It Happens

by Vale, Lani Lynn

  That whoever was making his home in her attic had appeared about three months ago based on her bills going up around that time.

  “Since I had free time, I also tackled my internet people, too. My internet at home has been shit lately, and I wanted to call them and find out why, but apparently you have to be at home to do that for troubleshooting purposes. And then I came in here, and you were all talking about that woman, and it was just the cherry on top.”

  Liner blinked. “That’s…unfortunate.”

  Jubilee giggled, then turned her eyes to me. “Why are you talking about that horrid woman and Arkansas?”

  I made a split-second decision. “My mom asked me to come home for a few days…and your mom agreed with her. They think since we’re already off of work and halfway there, that we should just come stay for the weekend.”

  Jubilee opened her mouth and then shut it.

  “I don’t want to go home,” she blurted.

  I felt my lips twitch. “You’re really going to tell our moms no?”

  She bared her teeth.

  “Yes.” She looked away from me and focused on Liner, who was looking at her with amusement on his face. “No.” She scowled at him. “Shit.”

  I snapped off one of my gloves and held out my hand for my phone.

  I texted my father back one-handed, telling him to tell our moms what had just gone down, and closed it before shoving it back into my pocket.

  “I have off until Monday,” I said to her before reaching for another glove.

  “Fine,” she said stiffly. “But we have to stop somewhere on the way, first.”

  “Where?”

  ***

  Four hours and nineteen minutes later, in the last hour of our ride, she pointed to something.

  It was a sign.

  “You want to go to a haunted house?” I asked.

  She looked at the billboard for the haunted house that we were passing and then shrugged. “Sure. I don’t get scared easily, though. Just for your information, in case you were going to try to scare the shit out of me.”

  “Why is that?” I asked, tossing a look over at her before returning my eyes to the road.

  I mean, if I thought I was living in a haunted house like I’d heard her and Turner say before, then I sure as fuck would’ve been at least wary.

  I hated wearing my helmet, but it was nice to be able to communicate with Jubilee without having to wait for stoplights.

  “You won’t believe me,” she said.

  I grinned. “Try me.”

  She squeezed my waist just a little bit tighter, and then said, “I feel like I’ve been followed around my entire adult life.”

  I frowned, heart rate starting to pick up. “What do you mean?”

  “Well,” she hesitated. “It started when I was about sixteen.”

  My brows rose. “What started?”

  “The feeling that I wasn’t alone,” she said. “Right after Annmarie’s death, it almost felt like she hadn’t left the earth, and instead stayed with me to watch over me. Except for her ‘watching over me’ creeps me the fuck out. Luckily, it wasn’t all the time. Only sporadically. Or at least it was in the beginning. Now it feels like I’m being watched constantly.”

  I felt my stomach knot, and my hand burned to call my dad and tell him what I’d just learned.

  “Tell me more of this feeling,” I ordered as I gestured to Liner, who’d decided to go with us, that I was turning.

  He nodded and dropped back, following me when I turned down the road that supposedly led to the best haunted house in the south.

  “What do you want to know?” she asked, her hands tightening as we made an almost ninety-degree turn.

  “What makes you think that someone’s watching you?” I asked.

  Other than having someone actually living in your attic.

  “Well, when I moved into my house, for instance, it was a nice, comfortable place that I loved.” She paused. “Then I was living there for like a month, and all of a sudden I felt like it was too small.” She shrugged. “I always feel like someone’s there when I’m walking outside. Or when I’m running. That’s why I started running at the track. It’s so lit up and open most of the time, I can see someone for at least a hundred yards in every direction.”

  That was understandable.

  But, knowing that, I knew that she’d never run again without me there to make sure she was safe, even if I had to ride my goddamn bike beside her to make sure of it.

  I pulled up to the haunted house and winced at the large line that was wrapped halfway around the parking lot.

  “This is going to take hours to get through,” I grumbled, looking over at Liner who’d pulled up beside me.

  Liner looked in disgust at the line as well.

  “It’ll be okay,” she assured. “I swear to God, it’ll be fun!”

  It was not fun.

  Not even a little bit.

  After spending two hours in line—not one like she’d assured us it would be—Liner and I finally got up to the front with Jubilee sandwiched between us.

  At first, we’d been all together, but the closer we got to the front of the line, the more assholes turned into assholes and started to push and shove.

  It didn’t help that the haunted house served alcohol to the line, getting them nice and drunk by the time they arrived at the front.

  Meaning people didn’t have any sort of boundaries any longer to keep them in line. When the pushing started, Liner would glare at them at our backs, and I’d glare at them at our fronts.

  Needless to say, by the time we got to the entrance, neither Liner nor I were in the mood.

  Jubilee, though, was happy as a clam.

  She had a beer in her hand, and she was laughing her ass off at the sign.

  If you are not this drunk, you might want to turn around and wait in line for another hour.

  “Oh, that’s a good one,” she giggled. “I think I’m good.”

  She was.

  Most assuredly.

  “All right then, we can go.” I tugged on her hand and led her through the entrance.

  It wasn’t scary.

  It was funny, however.

  Being sober as hell, and having Jubilee slightly tipsy, everything scared her.

  Her bravado from earlier took a flying leap the first moment someone jumped out at us with a hatchet.

  The only thing I could say was that they were lucky that it was plastic, because had that been real, I’d have laid the motherfucker out.

  Liner grumbled under his breath.

  “Fake shit,” he muttered. “I can’t believe I agreed to come in here.”

  “I can’t believe you didn’t just scream like a girl,” Jubilee slapped her hand on her chest. “Jesus Christ, I swear to God, I felt my soul leave my body.”

  I looked down at my woman.

  And she was that—mine.

  Everything about her was something that had always been just a little bit mine—even when she wasn’t technically mine—I’d just been too stubborn to see it. Plus, honestly, it had been harder every passing year to continue with our animosity.

  It didn’t matter that she’d asked me to go to this stupid place and participate in something that was seconds away from being the worst part of my week. All that mattered was that she loved it, and had enjoyed herself.

  “Which hall do we go down?” she asked once we got to a fork in the hallways. “That one says exit, and that one says, ‘bad things lie this way.’”

  “I vote the goddamn exit,” Liner muttered.

  Jubilee rolled her eyes and walked down the one that was labeled ‘bad things lie this way.’

  Of course.

  I had to hand it to the creators of this haunted house. It was fairly creepy with the way that it was decorated.

  But I just couldn’t get into it today. Not with knowing what I knew about Jubilee’s actual haunte
d house that wasn’t haunted as much as infested with a parasite.

  “I can hear screaming from behind us,” Jubilee laughed.

  I could as well.

  In fact, I could hear pounding feet as well, which was why both Liner and I were both looking back instead of forward.

  The pounding feet ran toward the exit, and when we turned back around to look in front of us, there was a man standing there, bloody knife in hand. Right the fuck there.

  That was when Liner screamed like a girl.

  High-pitched. Long. And goddamn loud.

  It was long seconds later, once he’d finally run out of breath, that everyone just stared at him like he’d just pulled his dick out and waggled it at everybody.

  “Oh my God! Did you see that knife? Why were there holes in the blade? I hate holes, like that,” he gasped, breathing like a racehorse that’d just run in the Kentucky Derby. “Goddamn Trypophobia is no fuckin’ joke.”

  I’d heard of that as well.

  “That’s creepy as fuck,” I finally said to the silence.

  The man chuckled and backed back into his hidey-hole, waving us on.

  “We’re just going to forget that ever happened,” Liner said to the two of us.

  “What happened?” Jubilee was shaking with laughter.

  “I know where you live,” he grumbled. “And I’ll make sure to never let you take a nap.”

  Her mouth dropped open in affront. “You wouldn’t dare.”

  “Try me and find out.”

  Chapter 14

  If I say goodnight and an hour later you see me online, that doesn’t mean that I lied. It means that I’m a failure.

  -Jubilee explaining her night habits

  Jubilee

  I didn’t want to be back in my hometown.

  Honestly, I wasn’t quite sure how it’d happened.

  One second, I’d been at Brittany’s, ready to go back home, and the next I was on the back of Zee’s bike heading back to where I never wanted to go again.

  Sure, I’d been back before.

  But never on the back of Zee’s bike where everyone and their brother could see us riding in on his Harley.

  “What’s with that look on your face?” Zee asked from my side.

  “She’s scared of her mommy,” Liner teased.

  I flipped Liner off, causing him to laugh.

  Speaking of mommy, I could see my mother in the booth of the diner sitting next to Zee’s mom, Carrie.

  Carrie was looking out the window and slapped my mother across the chest when she saw us pull up to the diner.

  “Shit,” I muttered again.

  Liner started to laugh. Zee sighed, resigned to his fate.

  “Are you sure you want to do this?” I repeated for what had to be the thirteenth time.

  “Yes,” he answered. “If we didn’t go see them, they’d just come see us. Then we’d have no control over them leaving.”

  I sighed and dismounted the bike, my legs shaky from being on the back of it so long.

  Zee, who’d followed right behind me, caught me around the waist almost instinctively when I started to wobble and pulled me into his body.

  “I agree,” I muttered. “But it still doesn’t make this feel any better. I feel like I’m walking into my doom. Even now they’re getting all giddy.”

  And they were. My mother was practically bouncing in her seat as she stared, open-mouthed, at us. Her eyes were on Zee’s hand on my waist, and she was practically salivating.

  “She’s going to ask for kids the moment you walk in the door,” Liner guessed.

  I felt my heart sink.

  “She knows that I can’t have them,” I murmured softly. “She’d never bring it up just because she knows how bad it hurt me to hear those words when I was struck by lightning.”

  Liner grunted. “I can’t have kids, either. Thanks to my dad.”

  I looked over at him in surprise. “What happened?”

  “Beat my ass so bad that I got an infection that wracked my body for days. I laid on the floor of my bedroom for four days with such a high fever that I nearly died. When I came to on day six, fever free, it was to find out that I was in the hospital after my mother finally thought I might die and not make it. Killed all my swimmers,” he answered. “Mostly. There are a few in there, from what I’m told…but not many. Like one in a hundred thousand chance of having kids.”

  I felt my stomach fall.

  “I was told that the lightning zapped all my eggs. Hell, I don’t even have periods like normal people,” I told him.

  Zee squeezed my waist as Liner shrugged. “You’re with the wrong man, then. We’d have been perfect together.”

  Zee bared his teeth at Liner. “Who have you been texting all day every day?”

  Liner’s eyes went distant. “A man that’s good at finding people.”

  My eyes narrowed. “Who are you wanting to find?”

  I had a feeling I knew who, and I wasn’t sure that it was a good idea.

  “I’ll let you know when I find her,” he said.

  I hoped that he didn’t. If it was the woman I was thinking about, she only brought pain and heartache with her.

  I’d heard stories of her through Zee.

  And Liner, though he may seem like a hard ass on the outside, definitely had a soft middle.

  Which was why he was with Rome in the first place, because he knew that Rome might need support when it came to getting a tattoo that memorialized his dead son. As for why he was with us and not riding back with Rome, I had no clue. But I planned to ask Zee the first chance I got.

  “They’re taking pictures,” Liner said suddenly.

  I looked up to see my mother taking pictures, stretched clear across the diner table with her phone pressed up against the glass.

  “I don’t even know what to say to that,” I admitted. “I think we should turn around and head home, though. That seems the best course of action.”

  As if my mother sensed my thoughts, though, she pointed at me with one beautifully manicured finger and mouthed, “Get in here!”

  Zee chuckled and pushed me forward by bumping my hips with his. “Go, before she comes out here and really makes a scene.”

  I did, dragging my feet the whole way.

  “The last time we were here together was with Eitan and Annmarie,” I told him as we finally got to the entrance. “They’re sitting at the booth that has our pictures on it.”

  “Maybe they remodeled since we were here last,” Zee said, sounding hopeful.

  They hadn’t. I could tell that the moment we walked into Lucian’s Diner.

  It was the same wood-paneled wall. The same black and white checkered tile floor. The same weird wooden booths that were made more for one and a half people rather than two.

  Oh, and the walls were still decorated exactly how we’d left them.

  Lucian was one of the Dixie Wardens Arkansas Chapter. He’d allowed the club kids to decorate, and Annmarie and I had decorated the booth that my mother and Carrie were sitting in.

  Annmarie and I had been fourteen at the time, and you could tell based on how we’d decorated.

  But, admittedly, it was one of the better ones and could be worse.

  My mother squealed and peeled herself out of the booth, barely waiting for Carrie to get out before she followed suit.

  The moment I got close enough, Zee let my hip go and skirted around my mother for his.

  My mom hit me like a freight train, her arms going around me and squeezing me so hard that all the breath left my lungs.

  Over my mother’s shoulder, I watched as Zee pulled his own mother in and wrapped her up in his muscular arms.

  “Your dad called and told me about you and Zee, but I wouldn’t believe him until I saw him start to steady you before you fell on your cute little butt,” she whispered frantically. “When did this happen?”

  I thought about lying b
ut decided better of it. What would be the point?

  My mother had always known when I was lying, and the outcome of my choices always ended up biting me in the ass.

  “A few weeks,” I shrugged. “Since the night.”

  Understanding dawned on her face. “Oh.”

  She knew the night I was talking about. She also smirked her ass off.

  “So how drunk were y’all?”

  I opened my mouth to tell her I wasn’t so drunk that I wasn’t able to remember some stuff, but Zee heard the question and said, “Drunk enough for us to do shit that we never would’ve done sober.”

  That was the truth.

  Hell.

  He was so right.

  I never would’ve gone near him that first time had I been in my right mind.

  Carrie let her son go and walked toward me, wrapping me up in her arms just as my mom had done only moments before.

  “It’s so good to see you, baby,” she whispered.

  My mother and Carrie had been best friends since before time. They’d actually been the ones to introduce Gordon and my father.

  Now they were all best friends, married, and had kids that’d been together, too.

  But I was sure that they hadn’t seen Zee and me coming.

  Hell, I hadn’t either.

  “Let’s sit.” Carrie squeezed my hand. “I’m starving.”

  “When I called earlier, you’d just eaten,” Zee said, gesturing for his mother to sit down in her previous spot.

  Carrie did, as did my mother, leaving Zee and I the half booth across from them.

  There was such little room that the two of us had to touch from knee to shoulder, as well as him have half his thigh hang off the outside.

  Liner, who’d been silent up until this point, pulled up a chair and sat, not caring that he’d forced Zee to get even closer to me to permit him room.

  Not that I minded. Having Zee pressed up against me, his arm wrapped around my shoulder pulling me in close, was my version of heaven.

  My hand went to his thigh, and my head went to his shoulder, as I stared at my mother staring back at us.

  Her eyes went to the scars that lined my left arm to disappear under my shirt, only to move over to Zee’s right arm.

  I couldn’t read her face, so it took me a moment to realize that her thoughts weren’t bad like mine always were when I thought about my scars.