Page 36 of Tears and Other Fears

But she was sad. The other night, she reminded me of her brother, curled up in bed, looking for a solution for her mind. Maybe that was why I crawled beside her and held her as she slept. I always liked William; he was a good guy. I felt bad when I got word that he died from our bad batch, though I’d never admit it. This job was all about the brand, and if I started acting like I cared now, I’d be swarmed with addicts blaming me for their repossessed house and rehab stints.

More anger coursed through me. I was going to ruin Samuel Smith. I wasn’t a hit man, had only a couple deaths under my belt. My boss liked to stretch out the gore, initiate us dealers with death so they had blackmail over everyone in the ecosystem. But I knew my way around a gun. I could strangle a man twice my size if need be.

“Hurry home, Samuel. I’m waiting,” I whispered into the darkness. Maybe I was going crazy. I just wanted to get this over with so I could sneak into the hospital and check on my…Octavia.

She wasn’t mine. Nope. Not mine. I didn’t do attachments.

The front door opened downstairs, and I got off the mattress with a smile. Showtime. Popping my neck, I stood at the ready, aiming my gun at the door.

Good bye, Samuel Smith.

Thank you for reading!

Thank you so much for reading, and I’m so sorry about the cliffhanger. I didn’t plan on ending the book this way, but you know how Octavia is. She likes to leave us guessing and on the edge of a cliff. She’s probably somewhere fucking a hot nurse and laughing at all of our concern. I promise Octavia will be okay. She has a lot of chaos left in her system.

This series is very hard for me to dive into. Octavia is a profound, perfect, pain-in-the-ass, mess. We both went on a journey together of acceptance and healing. The final book in her story will echo that, and I’m looking forward to seeing her version of happily ever after.

If you connect with Octavia, I love you. I think everyone deserves to read books about people that remind them of themselves. Even if Octavia is just a version of you that you push down and hide from the world, I hope you let your wild out of your cage for a bit and enjoyed the freedom she has to offer.

Much love to you all. I’m so thankful to be on this journey with you.

Xoxo,

CoraLee June

Ps. Keep reading if you want a little preview of Burnout, my angsty taboo romance that released in August.

Burnout Preview

Everything I owned was on my back: three outfits, a cellphone with a cracked screen, and a folded up photo of Mama I couldn’t look at because it hurt too fucking much. I stood on the sidewalk, staring up at the red brick building in front of me.

I was avoiding eye contact with the balding homeless man three steps to my left. He was playing his scratched up and out-of-tune guitar while singing off-key for tips. From the looks of it, he wasn’t making much. If I had money to spare, I’d drop a nickel in his jar out of pity.

The humid air smelled like charred BBQ and grime. A steady summer breeze kissed the beads of sweat dripping down my face, effectively melting the cheap makeup I’d capriciously painted on to hide the dark circles under my eyes. It was sweltering hot, the air so humid it felt like I was walking around in a cloud of morning breath.

What the actual fuck was I thinking?

I’d asked myself that question numerous times on the drive from Lucas, Texas, to here. It had been a long trip. Not because the distance itself was necessarily daunting, but because I stopped every thirty minutes to park and convince myself to turn back. I could run away. I could escape this, if I really wanted.

So why didn’t I want to?

My older brother’s loft in Memphis was in the South Main Arts District. It looked nice on the outside and had that hipster vibe I loved, with traditional architecture to compliment the design. Patches of manicured grass littered the walk up, making it look homey. It seemed nice enough, but I learned a long time ago that just because something—or someone—looked pretty on the outside, didn’t mean they’d be just as beautiful within.

I’d been standing outside for a while now, like a statue on the concrete. Drunks and tourists walked by with beer bottles in their hand, straight from their boozy brunches. My car was parked precisely two blocks away. I could run to it, get inside, and use the last thirty dollars my brother sent me to fill up the tank and get the fuck out of here.

“You gonna stand out here all day?” a voice asked. The smooth, Southern drawl was laced with skepticism. My hard stare flickered to the doorman of the building, and I had to cup my palm over my eyes to shade my light-sensitive gaze from the beaming rays of sunshine over us. I’d caught the older, slender man staring at me multiple times, trying to gauge if I was trouble or not. I guess I did look suspicious, standing out here while deciding what I wanted to do with my life.

Mama always said I was too much of a thinker, was too stuck in my own head to make a decision and commit to it. I guess I got that from her. She never stuck with anything. My, she’d be shocked to hear I managed to drive all the way here. Too bad I couldn’t rub it in her pretty little face.

“I’m trying to decide if I want to go inside,” I offered back with an honest shrug. Maybe if this man called the cops on me, I’d have another day to process everything before meeting Lance. I’d been trying to give myself excuses for the last three weeks: I didn’t have enough money, my ’97 Corolla wasn’t able to make the drive, my heart wasn’t able to handle the rejection. What if Lance didn’t like me? What if he kicked me out? It wouldn’t be the first time someone charitable turned out to be a snake. Mama was always the one that let others fix her problems, not me. And yet, here I stood.

The doorman was wearing a black suit and a striped red tie with a name tag perched on his chest. Cornelius was his name. It suited him, I decided. He had a proper air about him, and stern eyes with a kind, wrinkled smile. Something about his stance told me that he took his job as a doorman very seriously. “You know someone in the building?” he asked while nodding toward the glass door.

What a fucking loaded question. Did I know Lance? No. No, I didn’t. I didn’t even know he existed until Mama informed me on her deathbed. One minute, I was holding her hand, forcing tears to fall from my eyes while the nurses looked on with pity. The next, I was being told about a half brother she put up for adoption at sixteen. Luckily for me, she’d found him just in time, but was too ashamed to reach out until it was too late.

I wasn’t sure if it was pride or cancer that killed her in the end.

“My…br-brother lives here,” I answered with a stutter before adjusting my backpack strap on my shoulder and eyeing the third floor of the building. I was trying to count the number of windows there. It was weird using the term “brother” to describe what Lance was to me. He didn’t feel like a brother. I didn’t even know if I had a right to call him that.

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