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I didn’t know who the fuck had done this, but I made a silent promise right then and there that I was going to find them. And when I did, I was going to make them pay.
ChapterFifteen
LYRIC
The chillI felt had sunk down into my skin, through my muscles, and wrapped itself around my bones so I couldn’t get warm no matter how hard I tried. And seeing as I was currently sitting in the passenger side of Holton’s truck with the door hanging open, the heat cranked, and a thick coat that smelled just like him wrapped around me, I should have been sweating bullets. Sure, the nights were getting colder thanks to autumn having wrapped the Smoky Mountains firmly in its embrace, but it wasn’tthatcold.
It was shock. My brain was still functioning, at least partially, but not enough to get my body to cooperate. I would have been fine with my house being trashed—okay, well notfine, but I could have dealt with it after a good rage, some screaming, and a healthy amount of Scotch. But seeing the heart-shaped urn that had held what little of my brother’s ashes I had left smashed to pieces on the floor of my bedroom... well, whoever had done that might as well have done the same to my heart.
I’d only felt this kind of pain two other times in my life: the day the doctors told us that Cal was never going to wake up, and the day a higher power finally granted him mercy and freed him from this world for good. My mother had the rest of Cal’s ashes, and there was no way on earth she’d let me have any if I asked. She hated me with every fiber of her being. That was why I’d had to steal what little I had, and after sprinkling them along my journey, I’d saved the very last of it in that heart, keeping it safely tucked in my nightstand drawer.
The asshole who took that last bit of my brother from me probably didn’t even realize the importance of what he’d done. Not that I expected an asshole who’d break into a person’s house just to trash it to give a shit how that person might feel.
I abhorred violence. I’d seen and experienced more of my fair share, and when I left that life behind, I promised I was done with it, but just then, I wanted to find the person responsible and do everything in my power to make them suffer. I wanted them to hurt. I wanted to torture them until they begged for forgiveness, and even then, I wasn’t sure I’d relent. That was how much I hated this nameless, faceless stranger. And the fact they could fill me with such icy darkness made me hate them even more.
At some point while I’d been tucked deeply in my state of shock, another sheriff’s department cruiser had arrived on the scene, and there were multiple deputies inside my house and spilling out into the yard.
It had been the female deputy, Sheffield I thought I heard them call her, who’d guided me out of the house and back into Holton’s truck after I’d spent god-only-knew-how long crying into his neck as he held me in his lap. She’d backed off just enough to give me space, but had stayed close enough that, if I needed her, she was only a few steps away.
Churro let out a whimper and stood on her hind legs, bracing her front paws on my chest so she could give my jawline a tiny lick. It was almost as if she was asking in her own way if I was all right, and that worked to melt some of that frigid rage forming like a block of ice inside my chest.
“Aw, thanks, cutie,” I murmured. “I’m okay, I promise.” And I would be, if for no other reason than there was no choice. The only person I had to rely on was me. I couldn’t stay down for too long. That was how it had been all my life. I reached up and gently scratched between her big triangle-shaped ears. “Sorry for worrying you.”
Suddenly, the sound of squealing brakes filled the night, and my head shot up in time to nearly be blinded by the headlights pouring through the windshield as the car jerked to a stop facing Holton’s truck.
Sheffield braced, one hand moving to the butt of her gun as the engine in front of me died, killing the lights with it. I blinked the spots away, the sight of Laeth’s truck coming into focus. The passenger door was thrown up, and the next thing I heard was my best friend shouting my name.
“I’m okay. I swear.”
A second later, Deva was lunging past the open door and wrapping me and Churro in a bone-crushing hug. “Oh my god. I heard the cops were at your house and I freaked. I couldn’t get here fast enough, but we had to wait for Myra to get to our place to watch Cash so we could leave, or I would have been here sooner, I swear.” She pulled back, her hands coming up to my cheeks and twisting my face this way and that so she could inspect me. “What happened? Are you okay? You’re not hurt, are you?”
I took her by the wrists and pulled her hands from my face but interlaced our fingers and gave them a reassuring squeeze. “I’m fine. I swear. I’m not hurt.”
Sensing I was telling the truth, she smacked me in the shoulder and glowered. “How dare you worry me so badly?” she accused, but her tone held no malice.
My lips curved into the tiniest grin. “I know. I’m just the worst.”
Laeth came up beside Deva, his face a mask of fury, and I had to admit, it was kind of nice to have people who cared so much about my wellbeing. “What happened?” he asked in a hard, demanding tone. The big guy was former military and now ran a security company—whatever that meant—with his two Army buds, Jensen and Gage. The work they did ran the gambit from bodyguarding to actual security systems to surveillance and beyond. Basically, they were professional badasses, and I got the sense that Laeth was sporting his work persona.
I relayed the same information to him and Deva that I’d already told the deputies who worked with Holton.
“I got home from work and saw my front door was already open. I ran back to my car and locked myself inside while I called the police. They got here and walked through, but whoever broke in was already gone.”
The image of my friends started to blur as tears started forming again. As if sensing my distress rising back to the surface, Churro gave me another lick, but it was too late.
“Th-they destroyedeverything,” I said in a watery voice as the tears spilled out.
“Oh, honey.” Deva wrapped her arms around me and stroked my back. “It’s okay. It’s all replaceable.”
I shook my head and sniffled. On top of my heart feeling like it had just received a thousand lashes, I also felt a niggling of guilt that I hadn’t been totally forthright with my new circle of friends. But when a person spends their whole life as an outcast with no one to look out for them, it was hard to let people in all the way. It wasn’t until that very moment that I realized I’d been keeping them all at arm’s length this whole time, not fully letting them in to know the real me.
I was terrified that if I gave them all the ugly pieces, all the darkness and anger, they’d no longer feel the same way about me.
There were things I still wasn’t quite ready to share, but I knew it was time to at least give them the part of me I’d already offered to Holton.
I opened my hands to show the shards of the broken porcelain heart I was still clutching.
“What’s that?”
