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CHAPTER THREE
Faith
“What the hell am I doing here?”
My whisper was loud in the car. The first I’d uttered in hours probably, other than my name and a thank you to the rental car lady.
Driving felt awkward. I’d been taxied around by Grace since I’d gotten out of the hospital, where I was for several weeks after I was attacked. Now, it was like I didn’t know what to do with my hands.
My abdomen ached from the increase in activity, my bruised and butchered insides still healing long after the staples had come out. All of this was a big no-no. Driving. Traveling long distances. Lighting houses on fire and stalking people was probably frowned on too, but here I was. In a rental car, in a different time zone, across the street from my half brother’s house in Charlotte, North Carolina. Because asking an Uber driver to park so I could sit and stare at a house in the middle of the night might come across as a bit crazy.
It wasn’t lost on me that I might actually be, indeed, a bit crazy.
The man who mugged me—no, men, I felt like it was—left me with a calling card from hell in the form of a concussion and two knife wounds. One in my side that just missed my kidney and one in my abdomen that hadn’t missed anything. I should have bled out and died, and would have, if not for a passerby hearing my cries.
All of this I knew from the police and the hospital. I couldn’t remember any of it. Not really.
My wristlet wallet that held my life and my phone was gone so it had been ruled a mugging, but I couldn’t remember anything after getting out of my car. They’d gotten the fifteen bucks in cash and whatever they could get on the credit cards before my brother-in-law had everything frozen. Canceled.
That’s how my life felt now. Frozen and canceled. Like it all happened to someone else. My dad being a sociopath. Secret families and cooked books. Being mugged and left with nothing but weird nightmares in sensory overload—the sound of crunching, like boots on gravel maybe, but louder. A sickly-sweet smell that always woke me nauseated. Every night.
So being here in this car instead of bed... maybe I’d be spared that for one night.
I pulled my phone from my little travel bag and hesitated with my finger over the power button. Once I opened that floodgate, there was no going back. I had zero doubt that the world was exploding in Redemption, at least in the McMasters corner of it. Between Dad’s house going up in flames and me going AWOL, my sisters alone had probably done everything short of send out the National Guard. Grace being married to the police chief—well, I’m sure Chief Mateo Beckett had jumped through a million hoops just to appease his very pregnant wife.
Jesus, I’d left my about-to-give-birth sister without saying a word, making her worry.
I closed my eyes. “I’m such a bitch.”
Hope would agree with me. And make damn sure I knew it.
Still...
I didn’t hit that button.
I couldn’t yet.
My eyes landed back on Matthew’s house, the windows dark, small solar torches lighting up a ragged sidewalk. There’s something heady about following through on a possibly insane plan, especially when it includes an hour and a half on a plane and nothing to do but think. I was still riding the rush, mixed with a little fear and uncertainty, and doused in just enough anger and hurt to keep that pesky common-sense character from chiming in.
I shook my head, setting the dark-screened phone on the passenger seat, and reached to tuck a strand of hair behind my ear out of habit. But it was already there, and much lighter. Butterflies hit my belly the moment my fingers touched it, as a whole different kind of rush came over me. The same weird and sad sort of power that had enveloped me when I’d walked into my townhouse, grabbed a pair of scissors from the cup on my bedroom desk, and hacked my blond locks off above the shoulder.
Golden princess, indeed.
I’d let them drop into the bathroom sink, without even meeting my own eyes in the mirror. Then I’d left.
Yanking the visor down now, I peered into the little mirror at what used to be heavy silken waves and was now bouncy flipped up ends, unburdened by weight. Slightly uneven, and that’s just what I could see. God only knew what the back looked like.
A laugh bubbled up from my throat. “Who does this?”
When I met my own gaze, the laughter died in my chest. Hot tears burned my eyes, making my image swim before me, then I blinked them free, swiping them off my cheeks. It didn’t matter whether any of it made sense. It was my choice. To come here on a one-way ticket and stay till I had answers.
Tonight, though... tonight was a wash. It was late. He was in bed asleep, and I was—
A single headlight blinded me as a motorcycle slow-rolled around the corner and then into Matthew’s driveway. I gasped and ducked low in my seat like I was on a stakeout and afraid to get made.
Mine wasn’t the only car on the street. There were several, and he didn’t know me. Or—maybe he did. He was at the funeral. But that was months ago, and the light swinging through the car was only seconds.
“Jesus, get up, fool,” I muttered, but still only peeked over the steering wheel.
