Page 6 of To the Grave

Manage them.

I looked up at Locke and nodded. “Tomorrow.”

He surprised me by reaching down to squeeze my shoulder. The gesture felt paternalistic, and I thought of my dad, one of many messes in my life that had gone unaddressed in the wake of Jace’s death.

“I’m proud of you,” Locke said. “Keep showing up for yourself. One minute at a time.”

I sucked in a breath, blew it out slowly around the grief that was creeping back in now that I was still.

One minute at a time. I could do that.

I said hello to a few of the gym members I’d gotten to know when I’d been coming regularly and grabbed my bag. It was a relief to step outside into the cool morning air and I exhaled another big breath.

Across the street, Wolf was holding a cup from Cassie’s Cuppa and leaning against Benji’s driver’s side while Otis fiddled with something under the hood. I felt the unfamiliar stirring of desire.

No, that wasn’t right. I’d felt desire in the months since Jace’s death, but it had always come after prompting by Wolf and Otis. They could still light my body on fire with a kiss or a touch, but I didn’t initiate anything because my body felt dead without a jump start from their lips and fingers.

But I felt it now: the familiar rush of heat to my pussy, the tingling at my center.

And who could blame me? Wolf had deployed his trademark lean while wearing ripped black jeans, a sleeveless gray Sex Pistols T-shirt that showed off his defined biceps, and his black boots. His dark hair was still tousled, probably because he and Otis had gotten up early to get me out of the house for the gym, and I wanted nothing more than to go back to bed and mess it up some more.

Otis did nothing for the impulse when he shut the hood of the car, his arms flexing under his tank top, his lower body poured into faded jeans that hung just a little too low on his hips, giving me a glimpse of his washboard abs and the Adonis belt pointing at his dick.

“Hey, doll,” Otis said, walking over to stand next to Wolf as I approached. “How was the workout?”

I took a deep breath. “It was…” I nodded. “It was good.”

Wolf handed me the cup from Cassie’s. “Thought you could probably use this.”

“Thank you.” I took a drink of the hot bitter coffee.

“What do you want to do now?” Otis asked.

For the first time in a long time, I didn’t feel totally dead. It wasn’t just my body, although the workout had definitely woken me up on that front, as evidenced by the shot of lust I’d felt looking at Wolf and Otis. My mind felt sharper.

Clearer.

“I want to find out who killed Jace,” I said. “And I’m ready to make them pay.”

Chapter 8

Daisy

Iput food out for Cat, the mangy feline Jace had started feeding, then I made bacon, eggs, and toast. I also set out some strawberries I found in the fridge, because after my workout the last thing I wanted to do was eat more of the processed pastries I’d been wolfing down the past three months. I had no idea how much I weighed and I didn’t care, but my body had felt slow at the gym, weighed down both by grief and the fact that I hadn’t been taking care of myself.

It hadn’t seemed important before. Why bother when Jace was dead?

Now I was angry at myself for wasting so much time. If I wanted to find out who had killed Jace, I needed to get my shit together. I needed to go back to eating the food my body needed to be awake and alert, needed to get more exercise and fresh air and sun, needed to stop sleeping all the time.

I thought of my dad. His insistence on discipline — on eating healthy food, on setting goals and working hard to achieve them — had seemed militant when I was younger.

Now I realized I could use it.

“This is amazing,” Otis said, digging into the eggs.

I smiled and wondered if smiling would always feel strange, like I was a puppet and someone else was pulling the strings on my face. “It’s just eggs.”

“I know,” Otis said. “They’re amazing.”

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