Chapter Fourteen

 

CASPER

Claire enters the kitchen and walks purposely toward the coffeepot. It’s a fairly normal part of my day now. One I don’t particularly notice, except for the past hour she’s been in and out like a whack-a-mole in his hole and not actually drinking her coffee. Back turned to me, she puts her laptop and a bunch of paperwork down on the counter and busies herself making yet another cup. “Have you gotten a hold of her yet?”

She turns and rests her hip against the counter, two cups in hand, and I set down the cleaver I was using to joint the chicken to take the mug she offers.

“I talked to her.” After Summer rang and told me the news about Mandy’s grandmother, and how they hadn’t been able to find her because she wasn’t answering her phone, all I wanted was to get the hell out of the kitchen and search for her. Claire was willing to let me go too, but for some reason Mandy answered the first time I rang. It was almost immediate, and her voice soothed the tightness that had filled my chest until it rattled each time I took a breath. “She’s okay. A little shocked. She’s on her way here.”

“Good.” Claire shifts to put her cup in the sink and then comes back to touch my bicep with a sympathetic smile. “And you’re all right too?”

“Yup.” I exhale, the release of tension leaving my muscles lethargic and heavy. As good as I’ll ever be.

“Tell her I’m sorry for her loss, and that if she needs anything to let me know,” Claire says.

“Will do.”

She leaves me alone in the kitchen to wait, and I get back to work, routinely glancing at the kitchen door and waiting for Mandy to burst through it, recalling earlier when I held her trapped against the blue wood and she asked me what scares me, like she cares, and I couldn’t tell her. Wanting her horrifies me. The possibility I could feel something more for her scares the fucking shit out of me. But having her care for me?

I push both fists against the marble, one still wrapped around the handle of the cleaver. Juliette assails me. Her laughter. Her smile. The way she stared up at me while her hands gripped my ass. The lust in her eyes and the sounds that came from her throat. I squeeze my eyes shut, try to block out the images I’ve long learned come no matter what. Awful, horrific flashes from my past that are so vivid even now. Maybe it’s because of the way she died that I can’t get past these memories that haunt me.

It was an accident, they said.

There was no culpability.

Still, it doesn’t help. Doesn’t make it any less my fault. Didn’t make either of us any less drunk, or her any less stoned, or me any less rough.

“Are you okay?”

I open my eyes to find Mandy closing the door and hanging her bag on one of the hooks beside it. She drops her keys in the front pocket before traipsing across the kitchen to me.

“Yeah. Sure.” I let go of the cleaver and face her. She’s ashen. Her green eyes excessively sparkly. Her bottom lip is slightly swollen. The shit thing is I knew where she was when she answered her phone. I knew it, and it was just the way things were. She was with Sam Sweets. The guy who makes sense. But seeing his mark on her, seeing that slight imprint of teeth on her lip, the subtle red of stubble rash kills me.

I suck in a breath and let it out slowly. I shouldn’t be pissy about Mandy spending time with him, but I can barely stand the idea of him touching her. Even though eventually that’s what’s going to happen. She’ll win over her man, and I’ll leave Reverence. She’ll have a happy ever after, and I’ll try not to drown in my misery.

Mandy deserves everything she wants. She deserves the best. That isn’t me. It can’t be me. “We were all worried about you. That’s all.”

“I had my phone on do not disturb,” she says, grabbing my arms and pulling them around her. “You were the exception, because I knew you were going to call me at some point, and I knew I’d want to talk to you.”

I press my nose to her hair, breathe in her scent. When did we become so close that she doesn’t think twice about making me hold her? That I’m on the top of her list of people she thinks of when she needs someone in her corner? “You wanted to talk to me about all of this?”

“Uh-huh.” She tilts her head back and kisses my jaw.

It’s a simple peck. It’s not sexual in the slightest, though these days my body betrays me at the smallest touch from her. It doesn’t even matter that she’s been kissing him, and doing God knows what else with him, my chest feels like an armful of helium balloons have been let loose inside me. I want her lips on mine. Her mouth under mine. I want so many things.

“Will you take me?”

“Take you?” She brings me back to earth so quickly, conjuring images of her bare body bent over the counter, her legs slightly apart. And instead of those pink shorts, a sliver of her rosy pussy, all pretty and untouched peeks from between her legs, waiting to be stretched and filled. But not by me, not by my stupid fucking dick. I haven’t as much as touched another woman since Juliette. Haven’t given my cock more than a few minutes with my own hand, and that’s only happened since I met Mandy, because she makes it impossible to ignore my attraction to her. But getting that close to her isn’t something I can do.

“Will you come with me to my grandmother’s? I haven’t stepped foot in the house in five years. I don’t want to go alone.”

“Absolutely.” I squeeze her waist. “When do you want to go?”

***

Mandy stands at the edge of the grave. Instead of her usual happy pink, she’s dressed in sombre black. The only brightness is a thin, blush-colored belt around her waist. She takes a handful of dirt from the bucket and whispers something to the casket that not five minutes ago was lowered into the ground. Slowly, she lets the dirt sieve through her fingers into the hole, and then she brushes her palms together until there’s no more dirt to shake off. When she turns around, her green eyes sparkle, but she doesn’t cry. She’s been crying all week while we sorted through her grandmother’s things. Now she’s just reserved.

Arms folded, she rubs at goose bumps that have erupted despite the stifling heat as she makes her way back to me. There are only a handful of us gathered. A few of her grandmother’s friends, Summer and her boys, Claire and Razer, and me. Sam showed up at the house to help with the packing, but he’s stayed clear today. I don’t know whether to be pissed for her sake, or grateful for mine.

“Okay?” I put my arm around her waist as we cross the grass and walk to the car.

She puts her head on my shoulder. “I’m officially on my own.”

“No, never. You’ve got me. You’ve got your friends.” I kiss the top of her head. Summer catches me and it’s a kind of awkward moment of eye contact. No doubt she thinks her friend can do better, perhaps even imagines that her brother is the right guy, the same way Mandy does. But I don’t believe it. Can’t shake my unfailing certainty that he’s not the one for her.

I open the door of my truck for her to climb in. She puts her seatbelt on while I jog around and climb in behind the wheel. There’s a moment of silence where she stares out the window toward where her grandmother rests while I gun the engine and pull away from the curb.

“Sam’s helping me look for my biological parents,” she tells me on our way to the house for the wake. “What do you think they’d be like?”

“I don’t know.” Her announcement throws me. Sam Sweets, jerk and pain in the fucking ass is actually doing something pretty damn nice. Which is good, even if it makes me wish I had thought of it myself. “If they’re anything like you they’ll say the craziest things and be a little obsessive about pink.”

“I doubt it.” She pushes my elbow, but for the first time today she smiles. Then she shakes her head. “We might not find out who they are.” She draws her bangs behind one ear and curls her legs up on the seat. “Even if we do find names, we might never locate them. Or they could be dead.”

I reach out to squeeze her thigh. “You’re going to find them.”

“Maybe,” she says. “I don’t want to get my hopes up.”

“And Sam?” We haven’t talked about what happened the day she showed up with his marks on her. This week was hard enough on her as it is, plus I’m not sure that I want to know things are progressing between them. It was always going to happen. Nobody could withstand Mandy Pearce and what she wants.

“We kissed.” She puts her fingers to her lips, probably remembering how it felt. “We were in bed, and—”

“I don’t need details,” I croak, my throat closing up over the idea of her and him together. The two of them in bed, doing what? Were his hands all over her? Were they naked? Did she wrap her hand around his dick? Did he touch her between her legs? Put his mouth there? His—

“Nothing happened.” She sighs. “You kind of ruined it with your phone call. He got my shorts undone and kissed my panties. Didn’t even get them down my legs. That’s as far as it went. He’s a sweetheart. Didn’t want to take advantage of me.”

“Good. That’s good.” I pull the truck into the driveway and park it. My heart is pounding, my stomach squeezed tight. I don’t know how I am going to handle the next time she’s alone with him. They can only get closer. With less clothes. Fuck. It should be a relief, but it’s anything but. I try to muster some enthusiasm, but there’s none. “Means he probably respects you and actually likes you.”

“This plan of ours is working.” She slides from the car.

What am I supposed to do? Tell her that I feel something for her? Pretend I don’t? There’s too much at stake for me to stay in Reverence. There’s too much in my past I can’t let go of for there to be any kind of future for us. Let’s face it. Sam Sweets is the better choice.