Page 42 of Tempting Fate

Now, I’m not a terrible best friend.

I’ve tried to tell her.

Every time I broach the subject, she cuts me off.

Rock meet hard place.

My hard-headed best friend can be frighteningly stubborn when she wants to be. I swear that’s half the reason her relationship with my twin never worked out. They’re too alike. The love they share isn’t strong enough to withstand the constant arguments since neither one of them is capable of backing down for the sake of peace. Somehow, what doesn’t work between them is the foundation for our decade-long friendship. Where she holds a grudge with Sander over the minutest slights, when we argue, it’s nuclear until we hash out our problem, then all’s forgiven and forgotten.

As another trio of old ladies descend on me, weariness takes hold. While I appreciate the bond I share with the other old ladies, I’m wilting. Today has been a trial. A walk down nightmare lane. A physical and emotional battering. I don’t want to be alone with Zeke, not until I’ve come to terms with what I did and I’ve found a way to explain it to him, but I can’t deal with this many people either.

Maybe I can talk Nadia into hiding me in her room?

“Mumma,” Slash raises his voice above the din. “Think it might be time for everyone to give Cherub some space.”

Crystal Hudson has a painful past of her own.

I don’t know the exact details.

But scarred souls recognise similar suffering, so she understands me better than most.

Therefore, after her son’s comment, Crystal takes one look at me and bursts into action. A flurry of orders follow as she sets about shooing everyone out of the room. Some women are sent to tidy the kitchen, others are dispatched to check on the kids in the family quarters and set up the beds. Nadia disappears out of the door behind me before she can be given a chore, but Honey isn’t so lucky.

She gets laundry duty.

If I said I didn’t giggle at that, I’d be lying.

Sometimes a little pettiness is good for the soul…

“Take your time, Cherub, I’ll make this area off-limits,” Crystal tells me. She pats Slash’s jaw. “Look after her, mo ionmhas.” When she pinches her son’s chin between her fingers, he obligingly leans down and presses a kiss to her cheek. “Venom will be breathin’ fire as soon as he finds out you’ve commandeered his Lily… make the most of it.”

Ice-blue eyes filled with misery, he nods. “Always.”

I’m not sure what to make of her comment, and I’m even less certain as to the meaning behind Slash’s bleak response. My plan to ask him what they meant as soon as we’re alone dies when I find myself mute and frozen like a statue after Crystal hugs me.

Her embrace is quick.

It’s comforting.

It breaks me.

The door closes behind her, whisper quiet, yet I jerk like it was a thunderclap. As my skin ripples with awareness and my pulse races, I waver on the spot. Crystal’s small gesture, human connection at its most basic, was the final straw. I could deal with everyone’s sympathy, the sadness in their eyes as they took in my battered face, the bruises around my neck, my limp. The fear in their eyes that spoke to the shock of their discovery that the Shamrocks’ influence isn’t always enough to keep us safe sits heavily in my heart.

Yet a simple touch from one of my favourite women was the final straw.

She was scared for me and of me.

I wasn’t just her little treasure in that instant. I was a broken woman, someone she had to placate, someone she had to protect, someone who brought violence to her doorstep. My stupidity five years ago put her husband and sons at risk. My bad decision made her life a target.

I am poison.

Toxic.

She’d never say that to me.

None of them would.

But it’s the truth.

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