AllFreeNovel
Share Us
It feels like it’s been five minutes when the alarm blares from the side. I reach out my hand and move it around, knocking the bottle of whiskey to the floor. It shatters all over the place. I get up on my elbow, looking down at the amber liquid with glass shattered around it. “Well, this is a wake-up,” I say, rolling to the other side of the bed and grabbing a pair of shoes before going to get a broom. I sweep up the glass. “What a waste of good alcohol,” I mumble as I finish cleaning it. I look over to the bedside table at the picture of Jennifer. “Morning, baby,” I greet her before turning and heading to the shower.
Thirty minutes later, I’m grabbing my mug of steaming, hot black coffee and heading out the back door. My hair is still wet from my shower when I slide my boots on as I walk down the steps, headed to the backyard. I look at the side, at the sun slowly coming up.
I walk past the two black pickup trucks parked right next to the shed where we keep the tools, going to the far corner of the yard where the red barn is located. I’m making my way to the office building that is halfway to the barn. I open the glass door and turn on the lights before I make my way past the reception desk toward my office. “Time to start the day.” I pull out my chair. “Another day I’m closer to death.”
Chapter Six
Autumn
The soft sound of bells ringing makes me reach out from the quilt and turn it off. It wasn’t like I was sleeping anyway. I turn to the side, grabbing my phone and shutting it off before my arm goes back under the cover where it was. I look around the room I moved back in with my father a couple days after the accident. I haven’t been in for over eight years, eight years and nothing in this room has changed. A house where my mother grew up and we inherited when her parents died. Brady wanted nothing to do with it, mostly because he knew how much I loved this house, so he didn’t care that I moved in as soon as I turned eighteen. A house Waylon hated because it was beneath him to be in something that didn’t have fifteen bedrooms. Another reason I should have hated him, but instead I just ignored it.
Turning to my other side, I look at the window. The shade’s open as the daylight streams into the room. My body feels like it’s been run over with a Mack truck, front and back. I blink a couple of times, not looking anywhere else but the window, until I take a deep inhale and throw the covers off me and get out of bed. The cool air makes me shiver as I reach for the long sweater lying across the bottom of the bed. Wrapping it around myself, I move to the kitchen to make myself a cup of coffee.
Walking over to the pantry cupboard, I see my brother at least went out to get things to make coffee. Setting it up to brew myself a pot of coffee, before pouring myself a cup, I pick it up and walk over to the back door, pulling it open and then pushing through the storm door before standing on the back deck. The swing chair my father put up for me when I inherited this place ten years ago sways softly with the warm breeze. Instead of walking over and sitting in the swing, I walk to the steps and sit on the top one and look out into the field. The sounds of birds chirping fill the morning air as I take a sip of my hot black coffee. My mind goes back to last night and coming face-to-face with the one person I never wanted to see again. Was it irony or maybe it was karma? Whatever it was, I saw that Charlie had not changed in six years.
I mean, his appearance changed for sure. He was always handsome and the hate definitely didn’t dimmish that. The words from the last conversation we had, some all those years ago, fill my head. It was also the last night I stayed in this house, after that, I moved in with my father, right before I left town.
“You fucking knew he was drunk!” he roared in my face; his face filled with anguish and hatred. His eyes were filled with rage. It was also one o’clock in the morning when he knocked on my door, scaring the ever-loving fuck out of me. “You did this.” His face advanced to mine. “You could have stopped him.”
“I tried,” I finally said, “I tried to get him to give me the keys.”
“You didn’t try hard enough.” His words sliced through me like little shards of glass getting under your skin. “It should be you in that grave, rotting in hell with him.” That was the last thing he said to me before he turned and stumbled into the forest like a thief in the night. My legs gave out from under me, and I sat there rocking side to side until daylight.
I take a sip of the coffee, closing my eyes and blinking the last tear away. I knew coming back home would bring back all of this. I was just hoping I would be strong enough for it.
I finish the cup of coffee before getting up and moving back inside where my phone is ringing. I place the cup in the sink, not rushing to the phone. The phone stops ringing as I walk back to the bedroom. Picking it up, I see it’s my brother.
I’m about to call him back when he sends me a text:
Brady:Just checking in. Call me when you’re up.
I put the phone on speaker, calling him back. “Hey,” he says when he answers the phone, “did I wake you?”
“Nope,” I reply, picking up the pillows and tossing them to the foot of the bed as I make it. “I was up and at ’em.”
“You got in so late last night,” he reminds me, “you should have slept in.”
“I’m fine,” I assure him, avoiding telling him I ran into Charlie. He has enough on his mind with Dad. He doesn’t need to worry about me and how I’m doing. “I was planning on getting in the shower and picking up some donuts and surprising Dad.”
“What time do you think that is going to happen?” he asks me. “Because he’s going to want to kick my ass, and I’d rather be far away from him when you do this.”
I laugh at him. “In about an hour. Is he still at the hospital?”
It’s Brady’s turn to laugh. “You think that stubborn man would stay in the hospital if he didn’t need to be there? His words to the nurse were, ‘I can do all this lying around in my own damn house.’” I grab the pillows, putting them back up to the headboard.
“Sounds about right,” I say, “he’ll probably kick my ass for being here.”
“Well, there is more stuff we need to talk about,” he says, and I sit down. “How about you swing by the bar when you’re done?”
“Sounds good.” I close my eyes. “I will also note I don’t like your tone.”
“Duly noted, little sister,” he responds softly. “See you later.”
“Love you,” I say before pressing the end button, then getting up and going into the shower. I comb out my shoulder-length hair before fluffing it with my hands. I’ve always had long hair, but now I don’t let it get longer than my shoulders.
The dread that fills me is something I can’t explain or put into words. I slip my light-blue jeans with holes in the knees on before grabbing the gray tank top that sits right above the waist of the jeans, showing you just a touch of my stomach. I grab my gray sweater and put it on before snatching up my black bag and putting on my white sneakers.
I walk out the front door to my car, my hands shaking when I pull open the door and get behind the wheel. “It’ll be fine,” I tell myself. “The worst that can happen already happened.”
