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There is no way I can move forward with him now. I would question everything at every turn. Is he only interested because I told him I was? Is he so flattered by my massive interest in him that he only wants his ego stroked more?
What’s worse is that I was so embarrassed that my temper got the best of me and, in turn, caused him to come at me. I’ve never seen Evan speak so harshly to anyone as he did to me when he came to the store. But that’s probably best for both of us. I don’t have to confront him anymore and deal with what I drunkenly blurted out, and he doesn’t have to pretend to be interested in me.
The horrible burn of that rejection and humiliation still sits heavy in my chest. As if that’s the worst thing I have to focus on right now.
So I work. I work, and I work, and I work. I manage Lily and pick up some babysitting jobs on the side. Some old friend of a neighbor needs their house cleaned, so I do that. I walk a pair of dogs that belong to a couple who always used to ask for my section at Hope Pizza. Any odd job, any little scrap of money I can pull together, I find it, and I do it.
It might only be a week, but I make a couple hundred dollars payment toward the mortgage. Some is pulled out of my measly savings, the account I barely kept afloat during college, but every penny counts. No sense of relief washes over me as I hit submit on the loan website. I don’t feel lighter.
No, if anything, I only feel more bogged down in this shit. But I don’t really have a choice to stay there, in my dark emotions. There is far too much ground to make up for that kind of wallowing. So I schedule myself to the brim so that I can’t feel.
By the time I put my car in park in Alana’s old driveway, my bones are so tired that I’m nearly falling asleep. At least when I’m this tired, I pass out as soon as my head hits the pillow rather than driving myself nuts in the dark with anxiety.
The street is pitch-black and quiet at this hour of the night, and I climb out as silently as possible in case Evan still isn’t asleep. Please, dear God, don’t let him be downstairs. Allow me to escape to my room in peace.
But a rustling to my left has me stepping sideways, expecting an animal to run across my path.
Except it’s not an animal at all.
“You Victoria’s kid?”
A person appears from the shadows, and I jump back, terror seizing my lungs. It’s dark out since it’s pretty late. None of the houses around us have lights in their windows, and even though Evan’s car is in the driveway, I’m not sure if he’s awake or aware.
A thin man with a white shock of a goatee, dark hair, and a long black trench coat approaches me. He’s not large, not in the brawny sense, but there is something intimidating about his presence. In the unhinged way his lips continue to twitch a little, in the way his eyes, large and so light blue they’re almost white, shift back and forth too quickly.
I position my keys between my knuckles like I’ve seen self-defense experts advise and curse myself for not taking a class or two. If I scream, will someone hear? Does this guy have a weapon?
He seems to take my silence as an answer because his lips twist up in wry amusement, and he speaks again.
“Your mom owed me a debt.”
That panic about a stranger confronting me in the dark? Yeah, that immediately disappears. In its place is a sinking of my stomach, a knowing of sorts that this final hammer was going to whack me over the head.
Of course, she didn’t stop at the house. Of course, there was more she left behind to punish me with.
“Who are you?” Was this even legal? If not, he can’t hold me to it, right?
“Don’t you worry about that.”
Okay, that answers that question.
“She’s dead, so she doesn’t owe you anymore.” It sounds so stupid and childlike when I say it, but I try to square my shoulders like I’m not afraid.
He chuckles, and it sends a chill up my spine. “That’s not how this works, girly.”
The way he says girly isn’t sweet or cute, it’s dirty and debasing. I want to throw up, but the sheer fear in my lungs won’t let me.
“Your mom loved to blow money, but she wasn’t particularly smart. Bet on lost causes, poor shots. She wanted to get rich quick … too bad for her. Seventy-five grand in the hole, that’s where it landed her. Well, I guess you, now.”
I nearly keel over when he says the number. Seventy-five grand? She was illegally betting and lost seventy-five grand? I start to shake, my panic manifesting itself as a full-body tremor rather than my dinner in chunks all over my shoes.
“What you do is illegal …” It’s not a question, more a thought to myself that comes out.
As if that would scare him away. I wasn’t in this world of people, but I knew my mother hung out with some questionable people when I was still living at home. They didn’t just take no for an answer.
He sneers, a terrible smirk on his lips. “Which means that I operate under the nose of the law. And if something just so happened to happen to you, there might not be any clues as to how you ended up, oh I don’t know, in a car crash?”
The threat of bodily harm has all the blood draining from my body. I feel ice cold, trying to process the debt and also the violence he threatens.
