AllFreeNovel
Share Us
The hour-long drive back to the no name town to the no name antique store gave Nelle more than enough time to cry. She also spent a good portion checking her mirrors, making sure nobody followed her.
Just put it behind you,she thought to herself.Just leave it all behind, like so many times before.
Yet there was another voice in her head, way in the back of her mind that kept screaming.
Thalia is dead! Thalia was shot to death! With a gun! Bullets… think about it. BULLETS. Bullets tearing through her shirt and her skin. Into her chest. Ripping her flesh open,seeking muscle, veins, arteries, and organs. Her sweet heart exploding…
At one point Nelle had to pull over. Only ten minutes fromhomebut Nelle had no choice. Her stomach said so.
As she opened the driver’s side door, she leaned to her left and began to vomit. The ache in her stomach went up to her heart and her head. The vomiting stopped but the tears and emotion could no longer be held back.
She fell from the car and ended up on her hands and knees on the side of a desolate road, crying her eyes out. Gasping for breaths. Her hands curling tight around jagged rocks that dug into her skin like broken glass. She threw her head back and screamed as hard as she could, as long as she could.
Growing up in such a fake world and knowing violence was the cost of any wrong step… and now little Thalia was gone. Dead. Cremated. Never to exist again. Yet in some fucked up way, Thalia escaped it. For good.
After a few minutes, Nelle climbed to her feet and took her shirt off. She wiped her face and her mouth, cleaning herself up the best she could. She then balled the shirt up tight and threw it off into the distance.
Nelle stood in a bra, on the side of the road, next to her car. She looked down at herself, watching her breasts rise and fall with her breaths. A smile broke out on her face.
I’m wearing a sexy, black laced bra right now,she thought to herself.For who? Huh? Who? Who is going to see me? Who is going to want this…?
Nelle opened the back door to her car and unzipped a bag to get a fresh T-shirt. She also found an old pack of gum and tossed a piece of the fake minty snack into her mouth to chase away that awful vomit taste.
When she arrived backhome, she went right to the antique store. She found a small, half dead bouquet of flowers on what was supposed to be the register counter.
There hadn’t been an actual person to walk through the store in years, if not more. That was a big reason why Nelle took the odd job of managing the antique store. Bucky hated when people walked around the store. They touched things. They picked things up. They never put them back the right way. And most of the cheap fucks came to look and rarely purchased…
Then again, even if someone wanted to buy an item, Bucky would suddenly get scared and say the price was wrong.
The flowers were a sweet gesture from Bucky.A handwritten note rested beside the bouquet.
Sorry to hear of your sister’s passing. Hope you’ll be back online soon.
Maybe in other circumstances this would have been seen as a dickhead move. A passive aggressive note from her boss essentially telling her to get back to work. But it was okay. Nelle needed it. This was her sad version of normalcy.
Sometimes it was better to hide.
Sometimes it was easier to forget.
Chapter Five
No Snow Ski Trip
Slade took a seat at the bar, right next to Nova.
“He told you to watch me, huh?” Nova asked without looking up from her coffee.
“He loves you, sweetheart. We all do.”
Nova looked at Slade. Her eyes were sweet, tender, fighting the battle between an old life and this new one.
“You’re a badass,” Slade said.
“I don’t need to hear any of that.”
Maggie rushed over to Slade, coffee cup in one hand, coffee pot in the other.
“Morning, sweetheart,” Slade said with a grin.
