Smother (21 page)

“Reese?” The voice was feminine, and so familiar. It was a voice she had at one time loved. The sound of it equally sliced her open and soothed an abhorrent part of her that still longed to hear it.

That was why she never changed her phone number, because a stupid part of her was hoping one day her mom would call her and say she finally, finally believed her, and that she was sorry for picking him over her daughters. But it would never happen, and even if it did, Reese didn’t think she could forgive her.

She grabbed a cigarette and lighter, climbed onto the roof, and waited. Reese shivered, wondering when snow was once again going to put a damper on her rooftop visits. Maybe she could wear snowshoes when that happened. Or take her chances falling off the roof. Sue Leo’s ass, though she knew she’d never win that case.

“Your father—”

“Not my father,” Reese bit out and hunched down as she lit the cigarette. She quickly, deeply inhaled, enjoying the burn.

“He’s the only real father you ever had. He was good to you, you know he was.”

Her fingers tightened on the cell phone. Yes, a little too good, a little too loving. Nausea hit her, potent and unavoidable.

“I don’t know where he is,” she wailed.

Reese exhaled slowly. “And I care? What the hell are you calling me for? I told you not to contact me.”

“I don’t understand you. I don’t understand this hatred,” she whispered.

No, she probably wouldn’t, because she was purposely blind.

“You have to move on. We all lost Morgan—”

“Don’t talk about her,” she cut in sharply. “Not to me.”
You killed her. He killed her. We all killed her.

Her mom inhaled noisily, voice shaking as she continued. “Brad didn’t come home from work eight nights ago, and at first I thought maybe he was drunk somewhere and sleeping it off, but he didn’t show up at work either, and . . . the cops have been looking for him. No one’s seen him. This isn’t like him. I don’t know—I . . . I have no one to talk to. Reese—”

Her stomach clenched as her eyes lifted to the building across the street. “Haven’t seen him, and if I had, I would have shot the bastard. Don’t call me again.” Reese ended the call, sucked her cigarette down before she put it out on the sole of her shoe, and climbed back into the apartment.

Reese’s movements were jerky as she set the lighter and pack of cigarettes on the coffee table. With an out of control pulse and shallow breaths, she paced the length of the living room, hands twisted into her hair. Just talking to her mom brought so many bad memories back.

When she finally told her mother what was happening, she called her a liar and slapped her face. She told her to leave and never come back. It was the only time her mom struck her, and even when she did, Reese saw the truth in her eyes, saw her inwardly deny what she knew to be factual.

She’d chosen the monster over her daughters.

One time in seven years her mom called her, and it was to tell her Morgan was dead. Reese brought a hand to her mouth when a pained moan escaped her. She’d left her sister there, in that house, with him. Reese was seventeen, just a child herself, and she couldn’t take care of Morgan. That didn’t matter. All that mattered was that she left her, and because of that, Morgan died.

Morgan was seventeen when she got behind the wheel of a car and drove into a tree. There was alcohol and traces of cocaine in her system. The officials said it was an accident, that someone or something must have made the car go off the road. They said there hadn’t been enough time to slow down.

Reese knew the truth.

That had been her answer to the question she would never ask. He’d done to Morgan what he’d done to her. Her hand fisted and her nails dug into her palm. She welcomed the pain, wanted it. Deserved it. Her sister killed herself to get away from the blackness forced upon her soul, and at times, Reese envied her, even as she hated her for not being strong enough to live.

Because a look at Reese’s life was proof that living was so much better.

Her sad blue eyes haunted her—the way they pleaded with her not to go just before she stepped out of the house of deceptive wickedness and into the unapologetically indifferent world. Tears burned her eyes, fell down her cheeks in a blanket of anguish. Morgan wasn’t saved by Reese or their unknown father—she was saved by the unending slumber of the dead. Reese imagined it wrapping its black arms around her sister to hold and comfort her as it drew her into the soil until she became a part of it.

Reese closed her eyes, shaking her head. She considered pouring the bottle of vodka in her kitchen down her throat, but she feared even that wouldn’t take the restless edge off. She was walking toward the kitchen with the intention of making a drink when her cell phone rang again. Her stomach swooped when she saw Leo’s name and number on the screen. How did he always seem to know when she was at her lowest?

“Yes?”

“Come to the shop.”

“I don’t—” She pulled the phone from her ear and sighed when she saw he’d ended the call. Reese put the phone on the arm of the couch and pursed her lips as she looked out the living room window. It was snowing—large, white snowflakes dropping from the sky to coat the ground below. She watched it for a minute, thinking it pretty, and because of that, turning away.

Grumbling to herself, she got her jacket from the closet and shrugged it on. Her boots were unlaced and she left them that way, easily sliding them on. She grabbed a stocking cap and gloves from the shelf, shoving them on as she left the apartment. As she walked outside and into a shield of frozen air that seemed to wrap itself around her and refuse to let go, she wondered why she was listening to his demand. Giving in to Leo did not benefit her in any way. She told herself it was curiosity that was pulling her toward him, and nothing else.

Reese looked up and abruptly stopped walking, which made her slide a few feet in the snow. Her arms pin-wheeled as she fought to stay upright, making an ungraceful picture for anyone happening to look her way. Fortunately for her pride, Leo was not. His back was to her as he strung Christmas lights above the shop windows. The whole scene was wrong, messed with Reese’s perception and altered him in a way that shouldn’t be possible. It added softness where only hardness should be.

Purposely bumping into him just to make him stiffen and then move away, which was exactly what he did, Reese said, “Getting into the Christmas spirit, are you? Or is this because of my comment about Christmas lights on Thanksgiving? You’re just trying to irritate me, right?”

He wordlessly handed her a string of lights.

She took them, staring at the shoulder blade that was directly in front of her eyes. “If you’re going to boss me around, you could at least tell me what we’re doing.”

“We’re putting up lights.”

“Yeah. I get that. Why?” She started on the opposite side of him, finding the hooks he’d already put in place to hold them.

“I like them.”

She glanced at his profile. His jaw was unshaven, making it darker and more defined. She watched the breaths that left him, picturing them on her skin instead of being wasted into the air. His pale skin was flushed with cold, which was a conundrum to her. Cold should steal the color from things, not bring it to them.

“Are they pink?” She laughed at the glower he flashed her way.

Leo stretched over her, bringing his chest close to her back, as he folded the lights into the hooks she couldn’t reach. She caught a hint of his scent as he moved, just a brush of his warmth, and then he was gone.

“Something wrong with pink?”

“What?” Reese blinked, stepping away from the window.

He plugged the cord in and the front of the shop lit up with pink lights. She snickered, holding her hands over her mouth to hide the smile. Leo’s lip twitched. They weren’t buddies. She really didn’t know what they were. Employer and employee seemed lame, but she supposed it fit, even if they were something altogether different from that. She knew she enjoyed his company much more than she should.

The question left her mouth without her consciously deciding to ask it. “Would you tell me if you did anything to them?” She didn’t have to say who.

Leo glanced at her. “No.”

Reese hopped on her feet and tried to remain semi-unfrozen. The urge to drink was grabbing hold of her, growing, whispering in her brain that she needed it. “Are they the only ones you may or may not have done something to?”
Did you do something to Brad?

“You know I won’t answer that.”

“Right. Can I go now?”

The skin around his eyes tightened. “Something happened. What?”

“How do you know that?”

“Your eyes. You’re fidgeting. Your questions,” he added after a pause.

“I guess you know me pretty well, huh?”

“Know you well enough.”

“I got a call from my mom and now I want to drink myself into oblivion. Happy? Now you know.”

He turned to stone, but his eyes shifted over her face. “What did she say?”

Reese frowned. “She said not to drink milk on Sundays. Why? What’s it to you?”

“Didn’t know you talked to your mom,” was his vague response, and it was given after a tense, drawn-out moment.

“I don’t. Okay, so, I’m going now.” Reese turned to go, wanting to escape him and the memory of her mom’s voice. She wanted to escape it all.

“Reese.”

She stopped. “What?”

He looked torn, and it was an odd expression for his face to wear. “You can say no, even if you’re saying it to yourself.”

“Oh, shut up, Leo,” Reese said in a tired voice, not wanting to listen to his elusive, insightful comments at the moment. “Enjoy your pink lights.”

She crossed the street to get back inside her apartment, where it was warm. Her alcohol was calling, its tune piercingly persuasive. Leo’s words mocked her as soon as she reached for the bottle of alcohol, and she shoved it away, going for a walk instead. Reese walked until her legs hurt and her fingers, nose, and toes were icicles. She let her mind go numb, and it was cathartic. The walk lasted only thirty minutes, but that was thirty minutes that kept her away from her vices.

She entered the apartment building and stumbled to a stop at the sight of the petite form and pretty face. Josie Stewart sat on the steps that led up to Reese’s apartment. She had to be waiting for her, but Reese had no idea why. Blue eyes veined with red were set in a swollen face, and she looked unnaturally pale. The auburn hair, usually shiny and full, hung limp and dull around her face. She hugged herself as she hesitantly stood up and moved from the stairway.

Reese didn’t talk, her mouth and voice uncooperative. Why now, of all days? Why on this day when she’d already had to deal with her mom? She had spent the last year trying to pretend none of them existed. She’d never wanted to see Josie again, yet here she was, making it impossible for Reese to continue on that oblivious path of hiding what used to be.

“Reese?” she beseeched, the hesitancy in her tone making it seem like she wasn’t sure if she really knew the woman standing before her. Josie stepped closer, bringing the faint scent of honey with her.

“How did you find me?” Her lips were stiff, making it hard to talk.

“It’s a small town. I asked around.”

“Why? What do you want?”

Tugging at her tight lavender top, Josie looked away as her lower lip quivered. “I—I’m scared.”

Whatever had transpired between Josie and Sawyer to bring her here, Reese didn’t feel sorry for her. She didn’t want to know. She wanted her to leave.

“You knew what Sawyer was like when you got involved. You saw things. I told you things. If you’re scared of him, I can’t help you.”

Josie was in Sawyer’s life before Reese, and she guessed that should have been a sign. Josie was the permanent fixture while Reese was the temporary. Maybe Josie thought Sawyer would treat her better than Reese. From the looks of her, she was wrong.

She met Reese’s gaze, unleashed tears making her eyes appear crystalline. “Something happened to Sawyer.”

Sawyer hit Reese and she took it, because she took any part of him she could get. She knew what he was doing when she wasn’t around. She knew she wasn’t the only one. And she didn’t even care. Reese took the pain, because it eventually fell into pleasure.

A bad taste formed in her mouth. “I haven’t seen either one of you in over a year now. Why would I care about anything that involves the two of you?”

Sawyer would punish her, and then he’d love her.

Reese would cry, and then she wouldn’t
.

Josie’s eyes shifted in her head and her face crumpled. “He’s in the hospital! This man . . . this scary, huge man, just showed up at the bar last week and picked a fight with him. He hit him and hit him and . . . and . . . wouldn’t stop hitting him.”

She openly cried and her small frame shook with her tears. “It was horrible. The sounds—the look on his face . . . he was cold, so cold.”

“What does this have to do with me?” Even as Reese asked it, icicles of awareness told her she already knew.

Josie dropped her hands from her face and Reese’s eyes immediately went to the yellow and purple splotches on her collarbone. She sniffled, wiping at her eyes. “He said your name. Sawyer asked him why, and all he said was your name.”

A chill went through her as she raised her eyes to the windowed door that faced the tattoo shop. “I’m not the only Reese in the world.”

“You’re the only one we know,” Josie countered.

“Is he going to live?”

“What?”

“Sawyer.” The name twisted on her lips, filled her mouth with the disease of the past. “Is he going to live?”

Josie’s mouth hovered open before she closed it. “Yes. His nose is broken, some ribs, and his left wrist, but he’ll be okay. I mean, he’ll live. He’s such a mess right now.”

Relief lowered her shoulders—not for her ex-boyfriend, but for Leo and what his actions could have cost him, had a life been taken. It had to have been him. It was too much of a coincidence with her confession and then this happening. But how did Leo know who to find, and where to find him? And why did he do it?