by Tijan
Knowing Jase Cross lied to me.
They had something to do with her murder. Maybe even him.
Tears leak from my eyes as I stumble in the kitchen.
“No,” I whisper, and force myself to stand. It will say something else. I tell myself it will, and the sinful whisper in my head reminds me, Hope is a long way of saying goodbye.
Swallowing down my heart and nerves, I push myself to stand, only to hear a creak.
Thump, goes my heart, and this time the beat comes with fear.
I couldn’t have heard that right. No one is coming. No one is here, I tell myself, even though my blood still rushes inside of me, begging me to run, warning me that something’s wrong, that someone’s here who isn’t supposed to be.
I keep silent and hear the sound of my front door.
Thump. Terror betrays my instincts. Stealing my breath and making me lightheaded.
The foyer floor creaks again and the front door closes, softly. A gentle push. A quiet one meant not to disturb.
The creaking moves closer and I listen to it with only the harsh sound of my subdued breath competing with it.
And I’m too afraid to even whisper, “Who’s there?”
A Single Kiss
“Grief does not change you, Hazel. It reveals you.”
― John Green, The Fault in Our Stars
Book 2
From USA Today best-selling author W Winters comes a gripping, heart-wrenching tale of romantic suspense that will keep you on the edge of your seat.
I should feel shame for not wanting this to end, but he doesn’t want it to end either.
When the darkness sets in with the flames all flickered out, and the loud click of the locks signal it’s over, that’s when reality comes flooding back.
The war. The drugs. All of the lies that weave a tangled web for me to get lost in.
I don’t want any of it.
I only want him. Jase Cross. My enemy. And yet, the only person I trust.
With broad shoulders and a smoldering look in his dark eyes, Jase is a man born to be powerful.
I shouldn’t give him more power than he already has…
Jase Cross will be my downfall.
Prologue
Jase
It’s odd the things you remember in the midst of fear. Fourteen years later, and I still recall the cracks in the cement; the sidewalks were littered with them. This particular one though… I remember it in vivid detail, probably because of what happened immediately after.
Against the old brick building of the corner store, a green vine had found its way through the broken cement and climbed up the wall. I remember thinking it had no business being there. The crack belonged, but the new life that had sprouted up and borne what looked like a closed flower wasn’t supposed to be there. Nothing beautiful belonged on that street.
The dim streetlight revealed how lively it was, even that late at night. With shades of green on the perfect vine and its single leaf with the bud of a flower just waiting to bloom, it made me pause. And in that moment, I hated that it was there.
I was almost eleven and maybe that childishness is why I scraped my shoe against the leaf and stem, ripping and tearing them until the green seemed to bleed against the rough and faded red bricks. I know I wasn’t quite eleven, because Mama died right before my birthday that year. It was her medicine that almost fell out of the overfilled paper bag I was gripping so tight as I continued to kick at the wall before feeling all the anger and hate well up and form tears in my eyes.
Life wasn’t fair. Back then I was just learning that truth, or at least I’d felt it somewhere deep in my bones, although I hadn’t yet said it out loud.
Mama was getting sicker. Dad’s condition was getting worse too, although he couldn’t use cancer as an excuse. Thinking about the two of them, I continued to kick the wall even though my sneakers were too thin and it hurt to do so. The bottles the clerk had given me to give my dad clinked against one another in the bag, egging me on to keep kicking until I felt a pain that I’d given myself. A pain I deserved.
All the while, the bottles clinked.
That’s what I had gone out to get, even as my stomach rumbled. I had enough money left over to get something to eat, but Dad always demanded the receipt. If he saw that I spent his change, I knew it’d be bad. I knew better than to take his money. Times were hard and I would eat what I was given to eat and do what I was told to do.
I picked up the medicine and beer for my folks on the way home from dropping off something at a classmate’s house on the other side of town. Maybe a book I’d borrowed. Those details are fuzzy over a decade later. I didn’t have many friends but a couple of students pitied me. I was the smallest one in the class and we couldn’t buy everything I needed for school. The other kids didn’t mind letting me borrow their things every once in a while. I never asked the same person in the same week and I always gave stuff back promptly. Mama always smiled when I told her I’d just gotten home from giving things back to my friends. I told her they were my friends, but I knew better. She didn’t though.
I’m not sure what I’d returned that night or to who. Only that I had to go by the corner store on the way home.
None of that mattered enough to remember, but the damn flower I’d killed, I remember that.
It was the shame of nearly crying that made me take that detour, right at the damaged sidewalk that was free of what wasn’t supposed to be there anymore. I cried a lot and that’s why everyone looked at me the way they did. The teachers, the other kids, the clerk at the corner store. They always got a certain look on their faces when they saw the dirty, skinny kid whose mother was dying.
They didn’t look at my older brothers that way. They were trouble and I was just… not enough of anything other than a kid to feel sorry for.
I stalked down the alley to hide my face in the darkness, only to meet a man I thought was a figment of everyone’s imagination.
He was like the boogeyman or Santa Claus; all myths I didn’t believe in.
A lot of people called him the Grim Reaper, but I knew his name was Marcus. It’s what my brothers called him. I thought they were messing with me when they’d told me stories about him, right up until I looked into Carter’s eyes and he shook my shoulders because I wouldn’t listen.
Don’t ask for Marcus, don’t talk about him. If you hear his name, run the other way. Stay the fuck away from Marcus.
Swallowing thickly, I remember the harsh look of fear that Carter never allowed to cloud his expression and his tone that chilled my spine.
The second I lifted up my head about halfway down that alley, staring at where I’d heard a soft cough in the darkness, in that moment, I knew it was him.
I thought I knew fear before that night. But no monster I’d conjured under the bed ever made my body react like it did when I saw his dark eyes focused on me. His breath fogged in front of him and that was all I could see as my grip involuntarily tightened on the paper bag. It was late, dark and cold. From the icy chill on my skin, down to my blood and even deeper to the core of what makes a person who they are, suddenly it was freezing.
So I stood motionless, paralyzed in place and unable to run even though every instinct inside of me was screaming for me to do so.
I remember how gracefully he jumped down from his perch atop a stack of crates, still hidden in the darkness. The dull thump of his shoes hitting the asphalt made my heart lurch inside of my chest.
“What do you want?” I braved the words without conscious consent. As bitterly cold as I’d been seconds ago, sweat began to bead on my skin. Sweat that burned hotter than I’d ever felt, knowing I dared to speak to a man who would surely kill me before answering my question.
A flash of bright white emerged in the blackness as he bared a sick grin. I could feel my eyes squint as I searched desperately for his face. I wanted to at least see him, see the man who’d kill me. I’d heard the worst thing you could see before you die was the fac
e of the person who ends your life. But growing up here, I knew it wasn’t true. The worst thing you could see were the people all around you who could help, but instead chose to do nothing and continue walking on by.
The streets were quiet behind me, and somewhere deep inside, I was grateful for that. At least if I begged for help, no one would be there to deny me a chance to be saved. It would end and there would be no hope. Having no hope somehow made it better.
“Your brother has an interesting choice of friends.”
Again my heart spasmed, pumping hard and violently.
My brother.
I was going to lose my mother; I knew I would soon. She was holding on as hard as she could, but she’d told me to be strong when the time came and that was a damn hard pill to swallow. I’d already lost what semblance of a father I had.
My brothers…. they were all I had left. I suppose life is meant to be suffered through loss after loss. That would explain why the Grim Reaper showed up, whispering about my brother.
I don’t know how I managed to answer him, the man who stayed in the shadows, but I questioned, “Which brother?”
He laughed. It echoed in the narrow alley, a dark and gruff chuckle.
For years that followed, every time I heard footsteps behind me or thought I saw a figure in the night, I heard that laugh in the depths of my mind. Taunting me.
I heard it again when my mother died, loud and clear as if he was there in that empty kitchen. It was present at her grave, when I saw my closest brother dead in the street, when my father was murdered and I went to identify his body—even when I first killed a man out of vengeance when I was nineteen years old.
That demeaning laugh would haunt me because I knew he was watching. He was watching me die slowly in this wretched world and yet, he did nothing.
“Carter,” he finally answered me. “He’s making friends he shouldn’t.”
“How would you know?” I asked without hesitating, even though inside I felt like a twisted rag, devoid of air and feeling.
“I know everything, Jase Cross,” he told me, moving closer to me even as I stepped back. The step was quick, too quick and the one free hand I had crashed behind me against the rough brick wall from the liquor shop. It left a small and inconsequential gash just below my middle knuckle. Eventually the gash became a scar, forming a physical memory of Marcus’s warning that night. His laugh stayed in my mind after that night, and like my scar, served as a permanent reminder of him over the years.
He neared the dim strip of light from the full moon overhead, the bit that leaked into the alley, but still he didn’t show himself.
I nearly dropped the bag in my grasp when he came even closer and I had nowhere to go.
“I have a message for you to deliver to him,” he told me. “If he ever goes against me, your entire family will suffer the consequences.”
“Carter?” I breathed his name, shaking my head out of instinct from knowing Carter hadn’t done anything. “He doesn’t know anyone. You have the wrong person.”
All he did was laugh again, the same sick sound coming up from the pit of his stomach. I repeated in the breath of a whisper, “Carter hasn’t done anything.”
“Not yet, but he will.” The words were spoken with such confidence from the darkness. “And I’ll be watching.”
He left me standing there, on the verge of trembling as he walked away. The pounding in my chest was louder than his quiet footsteps although I didn’t dare breathe.
That was the first night I met the man I would now call my enemy. Whatever fear I had for him as a child has turned to resentment and spite.
That’s all he is. He’s only a man. A man with no face, a hefty bag of threats and a penchant for eliciting fear in all who dare to walk the streets he claims as his own.
These aren’t his streets. He has no right to them, but I do.
He treats this world like a game; the lives and deaths of those around us are only pieces on a board to be lost or taken, used however he’d like.
But the mistake he made is simple: He dared to meddle and bring Bethany into this game.
She’s mine. Only mine.
Not a pawn for him to play with.
It’s time for Marcus’s game to end.
Bethany
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.
A numb prickle of fear races up and down my body like a thousand needles keeping me still. All the while, my heart’s the only thing that’s moving. It’s frantic and unyielding as it thrashes inside of me.
The floorboards creak again as someone moves toward the stairs while I keep my feet firmly planted in the kitchen. Someone. Who? I don’t know.
No one has ever walked into my home unannounced and I know it’s not Laura; I know it’s not Jase. Just thinking his name sends another chill down my spine. The fear, the regret, the unknown from what I just read in The Coverless Book are all things I can’t dwell on right now. Blinking furiously, I shut the wayward trail of thoughts down.
No, it’s not Jase.
It’s someone else, someone with bad intentions. Deep down, I can feel it.
If I'd just been back in the living room when the door opened, back there where I was a moment ago, reading The Coverless Book and using this notebook to jot down the underlined words… if I'd been there, whoever just opened the door would have seen me instantly. If I'd left the notebook in the living room, and not in the drawer in the kitchen, whoever it was, would have seen me. I wouldn't have had a chance to run.
Fate spared me, but for how long?
My fingers tremble as I silently set the notebook down on the counter, devising a plan.
Get my phone. Run the hell out of here. Call the cops.
It’s as simple as that. If I can’t get the phone, just run.
Whoever it is, they’re heading upstairs and once I hear the creaking from the floorboards move from the stairs to one of the bedrooms, I’ll move as quickly and quietly as possible. I can barely keep it together while I’m waiting, listening, and feeling the numbing fear flowing over my skin.
Hot and cold sensations overwhelm my body at once and I don’t know how I’m even capable of breathing with how tight and raw and dry my throat is. All I know is that I can’t fail. I can’t let him know where I am.
My movements are measured as I release the notebook. The second I do, I hear another person open my front door. Thump, thump, thump. My heartbeat is louder than anything else. Another person’s here. I’m not in control as I instinctively back away from the threshold of the kitchen, closer toward the back of the house.
One person and then another.
Thump, thump, thump.
Abandoning all reason, I turn my back to where they are, ready to hide somewhere as quickly as possible. Somewhere. Where? Where can I hide? My head whirls with panic. I need to hide.
My body freezes when I hear my phone go off. It’s still where I left it in the next room over, the living room. Footsteps come closer, closer to me, closer to the threshold of the kitchen where they can see me. No, fuck, please no. Inwardly I beg; I plead.
I’m trapped in the narrow kitchen with three people sneaking into my home. I can’t die here. Not like this. Not after everything that’s happened. It would be more than cruel to make me suffer in the last weeks of my life, like this.
I know if whoever it is stops at the coffee table where my phone is, he won’t be able to see into the galley kitchen, but that won’t stop him from moving on once he picks up my cell. Even more, he’ll know for certain I’m here. I wouldn’t leave without my phone, so they’ll know. Fuck!
Thump, thump, thump. I wish I could quiet the pulse that’s banging in my ears faster by the second.
Forcing myself to calm down and think as I hear a murmur from only ten… maybe twelve feet away in the other room, I focus on anywhere I could conceal myself. The pantry is the obvious solution, but it’s so full, there’s no way. Plus the shelves come out too far.
With numb fingers
, I pry open the cabinet door for the recycling. The bin is still outside where I left it for pickup yesterday. It’ll be cramped, but I think I can squeeze myself into the small space. I don’t know the chances they’d open every cabinet of the kitchen, but I don’t have anywhere else to hide.
My feet are heavy and my limbs rigid. I’m not as quiet as I wish I was. But I’m quick. I’m damn quick as I cram myself inside of the cabinet, the faint scent of spilled wine that’s leaked from empty bottles hitting me at full force, along with other less than desirable odors.
I couldn’t give two shits about what it smells like. All I care about is if they heard. Please, please. The telltale sound of shoes on the tile lets me know someone’s here.
The weight of the steps is heavy; they have to be from a man. Both hands cover my mouth out of an instinct to be quiet, just as my eyes slam shut tight and refuse to look. I pray he didn’t hear. If he heard the sound of a cabinet… fuck. Please, no.
I swear whoever it is can hear my ragged breaths and the ringing in my ears that’s so fucking loud I can barely hear them walk into the kitchen. Them. Multiple footsteps.
Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck.
I can’t think about it. I can’t be here right now. Not my mind. The stress and fear wrap around my body like barbed wire, tightening by the second and forcing me to fight it, to move, to react. I can’t be here. This can’t be happening.
Go somewhere else. My own words, words I’ve told patients many times slip into my consciousness. Go somewhere else.
“Have you ever thought about what it would be like to be pregnant?” my mother asks me with a devious grin. Her knee rocks back and forth as she sits in the chair, playing with her long hair that’s draped over one shoulder. “Like, to be Talia right now? Could you imagine?”
I was hoping she’d remember today, but at least she’s talking. That’s good, I tell myself. It’s good that she’s happy today, in whatever time she’s living in, it was a happy one for her.
