***
Sitting with his feet propped up on the front counter of the small gas station, Shane Harper stretched his arm out to arrange a faded and worn deck of cards into a game of solitaire. “I’m telling you, man, this girl was hot. On a scale of one to ten, she’s like a twenty.”
From the chip aisle a few feet away, Chad laughed as he stocked the shelf. “You’ve been talking about this all day long.”
“Because it was hands down the best kiss of my life,” Shane insisted.
“Right, like I haven’t heard that before,” Chad said. “Except usually you’re more graphic.”
Shane rolled his eyes. “I know I say this all the time, but that girl had something special. She really did.”
“The one from last night?”
“Yeah.”
“What was her name?”
“I don’t know.” He groaned loudly, as if he was being tortured. “She wouldn’t tell me. She just gave me the hottest kiss ever, and thenran off like that stupid princess. You know the one who had that glass shoe?”
“Cinderella,” Chad said.
“What?”
“The ‘stupid princess’,” he explained. “It was Cinderella.”
Shane looked up, a concerned expression on his face. “Dude, how’d you even know that?”
Chad shrugged, looking embarrassed. “I don’t know, man.”
Shane put a card down on top of a row he’d nearly completed, then picked up another. “I wish I knew why she just ran away like that.”
“Maybe she got a good look at your face.”
“Very funny.”
Chad walked down to the end of the aisle, finally poking his head around to look at his friend. “You know, I’m doing your job here. You could be helping me instead of pining over some tease.”
“She wasn’t a tease,” Shane said, looking insulted. “And I’m supervising.”
“Dude, take a look at yourself. She got you all wound up and left you that way. That’s the definition of a tease.”
Shane thought about this a second as he looked out the store’s front windows.
“Give it a day or two, and I’m sure you’ll forget all about your mystery chick.”
Seeing something outside, his expression cheered. “Maybe not.” Shane hurried to scoop the stray cards into a neat deck. “Here she comes. Quick, get out of here.”
“What? Why?”
“I can’t risk any competition! You have that whole wounded puppy look in your eye. It’d get you a lot of ass if you’d let it.”
“You’re a pig,” Chad said, but ducked back into the chip aisle anyway. Kneeling beside an unopened box, he pulled a box cutter out of his pocket and cut it open, hearing the bell above the door ring.
From the counter, he heard Shane say, “Just when I was starting to think I’d imagined you.”
Chad stifled a laugh at the cheesy pickup line.
“Um, can I just get a pack of those cigarettes? Lights,” The female voice was softer, sounding a little insecure and very familiar. “And a lighter.”
He recognized the voice but couldn’t place it, and taking a look around the corner, he realized why. The girl at the counter was Cameron.
Suddenly the thought of another bar hookup for Shane wasn’t quite so amusing when the partner was his younger sister. Chad walked up, taking a closer look at the two of them. “Wait a second…she’s the girl from last night?”
Cameron looked over at him in surprise, then back at Shane. Her mouth dropped as she finally placed him from the night before, and she shot him a venomous glare. “Gross, you were bragging?”
“Chad,” Shane said under his breath, “What the hell you think you’re doing?”
“Shane, I think it’s time you officially met my sister. Cameron.” Locking eye contact with Shane, he added in a scolding tone, “You remember her, right? From when she was like…six years old?
Shane’s cheeks flushed as he turned to Cameron, eyeing her up and down, momentarily distracted by her legs. “Wow…you’ve really grown up.”
Chad’s eyes bulged. “Dude!”
Shane cleared his throat as his cheeks turned bright red.
Cameron, looking more uncomfortable by the minute, shifted her weight from one foot to the other. “Can I just get my cigarettes?”
Shane turned to the display case, grabbed a pack and set them on the counter, his eyes lingering on hers in an apologetic look. “On the house.”
She took the cigarettes and looked over at Chad as if she wanted to explain. But instead, she left without saying another word.
Shane watched her leave through the windows.
“You forgot to card her.”
It took a second, but Shane’s eyes bulged in realization. “She’s eighteen, right? God, please tell me she’s eighteen.”
“Barely.”
Shane looked at his friend cautiously before speaking. “Look, man, I had no idea…”
Chad held up a hand, cutting him off. “Let’s just…never mention this again, alright?”
With that, he went back to stocking the shelves. But as he did, his mind wouldn’t stop picturing the two of them together and he wondered what his sister was up to. Why would she kiss some random stranger and then disappear?
***
By the time Cameron walked back to her brother’s house, it was getting dark and the porch light was on. As she stepped onto the porch, she heard voices carrying from inside.
“I’m sure if you just give her a chance to explain,” Bela was saying, “you’ll understand. Everybody has reasons for the things they do—even the decisions that don’t seem well-thought out.”
With a lingering feeling of dread, Cameron opened the screen door and stepped into the living room.
Bela sat on the couch, looking up at Sam who paced across the floor, his cheeks red. Spotting the tension like an expert, she immediately wondered which of her lies had caught up to her this time.
Seeing her, he stopped pacing, but she couldn’t read his expression.
“I’ll uh…I’ll just give the two of you some privacy.” Bela stood and left the room.
“Uh-oh,” Cameron said once she was alone with Sam. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong,” Sam said, giving her a smile that looked forced. “Why don’t you have a seat?”
“Something must be wrong then,” Cameron said without moving a muscle.
Sam sat down on the couch, resting his elbows on his knees. “I called Anne earlier.”
Cameron responded with a look of sheer panic. “What? You didn’t tell her I was here, did you?”
“Was it some kind of secret?”
Crossing her arms, she tried to look convincing as she said, “No. No, it wasn’t,” but even she didn’t believe it.
Sam motioned to an empty chair. “She had some surprising things to say about you.”
“I’m sure she did.” Flopping into the chair, she tried her best not to panic. But if Julian hadn’t gone to the police by now, Anne definitely would. “I’m sure she did,” she said bitterly. “I’m sure she talked your ear off.”
“You dropped out of high school?”
Cameron picked at a rip in her jeans, pulling out tiny white strings of denim. “So?”
“She said you never gave a thought to your future. That all you cared about was partying and taking off with some neighbor.” Keeping the steady, analytical gaze of a cop on her, he made it almost impossible for her to think of a way to spin this.
“She’s exaggerating.”
“Was she exaggerating when she said you’ve been in and out of trouble since you were fourteen?” he asked.
“What do you want from me?” she asked, her voice coming out a hoarse whisper.
“Just an honest conversation,” he said. “I just want to know what’s going on.”
“There’s nothing going on,” she insisted, her shrill voice contradicting her words. “I told a few white lies to hide the fact I’m a lose
r. That’s it.”
“Anne said you ran away last week,” Sam said. “Until I called, she had no idea where you were. And you’ve only been here two days, so it makes me wonder…what’d you do with the rest of that time?”
“I went fishing,” she snapped. Anything was better than telling him the truth about what she’d been doing.
He shook his head, raked a hand through his hair. “You didn’t come here for some familybonding, did you?”
Feeling beyond guilty, she couldn’t bring herself to look at him.
“So why did you come here?”
Cameron stood up, heading for the door. “That’s a really good question.”
“Wait,” Sam called, but she didn’t stop until she was outside, in the front yard.
Covered by the shadow of the house, she finally let out a slow breath, trying to regain control. Now that Anne knew she was in Victory Hollow, she couldn’t stay, even though she’d started to hope she could put down some roots here. Like usual, Anne managed to ruin that like she’d ruined everything else.
And with her car in the shop still being fixed, Cameron was left with only one choice, and it was something she really didn’t want to do.
Pulling her cell phone out of her pocket, she walked across the yard as she dialed Julian’s number. Not wanting anybody to hear her, she ducked inside the bottom level of the garage for privacy before she hit ‘send’.
Julian picked up in the middle of the second ring. “Well, that didn’t take long.”
The second she heard his smug voice, she felt an inch tall. Squeezing her eyes shut, she forced herself to swallow her pride. “Something…something’s happened.”
“What?”
“It’s Anne,” Cameron said with a trembling, heavy hearted sigh. “She knows where I’m at.”
He was quiet a moment. “Isn’t that a shame?”
Tears stung her eyes at his lack of empathy, but she wouldn’t have expected more. She knew better. “Look, I don’t want to do this, okay?”
“But you have to,” Julian said. “So you have to say the words. Ask me to come get you.”
Clutching the phone tight, her hand started to shake, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it.
“Come on, Cammi,” he said. “I can’t hear you.”
Biting her lip, she wondered if there was some other option, something her cynical mind had overlooked.
“Say I was right and you were wrong and you’re lost without me,” Julian said with a chuckle. “We both know that’s the truth. On your own, you couldn’t even hide for two days without getting busted.”
She swallowed hard while his words probed at insecurities she’d harbored for a lifetime.
“Let’s face it, you’re the beauty and I’m the brains.”
“Knock it off,” she whispered. “It’s hard enough to call you like this.”
“The truth is usually hard to hear. You tried to make it on your own, and here you are, calling me for help.”
Just like that, as he decided to open his big mouth again, she decided she’d rather stay under Sam’s scrutiny, with the police closing in, than live under Julian’s constant criticism. “This was a mistake,” she said.
“Another one of many in your book,” Julian said. “Wonder what you’re going to fuck up next.”
It was the last straw. With an aggravated scream, she hurled the phone across the wall. It smashed into the cement above a row of shelves, knocking a small shoebox off one of them. The box fell to the floor, while the pieces of her phone became lost in the darkness.
And for a second, her mind was a complete mess of racing thoughts and total panic. She didn’t know how she’d make it to the next moment, cover up the tornado that’d smashed into her life and thrown everything into the air. Thinking of how ironic it was that, just two weeks ago she’d been living with Anne. Not necessarily happy, but not hiding either. Now, the future seemed so overwhelming that all she wanted to do was curl up in a corner and cry, but she needed to save face. Because telling her brothers the truth about what had happened would be even more unbearable.
Trying to calm herself down, she took a minute to wipe the fresh tears from her cheeks, then groped around for the light switch. Finally, she found one and flipped it.
A dim bulb hanging from a string lit the room just barely. Just enough to see that the box had fallen in front of a staircase that led to Chad’s apartment. Letting out a slow breath, she moved forward and knelt beside the mess.
A few tattered envelopes had spilled out, along with several photographs. Picking one of the photographs up, she was surprised to see a younger version of Chad with his arms wrapped around a girl. Pretty and petite, she had long blond hair that hung in curled ringlets around a dainty, oval-shaped face. But it was her eyes that Cameron noticed the most. Sparkling blue, she looked so innocently happy that for a second, it took her breath away.
Standing by a willow tree, arms wound around each other, they gazed into each other’s eyes with a look Cameron had never seen first-hand, but somehow always envied. True love.
She could feel it the second she saw the picture. Whoever this girl was, or wherever she was now, Chad had loved her. A lot.
This point was made even clearer when she picked up a stack of envelopes and saw they were all addressed to Amy Chapman in Denver, Colorado. Some letters were returned unopened; the rest looked like they were never sent. Pushing them back into the box, she came across a newspaper article. It was a front page story, featuring a picture of a creepy guy with eyes so cold it gave her chills, next to a photo of Sam. The headline read: THE CARVER GUNNED DOWN, LOCAL OFFICER A HERO.
Narrowing her eyes in curiosity, she began to read the article.
Citizens of Victory Hollow were terrified to discover a serial killer preying on young women, but after a nearly year long reign of terror, the Carver’s deadly mission has finally come to a surprising end.
On a dark rainy night, Jeremy Edland attempted to eliminate a witness, but his plan was foiled by—
“What are you doing?” Chad’s stiff, angered voice came from behind her.
Standing, she chuckled nervously in an attempt to break the ice. “This…it fell from the shelf.” She quickly handed the box to him and pulled her hands back. “I was just trying to put everything away.”
“Kind of hard to do when you’re busy reading it.” Moving past her, he knelt at the bottom of the steps and carefully began to pick up a few photos she’d missed.
“I’m sorry,” she said. “The headline caught my attention. Sam’s a hero?”
“Yeah.” He yanked the newspaper article from her hands and put it back inside the box, then carefully put the lid back on. “He is.”
“The girl’s pretty,” Cameron offered, unsure of how to smooth this situation over. “Amy, right? Was she your girlfriend?”
Chad’s voice was tight with tension as he said, “Amy’s none of your business.”
She felt a sharp sting, which made her anger from before ignite. “Look, I wasn’t trying to snoop,” she said. “I was just curious, okay?”
He paused on the step, with the shoebox tucked under his arm. “That your excuse for last night, too? Curiosity?”
She turned an icy glare on him in response to the shame he made her feel. “So that’s what you’re so pissed about. What happened with your friend?”
“His name is Shane,” he said. “Not that you’ve bothered to ask.”
“What difference does his name make? He’s obviously a jerk.”
Chad opened his mouth to say something, and then closed it again. “I should just stay out of this.”
“Yeah, I think that’s a good idea.”
Turning, he headed back up the steps but stopped again. “It’s just…he didn’t even know your name.”
She crossed her arms. “And this bothers you because…”
“Shouldn’t it bother you?” he asked, looking down on her from the stairs. “Or do you normally go around jump
ing guys in bars without bothering to introduce yourself?”
“You know what bothers me?” she shot back. “You and Sam not minding your own business. This is my life, okay? And I can do whatever I want with it.”
“Fine, I’ll stay out of your way,” without looking back at her, he started up the steps. “And you stay out of my stuff.”
As Chad opened a door at the top of the steps, Cameron took off walking.
Fuming with anger, she power walked through the night as she thought of every way her life had turned out all wrong. With each step, she became even angrier, blaming everyone from Sam, to Anne, to that stupid guy from last night. It was their fault, not hers. They’d been the ones to screw up and she was just a casualty of circumstance. And why couldn’t anyone let her have some peace?
Up ahead, she saw Harper’s Automotive come into view. Though the garage that branched off the side was closed, the lights in the store were on. And seeing it, she felt her anger ignite full-bloom.
Marching across the parking lot, she yanked open the door, ringing the bell so loud it made Shane jump out of his seat behind the counter.
He looked surprised to see her as he turned to the door. “Whoa…you look pissed.”
“What the hell is wrong with you?” she demanded, hands on her hips.
He let out a slow whistle. “And apparently you’re pissed at me.”
She moved closer. “What kind of loser brags about something that barely even happened? Or is that just the most action you’ve seen lately?”
He hesitated, looking like he was caught in some kind of trap. “Look—”
“No. Don’t try to spin this. I don’t give a damn what you have to say. If you’d kept your mouth shut in the first place, Chad wouldn’t have just acted like such a jerk to me.”
“Oh,” he said in understanding. “So he said something to you?”
Cameron crossed her arms, giving him a steely look in response.
Looking somewhat boyish, he scratched his head. “Look, I’m really sorry about that. If I’d known who you were…”
“Why does it matter?” she asked. “Why do I suddenly get more respect for being a Baker?”
To that, he could only stare dumbly at her. “Maybe there’s something I could do. I could talk to Chad, or—”
Another Life: Another Life Series #1 Page 4