She glanced up at me and offered me her weak little smile. “Where are you off to so late in the night?”
“Just gonna sit on the porch a while,” I said with a pointed glance at Dad, who had started shouting at the television again. “Maybe go for a walk.”
She nodded. “Be safe. Lots of coyotes out lately.”
There was something about the warning that made me look at her twice. She smiled at me benignly—but somehow I didn’t think she was talking about canines.
“I’ll keep an eye out.”
The thin door didn’t do much more than muffle Dad’s hollering, but it was better than being inside. Cicadas buzzed and screamed in the woods and coyotes sang a grating harmony way off in the distance. They were miles away and moving south.
They’ll only hurt you if they’re starving and you’re alone.
Hunter’s words of wisdom floated through my head in his voice, so clear that I could almost feel him standing beside me. We used to sit out here and talk—just the two of us at first, then the three of us. God, we’d been inseparable back then.
My body moved through the memory, wandering over to the rickety porch swing. The paint had peeled down to almost nothing and the roof anchors were rusted, but it could still hold my weight. Probably couldn’t hold all of us at once anymore.
“Not like it needs to,” I said through a sigh. “Never again.”
The stars were bright tonight. The Milky Way swirled red and purple high above me, just the same as it always had. I wondered how many of those stars, like Hunter, were dead already. Gone way before their time.
Kicking my feet out, I drew memories around me until they draped over me the way Kash and Hunter’s arms used to. I was the smallest of our group, so I always got stuck in the middle. I used to hate that. It seemed unfair. It’s funny how some things grow on you, though. I’d have given anything to be squished between them just then, hips pinched, neck uncomfortably warm, just to feel that eternal security once more.
The coyote yips faded in the distance and Dad’s shouts devolved into snores. It was just me and the cicadas and the endless sky. No Hunter, no Kash, no comfort.
Then, suddenly, no cicadas either. The hairs on my arms stood up and I held my breath. They didn’t stop screaming for no reason, not at this time of year. My eyes strained out past the gentle splashes of light streaming from the windows, out into the black woods. My ears rang, desperately trying to fill the silence with anything.
When it came, it sounded deafening. A birdcall for a bird who never really existed, some crazy hybrid of mockingbird and quail, whistled out of the woods directly in front of me. There was only one person alive today who knew how to make that sound. I could feel his eyes on me but I still couldn’t see him.
I didn’t move.
The call came again, louder and closer this time. He just couldn’t leave well enough alone, could he? Of course, it was kind of my fault for getting all stupid over seeing him in the window. I could have just ignored him then, but I hadn’t, and now I was paying for it. Stupid, stupid, stupid. No, I decided as I straightened my spine. I wasn’t the stupid one, he was.
How dare he come sneaking around here after dark like some kind of juvenile delinquent? I was a grown woman with a job, damn it. He couldn’t just swoop in here and mess with my head like this.
At the third call, I stood up. A small, secret part of me was hoping that he would convince me that he hadn’t killed Hunter, cement in my beliefs what I was pretty sure I already knew. Maybe he could even pitch in a believable and forgivable reason why he hadn’t answered my letters. The rest of me was just looking for an excuse to hit him. Hard.
Chapter 6
He might as well have been a tree for as tall and still as he stood. My heart leapt at the sight of him standing there and I scowled. I wasn’t a fan of conflict, and this one was brutal. Kash didn’t say anything as I approached, but as the moon broke out from behind a cloud, his eyes lit up like a thousand fireflies, shining with a hunger I hadn’t seen in ages. I melted clear down to my toes and crossed my arms over my chest to keep them from wrapping around him.
“God, I’ve missed you.”
Before the last word was out of his mouth I was swinging at his face, my hands balled into fists so tight my nails cut through my palm. Luck, or perhaps pure instinct saved him in that moment as Kash caught my wrist before my hands had a chance of connecting.
“Missed me?” I hissed, shaking like a chihuahua in winter. “You ignore my letters, you don’t write, you don’t call, but now you’re home and you—missed me? You can go straight to hell, Kash.”
“Been there. It didn’t agree with me. You’re talking crazy, hold on one damn minute and listen, would you?”
Hot tears spilled down my cheeks. I glared at him and wrenched my arm out of his iron grip. I ground my teeth against the onslaught of abuse I wanted to hurl at him and squeezed my arms tight around me.
Screw him.
Fuck him.
Missed me? After all these years. After all this silence.
“There. Thank you. Nice swing, by the way. You almost had me.” His cocky grin threatened to pierce through my rage, so I rolled my eyes away from it. Not that that got me any further away from him. Seemingly believing that he wasn’t close enough, Kash took a step closer. I didn’t move. I couldn’t. I was still shaking so hard I was afraid I’d fall over.
“Listen, Daisy.
