Page 6 of Mischief

I lie here and hold her and stare at the ceiling and memorize this feeling.

The heat off the back of her neck, the little hitch in her breath, all the math of her, because somewhere north of here my father is already making calls, and somewhere in the next two days I'm going to walk back into the house I clawed my way out of.

I already know, the way you know your own name, even the buried one, that when I come back to this bed I'll have to look her in the eye and lie about every part of it.

I hold her until the window goes gray.

I don't sleep.

I keep her weight on my chest as long as the dark will let me, because I've done the math, and I know how few nights I've got left.

Nights where she still believes I'm nobody's snake, where the worst thing she can imagine about me is her father, where she lays her whole trusting self across me like I've earned the right to hold it.

And I want every second of it.

Every last one.

Before the name I buried climbs up out of the ground and takes it all.

CHAPTER ONE

Tindra

The espresso machine screams like it's dying, and the new girl screams right back at it.

"It's fine, Kayla." Both my hands are already on the group head, cranking the portafilter loose before the whole thing floods the counter. "It's not haunted. You just choked the shot. Grind's too fine, it can't breathe, so it backs up and hisses. Watch."

She watches. Wide-eyed, nineteen, two days into her first real job, looking at me like I pulled a rabbit out of the drip tray.

I knock the puck into the bin, wipe the basket, dial the grinder two clicks coarser, and pull a clean double that runs honey-gold into the cup instead of sputtering.

"See? Not possessed. Just hungry." I slide it toward her. "Tamp level next time and you'll never hear that sound again. Go run the register, I've got the bar."

Kayla scurries off, and I catch my reflection warped in the side of the machine, dark hair coming loose from the knot I threw it in at five this morning.

Truthfully, I look exactly like a woman who opened the second location and hasn't had a full night's sleep in any of them.

I look like my mother.

The thought lands warm and sideways, because there are worse things to look like than her behind a counter she built with her own two hands.

Well, not this counter.

My mother brought the first location here to Florida and she technically owns this second location, but I run it.

Mine.

My name on the manager's door in the back.

My schedule taped to the wall.

My grand opening, eleven days back, with a line out to the parking lot and my grandfather standing in the corner in his cut.

He watched the whole thing with his arms crossed and something in his face I'd never seen aimed at me before.

Pride, maybe.

Or as close to it as he gets before he remembers I'm supposed to be breakable and pulls it back in.