CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
MASSACHUSETTS, PRESENT DAY
I had learned about the Salem witch trials when I was nine.
Mom wasn’t thrilled when I insisted on taking the book from the library. She thought I was too young and emotionally sensitive to handle the truth of what had gone on back in the early 1690s, and she wasn’t wrong. Because after staying up all night, devouring that book and educating myself on what had become of those men, women, and children, I snuck from my bed to find Mom downstairs on the couch, watching Cheers .
“Charlie, honey, what’s wrong?” she asked after seeing my face, sticky and red from crying.
“Why did they have to kill them?” I demanded to know, remembering the horrors from the book as I tucked my body around hers and rested my head on her shoulder.
Mom sighed in the way she always did when she was about to explain something she’d rather not explain at all. Then, she said, “Because they didn’t understand them, Charlie, and people … sometimes, they’re afraid of the things they don’t—or can’t—understand. They think it’s easier to fear than to accept.”
“But they just wanted to be left alone,” I muttered, knowing, even then, exactly what that was like.
God, I still knew.
My entire life, that was all I’d ever wanted—to just be left alone to live my quiet life in peace.
That was what all those misunderstood, prosecuted people had wanted then too. To be left to live in the way they saw fit without judgment or mistreatment. I had felt that kinship ever since I’d read that book, and when it was time for me to leave Connecticut, Salem was the only place I’d thought to go. To a place that now honored those who were different, those who were misjudged, and those who simply wanted to be left the fuck alone.
Then, Stormy had walked into my life.
I hadn’t wanted her to; I’d never asked. But she had. And five days ago, she’d said she’d come back to annoy me, yet there’d been no sign of her since I had left her hotel room.
To be honest, her absence was annoying me more than her presence ever had.
What was annoying me more was that it was now Halloween, and I hated Halloween. I hated the memories it stirred, the panic and anxiety it instilled, and I hated it in Salem.
I'd always thought it was the influx of tourism, the increase of groups traipsing their way through my cemetery to ogle at the graves of people long since passed. And, hell, maybe that was still part of it. I didn't love that the souls of the wrongfully condemned had somehow turned into a spectacle in death when all they'd wanted was solace in life.
It angered me more today than ever as I cleared a crumpled fast-food bag from the tucked-away grave of Annabel. The woman had been rumored to be a legitimate, magick-wielding witch who'd escaped execution, helped by her law-breaking lover, Thaddeus. And now, all these years later, this was the respect she was given. Greasy garbage and a muddied cup of soda, emptying at the base of her flat, simple stone.
“Fucking assholes,” I muttered to myself and Annabel's ghost, piercing the grease-coated paper sack with the long-armed trash picker and stuffing it into the bag in my other hand.
Disrespect angered me. People angered me, and that was exactly what infuriated me so much about knowing I was also soul-crushingly lonely . That hollow, aching feeling I hadn’t been able to shake for weeks was now amplified tenfold since the night of Blake’s party.
My mind, flooding with images of Stormy in that dress. My lips, wanting to relive the memory of kissing her. My fingertips, craving to skate along her paper-smooth skin one more time. My body, pleading for the chance to be pressed against hers once again.
But I hadn’t seen her in five days.
She probably realized what a fucking psycho loser I am and decided to find someone else to annoy .
I walked along the path with my picker and garbage bag, turning my head to look in the direction of her hotel. Was she there now? It was unlikely. The sun was still shining, and although I didn’t know her work schedule or what she did when she wasn’t working at all, it seemed too early to be sitting in a hotel room, hunkering down for the night.
Unless someone else is with her .
I approached the truck, sitting idle on the cemetery’s one-lane road near the cottage, and threw the trash bag and picker into the bed before climbing in the cab. I gripped the steering wheel in tightly clenched fists and stared ahead at the dashboard, working my jaw from side to side as I plunged deep into a black abyss of intrusive, terrible thoughts.
I should’ve gotten her number. I should’ve given her mine .
But what if she didn’t even want it? Wouldn’t she have asked if she did?
She doesn’t like me. Her friends saw through me and talked some sense into her. They told her to stay the fuck away .
God, what if they googled my name?!
The secrets I’d been holding tightly, locked safe in the crevices of my brain, were just an internet search away. And while, no, I didn’t think Stormy had my last name, it would’ve been easy enough to find it out.
What if she knows?
What if she’s scared?
Could I blame her?
I looked up from the ink embedded in my flesh to stare out the windshield, my brow furrowing as I tried to muster whatever was left of my confidence and bravery.
Maybe I should go down to the tattoo shop and see if she's there.
Right, yeah. Excellent idea. Freak her out even more. Maybe she’ll slap a restraining order on my ass .
I clapped a hand over my eyes and groaned loudly. Fucking hell, it had been years since my anxieties had screamed this loudly, and they bled out now in tremors and a fresh sheen of sweat coating my skin.
I tipped my head back against the seat and curled my bottom lip between my teeth as I begged my mind to give it a rest. If she showed up, she showed up. My life wasn’t affected either way. And to never see her again would be for the better, right? I could go back to the way things were. This loneliness would eventually fade like everything else in life, and things would be fine. Hell, maybe they'd even be good.
But …
Dammit, NO. I like her. I fucking like her, and any normal guy who likes a woman would just go and see her, so fuck it.
I turned the key in the ignition, and even as my brain screamed obscenities and every single imaginable reason why this was the worst idea I’d ever had, I tried to believe for a second that I was a normal guy with a normal past and didn’t stop driving until I reached Salem Skin.
***
“Hey! What can I help you with?”
The girl at the counter was cute. Petite, dusted in freckles, and dressed up in a Winnie the Pooh costume. Some might consider her choice of outfit to be lame, especially given her occupation and the fact that the whole place was heavily laden in gothic decor and black paint, but that only made her sunshiny disposition and costume that much more ironic.
If I could’ve pulled myself from the task at hand long enough to compliment her, I probably would have.
“Is Stormy here?”
She smiled cheerfully and nodded as she began pulling a clipboard from beneath the counter. “Yep! She’s with a client right now, but if you’ll fill this—”
“I really just want to talk to her,” I interrupted, trying my hardest not to sound like a crazed maniac.
“Oh! Well”—she laid the clipboard onto the countertop—“if you’ll just wait here, I’ll let her know you’re here for a consult—”
“No. I’m just here to talk .” I emphasized the last word, my patience growing thinner as the seconds ticked on by.
The young girl seemed unsure now, wringing her mittened Winnie the Pooh gloves together and eyeing me warily, like she wasn't sure if she should do as I’d asked or call the cops.
“Um … okay, well, uh … who should I say is here?”
“Spider.”
The girl narrowed her eyes, studying me with even more suspicion before saying, “Just wait here, okay?”
I nodded before she quickly disappeared through a black velvet curtain. I smirked to myself, unable to believe the stupid nickname had fallen from my lips so easily. It made me think about Luke and his own ridiculous nickname. Zero . God, it had been forever since I'd even thought of that stupid name. It had been so dumb, but the guy had used it anyway with more pride than he ever should’ve had.
Zero . I huffed a laugh and shook my head. Always such a moron .
My momentary confidence wilted to make room for a deep, pulsing pain. He might've been a moron, but, fuck, did I ever miss him. I missed him more than I missed anyone or anything, even my parents and Melanie and the innocence I'd known for only a brief stint of time.
We were supposed to be together now. We'd been all each other had for years, and it was meant to remain that way until we were old men. But he was there, back in Connecticut, locked away behind bars of steel and walls of concrete, and I was here.
Alone and pretending I deserved to be anything but.
I should be with him.
I should be exiled and left to rot too .
Don’t forget that Halloween night five years ago.
Don’t forget the knife. The blood.
Shit . I glanced toward the door, wondering if it was too late to make a quick getaway. The girl dressed as Winnie the Pooh was already back there, telling Stormy I was here, but was I really in any position now to talk to her when my brain was on a warpath and my heart was on the brink of combustion?
Then, there was a smoky voice behind me.
“Charlie?”
My head lifted at the sound of my name. My lungs filled with a deep breath, slow and controlled. The beating of my heart was lulled into a calmer pace, the jittering of my veins and fingers relaxed. My soul felt lighter as my shoulders slumped with the weight of impossible grief and guilt.
I turned to face her and swallowed as I took in the sight of her in a formfitting, long-sleeved, ankle-length black dress, nearly knocking me on my ass.
Stormy’s eyes met mine with a gentle smile, but when I opened my mouth to speak, another woman passed through the velvet curtain.
Stormy turned away almost immediately to address the woman now standing at the counter. “Ashley, Melissa will ring you up, okay? You remember your aftercare?”
Ashley replied, “Of course.”
Stormy smiled, and although it wasn’t directed at me, I wanted to pretend that it was. “Cool. Come back and see me when you wanna get those snakebites.”
“I wouldn’t go to anyone else. Thanks again, Stormy.”
“Anytime, girl.”
I stood there, waiting. Staring. Focusing on nothing but her and the silver flecks gleaming against the deep emerald of her eyes. Like lightning illuminating a cloudy sky from within, and I was the spider, unexpectedly desperate to find shelter within her storm.
She returned her focus on me, tipping her head as her heavily lined eyes danced across my face, like she was trying to figure me out.
“Hey, mister,” she said, curling one side of her mouth into a half smile as she crossed her arms over her chest. “What brings you to my side of town?”
Before I could speak, my gaze quickly dodged toward Melissa and Ashley, still engaged in the transaction. As much as I wanted to spill my guts to Stormy—to tell her that I hadn’t stopped thinking about her since Blake’s party and that it had been many years since I’d taken the time to think of anyone new—I didn’t want to do it in front of these women.
Stormy followed my gaze, then sniffed a soft laugh before taking my hand in hers.
“Come back here,” she ordered, as if she wasn’t already dragging me through the heavy velvet curtain.
We entered a hallway adorned with framed pictures of tattoos. It branched off into workstations, sectioned off from the hall by more velvet curtains. With Stormy’s hand wrapped around mine, she led me into a station at the end of the hall and pulled the curtain shut behind us. I took a moment to sweep my gaze over the small space. A heavy chest of drawers, an autoclave, and a cluttered countertop with a sink took up two walls of the room while the other housed a padded black chair and a matching stool on wheels.
I had gone with one of my ex-girlfriends to get a few piercings, and this room looked much like that one had nearly a lifetime ago. But this one was better; it was hers . The wall toward the back was painted black, the wall behind the chairs was accented by a gallery of various framed pictures of skulls, and the mirror on the opposite wall was surrounded by black bats.
“Well, it’s not exactly soundproof, but we’re the only ones here for now,” Stormy said as she walked past me to the counter, where she turned to pin me with her gaze and gripped the black laminate edge. “So, what’s up?”
She had said before that she saw me, and I didn’t think I’d fully understood what she meant by that until this very moment. I stared at her for perhaps a moment too long while I allowed her understanding of my social issues to burrow beneath my skin.
Is it possible that she really gets it?
Nobody ever has before. But what if she truly does? Could she really be that special?
God, this is going to hurt so much when she inevitably leaves.
Stormy cocked her head and eyed me with more patience than I ever deserved. “Hey, you good?”
I cleared my throat and stepped forward as I shook my head. “No, actually, I’m not.”
“Oh?”
“I seem to remember you threatening to annoy me, yet it’s been five days, and”—I shrugged and dipped my hands into the pockets of my jeans—“I haven’t been annoyed once.”
She accentuated a furrowed brow and a black-lipped pout. “Oh, has it been five days already? I didn’t peg you to be the counting kind, but I guess you’re just full of surprises, huh?”
“There’s a lot of stuff you wouldn’t expect about me,” I countered. Or, hell, maybe she would. I wasn’t quite sure yet.
“Well, you know, you could’ve called—oh, wait.” She snapped her fingers. “Damn, forgot you didn’t ask for my number.”
I took another step and another until my toes were touching hers, her chin aimed up toward mine. Still, her arms remained at her sides, and my hands stayed within my pockets, but I caught the anxious tapping of her fingers, and there was no mistaking the clenching of my fists.
“Thus the reason for this visit.”
“Oh, is that the only reason? Because you realize, you could’ve just called the shop.”
I shrugged. “Don’t like calling people I don’t know.”
“Hmm.” She nodded. “Neither do I. I’m just surprised you came down here at all. You do realize the sun is out, right? And that there’s, like, people everywhere outside?”
“Oh, believe me,” I huffed with agitation, “I’m aware.”
“Oh, okay. Because I thought you might spontaneously combust if you ventured outside in anything but darkness.”
I tried to fight my grin, tried to suppress my chuckle, but it was hopeless. My lips split with a smile as I shook my head and sniffed a laugh through my nose.
“Ah, so you do think I’m funny,” Stormy teased, reaching out to poke my chin.
I caught her hand in mine. “I find you endearingly annoying. There’s a difference.”
“But you missed me,” she pointed out, dropping her voice to a teasing whisper as she flipped her palm within mine to interlock our fingers.
My poor, battered heart sped up, hammering against its brittle, bony walls, as I nodded and tightened my grip on hers. “Yeah, so maybe I did.”
“Hmm,” she uttered again, nodding. “Well, I’m sorry for ghosting on you.”
“Don’t do it again,” I replied in a low, gruff whisper.
Stormy giggled, pressing her other hand to my chest. “Oh, yes, sir. I’ll—”
“No … Stormy …” I shuddered with a relenting sigh, my resolve to keep it together crumbling by the second. I dropped my forehead to hers, squeezing my eyes shut to the world and her piercing green gaze. “Listen to me, okay? You wanted me to let you in. I didn’t want to, but it happened, so I’m here, accepting this for whatever the hell it is. But you can’t disappear on me, and if you do, it can’t be out of the blue. I can’t handle it, as fucking pathetic as it sounds. I just can’t do it.”
We were blanketed in a concerning silence, and I was left to regret ever saying anything. What woman in her right mind wanted to dive headfirst into something with a man she not only knew little about, but one with apparent abandonment issues?
Yet there she was, breaking the silence with a hushed, “It's not pathetic, Charlie,” as she tipped her head back and stood on her toes.
At the touch of her lips against mine, I inhaled deeply, sharply. My nerves were snapped into overdrive at the impact before being lulled toward desperate lust as her lips parted—a silent invitation to deepen the kiss. I answered with a groan at the reacquainting of our eager, wandering tongues. My hands moved to cradle her face, my fingertips skirting her raven-colored hairline. She gripped my shirt, pressing her fists to my heaving chest, as we made out like desperate teenagers against the countertop in her workspace. Both of us too wrapped up in the moment to hear the footsteps coming down the hallway.
“Hey, Stormy. You in—”
Metal rings slid along the curtain rod, and Stormy reluctantly pulled away but kept my shirt within her grasp.
“Oh shit. Sorry,” a man’s voice said.
I glanced over my shoulder to see Blake standing there in the now-open doorway. His eyes were already cast downward, aimed toward the floor.
“I thought we had a rule, Blake,” she snapped as a deep blush spread from the collar of her dress to her cheekbones. “Knock on the wall before opening the curtain, right?”
He cleared his throat and still made no move to leave. “My bad.”
She furrowed her brow and cocked her head as she glared at the man behind me. “And whose rule was that? Hmm … let me think …”
“I said I was—”
She unraveled her fingers from my shirt to tap her temple. “Oh! That’s right! It was yours .”
Blake sighed. “Melissa told me you weren't with a client. It hadn't occurred to me that you might be back here, sucking face with some guy.” He met my eye with an almost-apologetic raise of his brows. “Sorry, Charlie.”
I cleared my throat and smoothed my shirt over my chest, feeling a lot like a kid who'd just been caught doing something he shouldn't have been doing. “It's fine.”
“Anyway,” Blake said, clearly changing the subject, “there's someone up front, looking to get pierced.”
Stormy didn't even try to not look disappointed as she nodded. “Okay. I'll be right out.”
“Cool.”
He turned to leave when Stormy stopped him.
“Can you do me a favor though?”
He sucked in a deep breath and turned slowly, like the last thing he wanted to do was hear what she needed from him, but still, he nodded. “What's up?”
“Give Charlie my number.”
I caught her gaze, and her smile touched her eyes with every bit of reassurance she thought I needed.
“Yeah, sure,” Blake replied before gesturing for me to follow. “Come on, man. I gotta get paper and something to write with.”
Stormy's brow creased with what looked like suspicion, but she didn't say anything more. She gripped my arm, smiled, and told me to shoot her a text as soon as I could. She promised to annoy me when she got the chance; I told her I was looking forward to it, and I meant it.
Then, I followed Blake down the hall, through the waiting room, and down another shorter hallway to what appeared to be an office.
He closed the door behind us and gestured for me to sit in a chair on one side of an old wooden desk. I complied, and as he sat across from me on the other side, I was struck with an unwelcomed memory of speaking to the school principal after Ritchie Wheeler had used his seniority and popularity to torment me in the second grade.
Blake didn't look at me as nicely as the principal had that day.
He grabbed a pad of paper and a pen and began to speak without wasting another moment. “Listen, you seem like a good guy, and Stormy's apparently really into you.”
He scrawled something onto the paper without glancing up at me while my blood burned to the temperature of molten lava at the thought of her being into me at all, let alone talking to her friends about it. But there was something else in his tone that had me sitting on edge, like he was about to drop a bomb onto my head.
“But, look, I gotta say this because I care about her. She’s a good friend—practically family. She's been through some shit. She's been hurt .”
“We've all been hurt,” I countered defensively while also listening intently to what he was trying to say.
He looked up to pin me with a stern glare. “It’s not my story to tell, and I’m guessing that when she's ready to tell it to you, she will. I’m not telling you not to go out with her or … whatever you guys are doing—it’s not really my business. All I'm saying is, be careful with her. And I'm telling you, man, if you hurt her—”
“You're gonna come for me?” I offered, leaning back in my chair while wondering how the hell I always found myself in situations where some asshole thought it was okay to threaten me with violence.
But Blake shrugged as he passed the piece of paper across the desk. “I can't speak for other people she knows, but no. Revenge isn't really my thing. I'd just be disappointed. Like I said, you seem like a good guy, and she really likes you, and …” He sighed. “She deserves something good, is all I'm saying. And if she can find it with you, then …”
I took the paper from his hand and tucked it into my jacket pocket. “I'm the last person you need to worry about,” I replied, removing any hint of defense from my tone.
He nodded. “I hope that’s true.”
I forced a tight smile to form across my lips as I stood and left the room without another word. When I left the hallway, I found Stormy was still in the waiting room, handing a nervous-looking young man a clipboard with a consent form and instructing him to fill it out while she went to make a copy of his driver’s license. She kept things professional at the sight of me but offered a small, glittery-eyed smile.
“Don’t forget to text me, Spider,” she said, her voice even and cool.
One side of my mouth curled upward as I replied, “Only if you don’t forget to drive me crazy.”
Then, I left the shop, feeling good about the future for maybe the first time in an incredibly long while. I knew better than to be too hopeful. I knew better than to expect too much.
But for once, I felt lighter, happier, and I thought, Blake has nothing to worry about . I knew what it was like to hurt, and I had no intention of inflicting pain on her.
And that was the kind of good feeling I held on to all the way back to Luke’s bike. I picked up the helmet and was about to put it on when I stopped in a fretful stupor.
I could do everything to not hurt Stormy. But there wasn’t much I could do to keep the past from breaking her heart. And once she inevitably learned about those skeletons hidden in my closet—stuffed deep and coated under an inch of dust—would she find it in her to stay?
And that was the question that swarmed through my mind and festered in my gut all the way back to my cottage in the middle of the cemetery, where I parked Luke’s bike in the back and headed for the door.
Only to be stopped by the faintest hint of cigarette smoke lingering in the air and an empty pack of a familiar brand of cigarettes, sitting precariously in the center of the mat right outside the door.