Noxious (Anathema #1) - Yolanda Olson Page 0,2

pair of narrow, mischievous blue eyes that I swear hide the devil in them sometimes, and when he grins, it takes up half of his face.

I never do recall seeing his momma smile much. Not around him, anyway, but I do know he doesn’t look a goddamn thing like her.

Or didn’t, I correct myself with a chuckle. It’s easy to forget sometimes that she died a few years ago only because we don’t talk about it.

He didn’t cry, if anything I don’t think I’ve ever seen him happier than he was that day. Whatever was left inside of him that could be identified as moral shattered into teeny, tiny pieces and I picked them up as best as I could.

Lucky for him, when my granddaddy died, he left everything he ever owned to me since he wasn’t on speaking terms with my father when he got sick. I used a lot of that to set up Aftyn comfortably in a fancy loft apartment over in Tribeca.

Sometimes, when the celebrities blow into town for that damn film festival, we’ll sit in one of the windows of his place that looks down over the main road below and watch them mill around.

I grunt as I pull my SUV into the spot outside of my home. It’s going to be over two thousand fucking miles just to get to the Arizona state line itself, and God knows how much further once we reach that.

Cracking my neck, I remove the keys from the ignition and grab my purse from the passenger seat. Once I’ve stepped out of my new ride, I press the alarm button and begin to search inside my purse as I head up my walkway.

Where the fuck are my house keys?

“You were gone for a long time.”

I startle and swallow down a scream. I let out a relieved, yet annoyed, sigh when Dexter makes his way over from around the side of my house and slips his hands into his pockets.

In a way, I feel bad for the little fucker.

He’s not short by any means, maybe an inch or two shorter than Aftyn, but he’s so damn gaunt looking these days that I wonder if he ever has enough to eat. Considering he lives in the same goddamn neighborhood that I do—a few doors down, no less—I would assume so.

Though something tells me that in order to keep up appearances for the Stepfords, as I call them, he cuts out necessities.

Like food.

“Come inside,” I tell him tiredly after I finally retrieve the keys and slip them into the lock.

He scuffs his foot against the lawn, eyes on the ground, then nods when I reach over and give him a gentle tug.

Dexter is a really good-looking guy in his own ‘needs saving from shit he doesn’t know is bad for him’ kind of a way. He’s got hickory-brown hair that he always does his best to keep nice and neat. Sometimes I’m worried he’s going to comb it all off, but I assume that he thinks if he looks presentable enough, maybe Aftyn will notice him the way he wants. His eyes are the color of rusty pennies, but it’s my favorite thing about him. I’ve never seen eyes like his before and sometimes I lose myself staring into them.

It makes us both blush because I shouldn’t be so damn easily captivated by a feature, but it’s hard not to be.

“Were you… um,” his voice trails off nervously as he walks in behind me and closes the door.

I smile at him over my shoulder. “Yeah. We were just playing cards though, honey.”

His cheeks redden slightly, and he shrugs. “Oh, I don’t really care. I just know that when you’re gone for a long time, you’re usually with him.”

“Well, don’t worry about it, Dex,” I tell him, giving his arm a gentle squeeze. “That fucker has nothing I want so there’s no competition from me, okay?”

He clears his throat and nods before he finally lifts his eyes from the floor and glances toward the kitchen.

“I think there’s some leftover pot roast in the fridge,” I say softly.

Dexter looks up at me with those hopeful eyes of his and I nod. That’s all it takes for him to be off like a shot into the kitchen, rummaging around in the refrigerator before he finds the small container. I knew he’d come over to eat at some point, so I saved as much as I could for him. The rest went to Aftyn—not because he