Page 66 of The Spider & the Storm

“Not a lot to say.”

She sighed wistfully. “Gonna be really awkward when we spend the drive back to the hotel in total silence.”

My brow furrowed as my eyes quickly narrowed with suspicion and protest. I thought about Morgan, that girl in the cemetery all those years ago. It'd been my one and only random hookup, as Luke had called it. I had no intention of doing it again—and especially not with Stormy girl. I couldn't put my finger on why, but she seemed worth more than that.

Shedeservedmore than that.

I shook my head. “I don't—”

“I just meant I don't want to walk through the parking lot alone,” she quietly explained. “Blake's been taking me back everyday since … you know … and, um, I just figured since you live across the street, you could—”

“Oh. Sure,” I interrupted brashly, feeling stupid for assuming anything otherwise. “Yeah, I can do that.”

She sighed as her lips curled in a soft smile. “Thanks, Charlie. I appreciate it.”

“Yep,” I replied as I read between her lines, aware of the things she wasn't saying, confirming my earlier suspicions.

Despite not knowing me, I made her feel protected—safe—and I wanted to find comfort in that.

But, God, if she only knew how wrong she was to believe those lies …

Man, she probably wouldn't want to be alone with me at all.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CONNECTICUT, AGE TWENTY-TWO

Luke’s AA meetings were held in the basement of a church, which was conveniently located just across the street from where I worked at the cemetery.

After breaking Ritchie’s already-crooked nose a second time in a bar fight, Melanie and I had held yet another intervention with my brother, begging him to get his shit together. He accused us of not truly giving a fuck about him and that we only wanted him to clean up his act for our own benefit. And okay, sure, there was some truth to that. Melanie still wanted to marry him for some reason, and I had no desire to bury the last living member of my immediate family.

We loved the hell out of him—there was no denying that, so we didn't even try.

But what we truly wanted, more than anything, was for him to find enough love for himself to get better and not die of alcoholism before the age of thirty.

We wanted him to want to live, and somehow, we were convincing enough for him to give sobriety another shot.

Now, one of the stipulations was that he wasn’t to drive himself anywhere. Not until we all—himself included—could trust that his desire to survive was louder than the beckoning call of his addiction. So, on the days he attended his meetings, Melanie would drop him off, and after work, I’d pick him up.

It was a workable system, one we'd easily slipped into comfortably with surprisingly few complaints from Luke.

That was, until I met Jersey.

***

I left work early one day due to a stupid, minor cut on my hand from the hedge clippers. Marty, my boss, had insisted he could handle things on his own despite being older than the dirt we shoveled, and I'd left reluctantly, only to avoid his crochety attitude.

But there was a half hour to kill before Luke would be done at his meeting, and so I stepped inside the coffee shop next door to the church to grab something quick to drink.

I spotted her stark-white hair the moment I walked in, and I was lured to its light like a moth to a candle’s flame. I didn’t mean to stare as I stuttered stupidly through giving her my order—which should’ve been easy, given I was only getting a small black coffee—but I couldn’t help myself.

I’d never seen someone so stunning before in my life, and all I wanted to do was burn her image to my brain, just so I’d be able to remember her later when I had the chance to bring the tip of my marker to the drawing pad.

But to my surprise, she was also taken by me, and she gave me her number before I could leave.

And in the weeks that followed, Jersey brought out a side of me I’d never known before, and for that, I saw her as a savior.

I fellhard. I fellfast. And so did she.

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