Dedication
This is for my mother, who did whatever it took.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
Author’s Note
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Announcement
About the Author
Copyright
About the Publisher
Author’s Note
This story touches on the process of healing after an abusive relationship. If this is a topic that you’re sensitive to, please be aware. I hope I have treated the issue, my characters, and you, the reader, gently.
Prologue
Once upon a time, Chloe Brown died.
Nearly.
It happened on a Tuesday afternoon, of course. Disturbing things always seemed to happen on Tuesdays. Chloe suspected that day of the week was cursed, but thus far, she’d only shared her suspicions via certain internet forums—and with Dani, the weirdest of her two very weird little sisters. Dani had told Chloe that she was cracked, and that she should try positive affirmations to rid herself of her negative weekday energy.
So when Chloe heard shouts and the screech of tires, and looked to her right, and found a shiny, white Range Rover heading straight for her, her first ridiculous thought was: I’ll die on a Tuesday, and Dani will have to admit that I was right all along.
But in the end, Chloe didn’t actually die. She wasn’t even horribly injured—which was a relief, because she spent enough time in hospitals as it was. Instead, the Range Rover flew past her and slammed into the side of a coffee shop. The drunk driver’s head-on collision with a brick wall missed being a head-on collision with a flesh-and-blood Chloe by approximately three feet. Metal crunched like paper. The middle-aged lady in the driver’s seat slumped against an airbag, her crisp, blond bob swinging. Bystanders swarmed and there were shouts to call an ambulance.
Chloe stared, and stared, and stared.
People buzzed by her, and time ticked on, but she barely noticed. Her mind flooded with irrelevant data, as if her head were a trash folder. She wondered how much the repairs to the coffee shop would cost. She wondered if insurance would cover it, or if the driver would have to. She wondered who had cut the lady’s hair, because it was a beautiful job. It remained relatively sleek and stylish, even when she was hauled out of her car and onto a gurney.
Eventually, a man touched Chloe’s shoulder and asked, “Are you okay, my darling?”
She turned and saw a paramedic with a kind, lined face and a black turban. “I believe I’m in shock,” she said. “Could I have some chocolate? Green and Black’s. Sea salt is my favorite, but the eighty-five percent dark probably has greater medicinal properties.”
The paramedic chuckled, put a blanket around her shoulders, and said, “Would a cuppa do, Your Maj?”
“Oh, yes please.” Chloe followed him to the back of his ambulance. Somewhere along the way, she realized she was shaking so hard that it was a struggle to walk. With a skill borne of years of living in her highly temperamental body, she gritted her teeth and forced one foot in front of the other.
When they finally reached the ambulance, she sat down carefully because it wouldn’t do to collapse. If she did, the paramedic would start asking questions. Then he might want to check her over. Then she’d have to tell him about all her little irregularities, and why they were nothing to worry about, and they’d both be here all day. Adopting her firmest I-am-very-healthy-and-in-control tone, she asked briskly, “Will the lady be all right?”
“The driver? She’ll be fine, love. Don’t you worry about that.”
Muscles she hadn’t realized were tense suddenly relaxed.
In the end, after two cups of tea and some questions from the police, Chloe was permitted to finish her Tuesday-afternoon walk. No further near-death experiences occurred, which was excellent, because if they had, she’d probably have done something embarrassing, like cry.
She entered her family home via the north wing and skulked to the kitchen in search of fortifying snacks. Instead, she found her grandmother Gigi clearly waiting for her. Gigi whirled around with a swish of her floor-length, violet robe—the one Chloe had given her a few months ago on Gigi’s fourth (or was it fifth?) seventieth birthday.
“Darling,” she gasped, her sparkling, kitten-heeled mules clacking against the tiles. “You look so . . . peaky.” From Gigi, who was both a concerned grandparent and a painfully beautiful ragtime legend, this was a grave statement indeed. “Where were you? You’ve been ages, and you wouldn’t answer your phone. I was quite worried.”
“Oh, God, I’m so sorry.” Chloe had left hours ago for the latest of her irregularly scheduled walks—scheduled because her physiotherapist insisted she take them, irregular because her chronically ill body often vetoed things. She was usually back within thirty minutes, so it was no wonder Gigi had panicked. “You didn’t call my parents, did you?”
“Of course not. I presumed, if you’d had a wobble, that you’d collect yourself shortly and command a passing stranger to find you a taxi home.”
A wobble was the delicate phrase Gigi used for the times when Chloe’s body simply gave up on life. “I didn’t have a wobble. I’m feeling quite well, actually.” Now, anyway. “But there was . . . a car accident.”
Gigi managed to stiffen and gracefully take a seat at the marble kitchen island simultaneously. “You weren’t hurt?”
“No. A lady crashed her car right in front of me. It was all very dramatic. I’ve been drinking tea from Styrofoam cups.”
Gigi peered at Chloe with the feline eyes that lesser mortals tended to fall into. “Would you like some Xanax, darling?”
“Oh, I couldn’t. I don’t know how it would react with my medication.”
“Of course, of course. Ah! I know. I’ll call Jeremy and tell him it’s an emergency.” Jeremy was Gigi’s therapist. Gigi didn’t strictly need therapy, but she was fond of Jeremy and believed in preventive measures.
Chloe blinked. “I don’t think that’s necessary.”
“I quite disagree,” Gigi said. “Therapy is always necessary.” She pulled out her phone and made the call, sashaying to the other side of the kitchen. Her mules clicked against the tiles again as she purred, “Jeremy, darling! How are you? How is Cassandra?”
These were all perfectly ordinary noises. And yet, without warning, they triggered something catastrophic in Chloe’s head.
Gigi’s click, click, click merged with the tick, tick, tick of the vast clock on the kitchen wall. The sounds grew impossibly loud, oddly chaotic, until it seemed like a tumble of boulders had fallen inside Chloe’s head. She squeezed her eyes shut—wait, what did her eyes have to do with her hearing?—and, in the darkness she’d created, a memory arose: that crisp, blond bob swinging. The way it remained so smooth and glossy against the black leather of the gurney.
Drunk, the nice paramedic had said, sotto voce. That’s what they suspected. The lady had been drunk in the m
iddle of the afternoon, had mounted a pavement and plowed into a building, and Chloe . . .
Chloe had been standing right there. Because she walked at the same time of day, so as not to interrupt her work routine. Because she always took the same route, for efficiency’s sake. Chloe had been standing right there.
She was too hot, sweating. Dizzy. Had to sit down, right now, so she wouldn’t fall and crack her head like an egg against the marble tiles. From out of nowhere she remembered her mother saying, We should change the floors. These fainting spells are getting out of hand. She’ll hurt herself.
But Chloe had insisted there was no need. She’d promised to be careful, and by God, she’d kept her promise. Slowly, slowly, she sank to the ground. Put her clammy palms against the cool tiles. Breathed in. Breathed out. Breathed in.
Breathed out, her whisper like cracking glass, “If I had died today, what would my eulogy say?”
This mind-blowing bore had zero friends, hadn’t traveled in a decade despite plenty of opportunity, liked to code on the weekends, and never did anything that wasn’t scheduled in her planner. Don’t cry for her; she’s in a better place now. Even Heaven can’t be that dull.
That’s what the eulogy would say. Perhaps someone especially cutting and awful, like Piers Morgan, would read it out on the radio.
“Chloe?” Gigi called. “Where have you—? Oh, there you are. Is everything all right?”
Lying bodily on the floor and gulping air like a dying fish, Chloe said brightly, “Fine, thank you.”
“Hmm,” Gigi murmured, slightly dubious, but not overly concerned. “Perhaps I’ll have Jeremy call us back. Jeremy, my dear, could you possibly . . . ?” Her voice faded as she wandered away.
Chloe rested her hot cheek against the cold tiles and tried not to add more insults to her own imaginary eulogy. If she were in a twee sort of musical—the kind her youngest sister, Eve, adored—this would be her rock-bottom moment. She’d be a few scenes away from an epiphany and an uplifting song about determination and self-belief. Perhaps she should take a leaf from those musicals’ collective book.
“Excuse me, universe,” she whispered to the kitchen floor. “When you almost murdered me today—which was rather brutal, by the way, but I can respect that—were you trying to tell me something?”
The universe, very enigmatically, did not respond.
Someone else, unfortunately, did.
“Chloe!” her mother all but shrieked from the doorway. “What are you doing on the floor?! Are you ill? Garnet, get off the phone and get over here! Your granddaughter is unwell!”
Oh dear. Her moment of communion with the universe rudely interrupted, Chloe hauled herself into a sitting position. Strangely, she was now feeling much better. Perhaps because she had recognized and accepted the universe’s message.
It was time, clearly, to get a life.
“No, no, my darling, don’t move.” Joy Matalon-Brown’s fine-boned face was tight with panic as she issued the nervous order, her tawny skin pale. It was a familiar sight. Chloe’s mother ran a successful law firm with her twin sister, Mary, lived her life with almost as much logic and care as Chloe, and had spent years learning her daughter’s symptoms and coping mechanisms. Yet she was still thrust into full-blown panic by the slightest hint of sickness or discomfort. It was, quite frankly, exhausting.
“Don’t fuss over her, Joy, you know she can’t stand it.”
“So I should ignore the fact that she was lying on the floor like a corpse?!”
Ouch.
As her mother and grandmother bickered over her head, Chloe decided the first universe-mandated change in her life would be her living quarters.
The mammoth family home was suddenly feeling rather snug.
Chapter One
Two Months Later
“Oh, you are a gem, Red.”
Redford Morgan attempted a cheerful grin, which wasn’t easy when he was elbow deep in an octogenarian’s toilet bowl. “Just doing my job, Mrs. Conrad.”
“You’re the best superintendent we’ve ever had,” she cooed from the bathroom doorway, clasping one wrinkled hand to her bony chest. Her shock of white hair fairly quivered with emotion. Bit of a drama queen, she was, bless her.
“Thanks, Mrs. C,” he said easily. “You’re a doll.” Now, if you’d just stop shoving bollocks down your loo, we’d be best mates. This was the third time in a month he’d been called to flat 3E for plumbing issues, and frankly, he was getting tired of Mrs. Conrad’s shit. Or rather, of her grandsons’.
Red’s rubber-gloved hand finally emerged from the toilet’s depths, clutching a soaking-wet clump of paper towel. He unwrapped the little parcel to reveal . . . “This your vegetable casserole, Mrs. C?”
She blinked owlishly at him, then squinted. “Well, I’m sure I’ve no idea. Where are my spectacles?” She turned as if to hunt them down.
“No, don’t bother,” he sighed. He knew full well it was vegetable casserole, just like it had been last time, and the time before that. As he disposed of the clump and peeled off his gloves, he said gently, “You need to have a word with those lads of yours. They’re flushing their dinner.”
“What?” she gasped, clearly affronted. “Noooo. No, no, no. Not my Felix and Joseph. They never would! They aren’t wasteful boys, and they love my dinners.”
“I bet they do,” he said slowly, “but . . . well, Mrs. C, every time I come over here, I find a little parcel of broccoli and mushrooms clogging your pipes.”
There was a beat of silence as Mrs. Conrad grappled with that information. “Oh,” she whispered. He’d never heard so much dejection in a single word. She blinked rapidly, her thin lips pursing, and Red’s heart lurched as he realized she was trying not to cry. Holy fucking hell. He couldn’t deal with crying women. If she dropped a single tear, he’d be here all night, eating bowls of vegetable casserole with enthusiasm and sparkling compliments.
Please don’t cry. I get off in ten minutes and I really fucking hate broccoli. Please don’t cry. Please don’t—
She turned away just as the first sob wracked her thin shoulders.
Sigh.
“Come on, Mrs. C, don’t be upset.” Awkwardly, he peeled off his gloves and went to the sink to wash his hands. “They’re just kids. Everyone knows kids have as much sense as the average goat.”
Mrs. Conrad let out a little burble of laughter and turned to face him again, dabbing at her eyes with a hankie. Old people always had hankies. They hid them on their bodies like ninjas with throwing stars. “You’re right, of course. It’s just . . . Well, I thought that casserole was their favorite.” She sniffled and shook her head. “But it doesn’t matter.”
Judging by the wobble in her voice, it really did.
“I bet it’s a damned good casserole,” he said, because he had the biggest fucking mouth on planet earth.
“Do you think so?”
“I know so. You have the look of a woman who knows her way around the kitchen.” He had no idea what that meant, but it sounded good.
And clearly, Mrs. Conrad liked it, because her cheeks flushed and she made a high, tinkling sound that might have been a giggle. “Oh, Red. Do you know, I happen to have some on the go right now.”
Of course she did. “Is that right?”
“Yes! Would you like to try some? After all your hard work, the least I can do is feed you.”
Say no. Say you have Friday-night plans. Say you ate five beefsteaks for lunch. “I’d love to,” he said, and smiled. “Just let me go home and get cleaned up.”
It took him thirty minutes to shower and change in his own flat, down on the ground floor. Came with the job. Since he led a life of daring excitement these days, he swapped his charcoal overalls for—drumroll, please—his navy blue overalls, fresh out the washer. Truth be told, he had no idea what he was supposed to wear for dinner with an old lady, but his usual shit-kicker boots and old leathers didn’t seem quite right.
It was only as he locked his f
ront door that it occurred to Red—this whole situation might not be quite right. Was he supposed to have dinner with tenants? Was that allowed? He didn’t see the harm in it, but he was fairly new to this superintendent lark, and he wasn’t exactly qualified. Just to be sure, he pulled out his phone and fired off a text to Vik, the landlord—and the mate who’d given him this job.
Can I have dinner with the nice old lady in 3E?
Vik’s reply came fast as ever.
Whatever gets you going, mate. I don’t judge.
Red huffed out a laugh, rolling his eyes as he put his phone away. And then, out of nowhere, he heard it.
Or rather, her.
Chloe Brown.
“. . . see you for brunch, if I can,” she was saying. Her voice was sharp and expensive, like someone had taught a diamond how to speak. The sound scrambled his mind, her crisp accent reminding him of people and places he’d rather forget. Of a different time and a different woman, one who’d clutched her silver spoon in one manicured hand and squeezed his heart tight in the other.
Chloe’s husky timbre and the memories it triggered were the only warnings he received before rounding a corner and coming face-to-face with the woman herself. Or rather, face-to-throat. As in, she was right fucking there, and they collided, and, somehow, her face slammed into his throat.
Which hurt. A lot.
The impact also did something terrible to his airflow. He sucked in a breath, choked on it, and reached for her at the same time. That last part was an automatic reflex: he’d bumped into someone, so now it was his job to hold that someone steady. Except, of course, this wasn’t just anyone. It was Chloe whose waist was soft under his hands. Chloe who smelled like a garden after a spring shower. Chloe who was now shoving him away like he had a communicable disease and spluttering, “Oh, my—what—? Get off!”
Cute as a button, but her tone cut like a knife. He released her before she had an embolism, wincing when his callused hands caught on the pastel wool of her cardigan. She stumbled back as if he might attack at any moment, watching him with flinty suspicion. She always looked at him like that—as if he was thirty seconds away from murdering her and wearing her skin. She’d treated him like some kind of wild animal ever since the day they’d met, when he’d shown her around the flat he never believed she’d lease.
Get a Life, Chloe Brown Page 1
