CRAVE - BAD BOY ROMANCE (3 page)

CHAPTER
FIVE

Louisiana
was hot. Louisiana was muggy.

Louisiana was hell.

I’d been sweating since the I’d
stepped off of the plane and into the steaming airport. Now that I’d rented a
car and driven even further south, the heat was absolutely oppressive. This
close to the bayou the humidity was insane. It felt like I was wearing a couple
of heavy fleece blankets instead of shorts and a t-shirt.

Not for the first time, I couldn’t
help but think back on the Michigan winter I’d left behind with a sick sort of
nostalgia. Sitting in my own sweat and watching big bugs splat against my
windshield was a far cry from the snow and ice I'd been driving through a yesterday,
and I was surprised to find my heart aching for real winter.

I had a feeling I was almost to her
house, and I checked the street address for the third time in as many minutes,
feeling like a fool. The GPS said I was only half a block away from my
destination, but I'd been expecting something...

Well, something more, I suppose.
Shouldn't I have felt some warmth, some connection? I was practically there,
and I may as well have been driving around on the dark side of the moon for all
the connection I felt to this place.

Once the nice lady in the GPS told me
I was there, I pulled into the driveway.

It was totally surreal, and
absolutely crazy. Here I was, staring past the bug guts at the sprawling, gabled
house my headlights were splashed across, wondering if I should just give in to
gut reaction and drive away as fast as I could until I ran out of gas.

It started to rain as I stared out at
the rain sprinkled, quaintly shingled roof for the first time in a long, long
time. The streetlights made the house’s windows sparkle in the moonlight, but
the lump I felt rising in my throat wasn't from the joy of any sort of
homecoming.

Instead, it took everything I had not
to burst into tears. She was gone now, and in her will she'd made the house
mine. It wasn't something I felt like I deserved, but a move to a new town was
definitely something I felt like I needed.

Still, I couldn't drum up a clear,
consistent memory of this house. No family reunions, no bright Christmas
mornings with presents and egg nog and carols.

Nothing...

My family had never been what you'd
call 'close'. I suppose that was obvious, seeing as how I was currently
dry-eyed, sitting in front of my long lost grandmother's house.

She was my Mother's Mother; the only
grandparent I had left. When my parents had been still alive, birthday presents
and Christmas cards had drifted in from Louisiana like clockwork from here, and
I could remember being pressured to speak to her on the phone now and then.
She'd always been incredibly soft-spoken, to the point where I had to strain to
even hold a conversation with her.

That had been before, of course.
Before the car accident. Before the State had to look after me, before my
Grandmother had refused.

I couldn't remember the last time she
and I had spoken or what the conversation had been about, and now here I was
unable to understand why I’d obeyed her wishes and returned to the house.

Lightning crashed somewhere behind
me, and an instant later thunder rolled through the car with enough force to
rock the rental on its rusty springs. The strike had been extremely close, and
judging by the sharp scent of ozone on the wind picking up and swirling me, the
rain was well and truly on the way.

“Better get your ass in there, Rachel,”
I said out loud. “This isn't going to get any easier the longer you wait.”

I reluctantly climbed out from behind
the wheel and shut the door behind me. Once I was clear of the car, I locked it
and made sure the keys were safely stowed away in my pocket.

A couple of ratty bags of luggage sat
in the backseat. They'd been my only traveling companion all the way from the
airport, and I wasn't embarrassed to say that I'd spoken to them more than once
on the ride in.

“Here we go,” I told them as I
grabbed the handles and dragged them out onto the driveway. “Louisiana. End of
the line.”

I was still standing there, feeling
like this was a mistake, ready to get back in the car and drive as far away as
the oncoming storm would let me go when a pair of headlights swept across me. I
spun on my heel, blinded for a moment by the bright sweep of someone driving
toward the house.

I expected the car to keep right on
going, but instead whoever was driving pulled up at the curb in front of my
Grandmother's house and shut the engine off. I couldn't help but try and peer
inside, but I was still seeing spots and the streetlights weren't helping me make
out who was in there.

My heart banged around inside of my
chest, and the luggage I'd been about to pick up was almost completely
forgotten.

Stop
, I practically screamed at myself,
there's no way he followed you here. Nobody
knows you're here but you and some random lawyer
.

Even though I knew the logic was
flawless, I still couldn't help but feel the fight or flight kick up along my
spine and light my brain up. By the time the stranger got out of the car with a
pizza box and ignored me as he walked on down the street, I was ready to grab
my phone and call the cops.

He was harmless, of course. Just like
the guy who'd asked me for directions in while I was renting the car had been
simply lost, and not some stalker. Just like the dude that had asked me for my
number at the gas station fifty miles back had just been lonely, and not trying
to work out if I was worth the trouble of mugging.

I watched the pizza guy as he walked
up the street a little. Grandma's house was on the corner, and the kid went up
the road and took a right, walking to the far side of the house and out of
sight. He'd left his keys in the car and the door slightly ajar, which made the
dashboard make a merry little ding ding ding at me that I couldn't help but
find cheering.

Because nobody dangerous left their
keys in the car, and the very that he had meant that the neighborhood couldn't
be that bad either. I mean, the delivery guy would know the area like the back
of his hand, and the fact that he'd risk his car being stolen just to make it a
little more convenient when he got back in spoke volumes to me.

I tried to force myself to smile, and
when that didn't work I shrugged instead, picking up my bags and walking up to
the front door. Even though I knew I'd gone through it before, this this was
the first time ever done it under protest.

Too bad, I told myself. It was time I
sucked it up and stopped bitching. I’d made my choice to come here, and if my
Grandmother started trying to justify all of the shit she’d let me go through
on my own, I had no problem reminding her of
her
choices, too…

It took everything I had, but I
finally found the strength from within me to reach up and rap my knuckles on
the ornate decorations scrawled into the wooden door. The sound they made
echoed loudly, and lightning and thunder ripped the night apart somewhere even
closer than before.

No answer. I sighed, taking a step
back. Now that I was in the frame of mind to get this task over and done with,
I realized that none of the lights were on in the house.

Was she already asleep? I checked my
phone. It wasn’t too late, hardly even nine o’clock. What time did old people
go to sleep in these parts? I frowned, uncertain. If the lights weren’t on, she
either wasn’t home or she was sound asleep.

I guess this was why she’d included
the key…

I fished it out of my pocket and slid
it into the lock. It, at least. That had been one of the thousand and one fears
I'd had, that I'd push the key into the lock and for some reason it would
decide not to turn. I'd tried to tell myself that it was a ridiculous worry,
that getting locked out of her house would be a blessing and not a curse.
Imagine my luck, to come all this way and be able to just shove a note under
her door that said
I tried, but you
didn’t answer and so I headed back to Detroit!

Of course, it was nothing more than a
happy little fantasy. The truth was, I’d sit in my car until either hell froze
over, Grandma came home or the sun came up, whichever happened first.

I turned the doorknob, finding the
metal strangely shaped and oddly smooth to the touch all at once. I’d expected
the trademark haunted house squeal of rusty hinges, but the door opened
smoothly.

I stepped inside and searched
desperately for the light switch, resorting to pawing at the wall like some
sort of panicked animal. I could feel my pulse rate picking up as a terrible,
stupid fear crept over me. There could be anything here in the darkness,
waiting for me, ready to pounce...

Stop!
I tried to warn myself, all too
aware that the panic I felt rising in my throat was perfectly willing to
strangle me in its grip.
There's no one
watching you!

I found the light switch at last, and
the relief I felt when my fingers finally came into contact with it was so powerful
it almost knocked me over. I shook my head, trying to slow my breathing, more
and more aware that I'd brought far more baggage with me from icy Michigan than
the beat up luggage laying at my feet.

When I clicked the switch, the lights
didn't come on.

Shit.

Thankfully, my severe lack of finances
had made me have to cope with blackouts often enough that I was able to quickly
change gears, resorting to grabbing my phone out of my pocket. I popped open
the flashlight app and used its light to survey the living room.

I almost wished I hadn't. Everywhere
I looked loomed the twisted arms of various artworks and bare branches hanging
from the wall. It looked as if someone had gone into the swamp a couple miles
away and fished out whatever they called driftwood down here, which my
Grandmother had happily mounted in brackets along the wall so that she could
use them as shelves. I saw racks of powdered spices suspended from the wood and
the dry, peeling bark hung in ribbons.

“What the hell?” I whispered,
shuddering at the way my own voice was absorbed by the depth of the room. When
I’d knocked it had seemed far too loud, but now that I was in hear I had the
distinct impression that the humidity was going to swallow me up.

I looked off to the right, into the
next room. A few memories were starting to filter back to me, and I was pleased
to see that at least the kitchen was exactly where I remembered it. After I got
up the nerve to pass the shadows, noting that they changed shape as I
approached, I went in there and started gingerly poking through drawers,
looking for candles and a box of matches. If I was going to have to prowl the
house looking for her bedroom so that I could let her know I’d arrived, I was
going to have light.

Otherwise, I very may well scare her
to death…

I didn't have to look very hard in my
search for a light source. The first drawer I opened in the kitchen was
obviously the junk drawer, and I was pleased to find it fully stocked with
every sort of candle I could have ever asked for, not to mention a couple of
half-used lighters and matches from what looked to be about three dozen bars in
the area.

Did my grandmother smoke? I couldn't
help but wonder, which reminded me how little I knew about the woman whose
house I was now in. Here I was, rummaging through her drawers like a thief in
the night, and I couldn't even remember if she'd done something as simple as
indulged in cigarettes.

I sighed out loud, grabbing a handful
of candles and one of the lighters. I lit the wicks as I went, placing the old
fashioned tallow cylinders pretty much at random as I made my way back into the
living room. Each new spark and flicker of flame revealed more of the house to
my tired eyes, and I couldn’t help but view the things scattered about as if I
was walking through some series of creepy still life paintings.

Here was a kitchen countertop, the
ancient linoleum tile atop it gleaming in the light of the candles. A big,
blocky wooden knife block sat beside it, its top practically bristling with the
handles of knives that were no doubt older than me and more than likely sharper
than my wit, despite their age.

Grandmother loved to cook. It was
starting to come back to me. I could even remember her smelling of spice and
flour, and her hands always held some spicy, exotic scent from one thing or
another she'd recently pared or sliced.

Actually, now that I thought about
the kitchen its warm fragrances, rife with home-cooked meals and home-spun
spells, there was another aroma lingering in the air that was only just
beginning to make my mouth water.

Pizza...

I frowned. I hadn't eaten on the
plane, and the drive in from the airport had been too rushed to worry about
something as trivial as stopping for a meal. Had the mere sight of the delivery
guy on the street outside been enough to set my stomach rumbling and make me
imagine the smell of pizza? I could practically taste it, the scent was so
strong, and there was no way that was the result of the kid just walking past
on his way to some lucky homeowner ready to indulge in a big circle of dough
and cheese.