Splinters of You (Retired Sinners MC #1) - Anne Malcom Page 0,24

inbox that was no doubt full of borderline abusive threats from my agent, it still came time for me to do it.

Open my laptop.

This past week, I had managed to stave off this moment. Unpacking. Taking away some of the more disturbing furnishings that made this place a little too welcoming for my liking. I rush ordered my preferred furnishings late at night after one too many whisky’s, which was the only way to online shop. Though, I got a call from my realtor who got a call from the post office, wanting to let me know large packages couldn’t be delivered to my place because delivery trucks didn’t like the hassle of having to turn around in my driveway. “I wish you would’ve told me that prior to me signing the contract, because if I’d known online shopping would be this tedious, I wouldn’t have bought the place,” I’d told her when she’d explained this.

She’d laughed like I was joking.

I wasn’t.

So, I was wrong. I had talked to one person this week—the postal worker who had insisted on helping me with my packages, despite him almost being twice my age. At one point, I was certain I’d get arrested for manslaughter after he died trying to put the last of my overpriced skull statues in the trunk of my car.

He’d survived. I almost hadn’t, since the small talk was friendly and lethal to a dark soul like me.

It had taken time to unpack everything I’d bought. Crystal skulls. Books on the occult. Framed art that depicted gruesome battle scenes. Black cashmere throws.

After I was done, it made the house look odd. Mismatched. Wrong. Which immediately made me feel more comfortable.

So now there was no excuse not to write. Not to open my laptop. Not to do my job.

For an author, there’s not much more confronting than an empty page.

I used to find it exciting, that emptiness. That opportunity to fill up the page, fill up a world with stories that were uniquely mine. To somehow exorcise my demons by creating others.

Now? It made me want to rip my own face off just so my blood would cause my laptop to malfunction and give me a stay of execution.

Maybe it was the morning whisky that did it.

Or was the lack of morning coffee.

Unfamiliar surroundings.

The slippery, mossy ground.

My terrible coordination.

Fucking Emily’s spirit haunting me for being such a bitch to everyone she’d once held dear.

To be fair, I hadn’t met everyone she held dear, but being rude to the bookstore owner, after judging her book collection, told me I was well on my way.

All of those things could’ve been the reason, or none of them. The reason wasn’t important.

It didn’t matter what it was that made my foot stay directly upright while the rest of my body tumbled to the ground, it just mattered that it happened.

There was a low pop that accompanied a thud of my body hitting the ground. I guessed it might’ve been something important in my ankle, since what followed was absolute agony.

I didn’t cry out.

What was the point?

I knew I didn’t have any immediate neighbors. This wasn’t a hiking or hunting track. There were only ghosts and small mammals around.

What was the saying? If a tree falls in the woods and no one hears it, does it really make a sound?

If a bestselling, slightly depressed yet brilliant horror author falls in the woods with no one there to hear her, did she really even exist?

The ground was hard.

I guessed it might’ve been the cold snap to the air, hardening the ground, making it more accommodating for pain and injury. That’s why I liked winter, it promoted death and suffering. That’s why I came to Washington on the eve of this beautifully frigid season, wasn’t it? So snow could ice my little cabin like a cake, eventually locking me inside and forcing me to write the book or go Jack Torrance in The Shining? Either one would be productive.

There was no option three of falling in the middle of the woods without a laptop or, at the very least, an axe.

I didn’t even have my phone.

Me, the woman who considered the device all but surgically attached. The constant stream of likes, death threats, pictures of what other people wanted to manipulate the world into thinking of them.

I had decided it was a distraction. That I’d only spend the entire hike taking pictures of the experience, instead of experiencing it. Not that it would’ve helped if it did—the