Wild Side (Rose Hill, #3)(3)

The woman is dead serious. And I’m too off-kilter to deny her.

“I pinky promise,” I reply gruffly.

She watches me for a beat, as though assessing the truthfulness of my promise. Then she nods and draws away. Without another word, she pulls the front door open and saunters out of my house. And I just stand there, arm propped on the doorframe, trying to wrap my head around that conversation.

Around that woman.

The one who, farther down the front walkway, turns to peek back over her shoulder.

For a few beats, I catch her looking. Or she catches me looking. To be honest, I don’t care which one it is.

I just know that usually I go out of my way to hide from too much attention.

But I don’t mind the way she looks at me.





CHAPTER 2


Tabitha





TWO YEARS LATER…

THE YELLOW DOOR BEFORE ME IS ALTOGETHER TOO CHEERful for a day like today.

Scuffs near the keyhole tell a story of full hands and rushed attempts to open the door. There’s a pink splatter over the canary gold at the bottom. Likely the only evidence of a grape-juice-box-meets-the-ground type of crime scene.

Milo loves grape juice.

His mom does too.

Did.

Erika loved—past tense—grape juice.

Heat builds behind my lashes, and I blink away the tears. Crying won’t see me through this job. Since we got the call last night, everyone around me has been crying. I can’t start too.

If I start, I worry I won’t know how to stop. Then shit won’t get done. And that’s my job right now.

Take care of her little boy. Navigate my parents’ grief. Run my restaurant. Get shit done.

Numb is preferable. Especially having just left the morgue.

So I push the urge to cry aside, roll from toe to heel a few times, as though I might be able to rock myself forward, into motion.

Toward my dead sister’s abandoned home to collect her belongings.

I both need to go in there and dread going in there. My lips twist into a sardonic grimace. Erika would have gotten a real kick out of seeing me wringing my hands on her front step. Too chickenshit to even face what she left behind. I suspect she’s somewhere watching me with a grin on her face right now. She’d say something like, You just identified my body. Vampirism would need more than twenty minutes to take effect.

I chuckle at my own made-up joke.

She wasn’t perfect—hell, I’m not either—but her dark sense of humor was spot-on.

“Okay, Erika, I’m going. I’m going,” I mutter in an amused tone, digging out the spare key I’ve been holding on to for two years.

I had it made when I helped her move in here and haven’t needed to use it until now. Mostly because I thought she was doing okay. I’ve always known addiction is a lifelong battle. I just thought she was holding the line.

I thought wrong.

The key clicks when I slide it in, and the door gives way when I grip the handle and press my thumb onto the lever. Sucking in a deep breath, I wait to see if any strong smells register. Nothing comes.

Judgmental little bitch.

I can hear Erika taunting me, clear as day. Somehow, this imaginary interaction brings me a sense of comfort. As a kid, she’d have killed me for going into her room. Borrowing her clothes or makeup always ended in a cat fight.

But we also always made up.

I chuckle darkly and shake my head. “Okay, sissy.” My arm straightens as I push the door open. “I’m here, and I’m going to take your clothes and jewelry, and there’s nothing you can do about it this time.”

Milo will want her things one day. I want him to have memories of her. Good ones.

With that in my head, my foot finally leaves the ground, and I move to step into the house.

But a deep foreboding voice brings me up short, and I freeze. “What the fuck do you think you’re doing?”

My heart rate accelerates as I slowly turn away from the door. And then my eyes land on him.

Rhys.

Her landlord. The one who evicted her without a second fucking thought. One late payment, and he didn’t even bother to contact me. Instead, he gave her a week to clear out.

In a mad dash to keep a roof over her head, I swooped in and took Milo so she could focus on viewing new places in the area. But instead, she spiraled.

It wasn’t the first time she’d struggled with housing. When our parents kicked her out, she went on a binge that landed her in the hospital, clinging to life. And it’s been something that destabilized her ever since then. The worst was before Milo—she’d hit rock bottom after being kicked out of a house by her roommates.

I spent three sleepless days frantically searching Rose Hill for her. At the hospital. At the local police detachment. In the local shelter. Under the bridge that leads out of town. In that one campground near the river our parents always told us to stay away from. Once, when I found her dirty, and downtrodden, and slumped in a back alley, I promised myself I’d never let her end up there again.

It’s an image I’ve never been able to scrub from my mind.

But this time, I didn’t find her at all. Someone else did. She was in the basement of a house owned by people who didn’t even know her. There was mention of her arriving with a man that no one was able to identify. How she ended up at their party will always be a mystery to me.