Split(21)

She steps out of the shadows, and my eyes, lids half-mast and vision lust-fogged, move up to her face—Oh God!

I stumble backward. Rip my hand from between my legs.

It’s her.

The woman from the diner and Mr. Jennings’s house.

I squint. She’s crying.

I crouch low and watch. She’s staring at the house and her cheeks are wet with tears. What was once the gentle sound of her humming has turned to quiet sobs.

Maybe she saw me and she’s upset?

But she’s still standing there, completely exposed. It’s as if the house itself is making her cry.

I blink against the strange urge to comfort her. As if women aren’t intimidating enough, emotional women trigger a darkness in me I can’t allow myself to acknowledge.

Who is she? The night I dropped Cody off, she was terrifying, but today at the diner she was kind. Gentle even. And with that piercing stare that sends my pulse racing, she’s the kind of pretty that makes my chest hurt.

Without another thought, I turn and scurry back to my room. I crawl beneath my sleeping bag and try to ignore the still heavy weight between my legs and the painful throb that begs for my hand. No. I push away images of the naked woman in the creek.

The room shrinks around me and I slam my eyes closed, begging for sleep to take me.





SEVEN



SHYANN


“So no one will hire you and now you’re desperate enough to come by and ask for your old job back?” My dad doesn’t look up from his newspaper and takes a sip of black coffee.

The smell turns my stomach, even though I had four cups and a plate of eggs and bacon in an attempt to cure my hangover. It didn’t work. After last night, I’m never drinking again.

Had I actually cried? The details are fuzzy, but I remember being naked in the creek. The lights were off in the river house; whoever Dad has living there was sound asleep while I stared and imagined the future my mom had planned to build in it. It was too much. The cold water sobered me up enough that a wave of pain and anger crashed over me.

But I don’t cry.

Not since she died.

So what the hell was that?

I swear this town is f*cking with my head. I pinch the bridge of my nose and pray for the ache between my ears to fade. “If you wanna be all technical about it, then . . . yeah.”

I hate this, I hate this, I hate this.

The fact is, I have no choice. I need money now, and the job is available now. Necessity shoves aside my pride. Sooner I make some money, sooner I’ll be gone.

“Fine.” He folds up his newspaper and smacks it down on his desk, kicking up a flurry of dust that lights up in the sunlight through the window. “But things have changed since you worked here in high school. Job now includes pickin’ up supplies from town when we need ’em. Didn’t want you driving to the city back then, but figure you’re a big-shot career woman now; you can handle it.”

“Okay, but—”

“Also might need you on job sites. Been spreading myself thin and we’ve been busier than ever.”

My head throbs. Is he yelling?

“And the pay, you’ll get twenty an hour to start. If you prove your salt, I’ll raise that.” His eyes go over my shoulder at the sound of the office door opening and he waves in whoever is behind me.

“Whoa, Native American Barbie.” My brother plucks the shoulder hem of my blouse. “Nice threads.”

I smack his hand. “Shut up.”

He chuckles and drops into the seat next to me, propping his work-boot-covered feet on my dad’s desk and dropping a decent amount of dirt off the tread in the process.

My dad stands and grabs his tool belt from a nearby table that’s in no better shape than his desk. “Get started out there, then in here. Cody and I’ll be out most of the day.”

“Aw, shit . . .” Cody’s voice is laced with laughter. “She caved.” He pushes his black hair off his forehead. “Less than twenty-four hours. That’s gotta be a record.”

“Cody, up.” My dad’s growl erases my brother’s cocky grin. “Got work to do, so does your sister.”

My brother pushes up to stand. “Hell yeah she does.” He whistles low and his gaze moves around the room. “Dad, I don’t know how to tell you this, so I’m just going to come out and say it.”

My dad drops a stack of overstuffed file folders into my lap, spilling their guts to the floor at my feet. “What’s that?” How he’s managed to run a successful company and not know the first thing about organizing paperwork is a damn mystery.

“You’re a whore.”

My dad freezes and glares at my brother. “Fuck does that mean?”

“This.” Cody holds his arms out, motioning to the entire room. “You’re hoarding.”

“Code, someone who hoards is not a whore.” The rumble of irritation is heavy in my dad’s voice, either from impatience or from my brother’s idiocy.

“Of course they are.” Cody laughs.

“No. They’re not, dumbass.” I wrangle the file folders back into my arms and carry them to the reception desk.

Cody ruffles my hair, pushing it into my eyes, and I’m stuck unable to clear it.

“You dick!”