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“I’m going to the store,” I said, opening my car door.
“Do you have your phone and…everything?” His gaze flicked to my neighbors behind me before pointedly looking back at me. He’d noticed we had an audience and didn’t want to ask if I was armed in front of them.
“Yup. Do you want me to pick anything up for you?”
He glanced at his watch on his wrist, taking note of the time. “No, I’m good. Check in every hour,” he ordered and returned to his drilling. I rolled my eyes as I climbed behind the wheel. How was he going to handle leaving me here to fly to North Carolina if he couldn’t handle me going to flipping Target ten minutes away?
I put my black Toyota 4Runner in reverse and when I went to look out the rearview window to back out, I caught two of the guys next door watching me. They both had the same shade of pale golden blond hair. One of them had it styled in a faux hawk where the other had that messy, I-just-rolled-out-of-bed style. Their eyes were the same color of light blue or aquamarine. I couldn’t tell from how far away I was.
They were both really attractive. If my life wasn’t messed up, I’d be crushing hard. But my life was an actual nightmare and that was why I didn’t just see two gorgeous guys when I stared at them. I only saw twins.
I looked away with a clenched jaw and backed out of the driveway.
* * *
By the time I returned home it was dark outside. Whoever said retail therapy could make you feel better was a liar. After hours of shopping and filling my car to the max, I still felt a heavy sense of dread. Friday would be here before I knew it and then I’d be alone.
Turning off the car, I sat in the darkness, staring at my new house. This wasn’t where I was supposed to be. I should have been moving into a tiny dorm room and scrambling to find my classes on a big college campus. A tear escaped my eye and I quickly wiped it away.
“So much for being brave, Shi,” I grumbled to myself. Who was I kidding? Buying brightly colored furniture didn’t make me brave. At the end of the day, I was still me.
I sighed heavily. I needed to stop beating myself up. Change and moving on took time.
But how did I move on whenhewas still out there?
I opened one of the bags I had on the passenger’s seat and pulled out a new pack of cigarettes and a bottle of Jack. I’d been using Shayla’s fake ID to buy booze to drown my sorrows. It was a perk of being a twin that I’d been definitely taking advantage of over the past year.
I stared at the bottle of Jack as temptation to open it gnawed at me. Sitting there, I thought back to a time I’d used to look down my nose at Shayla when she’d first told me that one of her bad-influence friends had made her the ID. She’d laugh at me now if she could see the hypocrite I’d become with how I had smoked like a chimney and drunk like a fish this past year.
I made no excuses for how I’d chosen to cope. I knew it had been bad. At the time I hadn’t cared. Therapy hadn’t been working as fast as I’d wanted it to, and I’d been desperate to numb the pain. At first Logan hadn’t said anything when he’d caught me smoking or smelled liquor on my breath. As long as I’d continued my therapy and hadn’t slacked off in self-defense training, he’d turned a blind eye. That was, until he’d found fourteen empty liquor bottles hidden under my bed. Logan had dished out some tough love then. He’d told me that my vices were just a band-aid and if I ever wanted to move on, I needed to do it the right way. He was right. I was working on quitting smoking and it’d been a while since I’d had a drink. Running helped the urge. It was a healthier outlet when thingsbecome too much to handle. Nicotine, however, was a tough drug to kick. I was slowly winning the battle, though. I was down to one cigarette a day.
I was very proud at how far I had come since I’d lost my family. But then days like today happened. With the news of Logan leaving in less than a week…I was struggling.
I broke my unblinking gaze from the bottle of Jack and set it on the passenger’s seat. It wasn’t that I had an addiction. I just needed to stop using it as a crutch.
Pulling my lighter from my purse, I got out of the car. In a lazy attempt to hide from Logan, I walked around to the back of my 4Runner and perched my butt on the bumper. I put a cigarette between my lips, set the new pack on the bumper next to me, and cupped my hand around the end of my white cancer stick as I lit it. That first drag of nicotine had me closing my eyes, dropping my head back against the rear window of my vehicle before blowing it out slowly through my lips. Without opening my eyes, I took another drag, basking in the euphoric feeling.
“Smoking kills, you know,” a masculine voice said, startling me. My eyes snapped open and I whipped my head in the direction of the source. Standing on the other side of the oleander bush was one of the twins I’d seen earlier today— the one with the messy bed-head hairstyle. I watched as his eyes roamed over me from my lilac ponytail to my boots.
“So can sneaking up on a girl at night,” I said.
His lips curled up on one side. He looked right around my age or maybe a little older. He had nice skin. It was smooth and tan, proof he lived in the desert. I probably looked like a ghost and stood out like a sore thumb here with how pale I was.
He stuffed his hands into the pockets of his dark jeans. His t-shirt was black and form fitting, which showed off how lean and fit he was. “I wasn’t exactly quiet when I approached. Then again, you seemed lost in your head for a moment there.”
I smirked. “You’re saying it’s my fault you startled me?”
He rubbed the back of his head with a shy smile. “Wow, this friendly introduction isn’t as easy as I thought it was going to be.”
I decided to cut him some slack and held out my hand over the oleander bush. “I’m Shiloh Pierce. Are you one of my neighbors?”
He stared down at my hand before engulfing it with his larger one. “Colt Stone. And yeah, I live here with my brothers.” It took a lot of effort not to react when he said brothers.
“Shi, you out here?” I heard Logan call out from the front porch. I gave Colt a small smile before stepping back to look over at Logan.
I purposely took another drag to show him I was smoking. “Yeah. I’ll be inside in a minute.” Logan noticed Colt standing behind me and crossed his arms over his chest. When I saw the evil glint spark to life in his eyes, I inwardly groaned.
“You’re not peer pressuring one of the neighbor boys into smoking, are you?” he drawled as if really serious.
