Splinters of You (Retired Sinners MC #1) - Anne Malcom Page 0,34

him from my nightmares.

I fumbled with the light switch, which pissed me off. I had a talent, born from a childhood of moving, from a career that demanded hotel rooms—I could find a light switch, no matter what. I guessed it was a survival instinct, because no matter how much I thrived in the darkness, how I made my living in the darkness, I always needed just a little bit of light.

My body protested with the stretch I put it through to push over a wine glass, a pill bottle and a book in my search for the light.

Once I found it, the room illuminated a book covered in wine, a glass somehow still intact and the pill bottle that this whole foray had been about, nowhere to be found.

I sighed, glancing around the room, sucking in the quiet; the absolute, utter silence. It was chilling. The lack of noise was a roar.

A childhood spent in small towns should’ve insulated me to this. But I’d spent a long time repressing my childhood and I welcomed the noise of New York, of the sounds of the people I’d chosen to sleep with.

Not even fucking crickets.

I did my best to fill up the silence with the clang of my crutches, my curses as I fumbled with them and my sharp hiss of pain as I put weight onto my ankle that was in no shape to hold me up.

It frustrated me, enraged me, that my body was failing me. That I had rely on something to walk. Even if that something was an inanimate object.

But there was no room for self-deprecation because I had chosen this spot. This cabin. That hike. To not fight and get myself up off the forest floor. To give up.

All of this was a result of my choices.

That truth was what had me trying to grasp the fallen wine glass, failing, and then hobbling to my—Emily’s—kitchen counter in order to swig the remains of my wine straight from the bottle.

It was then I remembered why I didn’t drink wine in times like this. It wasn’t strong enough. Sure, it went well with a good book or a rare steak, but not with emotional crisis.

That required whisky.

Which I had already finished.

I sighed, switching the main light of the kitchen on, showing the cluttered, yet classy interior. It was still jarring to me, how much personality a dead woman left behind. I thought of my apartment in New York and how much it said about me as a person, as an author.

Nothing.

It said I had a lot of money and a famous interior decorator.

It was cold, no matter what the temperature was set at.

This place was warm, despite the fire having died out and winter creeping through the floorboards.

Plus, I was only in panties, bare feet and bare nipples.

The sky lurked outside of the windows, obscuring the view of the lake, of the vista that sold me on this place. It could be anything out there, the night was so thick. A brick wall. A junkyard. A cemetery. I liked that better. That I didn’t know what lurked in the darkness, that I could imagine all kinds of horrors.

I did my best to shrug on a chunky cardigan. Now that my sweat had settled onto my skin, it chilled it down to the bone.

I didn’t put anything else on. The cold, the bite in the air, the way it slammed into my senses, the discomfort, I liked it all. It was distracting from the nightmare clinging to my skin much like my quickly drying sweat. Eventually, the nightmare itself would seep back into my body, waiting to leak out in the darkness.

I had seen a pile of wood outside in the backyard, neatly stacked beside a bricked-in grill of some kind. There was expensive outdoor furniture, solar lights and flowers in pots scattered over the patio. Stones led all the way out to my private dock. They also led out to the spot where Emily’s organs had been splayed across the forest ground.

I’d already inspected the spot.

No bloodstains.

It had all seeped into the soil, the earth swallowing her up like she’d never even been here.

That had almost been me.

I barely even realized I was standing in the middle of the patio, the wind blowing at my unbuttoned cardigan, cutting at my exposed skin. The stars were brighter than I’d ever seen in my life.

No moon.

I wasn’t into astrology. I wished I was. That I knew what moon cycles meant.