Page 24 of Cold Foot Curse

Kade frowned and ripped his gaze away from her front door. He’d left his phone number on the counter in case she needed anything, but if he had to guess, she would want to distance herself from everything to do with Sister’s Edge, and once upon a time, he had been Third there. And then he’d been taken away in handcuffs, and she’d been left to deal with the aftermath.

Jess would probably never forgive him for that. He could tell she didn’t believe him about Samuel being the one who murdered Tanner. Maybe it had been a mistake to tell her.

He eased his foot onto the gas and coasted out of the small residential neighborhood and aimed his truck toward Wreck’s Mountains.

Chapter Seven

The clock on the bedside table read 6:29.

Confused, Jess pushed up in the unfamiliar bed and rubbed her eyes and then read it again. 6:29. The saturated evening light made a halo around the closed window blinds. There was no way she’d slept twelve hours. Not after sleeping nine on the way here.

No way. No. Way.

She swung her legs over the bed and pressed the soles of her feet against the soft carpet. Her back was sore, probably from lying in the same position for too long.

The silence threatened to drown her.

She could hear her thoughts too easily in a deep quiet like this.

Her house back home was probably reduced to rubble, and the Sister’s Edge Crew would be sorting through insurance paperwork.Not your house.Your room, the animal corrected.More like a cage. Your cage is reduced to rubble.

Jess huffed a breath. Well, at least the animal could say something other than,can you feel him? It was progress, she supposed.

The carpet was so soft, it tickled her feet. Her skin was sensitive right now. The sheets were comfortable against the backs of her legs, and against the palms of her hands as she sat here with her arms locked against the mattress on either side of her hips.

Her hair was hanging in her face, and she shook it out of her way, then stood, and stretched. It felt so damn good.

Feeling groggy, she padded into the bathroom down the hallway and turned on the light, then noticed the gas station bag of toiletries she’d bought for herself while Kade had pumped the gas into his truck about an hour outside of Sister’s Edge. She traced the lettering of the logo. Oregon. Oregon felt a million miles away now.

She looked up at her reflection and yelped and then laughed at her rat’s nest of hair that had tangled on top of her head.

Her house was in a pile of rubble.

The thought dragged the smile from her lips. Inhaling deep, Jess traced the remnants of the biggest scar on her face from that damn car accident all those years ago. She wished that she could look in the mirror and see anything else, but even when she tried, her attention always drifted back to her cheek. Her make-up from yesterday was probably smeared off onto one of the bedroom pillows, and the big scar was red and angry looking. The doctors had fixed so much, but this one was stubborn. Her jaw ached from clenching her teeth in her sleep. The break there had healed badly. A vision of headlights coming straight for her made Jess flinch. The sound of shattering glass, and metal slamming against metal was deafening. She broke out into a cold sweat.

Why couldn’t she cut that damn memory from her head? It had been so long ago. God, she hated the scar-reminders in her reflection. She never wanted to think about it again.

He said Samuel killed Tanner.

The thought had her gripping the side of the sink. Jess squeezed her eyes tightly closed and tried to banish it from her mind. She didn’t want to think about any of this stuff.

She needed to stay busy. That was her coping mechanism—stay busy from sunup until sundown, and go to bed so exhausted, she didn’t have the energy to question her life.

She focused on one thing at a time.

Brush her teeth.

Brush her hair.

Wash her face.

Put her toiletries away.

On and on, and so forth until she felt as ready as she could be for the day, and then she made her way into the living room.

When she saw the coffee machine, she got a little excited. Jess looked around on instinct to make sure she wouldn’t get in trouble. In the house in Sister’s Edge, she rented the smallest room, because she was the lowest rank, and that siphoned down to a lot of things in that home. She was the last to get food if they were eating meals together. The last to pour coffee from the pot in the mornings, and often there was just a trickle left, and she wasn’t allowed to make more, because any extra would be wasteful, according to Samuel. She came last on everything, but a pairing would’ve fixed that. Her Promise to Kade would’ve put her first on many things, because he was Third. Not that it was important to her, but there were times when she didn’t get enough to eat or to drink that she thought it would’ve been nice.

Here? She could make her own cup of coffee with her choice of creamer, and no one could say shit about fuck about it.

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