River Bodies (Northampton County #1)(16)

Romy curled up at the bottom of the bed. Becca pulled the covers to her chin and stared at the dark ceiling. It was strange lying in the bed she’d slept in as a child, comforting and upsetting at the same time. The only reason for a grown woman to return home was if she had failed in some aspect in her life. Or if her father was dying. Or both.

She rolled to her side. She could just make out the poster of Green Day on the wall. Her cell phone went off. She reached for it on the nightstand. Matt had sent her three texts. He was worried. Please text me. Let me know you made it to your dad’s safely. Please tell me you’re okay. She shouldn’t reply. Let him worry the way she’d worried, staying up the night before, pacing their condo, wearing the carpet with fret.

She rolled onto her back, cell phone in hand, and typed, I’m fine. She was the better person. She was the sort of person who did the right thing.

But not always.





CHAPTER EIGHT

John felt a warm body next to him in bed. He rolled to his side, scooped Beth into his arms. Beth. He buried his nose in her hair, searching for her scent, but instead he smelled cigarette smoke and what he thought might be some kind of cheap perfume or bad hair spray. His brain was slow waking up, and the night before was fuzzy, but he knew something wasn’t right. For one, Beth’s smell was all wrong. Beth’s hair smelled sweet like some kind of fruit, strawberries or kiwi, something natural rather than something cheap from a bottle. And the body tucked against his didn’t feel right. This body had bony hips and protruding ribs where Beth was a full-figured woman with soft padding on all her curves.

He flipped onto his back, covered his eyes with his arm, the memory of last night seeping slowly into place one painful minute at a time. He’d gone to Sweeney’s with Hap for a drink, and then the guys had surprised John with a stripper. He must’ve had more to drink than he’d realized and brought the damn girl home with him. He glanced at the back of her head, her bleached-blonde hair. Something downstairs fell onto the floor. Someone moaned. It was coming back to him, the guys riding their bikes here with the girls, how he’d driven straight home but the guys had stopped briefly, riding circles in front of Clint’s house, a stupid stunt.

More rustling came from the rooms below.

“Wake up,” he said to the blonde and nudged her shoulder, wanting her out of his bed, his marital bed that he’d shared with Beth until now.

“Come on.” He nudged her again. She swatted his hand away.

He sat up. His head pounded, and the room was out of focus. It took his eyes a second to adjust. When he thought he could stand without falling over, he swung his legs to the floor, pulled on the pair of jeans that was lying by his feet. He looked back at the girl in the bed. There were bruises on her arms and one the size of a fist on her thigh. Jesus, had he done that? He didn’t think he had, but hell if he could remember.

He tapped her arm. “You have to go.” She was young, maybe early twenties. Too young. “Now,” he said, sliding his hands under her arms and sitting her upright.

“What the fuck is your problem?” she growled. Her eyes were blackened with smeared makeup. Glitter glistened on her neck and shoulders. Hell, the glitter was all over the bed. He looked down. His chest hair sparkled.

He didn’t allow his eyes to roam her body or the bed after that. Instead, he searched for her clothes on the floor, a little skirt and some kind of tiny shirt. “Here, get dressed.” He wanted her out of his bed, out of his room, and out of his house. It had been a mistake. He hadn’t meant to bring her here or do what he’d done. An image of her scrawny body wrapped around his cut across his mind. He pushed it away.

He kept his back to her. When she’d finished getting dressed, he escorted her downstairs. Bodies littered the couch and floor. Ashtrays and bottles cluttered the coffee table. The whole place smelled like whiskey, sweat, and cigarettes. The two spare bedrooms contained more of the same.

“Here.” He put a couple hundred bucks in the girl’s hand. She took the money and, without saying a word, shoved it into the pocket of her skirt.

“Well, uh, thanks,” he said and pointed to the door.

“Do you expect me to walk home?” she asked.

Shit.

The toilet flushed. Chitter emerged from the downstairs bathroom. He looked like John felt. His face, pasty and damp, didn’t look human. His dark curls were matted and stuck to the one side of his head. His left eye drooped.

“Hey, darlin’,” Chitter said, then turned to John. “You got any coffee?” He sat in the only empty chair in the living room and turned on the TV.

The girl sat at the kitchen table while John put a pot of coffee on. He swallowed two aspirin and chased it with a large glass of water. He refilled the glass from the faucet and set it along with the bottle of aspirin on the table in front of her.

“Thanks,” she mumbled.

He stared at her.

“What?”

He pointed to her arm and the black-and-blue marks. “Did I do that?”

She covered them up with her hand. “No,” she said. “You didn’t. But don’t you be asking me who did. You hear? Mind your own goddamned business.”

John tossed up a hand, a signal he wouldn’t ask her any more questions, but the notion some punk had struck her enraged him, and a familiar protective instinct flared inside his chest.