Page 37 of Careless

* * *

The headlights shineagainst the garage door as Rian pulls up to my dad’s house. I don’t wait for an awkward goodbye and jump out of the car. I’m surprised and a bit aggravated when Rian follows suit.

“What are you doing?” I demand, but he just grabs my hand and pulls me against him.

“Let’s just hang out in your room and talk. Nothing else. I promise.”

I choke on a snicker at the impossibility ofnothing elsehappening. Just talk. It may be hard, but I have to try. If anyone asks, he drove me home. There’s a perfectly logical explanation for him being in my room and we’re not doing anything wrong by talking.

“Okay.” I smirk as he tucks a stray hair behind my ear for the second time tonight, almost like an unconscious move, but I sense the affectionate trail his fingers leave behind.

He gives me a rare smile as we walk through the gate and on to the porch.

“Sorcha?” A voice that isn’t Rian’s stops me dead in my tracks. All the heat I had experienced from being in Rian’s presence diminished, replaced by ice cold water.

I turn in the direction of the female voice to findhersitting in Dad’s chair on the porch, cloaked in shadows and yet I can still make out her features.

And in that moment, any sliver of happiness that remained morphed to madness, feeding into my need to really hurt this woman.

“You.” An animalistic growl is ripped from my throat. What about our last interaction gave her any reason to think I would be willing to see her again?

“Please, I just want to help you.”

“You... help me?” I laugh at the stupidity of that. I want nothing from her, never have and never will.

Rian must sense my frame of mind because he takes a little step in front of me, creating a protective barrier between me and the intruder. “I’m sorry. Who are you?” Rian asks as his hand remains in mine, holding me in place slightly behind him. Her mahogany eyes move from me to him and she offers a kind smile, but that strange feeling I sometimes get from people is rampantly snaking through my brain. Warning bells sound just like last time she showed up. Luckily, Dad was there to make her leave.

“You must be Rian. You look like a perfect mixture of both of your parents,” she offers, trying to seem polite, but I don’t buy it. “My name is Carmen Muerte. I’m Sorcha’s mother.”

Rian stiffens beside me. He knows the story of what happened to my mother, how she abandoned me at the hospital when I was born. If a good friend of Dad’s hadn’t been working at the hospital that night, I would’ve gone into the system, and never would’ve known any of the people that are so important to me.

She didn’t want me, didn’t care about me, and I’m not about to give her a chance now. It’s eighteen years too late.

“Leave, now,” I demand, but Carmen doesn’t move.

“Darling, I just want to help you.”

That’s the same recycled line from years ago. It didn’t work then and it won’t work now.

“I don’t need your help with anything. Leave or I’ll have you removed.” Done with this exchange, I turn to the front door, but her words stop me in my tracks.

“Have you started seeing the shadows, darling?”

A cold sweat gathers at the base of my neck as I stare at the cracks in the front door.

She knows about the shadows? How the hell does she know about them?

“Ahhh.” Triumph drips from her acknowledgement of my visible reaction. It is answer enough. “You’ve had the visions, too, haven’t you? You see things in your dreams that make no sense until it’s too late to do anything to stop it.”

How does she know these things? It’s impossible.

“Sorcha?” Rian mutters, concern and confusion in his voice, bringing me out of my state of befuddlement.

I squeeze his hand as I turn to face Carmen. That buzzing sensation in my brain increased tenfold. Something isn’t right.

“I have something I can give you to make them stop. That’s why I’m here, to give this to you. I know that I can’t expect you to accept me as your mom after the way I left. I want to at least give you the peace I didn’t have at your age.” She reaches into the pocket of her black trench coat—because what else would you wear when sulking in the shadows to confront your long lost daughter—and pulls out a pill bottle with the label torn off. The singular porch bulb works like a spotlight, amplifying the lone capsule filled with blue liquid. “Just take it, and you’ll never have to see me again, Sorcha. I’ll leave and that will be the end of it. I promise.”

I don’t see her for years then she shows up, offering me drugs, and I’m supposed to take it?

---