CHAPTER
FOURTEEN
“Love is a trap. When it appears, we see only its light, not its shadows.”
~Paulo Coelho
The morning of the funeral arrived too quickly. I packed light and went with dread to the airport, making it to my flight with mere minutes to spare.
Leona dropped me off, her best friend eyes worried on me as we said goodbye. Though she never voiced her concerns, she didn’t have to. She knew this was an unpleasant trip for me, unhealthy for my state of mind, but it was unavoidable.
“I’ll be fine,” I told her chidingly, avoiding eye contact.
That was the closest I’d get to voicing my trepidation of the ordeal to come: Acknowledging the fact that there was something I might not be fine with.
“I know you will,” she assured me.
We kissed cheeks and said goodbye.
And off I went. Heading back into hell for the sake of Gram.
Oh the irony. She’d been one of the few people in my life that’d actively tried to keep me out of it.
I wasn’t even mildly surprised when I found myself in a first class seat for the flight from LAX to Seattle. It was so Dante. The nonchalantly rich bastard.
I’d been conditioned to stay awake on airplanes, so I didn’t sleep a wink for that entire leg of the trip. I’d brought a book, and it was a good one, but I couldn’t focus on it for shit.
Instead, I stared out the window and drove myself crazy.
Why did I still feel so much for Dante? What would it take to make me numb?
I’d have paid a heavy price for numbness, felt I’d already paid it in the attempt to seek it out.
And for the price, nothing. All of my efforts had been futile. Every furious, vengeful, masochistic thing I’d ever done to get over him had left me at ground zero.
I still felt. Too much. With just the slightest provocation, I was wrapped up in him again, in the good and the bad. He got to me, was so deep under my skin that even now, years after the end of us, it was a fight with myself not to let the bitterness of it consume my waking hours.
At SeaTac I switched to a tiny commuter jet for the short flight to the small town I’d been raised in.
That flight was shorter but worse for my peace of mind. I hadn’t been back in years, and when I’d left, I’d been ecstatic to be done with the place.
I hadn’t planned to come back ever, and the reason for it . . . fuck my life.
One small relief was that Dante didn’t pick me up himself when I arrived. I’d been almost certain that he would.
Instead it was an unfamiliar middle-aged man wearing a comfortable looking T-shirt and jeans and holding a small sign that said SCARLET.
Despite the spelling of the name, I figured it was meant for me. Who else?
He was the only one in the tiny airport holding a sign, so it was a bit laughable, but I walked up to him with a straight face.
“You Scarlett?” he asked me, looking bored out of his mind.
I nodded and held out my hand. “And you are?”
“Eugene. I’m, er was, Mrs. D’s gardener. Dante, er, Mr. Durant asked me to pick you up and take you to your, erm, lodgings.”
“Lead on,” I told him wryly. It was a random welcoming committee Dante had sent, but frankly, it was a warmer reception than I’d expected from the town of my nightmares.
He took my one rolling suitcase without another word and started to walk.
I followed silently.
The town was a small one by city standards, but not tiny. At about a hundred thousand residents, last I checked, it had a whopping three high schools, and more importantly, four Walmarts.
I couldn’t remember how many hotels it had, and didn’t particularly care which one I was staying at, so I didn’t ask. Anything would do, because whatever it was, I was used to worse.
Eugene didn’t open the door for me, and I didn’t take exception to that. I just got in the car, which happened to be an old beat-up truck, and stared out the window while Eugene steered us wordlessly through my despised hometown.
Time hadn’t been kind to the little hellhole. I’d read a few years ago that it’d become the drug capital of Washington, the entry point for cartel distribution into the northwest, and the signs were apparent nearly everywhere I looked.
I took in every change I saw with a stoic face. It was dirtier than I remembered, with more dead behind the eyes pedestrians loitering aimlessly in the busier parts of town.
It was as though every negative thought I’d ever channeled into this little slice of purgatory had taken root and poisoned each dark corner of the place while I was absent.
It gave me an unwilling and brief spiteful thrill. The way I’d been treated here, it felt almost like justice, like it’d finally gotten the reckoning it deserved.
But all of that was stupid, emotional drivel. It was only a place. A spot on the map.
It was the people here that deserved a reckoning. Not all, but many. Too many hostile faces and names for me to recall that had helped to shape me into the bitter, little ball of hate I was today.
We were nearly to our destination before I shook myself out of my memories enough to realize just where we were going.
“I’d like to go straight to my hotel. I need to freshen up and change before the funeral, since I still have a few hours,” I told Eugene, voice firm. “Thank you.”
He shot me a glance, cleared his throat, and kept driving.
“Did you hear me?” I asked him when he didn’t respond.
“I did. You’ll have to take that up with Mr. Durant. He didn’t tell me anything about a hotel. He just said to bring you to Miss D’s house.”
My jaw clenching in agitation, I pulled out my phone, sending off a hasty text.
Me: Which hotel am I staying at?
Bastard/Stalker/Liar/Cheater/Ex/TheDevil: You’re almost to the house, right? We’ll talk when you get here.
I shot Eugene a hostile look. He’d officially reached collaborator status in my book.
I punched out another furious text.
Me: I hope you don’t think I’m staying at that house.
He didn’t respond, which was just as well, as we were pulling into the long drive that led to Gram’s large estate.
As usual, manipulative bastard that he was, Dante had orchestrated everything before I saw the trap that had closed around me.
There were several cars in the drive, and I assessed a few of them with an eye for whom they might belong.
A few nondescript sedans: whoever had been hired to prepare the huge house for refreshments after the funeral.
Silver Rolls Royce: Dante’s father, Leo.
White Mercedes: Unknown but worrisome. Any sign of money pointed to either Dante’s family or someone even worse.
Black Audi: Dante, because he always freaking loved Audis.
I didn’t even want to get out of the truck, in fact, I sat there for a few awkward minutes, Eugene holding my door open for me, just staring at the house before Eugene muttered, “Well, shoot. I can take you to a hotel.”
Sure, I thought scathingly, now he was offering, right as Dante emerged from the house.
With a heavy sigh, I got out of the car.
He was wearing jeans and a black T-shirt. I hadn’t seen him wearing anything but a suit or, well, nothing, for ages, and the sight struck me, reminded me of when we were teenagers.
Already off to a horrible start, I noted. As bad as I’d dreaded it would be.
“I’m not staying here,” I told him as he approached.
He didn’t respond, didn’t even aim his stern eyes my way, just took my bag from Eugene and started heading back to the front door.
“What are you doing?” I asked his back, following him with a quick, furious stride. “I need to go to a hotel to get ready.”
He paused at the door and finally looked at me. I could tell he was angry with me, some remnant of the temper he’d last left me in still present. “Your room is untouched. Gram kept it for you from the time you left.”
This got to me. The sentiment of it. In my last year of high school my grandma had decided she was done dealing with my shit and kicked me out. I hadn’t had to go far. Just that five-minute walk uphill from my grandma’s trailer, and I’d been welcomed here with open arms. It had meant the world to me. Still did.
“The house will likely be sold by whoever inherits it,” Dante continued, “so I assumed you’d want to go through your old things yourself before all of that happens. If I assumed wrong, Eugene will take you to a hotel, but in case you forgot, there isn’t one close. You’re looking at a forty-five minute drive each way. The funeral is in two hours, so you won’t have much time, but if that’s what you want to do, by all means, be my guest.”
I glared at him, temper boiling up. “I should have seen this coming. I should’ve guessed you’d pull something like this.”
“What did you expect? Did you think I was going to put you up at the shitty hotel over on Main Street?”
“I’m used to shitty hotels.”
“You know what?” His voice was unsteady suddenly, volume going up with every word, ”I don’t give a fuck what you’re used to.” By the unholy light in his eyes, I could tell he wasn’t talking about hotels anymore.
Perversely but predictably, his apparent fury calmed my own. I leveled a serene look on him, one meant to either stir him up or stop him cold. “Okay, fine, it’s hardly worth arguing over. I’ll stay here and I’ll go through my old room, though I can’t imagine I left anything behind that I wanted to keep.”
His jaw was clenched, eyes still flashing hotly at me. Stir him up it was. “You might surprise yourself,” he told me softly.
That made my eyes narrow, serenity gone. It was amazing the landmines we set for each other with the most innocuous phrases, and I wasn’t interested in walking over even one of his, particularly not at the start of what was bound to be a trying few days.
“I’m quite certain,” I enunciated slowly, “that there is not one thing I left behind in this town that I have any interest in now.”
He seemed to deflate at that, eyes darting away, shoulders slumping, and without another word, I walked into the house.
Point for me, though I wasn’t sure it counted. It certainly didn’t feel like a victory.