Page 3 of Canvas of Lies
“Look, I’m just about done here, if you want to head out to ship those packages. Thanks for your help today.”
“Anything for you, boss,” Erin chirped. “And text that poor guy back! You need some fun in your life, Kat. It’d be good for you to go out, have a drink, maybe get laid once in a while. Let him dazzle you with his nerdy charm. You might be pleasantly surprised, you know.”
I snorted and waved her away. As Erin left the office, silence descended, cloaking me in peaceful solitude. I leaned back in my chair and closed my eyes, ignoring the internal organs of the Teddy Ruxpin that lay spread across my desk.
Breathing new life into old things was my drug of choice. I couldn’t recall a time when Ididn’ttake things apart just to put them back together again. Inspecting their inner workings, surrounded by gears and gadgets, I could drift into my own little world, like entering a daydream, while I returned an object to its former glory.
If only my life outside of work were so easy to fix.
Business was booming at Kat's Keepers, the vintage toy resale shop I’d started when I was still in college. With Erin to assist in managing inventory and scouting for items, we made enough to maintain a small warehouse at the edge of Spruce Hill, New York, where rent was cheap. The only other business nearby was a car garage called Saucy Wrench, owned and operated by a handful of female mechanics. I’d only been there a couple times for oil changes, but I felt like we were kindred spirits inhabiting this side of town.
The property wasn’t smack dab in the middle of Main Street where all the shops were located, but casual foot traffic wasn’t really my market. We fixed up antiques and collectibles, things that most people didn’t see the value of aside from a hit of nostalgia.
Running my little business was about as far from my father’s glamorous lifestyle as I could get. I still recalled with perfect clarity the look of utter disdain on his face the time I’d asked him to stop at a yard sale when I was six years old. Though I doubted there’d been anything worthwhile to find—or that my childhood self would have recognized it back then—the spread of old toys and dolls across that wide driveway had looked like heaven to my young imagination.
So many things I could’ve fixed, even if only to give them a destination that wasn’t the trash.
I couldn’t deny that I now found a great deal of satisfaction in making a good living in a way that disgusted my father. It wasa win-win situation all around. And now that I had Erin to help out, everything was easier.
After I reassembled Teddy, I placed him back on the shelf and finished loading up a box of unsold toys to drop off for donation the next day.
Some of my resale items went for a decent amount of money, but anything that didn’t sell, no matter how long I’d spent fixing it up, I donated to a local charity called Path of Hope that helped refugee families establish homes in the area. I’d started volunteering with the organization in college and stayed involved through every stage of building Kat’s Keepers from the ground up.
No matter how long it’d been since we moved into the warehouse, there was something eerie about being on my own after Erin left. The two of us were practically complete opposites, but we worked well together. I hadn’t realized how lonely I was before she joined me, and I often didn’t notice just how lively she made things until she was gone.
Still, in the silence, Erin’s advice haunted me.Have fun, get laid.
I scoffed. The business had simply taken up most of my free time as I got it off the ground, that was all. I had plenty of fun, but I didn’t want to waste time on a meaningless fling that was more likely to hurt a sweet guy like Alan than to give me any kind of fulfillment before I ended things.
“I have plenty of fun,” I mumbled aloud.
When the obnoxious cuckoo clock on the wall chimed the hour, I drew on the butter-soft leather jacket I’d picked up at a thrift store the previous month, shut down my computer, and made my way to the back door of the warehouse. In the dark winter months, Erin and I took care to leave together—it wasn’t a bad area of town, if Spruce Hill even had such a thing, but the deserted parking lot behind the warehouse could be unsettling in the dark and I felt responsible for Erin’s safety.
We even took a self-defense class together one summer, and while we’d spent more time laughing than trying to take one another down, I always figured the two of us could tag-team an assailant in the event we needed to actually defend ourselves.
In September, though, the sun didn’t set until after seven, so I had no qualms about sending her home when I lingered until the clock struck five. I hummed a jingle from some old gum commercial while I locked up and activated the alarm system. As I rifled through my purse, looking for my trusty lip gloss, an engine growled and I spun toward the sound.
A white van was parked at the side of the building, blocking the driveway into the parking lot—the kind of van with no windows in the back.
The kind I always imagined a kidnapper would drive.
For a second, I froze, then a familiar grin flashed at me through the passenger’s side window before the door opened and a blast from my childhood hit me like a cannonball to the stomach.
“No freaking way,” I breathed. “What the hell are you doing here, Nico?”
Memories galloped through my head, both good and bad. Sweet moments shared with my first and best friend melted into the hurt of him turning away, keeping his distance from me, leaving me aloneagain, and bitterness crept in.
Nico closed the door of the van and leaned back against it, crossing one foot over the opposite ankle like he had all the time in the world to stand there staring at me. Fuck, he looked good. He’d grown into those long limbs and his hair was as unruly as ever, falling nearly into the dark eyes that surveyed me from head to toe in a warm, leisurely way that threw my pulse into overdrive.
I scowled at him. “Nice van. Did you go into kidnapping after college? Become a pirate, after all?”
God, that smile. It’d been ten years since I last saw him and it still had the same power to hurl me right back to the height of my adolescent crush.
“No, Kitten,” he said quietly, “but we need to talk.”
Anger bubbled up into my throat. Back in high school, I would’ve given my right arm for Nico to talk to me. His unexpected appearance tonight filled me with a riotous mixture of fury and hope.
It made me want to scream.
