Page 262 of Secret Shifters Next Door

“About the curse? I’m gonna tell Ava what’s going on, then she’ll reject me outright. Boom, curse over. Bonus points for not going through the shit you guys did, and also not dying?—”

Steff held up a hand up. “Here’s the thing. I’ll be a devil's advocate for a second here. What if—and I know it’s a long shot—she doesn’t reject you?”

The idea nauseated me. I gave him a look that was half-disgust and half-incredulity. “Are you serious? I’ve been over this. Why would she want to mate with her dead boyfriend’s brother? I mean, I’d laugh if I saw her obituary in the paper.”

Steff gave a little shrug. “All I’m saying is that stranger things have happened.”

I waved his comment away and pushed up from my seat. “No way. She’d never go for it, and even if she did, she'd be the absolute last person on Earth I’d ever want to tie my life to. I’m going to go home, slam a shot or two, and go to bed.”

Tate laughed. “Dude, it’s like eleven in the morning.”

“Fine,” I said as I walked out the door. “I’ll slam some shots and play video games until bedtime. Happy?”

The drive back home was less angst-ridden. Most of my rage had petered out and devolved into a sort of numb depression. Idrove around town, not quite ready to head home yet, and took the street that led me to my old house—the home I’d shared with my brother. That house had been paid for with dirty money from Liam’s jobs for the Francis family.

As I crept by and looked up at it at, I couldn’t help but think it looked good—better than I remember it being. There was a little girl out front playing in the yard, and that made me happy. It meant the house still held happiness.

After Liam’s death, I couldn’t stand to live in that place. I’d put it up for sale two days after he’d died. By the day of the funeral, it was already under contract. I’d used the money from that sale and the cash I’d found in the hidden wall safe to start a new life away from Lilly Valley.

Soon, the memories started to get too much to bear. I pulled around the cul-de-sac, leaving the old house and the girl playing in the yard. The rest of the trip only took a few minutes.

When I’d left this morning, the house across mine had still had aFor Leasesign out front. Somehow, in the short time I’d been gone, that sign had been removed and now a car sat in the driveway.

Something tickled at the back of my mind as I leaned over to look at the license plate of my new neighbor’s car. Virginia plates. Who the hell had moved all the way from Virginia to Colorado? I frowned, then remembered that Harley and her kids had come all the way from New York. Quickly memorizing the plate number, I parked my truck and went into my house, the nagging feeling itching at the back of my mind.

I flipped open my laptop and pulled up the software we used at work. After some internal debate, I punched in the license number and state of issue. The results popped up less than a second later.

I flopped back onto my couch, staring at the screen. It really would have been funny if it didn’t piss me off so much. Islammed my computer shut and headed straight for the front door.

As I crossed the street and the yard of the house opposite mine, I noticed that the garage was open and several empty boxes were already sitting inside it. That hadn’t taken long. My teeth grinded against each other as I stepped up onto the porch and banged on the door. It took everything in me to only knock on the wood and not punch it until it broke apart.

A few seconds later, the door opened, and Ava stepped out, her eyes wide with shock.

TWO

AVA

My tears had finally dried. After I left the cemetery, I’d had to pull off into a gas station parking lot and sob for a few minutes. Seeing Blayne at Liam’s grave had made me more emotional than I’d expected. The anger and fresh hate in his eyes had hurt more than I thought it would. My timing couldn’t have been worse.

It’s not like I’d been in a good headspace when I’d run into Blayne. The night before, Dad decided to have a remembrance party for Liam. Everyone who’d known or worked with him had come over. There’d been toasts and stories and lots of tears. The tears were mostly from me. It had been a decade since he’d passed, but the pain was still fresh.

Seeing Liam’s brother the very next morning had almost been too much. It was like Fate herself was sitting there with a bucket of popcorn, laughing her ass off and watching me squirm.

The worst part was seeing his face. Blayne looked so much like Liam. They hadn't been identical, but there was a strong resemblance. The curve of the jaw, the nose, the eyes. Seeing him in that moment had almost been like stepping back in time and looking at the man I had loved once more.

Thinking about my father did not help my emotional state. The entire reason I’d come back home was to be with him. The phone call from Uncle Mike a few weeks ago had been a kick in the gut. My dad was sick. Cancer. My father, who’d always seemed indestructible, was being eaten alive by that awful disease. Mike had assured me they’d caught it in time and that it was treatable, but that didn’t make it any better. I’d called a local realtor that night to start looking for a short-term rental.

Mike had told me I could crash at the house, but there was no way in hell I wanted to do that. For at least four generations, I’d been the only girl in the entire Francis family. That was both a blessing and a curse. The blessing was that I’d always had protection, and my grandmothers, when they’d been alive, had doted on me like crazy. The curse was that none of my uncles or cousins knew what the hell to do with a girl. It was always an overload of testosterone, especially given what they did for a living. Staying in a house full of partying gangsters did not sound like the most relaxing thing.

The cross-country drive had taken me four days, and with every mile closer to Lilly Valley, I’d thought more about Liam and Blayne. The horror of that night all those years ago had played out a dozen times in my mind. As awful as it had been to see Liam’s dead body, the agony I’d seen on Blayne’s face had been almost as terrible. I couldn’t remember ever seeing someone so angry and hurt in my life.

The day before the party, my realtor let me know that she’d found me a place, and I’d signed the lease digitally before going to bed. It was part of the reason I’d stopped to see Liam. The real-estate app had shown that the rental was about half a mile past the cemetery. It seemed like it was meant to be, what with it being the anniversary of his death.

I’d swung by on the way to my new place…and there was Blayne.

I hadn’t even considered that I might run into Blayne at Liam’s grave, of all places. Blayne had left Lilly Valley the day Liam was buried, and I’d assumed he'd stayed away. Then Dad told me that he’d moved back home and started a business with some buddies. That information had set me on edge, but as small as Lilly Valley was, I’d assumed I’d still be able to avoid him if I was careful. That plan had evaporated in less than a week.

I pulled into the driveway of my new place and was pleasantly surprised. The pictures hadn’t done it justice. The envelope the realtor had given me the day before held a security fob that would open the garage and a set of keys. I hit the button on the fob and watched the door rattle up. I left my SUV in the driveway and unloaded the few boxes and suitcases I’d been able to pack inside it.

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