Page 16 of Slow Burn
Determined to prove just how untouched she could be, she got up, got ready, and found herself out on First Street. She wandered with no real intention of buying anything, only catering to the need to keep her mind from spinning endlessly over Frank’s pale face and Cole’s weighty stare. Window displays became her refuge—bright distractions against the burden she carried.
When the bell over a shop door jingled and a couple emerged, voices sharp with an argument, it took her too long to recognizethem. Daniel and Lydia Abbott. Her father and his chosen family.
Her pulse kicked hard, and she ducked into the nearest boutique, slipping behind a mannequin like a child hiding from monsters. It wasn’t fear so much as unwillingness. She had no energy to confront the people who had built a life around erasing her.
From her hiding place, she watched them pass, their clipped words heavy with a kind of practiced resentment. Not a rare fight, then, but the sort of chronic friction that wears people down grain by grain. A strange pang stirred in her chest—anger, pity, maybe both—but she stuffed it down and turned away.
Might as well get something out of this turn of events.
The boutique smelled of warm vanilla, enveloping her in sweetened nostalgia. It was her mother’s favorite scent, and that detail alone softened her enough to step toward the racks. She let fabrics whisper through her fingers, indulging in the quiet pleasure of texture and color, until a voice startled her.
“Hello! Sorry for keeping you waiting!”
Jocelyn turned, heart stumbling, and froze. The woman who entered from the back carried her own ghost—familiar but altered by time. Natasha Abbott. Her half-sister.
They stared at each other, the moment stretching like warm molasses.
“Um, hi,” Natasha said, her voice unsteady.
“Hi,” Jocelyn echoed.
Memories sifted up like dust motes. They’d gone to the same school for a time but had never spoken beyond the unavoidable. Lydia had seen to that. And now, here they stood, grown, opposite in almost every way except for the faint trace of Daniel Abbott in their long frames.
The contrast between them struck Jocelyn hard: her own chestnut hair, her mother’s brown eyes, against Natasha’s salon-gold waves and pale blue stare. Two women made from different halves of a man who had never known how to hold them both.
“What brings you in?” Natasha asked, smiling with a practiced warmth that didn’t seem false but did feel… cautious.
Jocelyn hesitated, then gestured vaguely toward the door. “I was just…”
Natasha’s brows rose when she didn’t finish.
Jocelyn waited another beat but couldn’t bring herself to lie. “Hiding.”
“Hiding?” Natasha repeated.
She exhaled. “Yeah. From… your parents.” Her fingers curled into her palms. “They were arguing.”
Natasha sucked in a breath, her cheeks flushing. “Oh.”
“I didn’t want to make things weird…er.”
Natasha reached up to tug on a shiny gold hoop at her earlobe. “Well, they make it weird enough for everyone.” Her mouth tipped sideways. “They do that. A lot.”
The honesty loosened something in Jocelyn, but not enough to quiet the ache beneath it. She wanted to say more, to explain herself, but words tangled.
Natasha, thankfully, shifted the conversation. “Anything strike your fancy? I can help you find something.”
The moment rebalanced, and Jocelyn let out a breath. “I haven’t had a chance to really look yet.”
Natasha moved easily, flipping through a few pieces on the rack, glancing at Jocelyn sidelong. “I’ve got some linen pants in longer inseams. Figured you might understand the struggle.” She gestured down her body.
Jocelyn gave a startled laugh, surprised at how natural it felt. “Yeah. We definitely have that in common.”
The words hung between them, heavier than they sounded. A reminder of what they shared and what had always separated them.
“That would be great,” she hurried to add.
Natasha nodded with a smile and headed back to where she’d come from. Jocelyn released a captive breath. After twenty years, this was a hell of a way to run into her sister.
