“You want to know how I feel? It’s the best fucking feeling in the world, Vaughn. Being able to look at the one person who fucking destroyed me and not feel a goddamn thing,” I screech.
“Whatever. Are you done here? Can you just leave?” He gestures to the front door.
“Gladly.” I hate you. I hate all you arrogant, Montgomerys. I hate you all so much that looking at you I can hardly breathe. I rush toward the door and fumble with the knob and the box until it opens and a blast of frigid air blows back my hair.
I barrel out and onto the small front porch. Vaughn crashes the door closed behind me. I peer over the top of the box and all I see is a thick wall of white. Ah-ha, this must be what a snow squall is—I was hoping it was some sort of a north-eastern snow bird.
I lower the box and try to get a better view. I’m not sure where my car is, there are car-shaped lumps of snow everywhere. Great, this is prefect weather to match my mood. My insides are a rolling mess of emotions. I’m so angry; at the Montgomerys; at my mother, but mixed in with that there’s this bitter sharp sadness that aches in my chest. Over the last ten years my mother wanted nothing to do with me. She locked me away in a school far away from her and left me there. Alone. All along I thought she was heartbroken my father left her, that maybe I reminded her of their marriage and her mistake. But she wasn’t living her life making amends for what she’d done, she never stopped doing what was wrong. She just stopped being my mother. That’s what she chose.
Not surprisingly, the first step I take my feet slip out from underneath me and I’m flat on my back in the cold snow in an instant. The box goes flying. Ice cuts through my clothes and bites at my skin. My coat! I left it inside the cabin. I scramble to my feet and face the front door. A plume of foggy breath appears in front of my face and I can’t make myself walk through it to go back inside. There’s one thing that Vaughn and I both can agree on, I don’t belong inside there, and neither did my mother. Forget the coat. I’ll be fine as soon as I get in the car and get as far away from this place and Vaughn as possible.
I decide to leave the box where it landed. What am I really going to do with my mother’s clothes and broken knick-knacks? They’re trash. Everything she touched is trash and I don’t want any of it. I tumble down off the front porch and catch myself before falling again. I cover my eyes from the wind and look back at the cabin’s foggy window. That selfish prick of a Montgomery better not be watching me.
Trudging through the snow, I set my sights on the closest lump of snow and pray it’s my car.
A trickle of ice trails down the back of my collar and crawls down my spine. There’re a few inches of the white shit on the ground, enough to make it hard to walk, and the air is so crisp and cold it stings my nose whenever I inhale. This is insane. I can’t believe I let myself get into this situation.
When I finally reach the first car-shaped hill of snow I start wiping at the mound with my sleeve. My arm instantly burns from the cold. I almost start crying from pure joy when my car window appears. I brush off the rest of the door and yank like a lunatic at the handle. My hands are too numb to push the button and pull at the same time. I have to slow down my movements and use both hands.
It takes three tries, a ton of curses, then the door opens.
It’s not warmer inside, but the cover of the car cuts the bite of the wind on my wet skin. I bring my hands to mouth and try to warm them with my breath. I don’t wait for the feeling to come back to them. I dig in my front pocket of my jeans until I can pull out my car key. My eyes blur with tears. I fumble with trembling fingers and fight to fit the key into the ignition. When I finally push the key in and I turn it, the engine stutters once, twice, then dies.
“No. No, no, no,” I cry out. “Please, God. Please.”
I try again.
And again.
The fourth time it catches and the engine revs to life. Oh, thank God!
I let the car warm for a few moments, then give up on waiting and flip the heat on. It blasts out cold, whistling air, then slowly but surely it warms. My windshield wipers only clean a small area, but I don’t care. I need down this mountain and into warm clothes as soon as possible.
I yank the gear shift into drive and my tires spin and spin. The car doesn’t move at all. I press harder on the gas and the back of the car slides a bit, but the car still won’t go forward. Then all the lights on my dashboard flash on and a beeping chirps out. What the hell it that? The small check engine light flashes bright red, then stays on. They all stay on. Well, only until the engine cuts off and all the lights fade out and I’m sitting inside an icebox, unable to move.
I shudder out a shallow breath. Okay, not a problem. I’ll just call for someone to come and get me. They have to have a ton of tow trucks around here, just waiting for idiots like me to show up. Idiotic New Englanders that are never ready for this kind of a storm. I push off the seat to get to my cell in my back pocket. How the hell will I be able to pay for a tow truck, though? The last time I looked at my checking account there was only $153 left in it. Maybe I’ll use my emergency credit card and pay it back over a few months. What kind of interest am I going to have to pay on that crap? It’s going to be a two-hundred-dollar tow that will cost me four hundred in the long run.
What the—? My back pocket is empty! I scramble around, wet clothes scraping against my skin, burning and chaffing. The phone’s not in my other pocket either.
Shit. It’s still in the house with Vaughn Montgomery.
Chapter 7
Vaughn
Of course my father kept a well-stocked bar in his mistress’s home. Why wouldn’t the bastard? Remy Martin Black Pearl Louis XIII Cognac. Elit Vodka. Brugal Papa Andres Rum. My old man and his whore have expensive taste. Had. They had expensive taste.
I stare at one of their pictures that hangs behind the bar. I wonder how long it went on—and how my mother or Chloe hadn’t noticed. He always was a few steps ahead of us, doing everything in his power to keep his dark little secrets.
A hard, self-indulgent man was what my father was, and the Radcliffes were nothing more than gold-digging con artists.
I hate my teenage self for falling for their bullshit. I wasted so much energy and emotion on that girl, hell, I thought I was going to die of heartache when that all went down.
Fiery bitterness churns in my stomach.
I guess I always sort of understood what my dad saw in Libby Radcliffe—any man who wasn’t blind would. She had a captivating sexuality that seemed to hit a man hard, bring him to his knees. That’s how my father explained it to me at least. She was beautiful back then. Her daughter, though, her daughter was, is, well, let’s just say her mother could never hold a candle to her. I’ve never met another woman who could.
I pour myself a seventy-two-year-old single-malt Scotch Whiskey and try to wash away the image of Claire Radcliffe from my mind.
But Lord, those lips.
Flawless ivory skin and striking eyes that made the color of tropical water look dull. She always had this way about her, this look. Like she was the sun. One of those girls who even when you tried not to look straight at her you saw her everywhere. She shined. Her warmth touched everything. The girl I once missed with a never-ending ache that I didn’t think would ever stop, she haunted me. For a while it pushed out all reason and sense in my life, until I just numbed to it—to the realization that me and Claire, we were never going to be allowed to see one another again. We were the Montagues and Capulets. Because of what her mother did, we would never be together.