make-up day then,” Shade said as he stood up and walked with me to the door. “And don’t think I’ve forgotten that you didn’t ever make dinner. You owe me that, too.”
I smiled as I grabbed my coat and threw it on.
My gaze went out over the quickly darkening sky. “Bye, Shade. Don’t get in trouble this week.”
Shade was a magnet for trouble.
He was also always making the worst decisions possible.
He’d actually been responsible for causing an allergic reaction in Mable when he’d purposefully lined her drink with lime, knowing damn well and good she was allergic.
Luckily, all that happened was Mable got swollen lips and a swollen tongue.
Shade had lost his job because of his stupid decision—even if he’d done it because he hated Mable because she hated me—and was now working at the hospital as a night shift custodian.
“Be careful.” Shade ignored my parting words. “Text me when you get home.”
I gave him a thumbs-up and headed to my moped.
It wasn’t the most ideal vehicle around, seeing as we were in Sawtooth, Montana, where it snowed until freakin’ May—and sometimes June—but it got me from point A to point B.
Since I lived in town, and the roads were kept well groomed of snow, I usually didn’t run into any trouble.
My dad, Cody, and Dad’s wife Grace ran a snow-plowing business together. Cody and my dad were really good about keeping the roads clear for the city and residents that paid to have their roads plowed.
I didn’t ask them to do mine, though they made sure to do it anyway.
Used to, it’d piss me off to see my road done.
Now, I was all warm and fuzzy.
I liked that they always made sure to do mine—most of the time first—to ensure that I got where I was going safely.
Though, my dad freakin’ hated that I was driving a moped around in the middle of winter.
It was temporary, though.
Hopefully next spring, I’d be able to afford a new car.
But for now…
“Bye!” I called out.
Shade shook his head, and I could practically feel his disapproval follow me until I was out of his sight.
I shivered slightly when the wind hit me, cutting through my many layers as I rode through the streets of Sawtooth.
I passed one of the bars we had in town, as well as the four restaurants. I waved at the gas attendant who was filling up a patron’s vehicle—the one and only gas station refused to allow anyone to pump their own gas, even though it was legal to do it yourself in Montana.
Dave waved back, and I continued down the two-lane road until I got to mine.
Turning down my street, I came to an abrupt halt when two bright headlights filled my vision.