Page 3 of Star-Crossed
She couldn’t help but be super curious.
And crazy jealous.
She hadn’t had to bite down to silence an orgasm since—
“Anyways, I’m sorry,” she said, pushing that thought into the chained compartment where it would live forever. “Guess I’m still washing the blunt East Coast off me.”
Gemma giggled. “To be fair, people have been calling you a bitch way before you left for the East Coast.”
Lyra leveled Gemma her best attempt at a sarcastic but not bitchy look. Then she realized there was no such thing, so she shrugged and walked around the counter to put the abandoned palo santo wood next to its other smoky, fragrant neighbors of incense and sage.
Bitch.
The word stung, but Lyra knew the shoe fit. Ever since she’d slid into this world seventeen seconds before her sister, she’d been beset with mild to moderate irritation. People thought she was a bitch? They should get a load of what she didn’t say.
Shrugging, scanning the crowded shop for any remaining customers, she said, “What can I say, it’s a gift.”
The old couple lingered by the crystal balls, the woman clutching a handful of tarot cards like they were Willy Wonka’s golden tickets. Both kept glancing over at the twins, and Lyra wondered how long it would take them to slide the tarot cards into the pocket of his cargo pants.
She tapped her foot, anxiety pooling in her gut along with the backed-up sewer water in the basement. She needed themoutso she could deal with the plumber currently cursing at the pipes below. She could literally feel the vibrations of his work beneath her feet.
To her astonishment, the couple finally made their way to the register. She rang them up and hurried them out before flipping the sign to “Closed.”
Sagging against the door, she scrubbed her hands over her face.
It wasn’t that she’dmeantto abandon her life back east. The intention had been to just take a little sabbatical.
But a world like hers unraveled quickly, and she realized she’d allowed her ex, Harrison Lynch, to put everything in his name. After he’d smashed their relationship into a million pieces, she’d crawled back to Townsend Harbor with her tail between her legs, too numb to do anything but go through the motions of her old life.
Now here she was.
Stuck.
No roomy high-rise apartment with a great view. No partner track (thanks to Harrison’s subsequent slander). No fiancé with flawless style and a heroic capacity to believe his own bullshit.
A little money saved, and no direction in life.
“Gemma? Lyra?” Guillermo’s voice echoed up through the floorboards. “You better come see this.”
Great.Just great.
Sighing, Lyra descended into the basement, the smell intensifying with each step. At the bottom, she found the plumber elbow-deep in a pipe, his expression grim.
“The clog’s farther in than I thought,” he said through gritted teeth. “There’s a place back here where the roots of that ash tree between the buildings have grown into the foundation and the plumbing. Gonna need to get it removed before I can finish the repairs.” He shook his head, pulling a cluster of small roots free and lifting their soggy, mud-laden gnarls to show them.
Lyra’s stomach twisted into similar knots.
Please, not the tree… That would mean…
“You’re going to need an arborist.”
Fuck.
She licked her lips and forced a tight smile. “What if I paid you to just yank the tree out and install new pipes? Would that work?”
The plumber frowned. “Young lady, you ain’t listening. I can’t do a thing with these pipes until that tree’s gone, and I can’t move the tree, either. Cy the Tree Guy is gonna have to do it.”
Panic surged in Lyra’s chest as she turned away, groping for the rickety stairs.
