The Love We Chose Next Door

Prologue – All the Trouble

Prologue

Andie

ALL THE TROUBLE

Performed by Lee Ann Womack

NINE YEARS AGO

Pain hammered through my skull, traveling down my neck to my right arm, before spiraling across my torso.

It jolted me back to consciousness with a groan I tried to bite back.

For one brief second, disappointment curled through me.

I’d survived. I’d lived, which only meant I’d experience this all over again.

The fear. The pain. The absolute desolation and isolation.

I tried to swallow the pool of saliva and blood that filled my mouth, and the simple bodily function shot agony through my jaw. Inhaling felt like a thousand daggers had been shoved into my lungs.

After several tries, I was able to force one eyelid open. The world was blurry. A living room I’d first seen as an escape but had quickly turned into a prison swam before me.

Exhausted by the effort, my eye closed again.

I focused on breathing, on shoving the vicious, pounding torture running through my body to the back of my mind, locking it up in the same place I held the verbal taunts of my childhood.

Taunts that, in hindsight, had shoved me right into Eddie’s arms. My inner child had hoped for a better future, only to end up with something horribly worse.

Sirens screamed in the distance, but I didn’t believe they were for me.

The back door slammed shut.

Fear shot through me. My slow pulse crescendoed until I could hardly feel the breaks in the beats.

If he came back, I really would die. It would be over. I’d have no chance of earning redemption for my sins.

I compelled my single functioning eyelid back open and forced my body onto its side, hoping I could climb to my knees. The movement drew my attention to an uncomfortable weight in my hand.

A gun. Black with an etched silver handle. Heavy and solid.

Fancier than my dad’s service weapon. Larger than the one my half brother had offered me. I’d declined it, afraid that my childhood disgust of guns wouldn’t be enough to stop me from pulling the trigger. And I didn’t want Eddie dead… I just wanted him to leave me alone.

As the gun slid from my fingers, the small, slow breath I’d taken evaporated as my blurry eyes caught sight of what lay beyond it.

Eddie was on the floor next to me, his stunning chocolate eyes wide and vacant.

Blood was sprayed across his white T-shirt and the muscled chest I’d once admired.

Some of that blood was mine, like the red coating his bruised knuckles, but the majority of it, seeping insidiously through the cotton, was from the hole dead center in his chest.

Muddled bewilderment blended with the pain screeching through my head.

Had I shot Eddie?

Had I somehow manifested my dreams into reality? If I had, why couldn’t I remember?

The sirens wailed, the sound much closer than before, as if they’d turned down the street.

My panic increased. A different sort of alarm than the slam of the back door had caused. The sirens meant my father’s arrival.

God…what would Dad say when he found Eddie dead with the gun at my side?

My heart hammered, and every wound and break became intolerable. The room spun. Unconsciousness threatened.

Dad’s words from months ago reverberated through my aching skull. You chose to lie with a venomous snake, Ariana. You’ll need to learn to survive the strikes. And you damn well better keep that poison from bleeding onto me.

He’d be furious at this new scandal. Regardless of whether I claimed self-defense, my name would be dragged through it all, and his name right alongside it. His opponents would thrive on it.

Tears burned the cuts on my cheeks.

I really was a fucking screwup. Instead of proving my parents’ words wrong, as I’d intended, I’d only added to the truth of them.

A gap in the floorboard beside Eddie caught my attention.

It revealed a sliver of the dark space below—the hideaway where he’d kept the money he’d borrowed, promising to double it, only to fail.

The money that had made him more and more reckless…

angry…fearful. Usually, Eddie was scared of no one, but I’d seen the fear in his eyes when he talked about the person he’d borrowed the money from.

I’d given up asking him who it was after the first hit.

I scooted along the floor, pushing the loose board with all my might and peering inside. Relief filled me. The money was still there. At least Eddie couldn’t blame me for the cash disappearing.

A choked, fanatical laughter caused me to cough, spreading more anguish through my brutalized body. Eddie couldn’t hurt me. Not ever again. Not when he was dead.

But whoever he’d borrowed the money from could and would.

They’d come looking for it when news of Eddie’s death hit.

They’d torture me…or Marla. While there was no love lost between Eddie’s sister and me—she made her disgust for me known daily—I wouldn’t let the timid woman who could barely speak and scuttled to do Eddie’s bidding be tortured for things she didn’t know.

Mistakes that lay solely on Eddie’s shoulders—and mine for helping him.

Bile burned through my esophagus.

The sirens grew louder, followed by tires squealing to a stop in front of the house, and I used the little strength I had left to push the gun inside the hiding place. I dropped the plank back in place and collapsed on top of it, letting the darkness fill my vision once more.

It would be a brief respite from the new hell that would greet me when I woke.

Maybe I wouldn’t wake.

Maybe I’d just stay in the dark abyss where nothing could ever hurt me again.