it was lifetime enough for this place to have lost its hold over her.
She parked next to the yard that was more weeds than grass. There were no signs of her mother’s rosebushes and flowerbeds, and Nicky wondered if the weeds had claimed them or if someone had taken mercy on them and replanted them at a more hospitable place. She hoped it was the latter.
Something good had to have come out of here.
The screen door on the front was hanging on one hinge, and the July breeze caught it, causing it to make a creaking sound as it swayed. Definitely not welcoming, but she just kept on walking up the steps. Nicky only made it to the second of five steps before she had to stop. She couldn’t make her feet, or her mind, go any farther.
Even though she was still a good two yards away from the front door, she caught the scent of the place. She got an instant slam of dust, mustiness and other smells she didn’t want to identify.
She’d thought there couldn’t be a place grimier than Z.T.’s house, but Nicky had been wrong about that. From what she could see, there was plenty of dust here. Dead leaves and other debris, too. The paint on the walls was blistered and peeling. The wood floors, pocked with nicks and gouges. Nothing the way it had been when she’d lived here. She and her mother had at least kept the place clean.
But clean places sometimes held a dirty secret. This one certainly did.
The memories came. Not as some old, watery images that she couldn’t blink away, either. No. She wasn’t that lucky. These were crystal clear.
Memories of her father and his drunken rages.
Memories of him coming home from whatever job he hadn’t been fired from yet. Staggering through the door, his body slumped because he was too drunk to stand upright. It always put a knot in her gut to know that he’d driven home that way from some bar.
Grow a pair, Nicky!
He’d yelled it at her so many times that it was like a tattoo inked on her brain. He’d told her that anytime he was disappointed in her. Anytime she’d cried. Anytime things hadn’t gone his way.
Which was often.
She hadn’t even known what it meant until she was eleven or so and then had gotten a backhand across the face when she had tried to explain in earnest that she would never grow a pair of testicles. After that he’d amended it.
Grow a pair, you dumb bitch!
There had been no lamps in the house because he’d managed to break every one of them. Most of their dishes were plastic. Because when he was in a drunken rage, he liked to smash things.
It didn’t happen every night. In fact, sometimes he’d stay sober for months. Just long enough to lull her mother and her into thinking that the monster wouldn’t come back. But it did.
It always came back.
There were times, like now, when Nicky could feel his hand slap her face. Times when she could hear the slurred words that had made her feel broken. So broken that she might never fit together again.
Stupid. Bitch. Ugly. Whore.
He’d had other words for her mother, but those were the ones he saved just for her. They echoed through her head now. Through the house, too, and Nicky could have sworn she smelled the cheap whiskey on his breath. The old sweat he hadn’t bothered to wash off before he’d started his slide into the bottle.
His name had been Walt Levi Henderson. And he’d died of liver failure at the age of forty-three. But not before leaving his mark on her. Several of them in fact. Nicky had the scars he’d given her along with the one she’d given herself. The one when she’d used a razor to cut into her own breast.
Cutter was such an ugly word.
But it wasn’t as ugly as the word she’d cut into her skin.
That was another of her secrets. And it was a secret she could hide beneath her clothes.
Grow a pair, you dumb bitch!
She thought of her big brother. Kyle. He was five years older than she was and had run away when Nicky had only been twelve. Or rather ridden away on a motorcycle he’d built from spare parts he’d found in the junkyard. Sometimes, she’d resented him for leaving, for not trying to save her. But he’d been just a kid, as well, and he certainly hadn’t gotten out unscathed. No. Kyle had scars, too.
The tears came, and she cursed them. Damn him. Damn this. Obviously, she was nowhere close to chasing away the demons. In fact, it felt as if she’d just cut herself again. As if she’d ripped herself open to let those demons back inside her.
Grow a pair, you dumb bitch!
She whirled around, ready to bolt off the step, and landed right in Garrett’s arms.
Nicky heard the strangled sound make its way through her throat. It wasn’t a sound she wanted anyone to hear. Especially Garrett.
“You scared me,” she managed to say.
Nicky didn’t look at him. In fact, she looked everywhere else because she didn’t want him to see what was in her eyes. Not just the tears. But the broken pain.
He opened his mouth, and she braced herself for him to say something like I wasn’t the one who scared you. Or what the hell is going on?
But he didn’t.
Garrett closed his mouth, and she could almost sense him debating how to handle this. Her elusive gaze probably wasn’t fooling him, and he likely knew something was wrong. Hopefully, he also knew that saying anything about it would be opening a particularly nasty can of worms.
“I picked you up a couple of times here when we dated,” he finally said.
So, no worm-can-opening today. Good. Because Nicky thought that maybe talking about it would be the same skin-cutting experience as being inside the place. It’d been a mistake to come here, and like the other times she’d felt this way, she wanted to run. Not to just any ordinary place but to Z.T.’s old house.
Fifteen minutes. That’s all it would take her to run there if she cut through the old ranch trails and the pastures. Fifteen minutes before she could hide in a safe, quiet place with no drunk fathers calling her names.
Of course, she couldn’t go there. Not only because of the investigation but also because Garrett likely wouldn’t let her start running without expecting her to explain what the heck was going on.
“The dust got to me,” she lied, wiping her eyes. Nicky stepped around him and went into the yard. It helped. She could catch her breath, could try to tamp down all these stupid emotions.
She could leave.
And that’s what she started to do, but Garrett stepped in front of her, blocking her path. Judging from the look on his face, he was getting that opener ready for the worm can.
* * *
GARRETT WASN’T SURE that stopping Nicky was the smartest idea he’d ever had. It was obvious she didn’t want to talk about what was going on in her head. But that stark look in her eyes tugged
