AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The sound gets louder and louder, ringing in my ears, pulsing in my head. Screwing my eyes shut, I pound at the ground until I can’t feel my hands. And when I open my eyes, my stare meets his again. Milky eyes. Blown pupils. Hole in the head.
Bang!
I can’t contain the scream that tears from me as I jolt upright on the bed. My hands grasp at my head, searching for the bullet hole as always while my sweat-drenched T-shirt sticks to my body, making it harder to stretch the residue of nightmare away. It’s impossible to see through the haze. The pounding of my heart gongs through me as I get to my feet and almost trip over the cat weaving through my legs.
Stumbling to the open door, I take a good look around me, trying to ground myself in any way I can. However, I always come up short because it’s too quiet, and where I left the door open, her scent has all but completely dissipated. The light of dawn murmurs through the hallway window as I check the time on my phone to find a text from Leo.
Leo: Might have something. Meet me at the office in the afternoon.
Georgina is always up at the crack of dawn. I can hear her padding around as she gets herself ready for her gruelling day. For someone that spends over twelve hours a day dancing, she likes to exercise first thing when she wakes up. Pilates, yoga…all this New Age mumbo jumbo stretching shit that’s fucking torture to watch. I miss the sound of her measured breaths or the way she hums random tunes when it gets too quiet.
She doesn’t like silence. We’re like that, the two of us. And it makes her absence from these walls even more stark as I make my way to my bedroom, replying to Leo’s text.
Freddie: Be at yours in an hour.
Still taking stock of my surroundings, I refuse to focus on the armchair that continues out of place or the bedding that remains rumpled. But the belt…the belt jeers up at me from the rug, making all the shit in my head worse. My sweat chills the longer I stare at it.
She’s gone.
I’m not sure what part of me is doing the taunting—my head or my heart. All I know is that it’s too fucking loud, and my skull is throbbing. My eyes are piss holes in the snow as I head straight to the shower to wash the fucked-up dream away.
It’s been a while since he’s haunted my nightmares like this. It used to happen all the time at first, but then Uncle Francis and Aunt Penny sent me to Dr. Pevensey. He talked more shit than any other person I’ve ever known—and that’s saying something because the number of lies I’ve been told is flabbergasting—but it made me switch off. I was so busy trying to argue everything he told me and trying to prove him wrong that it actually worked. I stopped thinking about my dad every second of every day.
Now, not even the cold water helps ground me. It just makes her absence more palpable as my body recalls the heat of hers last time we were in here together with her arms wrapped around me so tight that their vice hold was the only thing I could focus on.
The phone rings just as I’m flipping the cold water off, and before it goes to voicemail, I grab it from the vanity.
“Yes,” I bite down the line.
“I can’t do this morning,” Leo says, his breathing heavy as though he’s at the gym or returning from one of his runs. “I have plans with Cass.”
“Well, now you have plans with me before your plans with Cassie.”
“Freddie…” He lets out a deep breath before he tells me, “We’re telling Emily about the wedding. If I’m not focused on the conversation, she’s going to end up railroading Cass into something she doesn’t want.”
“She’ll railroad you both even if you have your wits about you. It’s what she does. So good luck telling her that her only granddaughter is going to get married in a tiny little chapel with no one but family and closed-circle friends.”
“I can’t do this morning,” he reiterates, trying to rush me off the call.
“I can’t do this afternoon.”
“What plans do you have? Arabella will tear you a new arsehole if you go near Georgina. If you thought she was a nutter in the last pregnancy…”
“How the fuck do you know anything?” The question pushes from me brusquely, instantly getting my hackles up.
“What do you think happens when you fuck with one of them? They all come together to fuck you right back. Let me tell you that you are so far in the shit that you do not want to upset them anymore.”
“I’m seeing Lucy this afternoon. So I need you to show me whatever it is you found this morning. The more I know, the better.”
A scoff pushes from him as he says, “Fine. Have it your way. You can come for breakfast at the gallery café and distract your grandmother so that she doesn’t make this entire wedding about her.”
“How about no? Fuck right off.”
Not sure what he takes me for right now, but I’m no fool. At least not when it comes to Emily. There’s a reason I’m her favourite grandchild, and it’s going to stay that way. Me and her…we see eye to eye on most things, but if there were ever a reason for her to put me on her shit list—that no one wants to be on because she’s got the yap of a Chihuahua and the bite of a pit bull—it would be because I have no intention of ever going down the settled family route she’s desperate for us all to take. Christopher’s there, and Cassie’s on her way. I’m going to milk every second I get of her ignoring my attachment status.
“Then no can do,” he tells me before he hangs up on me.
Son of a bitch!
