by W Winters
Her voice is small. “Yeah, I know. I’m sorry. It was a bad night.”
A bad night? It was a bad month, and the start of me losing my sister. That night, I couldn’t turn a blind eye to it any longer.
“I just wanted to say,” she begins, but raises her voice a little too loud and then has to clear her throat, tears rimming her eyes. “I wanted to tell you I’m really sorry.” Her sincerity brings my own emotions flooding back, and I hate it. “I loved your sister, and I’m…” This time I’m the one doing the hugging, the holding.
“Sorry,” she rasps in a whisper as she pulls away. I look beyond her, at the groups of people in the dining room and past that to the kitchen. There are maybe twenty or thirty people in my house. And not a single one looks our way. They’re too busy eating the food I paid for and drinking my alcohol. I wonder if they even feel this pain.
“She had this for you.” Miranda pushes a book into my chest before running the sleeve of the thin sweater she’s wearing under her eyes. Black mascara seeps into the light gray fabric instantly. “Right before she went missing, while she crashed at my place, she couldn’t stop reading it.”
It takes me a moment to actually take the book from her. It’s thick, maybe a few hundred pages… with no cover. The spine’s been torn off and my name replaces it. Bethy. That’s what Jenny used to call me. The black Sharpie marker bled into the torn ridges of what the spine would have protected.
“What is it?” I ask Miranda, not taking my eyes from the book as I turn it over and look for any indication as to what story it is. I can feel creases in my forehead as my brow furrows.
Miranda only shrugs, the sweater falling off her shoulder and showing more of her pale skin and protruding collarbone. “She just kept saying she was going to give it to you. That you needed it more than her.”
My gaze focuses on the first lines of the book, skimming them but finding no recollection of this tale in my memory. I have no idea what the book is, but as I flip through the pages, I notice some of the sentences are underlined in pen.
He loves like there’s no reason not to. That’s the first line I see, and it makes me pause until the conversation pulls me away.
“Before she died, she told me things.” Miranda’s large eyes stare deep into mine.
Jenny told me things too. Things I’ll never forget. Warnings I thought were only paranoia.
As Miranda’s thin lips part, my boss, Aiden, walks up to us in a tailored suit and Miranda shies back. My lips pull into a tight smile as he hugs me.
“You’re dressed to the nines,” I compliment him with a sad smile, not bothering to hide the pain in my voice. Miranda leaves me before I can say another word to her. She ducks her head, getting distance from me as quickly as she can. My eyes follow her as Aiden speaks.
“You okay?”
My head tilts and my eyes water as I reply, “Okay is such a vague word, don’t you think?”
He’s older than me, and not quite a friend, but not just a boss either. The second my arms reach around his jacket, accepting his embrace, he holds me a little tighter and I hate how much comfort I get from it.
From something so simple. So genuine. My circle is small, but I like to keep it that way. And Aiden is one of the few people in it. He’s one of the few people I can be myself with.
“I heard you didn’t go… that it was today?” he asks me, although it’s more of a statement, my face still pressed against his chest.
I won’t cry. I won’t do it.
Not until I’m alone anyway. I can’t hide behind anger then. There’s nowhere to hide when you’re lying in bed by yourself.
“I couldn’t bring myself,” I tell him, intending on saying more, but my bottom lip wobbles and I have to pull away.
He’s reluctant, but he lets me and I find my own arms wrapping around myself. Looking back to where Jenny’s friends were, I notice they’re gone, along with a lot of the crowd.
Maybe they heard my unspoken wishes.
“You need to take time off.” Aiden’s words shock me. Full-blown shock me.
My head shakes on its own and I struggle to come up with something to refute him. Money seems like the most logical reason, but Aiden beats me to it.
“There was a pool at work, and the other nurses are giving you some of their days for PTO. You have your own banked, plus the bereavement leave. And I know you have vacation time too.”
“They don’t have to do that…” My voice is low, full of disbelief. At Rockford, the local youth mental hospital, I know everyone more than I should, especially the night shift. But I wouldn’t ever expect any of them to give me their time off. I don’t expect anything from anyone.
“They can’t do that. They’ll need those days for themselves.” They don’t even know me really. I’m taken aback that they would do such a thing.
“It’s a day here and a day there, it adds up and you need it.”
“I’m fine-”
“My ass you are.” Aiden’s profanity draws my gaze to his, and the wrinkles around his eyes seem more pronounced. His age shows in this moment. “You need time off.”
Time off.
More time alone.
“I don’t want it.”
“You’re going to take it. You need to get your head on right, Fawn.” His voice is stern as my body chills from a gust of air blowing into the dining room when my front door opens once again. More guests leaving.
“How many days?” I ask him, feeling defeat, so much of it, already laying its weight against me.
“You have six weeks,” he informs me and it feels like a death sentence. My heart sinks to the pit of my stomach as my front door closes with a resounding click.
With his hands on my shoulders he tells me, “You need to get better.”
Holding back the pain is a challenge, but I manage to breathe out with only a single tear shed. Six weeks.
The next breath comes easier.
I tell myself I’ll take some time off, but not to get better.
My breathing is almost back to normal at my next thought.
But to find the men responsible for what happened to my sister.
My eyes are burning and heavy, but I can’t sleep.
I’m exhausted and want to lie down, but my legs are restless and my heart is wide awake, banging inside of me. I need to do something to take this agony away. Staring back at The Coverless Book beside me on the side table, I lean to the left, flicking on the lamp while still seated on my sofa.
* * *
The Coverless Book
Prologue
* * *
I’m invincible. I tell myself as I pull the blanket up tighter.
My heart races, so fast in my chest. It’s scared like I am.
Jake is coming.
He’s going to see me here in my house, and then where could I possibly hide from him? Where could I hide my blush?
Maybe behind this blanket?
“Miss?” Miss Caroline calls into the room, and I perk up.
“Yes?”
“Your guest is here,” she announces and I give her a nod, feeling that heat rise to my cheeks and my heart fluttering as she gives me a knowing smile and I hide my brief laugh. Caroline knows all my secrets.
Before I can stand up on shaky legs, he’s standing in the doorway, tall and lanky as most eleventh-graders are. But Jake is taller. His eyes softer. His hands hold a shock in them that gets me every time he reaches for my calculator in class.
“Jake.” His name comes from me in surprise as I struggle to lift myself.
“Emmy.” The way he says my name sounds so sad. “I heard you were sick.”
I read the prologue and the first chapter too before falling asleep on the old sofa that used to belong to my mother. I’m cocooned in the blanket I once wrapped my sister in when the drugs she’d taken made her shake uncontrollably.
The only sentence Jenny underlined was the one that read, “I’m invincible.”
Jenny, I
wish you had been. I wish I were too.
Bethany
My eyes feel so heavy. So dry and itchy.
Rubbing them only makes it hurt worse.
I would have slept better had I worked. I know I would have.
My gaze drifts back to the book. I’m only a few chapters in, but I keep walking away from the pages, not remembering where I left off and starting over each time.
Knowing I can’t focus on work, knowing it’s been taken away, has brought out a different side of me.
The side that remembers my sister.
Not the way she was in the last few years, but the way she was when we were younger.
When we were thick as thieves, and my older sister was my hero. Those memories keep coming back every time I read the chapters written from Emmy’s perspective. She’s young, and sweet, but so damn strong. My sister was strong once. Held down by no one.
Once upon a time.
Letting out a deep breath, I stretch my back, pushing the torn-up book onto my coffee table. I sit there, looking out the front bay window of my house. The curtains are closed, but not tightly and I catch a glimpse of a car pull up.
A nice car. An expensive one.
All black with tinted windows. Jenny came home in a car like that once, shaken and crying. Back when all of her troubles started. My blood runs cold as the car stops in front of my house.
If it’s someone she was associated with, I don’t want them here.
Anger simmers, but it’s futile. You can only be angry for so long.
Once it’s gone, fear has a way of creeping into its place.
My pace is slow, quiet and deliberate as I head to my coat closet and reach up to a backpack I haven’t used in years. I figured it would be the perfect place to hide the gun. The one Jenny brought home for me, the one she said I needed when she wouldn’t listen to me and refused to stay. I was screaming at her as she shoved it into my chest and told me I needed to take it.
It was only weeks ago that my sister stood right here and gave me a gun to protect myself, when she was the one who needed help. She needed protecting.
* * *
Jase
* * *
I can’t handle one more thing going wrong.
My keys jingle as the ignition turns off and the soft rumble of the engine is silenced.
Wiping a hand over my face, I get out of the car, not caring that the door slams as my shoes hit the pavement. The neighborhood is quiet and each row of streets is littered with picture-perfect homes, nothing like the home I grew up in. Little townhouses of raised ranches, complete with paved driveways and perfectly trimmed bushes. A few houses have fences, white picket of course, but not 34 Holley, the home of Bethany Fawn.
Other than the missing fence, the two-story home could be plucked straight from an issue of Better Homes & Gardens.
Knock, knock, knock. She’s in there; I can hear her. Time passes without anything save the sound of scuttling behind the door, but just as I’m about to knock again, the door opens a few inches. Only enough to reveal a glimpse of her.
Her chestnut hair falls in wavy locks around her face. She brushes the fallen strands back to peek up at me.
“Yes?” she questions, and my lips threaten to twitch into a smirk.
“Bethany?”
Her weight shifts behind the door as her gaze travels down the length of my body and then back up before she answers me.
The amber in her hazel eyes swirls with distrust as she tells me, “My friends call me Beth.”
“Sorry, I’m Jase. Jase Cross. We haven’t met before... but I’ll happily call you Beth.” The flirtatious words slip from me easily, and slowly her guard falls although what’s left behind is a mix of worry and agony. She doesn’t answer or respond in any way other than to tighten her grip on the door.
“Mind if I have a minute?”
She purses her full lips slightly as the cracked door opens just an inch more, enough for her to cautiously reply, “Depends on what you’re here for.”
My pulse quickens. I’m here to give her a single warning. Just one chance to stay the hell away from The Red Room and to get over whatever ill wishes she has for my brothers and me.
It’s a shame, really; she’s fucking gorgeous. There’s an innocence, yet a fight in her that’s just as evident and even more alluring. Had I met her on other terms, I would do just about anything to get her under me and screaming my name.
But after this past week with Carter and all that bullshit, I made my decision. No distractions.
The swirling colors in her eyes darken as her gaze dances over mine. As if she can read my thoughts, and knows the wicked things I’d do to her that no one else ever could. But that’s not why I’m here, and my perversions will have to wait for someone else.
I lean my shoulder against her front door and slip my shoe through the gap in the doorway, making sure she can’t slam it shut. Instead of the slight fear I thought would flash in her eyes as my expression hardens, her eyes narrow with hate and I see the gorgeous hue of pink in her pale skin brighten to red, but not with a blush, with animosity.
“You need to stay out of the Cross business, Beth.” I lean in closer, my voice low and even. My hard gaze meets her narrowed one, but she doesn’t flinch. Instead she clenches her teeth so hard I think they’ll crack.
With the palm of my hand carefully placed on the doorjamb and the other splayed against her door, I lean in to tell her that there are no answers for her in The Red Room. I want to tell her that my brother isn’t the man she’s after, but before I can say a word she hisses at me, “I know all about Marcus and the drugs and why you assholes had her killed.”
The change in her tone, her expression is instant.
My pulse hammers in my ears but even over it, I hear the strained pain etched in her voice. Her breathing shudders as she adds, “You’ll all pay for what you did to my sister.” Her voice cracks as her eyes gloss over and tears gather in the corners of her eyes.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” I tell her as the rage gathers inside of me. Marcus. Just the name makes every muscle inside of my body tighten and coil.
The drugs.
Marcus.
Before I can even tie what she’s said together, I hear the click of a gun and she lets the door swing open, throwing me off-balance.
Shock makes my stomach churn as the barrel of a gun flashes in front of my eyes. She leans back, moving to hold the heavy metal piece with both hands.
Fuck! Lunging forward, still unsteady as dread threatens to take over, I grip the barrel and raise it above her head, shoving her small body back until it hits the wall in her foyer and she continues to struggle, pushing away from me and getting out of my grasp.
Bang!
The gun goes off and the flash of heat makes the skin of my hand holding the barrel burn and singe with a raw pain. Her lower back crashes into a narrow table, a row of books toppling over and a pile of mail falling onto the floor as I stumble into her and finally pin her to the wall.
My chest rises and falls chaotically. My body temperature heats with the adrenaline racing through me.
Her small shriek of terror is muted when I bring my right hand to her delicate throat. My left still grips the gun. I can’t swallow yet, I can’t do anything but press her harder against the wall, smothering the fight in her as best as I can.
She struggles beneath me, but with a foot on her height and muscle she couldn’t match no matter how hard she tried, it’s pointless. Her heart pounds hard, and I feel it matching mine.
“Knock it the fuck off,” I grit between my teeth.
She yelps as I lift the gun higher, ripping it from her grasp. Both of her hands fly to the one I have tightening on her throat. On instinct, like I knew she would. Did she really think she could get one over on me?
“You tried to shoot me.” I practically snarl the words, although they’re nearly inaudible.
Struggling to catch my breath, I don
’t let anything show except the absolute control I have over her. The door is wide open and I’m certain someone could have heard, although it’s a Monday and during work hours. It’s why I chose this time to pay her a visit.
A faint breeze carries in from behind and I take a step back, pulling her with me just enough so I can kick the door shut and then press her back to the wall. Her pulse slows beneath my grip and her eyes beg me for mercy as her sharp nails dig into my fingers.
The way she looks at me, her hazel eyes swirling with a mix of pain, fear and anger still, makes my chest ache for her, because I see something else. Something that fucking hurts.
She doesn’t want mercy. She wants it to end. I can see it so clearly. I’ve seen it before, and the unwanted memory is jarring in this moment.
A second passes before I loosen my grip just enough so she can breathe freely.
Through her frantic intake, I lean forward, crushing my body against hers until she’s still. Until her eyes are wide and staring straight into mine. The sight of her, the fear, the desperation... I know I’m not letting her go. Not yet.
“You’re going to tell me everything you know about Marcus.” I lower my lips to the shell of her ear, letting my rough stubble rub along her cheek. “And everything you know about the drugs.”
My mind is whirling with every reason I should walk away. Every reason I should simply kill her and leave this mess behind. She tried to kill me; that’s reason enough.
But I don’t want to. I need more.
With a steadying breath, my lungs fill with the sweet smell of her soft hair that brushes against my nose.
I comb my fingers through her hair and let my thumb run along her slender neck before I lean into her, letting her feel how hard I am just to be alive. Just to have her at my mercy.
“And because of that little stunt you just pulled, I’m not letting you go.”
