I shake my head and move to the stairs, trying to figure out what I need to do next.
Micah reaches out but stops himself short of me. His eyes go wide. “Please don’t tell them I’m here,” he says, urgency ringing through each word. “I don’t want to go back yet.”
I can’t let it soften me.
I don’t know what’s going on.
I can’t make a judgment call here.
“Don’t tell who? Go back where?”
Micah looks panicked but he answers. Just not the one I was after. “Call Kissy,” he hurries. “You know her, right? Call her. She’ll know what to do. Just please don’t tell them I’m here.” He throws himself backward like his life depends on it.
Maybe he’s being dramatic, or maybe it does.
Regardless, I figure I should go answer that door.
CHAPTERFOURTEEN
Kissy
I dropmy keys in the catch-all dish by the front door then hover in the foyer.
My house isn’t special. Sure, it’s clean and updated where it counts and has more than enough space for me. The paint is nice, the floors aren’t scratched, and I can walk around naked without an audience if I wanted. But it’s not warm and the good kind of messy and has magazines covering every available surface. There’s no stained rug just inside the front door, no faint smell of lavender that meets me when I walk in.
There’s no Raleigh and William Lawson to be found inside.
There’s no Mimi and Wyatt.
I stand there, like I usually do when my head is filled with a billion different things, and manage to find the time to feel the emptiness.
The cold where there should be some warm.
I don’t know how to fix it, how to fill it.
It’s one reason I want to leave Robin’s Tree. I need something, and it’s not here.
The other reason I want to leave?
Everett Dang Guidry.
I make a noise that’s unbecoming of a lady, crossed between a cuss and a sigh, and start for the kitchen. I can’t believe that Damien came to the bar. For me.
Looking for Guidry.
How am I supposed to know where he is?
Though, I do wonder now where he’s gone off to.
I open the fridge and wrap my hand around a bottle of water. The cold matches how the night air is heading. I think about how Mom used to welcome the cold while Dad always fussed at it. I also think about Alice and if Guidry gone has something to do with that.
I never have the chance to hear someone come up behind me.
The hit is more of a shove, and it’s in my left shoulder. I scream out as all of me goes down against the tile. The water bottle I’ve grabbed hits next to me just right enough that the cap busts and water starts pouring out.
I don’t understand what’s happening.
Is this happening?
