Page 3 of Dead Love
“Kora,” she said. “Kora Nova. My mother owns the flower shop. You might know my father—he’s the sheriff?”
Telling me everything when she knew so little about me? What a trusting girl.
“What’s your name?” she asked.
The door to the flower shop rattled open, interrupting our conversation. The sheriff exited, heading toward his squad car parked a few shops down. Kora faced the stream below us again.
“Why were you crying?” I asked. I couldn’t help myself; I wanted to poke at her shallow pains.
“My parents,” she said. “They won’t let me go anywhere. This,” she smacked her hands into the railing, “Thisis the first time they’ve ever left me alone. Why did I think they would let me go to college? I’m just their precious little flower.” She turned to me, baring her teeth. “But you don’t help a flower grow by blocking out the sunlight.”
I grinned to myself. Poor little girl couldn’t go to college. But there was venom in her voice like she was holding back parts of herself, knowing they couldn’t escape. I wanted to mold that, to squeeze her until she erupted from the seams.
“Your life isn’t over because you can’t go to college.” I chuckled to myself. “You’re—what, eighteen? Your life has barely begun.”
“It’s not just that.” A cry rattled through her chest, the tears rushing back. “Even though I want to go, I can’t leave. No matter what I do, I’m stuck here.”
“And you always will be,” I said. She stiffened, and I turned to the moon’s reflection on the water. “This world traps all of us.”
And it always would, until we were rotting in the ground.
Those tears shuddered to a halt. The trails on her cheeks shined blue in the moonlight. I took another step forward, jasmine filling my nose, as if she steeped in its scent. I grabbed her chin; she flinched, but her round eyes widened, taking me in. Her lips parted. I must have been the first man to ever touch her like this.
“One day, you’ll wake up and you’ll realize none of this matters. Your dreams. Your failures. These tears.” I wiped the wet trails from her cheeks and her green eyes traced mine. “None of this will matter. I promise.”
Because one day, we’d all be dead too.
She blinked rapidly. “Who are you?” she stammered.
I bent down, kissing her forehead, the dirt on my cheeks smearing her skin. “I’m no one,” I said. Then I turned, heading across the street. A twitch of adrenaline surged through me, my steps lighter than before. I imagined breaking her apart, watching her cry until her eyes shriveled, until she was nothing but an empty husk of herself.
Thiswas what I needed: to ruin Kora Nova and her family.
I headed back to the funeral home, letting the weight ease off of my shoulders. I knew what I had to do. Without acknowledging my employee, I moved my brother’s body to the crematory retort and immediately started the process. He had spoken his desires when he was alive, but now, he was dead. There was no one to check on his last wishes, except for me.
And what did I care what he thought?
As the cremation proceeded, my mind buzzed with thoughts of her. Kora’s laughter transforming into tears. Kora gasping for her last breath. Kora with her face down in the dirt. Kora on her back, her blank eyes staring up at me. Once the machinery beeped, signaling the process was complete, I went to the far end of the cemetery, finding a new plot that I would dig specifically for her. She was fascinating: she was stuck in her parents’ shadow because it meant pleasing them, even though she knew she would never be happy.
She shouldn’t have cared so much. No one was worth that kind of trouble. Not even family.
Ruining Kora’s innocence, then making her forsaken body into a painting drove me forward. I imagined creating a memorial painting in her cremains, delivering it by hand to her reluctant father. Then I pictured painting a bouquet, then giving it to her mother, watching her throw away my hideous art, not knowing exactly who it was. And as I made it past the first two feet of dirt for her grave, the energy I had longed for was back. I needed to paintnow.
All because amusement had found its way into my life in the form of a precious little flower.
I rushed my brother’s ashes through the pulverizer. And once I mixed his ashes with paint, I dashed my brush across a blank canvas, staring at the work. In a few moments, the clear form of her swan’s neck, her pouting lips, her blushing cheekbones, her furiously childish eyebrows, all came to life. But something was off.
I dug through my drawers until I found blue pigment, then added it to a fresh bowl. I dragged the brush along her cheeks, fixing the canvas with tears and moonlight.
Living or dead, Kora would fuel my art.
CHAPTER2
Kora
PRESENT
“Nyla, dear?”my mother, Shea, asked, her voice calmer than usual. I glanced at Nyla, knowing what was coming. She bit her lip.
