SweetHarts (5 Book Box Set)

by Kira Graham

  “Killing us? Jesus, Peter, are you hearing what you’re saying? Why the hell would she have to kill us?” I ask, flinching back when he curses and levels a hate-filled look at me.

  “To shut you up and get those hounds off her back. Haven’t you figured it out yet? God, you people are stupid! All it would have taken to avoid this mess was for Cleo to accept that job and be her friend. She was so excited when she heard that the store was closing. You should have seen her when she bounced into the house and told us that Cleo had called her to find out about the job Mindy had offered her. All she’s ever wanted was to be your friend, to be in the in-crowd and be accepted. But she didn’t take that job—”

  “Because she didn’t want it! Dammit, man, please don’t tell me that over a year’s worth of terror for my family all comes down to Mindy getting her feelings hurt!” Tee yells, her face going pale when he turns on her and shoves the gun into her left eye.

  I whimper, my first instinct to attack him and fight him off, but I stop myself when he digs the gun in harder and leans closer, his lips pulling back in a hiss of fury.

  “Hurt? She wasn’t hurt, you bitch. She tried to kill herself,” he roars, his spit flying out so violently that it splatters against both her cheek and the side of mine.

  Tee has me pressed halfway behind her body, my face so close to hers that our cheeks are almost touching. Oh, God. Oh, God. Please don’t let him shoot her, I pray, sweat breaking out all over my cold body when he tightens his finger on the trigger.

  “That wasn’t our fault,” I whisper, closing my eyes on another whimper when his manic eyes meet mine. “We all tried. Hell, I joined the cheer squad with Mindy senior year because she was too afraid to try out alone. And Cleo used to send her chocolates until she had a fit about the booze-filled ones. And…and Alex loves Mindy. She lets her babysit Seth and Axel.”

  “She also told Nate to break up with her. Didn’t she? And you—you’ve spent the last few months using her as a crutch, only to abandon her when your precious boyfriend took you back!” he yells, his breath spilling all over my face while Tee and I both stand there, frozen and shaking.

  “Dude, you need to understand that we can’t be whatever it is she seems to be looking for. We’re friends, sure, but as soon as we seem to hit a stable place with Mindy, she always starts up with her religious crap on us. We didn’t mean to hurt her feelings, and you have got to see that attempting to hurt us and our families is not sane,” Tee tells him, her hand closing around mine, and her nails digging into my skin when he leans in closer and hisses into her face.

  “Peter. Oh, God—please stop this. Just stop. I know you aren’t this kind of man. Murder is a sin,” I say urgently, slowly pulling Tee back with me as I try to move a little farther away.

  When we’ve all crept so far that the TV stops me, I huddle close to the wall and try to calm myself down, though the fear is so strong that my anger can’t get enough of a foothold to win out. Peter, looking nearly out of his mind now, follows, and that gun stays planted against Tee’s eye, her grimace of discomfort followed by the track of one lone tear trailing down her cheek.

  I need to do something, I think frantically, the numbness of fear and helplessness causing a panicked, out-of-body feeling to slowly trickle in, turning my blood cold. This man is going to kill us. I can see it in the way that he’s looking at Tee, as if she’s nothing more than a fly that needs swatting.

  “You think I care about that? I don’t give a damn as long as I know that my sister is safe from you people.”

  “But…but we didn’t hurt her! She’s the one who’s been hurting us. I almost died in that car!” I yell, the memory enough to return some of my spark. “She’s been hurting everyone, Peter, and we’ve all been her friends.”

  “Friends? Friends don’t encourage a good, God-fearing woman to lead a life of sin. Drinking, partying all night, and wearing those slutty clothes,” he yells, his eyes hard as he scans our bodies. My own clothing is relaxed and conservative today, seeing as how I was at least pretending to make an effort to come clean up the apartment. Tee isn’t so lucky, though, with her tight pencil skirt and a blouse that is sheer enough to show off the top of her lacy white bra. “You just can’t accept her the way she is—”

  “Bullshit! Of course we do. We went to two of those boring-ass church meet and greets with her because she was nervous to meet those men. I even signed up for that Holy Rollers’ seminar and trust weekend,” I hiss, leaving out the part where I just wasn’t going to go, because, come on.

  I am not spending three whole days with people who think that rap is the road to the devil’s house, and I am not okay with making some purity pact at the end of it. I mean, my boyfriend is too hot not to attack like a starving, sex-crazed bimbo!

  Peter makes a choked sound that I soon realize is a laugh, and thankfully backs off enough that I feel Tee sag against me when the gun leaves her eye. Then he starts pacing, his movements jerky and disjointed, while he mutters and casts an occasional glare our way.

  “We need to get the fuck outta here,” Tee whispers, going stiff when Peter looks our way again and starts to grumble.

  “This one’s as fruity as one of Honey’s unbaked Christmas cakes,” I whisper back, trying to ease out from behind Tee so that she isn’t the only target in his sights. “Stop that! I’m not letting you act as a human shield.”

  “Yeah, you are. Grange told us that you went to the doctor.”

  “So?”

  “So, if you’re cooking something in your oven, then you are not dying today!” she whispers back, squeaking out a curse when I punch her in the ass.

  “Oh my God, really? You idiots have been gossiping about this? I am not pregnant, you idiot. I just have a bit of a hormonal imbalance that the doctor is managing. Would you stop it?” I spit out, my patience deserting me when she moves in front of me again, while Peter keeps up his pacing and mumbling.

  Christ. He really is out of his freaking mind, I think with a gulp of fear, my eyes going straight to the closed door as I calculate the odds of being able to get to the thing, get it open, and haul Tee out before the lunatic can gather his wits. Shit.

  “No, you stop it. I’m not letting you get shot by this asshole.”

  “Me neither. Look, maybe we could ambush him,” I whisper, my eyes never leaving him.

  “Are you insane? He’s already halfway to squeezing the trigger. He’d shoot you, or me, and while I’m not usually the cowardly type, I’m not made of fucking Kevlar, either,” Tee mutters, her shaking getting worse when Peter suddenly turns to face us again.

  “Shut up! I can hear the two of you making plans.”

  “Well, of course we are! What are we supposed to do? Just stand here and wait for you to shoot us? Look, I don’t know what the heck is going on, but from the paleness of your face, the way that gun is shaking in your hand, and the nearly white ring around your mouth, I don’t think that you’re okay with killing two innocent women,” I say as gently as I can, considering the anger that’s starting to rise within me. “Let’s talk about this, Peter,” I urge shakily, gulping when he swings the gun back around and points it at my face.

  “Talk about what, exactly?”

  “You don’t want to hurt me. Or Tee. This isn’t the kind of man you are. Murder is a…”

  “Don’t,” he growls, stopping me in my tracks when he shakes his head sharply. “Don’t bring what I believe into this. This is for Mindy!”

  “But—but she’s our friend!” I yell. “She wouldn’t want this.”

  “That’s the point. For all these months, I watched her, and I waited, and I tried to tell myself that she’d stop—but she hasn’t. She keeps doing these…things, keeps making these bad decisions and then pulling back. Always pulling back. It’s to the point where I don’t know what to do anymore, because I know that it’s just a matter of time before someone figures out it’s her. That’s why I have to end this,” he says sadly, so softly and with such anguish in h
is voice that I want to feel sorry for him.

  “Peter—”

  “Shut up! Just shut the hell up. I need to save her from herself, and that means that I have to end this for her. Starting with you Sweets.”

  “You don’t have to do this. We’ll…we’ll talk to Mindy and make her see that we’re friends. We’re her friends, Peter, and we only want to help her. That’s where we were going before you came in,” I lie, squeezing Tee’s hand so that she nods her head emphatically.

  “Yeah! Uh…we were on our way to her apartment to talk to her. To make her see that we love her and want to help her.”

  The “into the grave” part goes unsaid, but I can feel Tee’s violent anger and see it in the way that her mouth starts ticking in the right corner.

  “Help her…h-how?” Peter asks, the light of hope that fills his eyes making my stomach turn with disgust.

  The man is in over his head, and I can see how scared he is. The fear is dripping off him like the sick stink of murder that he came in here with. I also can’t forget that there was a guard outside our door, and the fear that fills me thinking that he’s hurt, or maybe even dead right now, spurs me on to say what I say next.

  “By getting her to see someone. A nice doctor who’ll make her see that violence isn’t the answer. We, uh, just don’t want anyone else to find out, Peter. If she keeps going and someone finds out, it’ll be too late for us to cover this up.”

  “Cover it up?” he asks, his words no more than a whisper, but enough that I see Tee snap to attention and seize the moment, doing what she does best.

  Lie. She lies every single day at her job and gets people to believe that violence isn’t the answer, even when that’s the exact opposite of the way she lives her life.

  “Of course! Of course we don’t want people to know. Mindy would go to prison, Peter. Prison. Where no one will understand her or love her the way we do. We all know her, know her little quirks and the strange way she says and does things. She can’t get locked up, Pete. I just won’t have it,” she grates, though what I hear her say is that “she can’t go to prison because I want to kill her with my bare hands.”

  Me, too. I am totally going to kill her, but before I do, I try testing out a theory that is laughable at best, although it’s all I have right now.

  “And then—then she can be Cleo’s best friend. I’ll stop monopolizing her time, and—and then Cleo can spend some real time with her. Just like Mindy wants,” I coax, watching as his face changes from that angry panic to relief.

  “That…that would be great. She’s always loved Cleo. Wanted to be just like her so badly that she dyed her hair blonde, you know. And the clothes. Mom didn’t agree with the way she started dressing, but it was okay as long as Mindy was happy, ya know? Then, Cleo got close to that Adonis guy, and she sort of snapped. Felt like he was stealing her away. I told her—I told her—that Cleo would still be her friend, you know?” he asks, his eyes skittering from Tee’s to mine, as if he’s searching for some kind of understanding.

  What I understand, however, is that Mindy is a crackpot who attacked the people I love. She can kiss my ass if she thinks that she’s going to fulfill some sick fantasy involving Cleo.

  I mean, Cleo, of all people! That chick is magical, but she’s a kook, for God’s sake. She dresses terribly, she’s as selfish and self-involved as hell, and the last time she went to church without death threats from Honey was when she was five years old. Cleo is the antithesis of who Mindy should obsess over. If I weren’t so scared right now, I’d be as jealous as hell that she didn’t choose me. We’re, like, best friends, dammit.

  “Of course Cleo would be her friend,” Tee says soothingly. “Mindy just never, uh…talks to Cleo.”

  “She’s intimidated. Afraid she’ll come across as too eager,” he says softly, his uncertain smile pulling at my heartstrings.

  Too eager? Do me a favor, and someone slap me silly, because we’ve all seen Mindy do “eager” so many times that it’s a running joke that everyone laughs about. The woman used to dye her hair red, something that I put a stop to because she looked like she was glowing in the dark with that funky, off-orange ’do. She’s taken to wearing clothes like Cleo, and even smiles when we tease her the way we do with Cleo. It’s the little things, you know, that I never took notice of that now make a light bulb go off in my head.

  She doesn’t just want to be Cleo’s friend. She wants to be Cleo.

  “She just has to be herself,” Tee says softly, nudging me with an elbow when I choke and have to cough to cover my derision.

  “That’s the problem. She, uh, has trouble with that part. I’ve told her that she can’t just be…” he begins, then stops talking and shakes his head, and something in the way he does it makes me squeeze Tee’s hand to make her stop speaking.

  I watch, literally goggle-eyed, as he loses the conciliatory attitude, and something feral fills him. It’s like watching someone with two personalities. One moment, he seems ready to talk, and the next, that gun comes up again, and I stiffen.

  “She needs to be free.”

  This is it. Slowly, I watch as his finger starts to pull the trigger, and I huddle into Tee, feeling her surround me. Like a sequence that unfolds pixel by pixel, I feel the seconds stretch into hours and hear my own breaths wheeze in and out of my lungs.

  The gun booms, the sound a distorted whine that echoes in my ears, and I brace for impact as I push myself over Tee, trying to take the first bullet because I don’t think that I can handle watching her die first.

  And then, miraculously, Peter and his gun are gone, as a dark, roaring shape tackles him and drops him to the ground. Plaster from the ceiling rains down on us, and I’m gaping as I see a struggle, watch Peter scream in outrage, and then bang! Another boom, and then silence, as Peter falls still.

  “Tee!” I roar, shock still holding me frozen.

  “Ares? Oh, God!” Tee screams, hurling herself away from me and at the man who just saved us both.

  Ares. The man who once vowed never to harm another living soul. Just killed a man.

  And now…

  What happens next?

  SAINT

  Chapter One

  Tee

  I’ve been alone almost all of my life, even while being surrounded by people nearly every minute. I once went to New York City, just to see the place and feel what all the movies had described, and I can explain my perpetual feeling of solitude with one scene. One perfect scene that they always use in the movies, and that never made any sense to me until I was there myself.

  Have you ever watched one of those cheesy romances, where the girl or guy stands on the street, and everything around them speeds up while they stay the same? It’s a fast-forwarded version of life meant to show them standing still in their time of heartbreak and loss. It conveys a loneliness that’s hard to describe and shows us that we’re alone, no matter how many people surround us.

  That’s me. I am alone, while life continues to move around me in fast-forward. Most days, I love it, because standing still while everyone else flies around at the speed of light allows me to witness things that most people don’t get to see. I’ve seen old married couples argue, make up, and then grouch at each again, other only to leave hand in hand, cuddling like two love birds. I’ve seen young people fight as if every second of their relationship is a stage drama playing out in only melodramatic scenes. I’ve seen mothers fight with, hug, and trudge behind their children, their faces holding love, fatigue, and this expression that I like to call, “Why the fuck did I go for a second kid?”

  I’ve seen all this and much more, and I’ve loved every learning moment of it.

  Because I’m awesome and perfect, I tend to think of those human moments as my due, since I’m so emotionally stable that I’m smart enough to catalogue all the art around us that we call life.

  Well, that’s what I used to tell myself, anyway—until recently, when I’ve been forced to stop and look at my own life a l
ittle more closely than I’d like. It pisses me off to admit this, but I think that I may be more alone than I let myself believe, and I think that the truth is that while I’ve been standing still, I’ve been letting life pass me by, nothing more than a spectator.

  “Dr. Sweet?” I hear, breaking off from my journal to answer my assistant, Gladys, who is sitting pretty out there, as smug as hell because she sued me a few months ago and got paid a shit ton of money.

  I’d have been pissed and fired her avaricious ass, but the truth is that I respect her for standing up for herself, and I love that she finally cracked under all the abuse I threw her way and took the lessons that I was silently trying to teach her to heart. Nothing says “I love you” more than Nefertiti Sweet giving you free life coaching and building you up as a person, which is what I did for Gladdy, who’d been a victim all her life until I forced her to be a fighter.

  Now she’s sitting pretty with a million dollars in her bank account, she finally divorced that abusive asshole she was married to, and last I heard, she’s sleeping with a man ten years her junior.

  Go, Gladdy!

  “What’s up, Glad?” I ask, checking my watch with a wince when I see the time and realize that I have a patient waiting.

  “Uh, sorry to bother you, but I believe that Mr. Tennyson’s appointment should have commenced five minutes ago?”

  “Send him in,” I murmur, mentally preparing myself for the man about to walk into my office.

  I’ve been seeing Harold Tennyson for the last seven months, and in that time, he’s assaulted two people, one of them being a stranger who pressed charges. In fact, I see no end in sight with this guy. He’s got a vile temper, he’s emotionally unstable, and the phrase “chill the fuck out” holds no meaning unless he’s holding a cold one. To put it plainly, he’s a mess, and since the judge ordered court-appointed anger management therapy, I’m the lucky schmuck who gets to see Harold twice a week in an effort to convince him that reacting violently is not the answer to all of life’s problems.