Ruthless Creatures (Queens & Monsters, #1)(27)

“Hmm. Just your fingers, huh?”

“Be gone, evil witch.”

“Sorry, but you’re stuck with me.”

“Why does every phone call with you end with me wanting to find a tall building to jump off?”

She laughs. “That’s love, babe. If it doesn’t hurt, it isn’t real.”





It’s funny how an offhand remark can turn out in the future, like some horrible prophecy, to be such perfectly accurate truth.





11





Nat





A month goes by. Then another. Thanksgiving comes and goes. Teaching keeps me busy during the days, and Sloane, Mojo, and my art keep me busy at night.

I started painting again. Not the meticulous landscapes I used to do, but abstracts. Bold, violent slashes of color on the canvas, emotional and unrestrained. Landscapes are all about what I see, but these…these are all about what I feel.

I won’t show them to anyone. They’re more like spiritual vomit than art. I assume it’s a phase that will pass, but for now, I’m into it.

It’s way cheaper than therapy. Works better, too.

David’s letter had me unsettled for a while, but by the time December arrives, I’m in a place where I’m grateful for that one last piece of contact. That final missive from beyond the grave.

I’ve finally accepted that he’s never coming back.

Sloane was right: he had an accident. He went hiking that morning and lost his footing. The trails were rough. The terrain, steep. The canyons of the Sierras were carved by ancient glaciers cutting through granite, and some of them dive four thousand feet down from the peaks.

No matter how experienced he was in the wilderness, it couldn’t save him from that one narrow stretch of rocky trail that crumbled under his weight and gave way, sending him tumbling down into oblivion.

There’s no other plausible explanation.

It took me five years to accept, but now that I have, I feel…well, not exactly at peace. I’m not sure I’ll ever get there. Accepting, maybe. And grateful.

Grateful for everything we had, even though it wasn’t destined to last a lifetime.

My lifetime, anyway.

And if every once in a while I’m sure I feel someone watching me, I chalk it up to having a guardian angel looking out for me from above.

The only other alternative is that I’m suffering from paranoia, and I’m really not prepared to deal with that.

When my doorbell rings two weeks before Christmas, it’s six o’clock. It’s dark outside, snowing steadily, and I’m not expecting anyone, so I’m surprised.

I’m also just about to take cookies out of the oven. One more minute and they’ll be done, two and they’ll be burnt to a crisp. The oven hasn’t been replaced since the house was built in the sixties, and I’m pretty sure it’s possessed by the devil.

I hurry to the door, pulling off my oven mitts. When I get the door open, I’m distracted. I’m also looking down, so the first thing I see is a pair of big black boots dusted with snow.

I look up from the boots to see more black: jeans, shirt, wool overcoat with the collar turned up. The eyes staring back at me are a shade lighter than black, but they might as well be for how darkly they burn.

It’s Kage.

My heart plummets to somewhere around my kneecaps. I say loudly, “You.”

“Yes. Me.”

His voice is that same low, lovely rumble, a velvet stroke along my skin. The man should get a second job as a DJ on a porn radio station, if there is such a thing.

When I only stand there staring at him like a lunatic, he says, “You dropped your oven mitts.”

It’s true. My cheery red Santa-and-reindeer Christmas mitts lie discarded on the threshold between us, dropped in my shock at seeing him.

At least I didn’t swallow my tongue.

Before I can recover from my surprise, he leans down, sweeps up the mitts in one of his big paws, and straightens. But he doesn’t give them back to me. He stands holding them like they’re a prized possession and he’ll only hand them over for a steep price.

“You’re back. I mean, you’re here. What’re you doing here?”

Not exactly neighborly, but I thought I’d never see him again. I thought I’d never have to deal with the hysterically shrieking hormones his presence always ignites.

Gazing at me steadily, he says, “I had business in Vegas. Thought I’d drop by and say hello. I just got in.”

“Drop by? Vegas is an eight-hour drive from here.”

“I flew.”

“Oh. I thought I just heard on the news that they stopped all the flights into Reno-Tahoe International due to bad weather?”

“They did. Just not mine.”

He looks at me with such intensity, my heartrate skyrockets. “Why not yours?”

“I was flying the plane. I ignored the call to reroute.”

I blink at him. “You’re a pilot?”

“Yes.”

“You said you were a debt collector.”

“I am.”

“This is confusing.”

“I’m a lot of different things. It doesn’t matter. The point is that I stayed away as long as I could. A little bit of fucking snow wasn’t about to stop me from getting here.”