Page 2 of With Spite

I looked at my brother, Creed, and said, “Listen, Creed. I’m going to be perfectly fine, okay? I swear to you. I don’t want to live the rest of my life without you.”

My brother, my sweet, doting, big-as-life, caring brother, melted.

“Just promise me if you start having trouble, you’ll let me know. I can’t help you if you don’t let me know stuff is happening.”

I sighed. “Creed, I’m fine.”

I’d moved to Sawtooth, Montana, after Creed’s new wife, Birdee, had gone against his wishes and informed me that he was, in fact, not dead. He was very much well, living in Sawtooth, Montana, and had joined a motorcycle club. Though this was after he’d broken out of prison, staged his death, and then escaped.

Some nice man named Apollo had created him a new life here, and he’d had to change his appearance and lay low.

Now he was a game warden and lived in a big, beautiful house, the exact opposite of the kind of house we’d grown up in.

When we were small, Creed had to step up and take care of me after my mother decided it was more fun to do drugs and work the streets than it was to be a mother. Creed had been taking care of me my entire life, and it was time to show him that I was a big girl and could take care of myself.

“But…”

“Creed.”

I looked at my sister-in-law and thanked her with my eyes.

She winked.

I gathered my things from my brother’s fancy kitchen table and shoved everything into my various pockets.

It was nearly June, but you wouldn’t know it.

Not with the fact that there were still piles of snow nearly everywhere. Plus, the mountaintops would apparently still have snow on top of them at least until mid-August. If not through the entire summer and fall.

I was both excited and terrified out of my mind.

I hoped that my body would allow me to live here.

When I was a child, I found out that not only did I have anemia—a very mild form of it that constantly kept me cold and eating red meat every meal—but I also had asthma.

The asthma wasn’t a mild form.

The asthma was intrinsic. It was triggered by whatever the fuck it wanted. Cold air. Stress. Getting sick. A light summer breeze.

You named it, I had an asthma attack.

It was also fairly severe, and I was often fighting to keep it under control with my medication.

Luckily, my asthma doctor was willing to see me remotely, seeing as I was now moved halfway across the country.

I wouldn’t be sharing what my doctor thought of the move to one of the coldest states in the US of A.

Creed would probably agree with him and send me back home kicking and screaming.

“On that note,” I said. “I’m headed back home.”

“How are you liking it?” Birdee asked as she fell into step beside me.

Creed grumbled as he followed behind, still on the ‘you shouldn’t move here’ kick.

We both ignored him as I talked about the house.

I’d signed the lease on the house that she’d just recently moved out of.