“Kat was an innocent young girl, still in fucking high school.” The words came out ice cold and I didn’t mean to direct them at Harley like that. “Your father paid for the funeral expenses. That’s one of the reasons I’ve been such a loyal employee of the Brooks family and it’s partly why I remained a resident of Wexler. Your dad had Kat buried in your family’s plot at Christchurch Cemetery. Probably the only South Banks resident in the whole place,” I said. My voice was heavy with sadness and so was my heart.
“Kat is with my mom?” she asked me in surprise. “I’ve never been to her gravesite since the day of the service. I didn’t want to fall apart like that, I prefer to remember my mom as she was, in life.”
“Kat is indeed with your mom. I go to see them both every now and then and I put roses on Kat’s gravestone and lilies on your mom’s because Mr. Brooks once told me that’s what she loved.”
“We always had lilies in the house and in the garden,” she said. Her eyes had gone glassy.
“Harley, I’ve got to go. It’s two-thirty in the morning and I’ve got to watch them load four cars in the morning and shoot anyone who scratches the paint job in the process. Get some sleep.”
I left her sitting there at the counter, sipping on black coffee and nibbling cookies, staring off into space thinking of her mother and my sister.
…
I was at the first stoplight entering South Banks, when I looked up to see if it had changed and the entire thing was black. I drove one more section of pitch black road to find the next light gone out too. I was minutes from home and looking forward to jerking off in the shower and diving into my bed, when a tickle in my gut made me turn my bike around.
Power outages were the norm in heatwaves and a bad one could last days. Oftentimes, they only affected South Banks because our grid was outdated and needed major upgrades. But occasionally, they happened city-wide and that could mean East Point too. Trying to stomach the thought of Harley alone and scared was hard enough, but add in a power failure, and imagining her in that big house in the dark was too much.
I put the pedal to the medal and did a gigantic loop in the velvet black night.
Looked like I’d spend the night in East Point after all.
Harley Brooks was afraid of the dark and there was no way I was going to leave her alone and unprotected.
Chapter 7
HARLEY
I drank the whole pot and finished almost all the cookies, while I watched the heat lightning outside light up the sky like an aurora borealis. I missed my mom. I liked that her and Kat were together and that Wyatt saw them both and brought them flowers. Wyatt turned me on and then he pushed me away. I’d never been shoved off a man before and it felt humbling. He didn’t want me, and I guessed I had to live with that. But truth be told, I had a hard time imagining being into anyone else ever again. Wyatt made my heart feel like it was bursting at the seams, and I’d never before had an experience of being so sexually attracted to someone. Just thinking about his husky voice, his rough hands, his defined abs and strong arms had me sitting my panties wet, drinking coffee in the kitchen.
I hated being alone so much that I decided I’d sit in the kitchen until sunrise and then go upstairs, get acquainted with my vibrator and fall asleep until Wyatt was already back again.
I tried FaceTiming my dad in Italy a bunch of times but the call kept on failing, and all of the attempts ate up my battery. I tried calling Gianna to make sure she’d gotten home safely, but it went straight to voicemail. I tried Alexandra but then cancelled the call when I remembered she had a church choir thing in the morning.
I heard the crunch of gravel of a vehicle pulling into the driveway. It was unusual this late at night for anyone to make past security besides residents. I felt a wave of hope thinking maybe Dad and Stefano were home early, but when I went to the window, I saw a truck pulling into our wraparound driveway. I knew transport was coming early and they had clearance, but this was too early for that.
I squinted into the dark as the white truck passed one of the latern-style driveway lights leading up to the house. It was the pool cleaning truck. My heart raced like a jack rabbit in my chest and my breath caught in my throat. When I glanced at the grandfather clock in the hall, it was just three o’clock in the morning.