Something New (4 page)

Abby trudged up the stairs to her rooms. For the first time since they’d started, she prayed for the nightmares to return.

* * *

The knotted rope caressed Abby’s bare back. For a moment, she thought God’s very own hand touched her and that he had come to save her and her parents.

She turned in the darkness of the closet and moved her hands around in the space in front of her, reaching until her fingers closed around the rope dangling from the closet’s ceiling
. The attic. Yes.
Daddy had made the rope ladder so she could climb in and out of the playroom just like a monkey in the jungle. She didn’t need to use the big ladder like they did. Mommy thought it was dangerous for her to climb up and down the rope on her own, but Daddy said kids need to get scrapes every once in a while and not to fuss. Abby agreed with her dad and even liked to hide in the attic playroom sometimes when people came over to visit.

“Abby!” The devil voice sounded far away, but she could still hear him. “Are you here, girl? Come on out, and we’ll go get some ice cream. It’s an awfully hot day.”

No. Abby didn’t want to do that. She fingered the rope in front of her again. Right this second, her heart beat faster than Easter Sunday at church when she sang a solo in front of everyone. She wrapped her hands around the highest point she could reach on the rope and hoisted herself off the floor. After finding the first knot with her bare feet, Abby pulled herself up, again and again, not stopping until she reached the entrance in the ceiling and climbed through. Quickly, she crawled around the opening and dragged up the dangling rope, clearing it out of the way.

Only one more thing to do. Abby crawled around to the opposite side of the entrance and prayed for God to help her work in absolute silence.

The closet door below squeaked as the accordion folds struggled to open on the ungreased tracks. Light from her parents’ bedroom streamed into the closet just as Abby eased the board that served as an attic door into its routed slot, blocking her completely inside.

As the unnatural, terrible voice of evil continued to call for her, Abby curled her arms around her drawn knees and waited for God to help her one more time.

* * *

Abby jerked upright in bed, sucking in air as she tried to regain her equilibrium.

The hand
. She put her own to her chest as she tried to pull the last remnants from her dream into her dark bedroom.
Something is wrong with the hand I saw pushing open the closet door in my dream
. Something wasn’t as it should be. Abby pulled her knees up to her chest, closed her eyes, and tried to step back into the point in her dream that had taken place just before she settled the board across the opening in the ceiling.

Instead of seeing that
wrong
hand again, Abby gasped as an invisible hand punched her in the chest and shoved her backward into her headboard. The pictures in her mind metaphysically hurled her through time and space, and she crash-landed hours beyond the correct place in her dream, right into the middle of a bloodbath.

Everywhere Abby touched and looked filled her hands and eyes with puddles and sprays of crimson. Straight ahead, the wall looked like a giant red finger painting, but Abby’s mom would pitch a fit if Abby so much as put a crayon mark on her walls, so Abby knew it wasn’t paint.

I know what it is.

Her breath suddenly coming in shallow pants, Abby forced her focus across the awful colored splashes on the wall. Suddenly, a thick streak of red cut a line straight up and down the wall. Abby trembled all over as she followed it with her eyes, down, down, down, over a shock of red hair, and looked straight into glassy brown eyes.

“Daaaddddyyy!”
Abby’s legs went out from under her as she screamed. Her knees slipped in more of the squishy red covering the carpet. Abby reached out to steady herself, and her palm sank into wet, sticky goo. One glance down and Abby saw her fingers buried in a hole in her mother’s stomach.

No. No. No.
Abby yanked her hand out of her mother’s gutted belly and hid it behind her back
. No. No. No.
She squeezed her eyes shut. No. No. No. Rocking back and forth, she screamed and screamed and screamed
. “Daddy!”

Abby snapped back into the present, crying out for her father just as she had back then. Her heart felt like it beat too fast for her body to contain it, and she trembled all over, so badly her teeth chattered. She tried to take deep breaths and envision herself in a safer place, repeated her mantra of “it was just a dream” over and over again, but her chest only burned hotter and squeezed tighter, and she started to wheeze.

Unable to make the aftermath go away this time, with fingers trembling, Abby reached for her phone.

* * *

Rodrigo slammed the door of his truck and glared at the man emerging from the familiar black Accord. “What are you doing here?” he asked Braden, his voice low out of deference to the dead silence and lateness of the hour.

Even in the shadows, Rodrigo saw Braden arch his brow in an exaggerated manner

“I would imagine for the same reason you are.” Braden pocketed his keys and jogged toward the residential entrance to Abby’s building. “Abby called me.”

Smart-ass.

Rodrigo ignored the jab punching him in the gut. His pride didn’t like that Abby had felt the need to call someone other than him.

“I figured that out, genius,” Rodrigo replied. “Did she tell you why?”

“She just said ‘Can you come? I need company.’” Braden rapped his fist against the metal door. “So here I am.”

Rodrigo went ahead and leaned heavily on the buzzer as well. “Same for me.” He studied Braden—who looked just as rumpled as Rodrigo did—out of the corner of his eye. “Fucking A, Crenshaw. I have to give you credit. You nailed it. You said she would call when she was ready, and look what happened. Wasn’t expecting she’d want me.” He chuckled. “Or you.”

“I don’t know.” Braden kept his pale gaze steady on Rodrigo. “You’re the one I’d call if I only had one quarter and needed help.” The rich layers in his voice went well past Rodrigo’s ear canals and penetrated his bloodstream. “You or her.”

Shit
. That funny little shimmering sensation waved down Rodrigo’s spine again. He busied himself running his hands through his hair, straightening his bedhead in a way he hadn’t taken the time to do at home. “You’re behind the times, man,” he muttered, glancing at Braden repeatedly, as much as he didn’t want to. “A quarter ain’t gonna get you anybody these days.”

Braden’s lips parted, but sounds on the other side of the door snapped his mouth closed. A moment later, Abby pulled the door open, appearing almost ghostlike in ethereal white. The cloud of her fiery hair only served to contrast the near translucency of her skin.

“Shit, honey.” Rodrigo automatically stepped closer and wrapped his hand under her elbow. Her skin almost left frostbite on his fingers. “Are you all right?”

The red slash of Abby’s lips pushed up slightly at the edges. “Yeah.” Her forehead pulled together between her auburn brows. “I thought so.” She rubbed the lines away, almost looking far away from them. “I’m not sure anymore.”

“Okay. Let’s get inside.” Braden stretched his arms to surround Abby and Rodrigo, and he nudged them into the foyer with small, guiding steps. “It’s fucking cold tonight, and you’re not wearing any socks or slippers.”

Braden’s words caused Rodrigo to look down at Abby’s bare feet. He could see the blue veins running under her skin.

I should pick her up and carry her upstairs. That would tear her out of this funk. At least for long enough to punch me in the kidney and demand I put her down.

Before Rodrigo could stoop down and grab Abby under the knees, she waved them toward the stairs. “Come on upstairs, guys. I dragged you both all the way over here. The least I can do is offer you a drink.”

Braden took a moment to lock the door, and then Rodrigo could feel the man follow behind him up to the landing. Abby stepped carefully in front of Rodrigo, each movement measured, controlled, and his concern for her grew.

“What’s the matter, Bit?” Rodrigo shoved his hands into his pockets so that he didn’t reach out and caress the vulnerable line of her back, something barely concealed by the gauzy white nightgown and matching robe she wore. “I know you’d have to be at the end of your rope to decide you’re gonna pick up the phone and call me in the middle of the night.”

Abby didn’t answer, just veered to the right through a squared-off arch into a kitchen. The galley-style space had all the necessities and none of the extras, with one narrow, tall window at the end with a table and two chairs beneath it. While functional, the space irritated the crap out of Rodrigo. He knew a bathroom and then a walk-in closet existed beyond the north side of the kitchen wall. On the opposite side of the hallway, behind where he now stood, she had a living area and bedroom, accessed through narrow walkthroughs cut into the wall in a manner as narrow and nonpleasing to the eye as this one.

If Abby would only let him, Rodrigo could do so much with this second floor. He could eliminate or move entire walls. He would open up the whole second level for her, creating a space she could breathe in and that would feel like an actual home rather than a roof and walls that protected her from the elements.

From the second Rodrigo had set eyes on Abby, the workhorse in him wanted to build something for her, something lasting and real, something that showed her his skills and proved he was more than a guy who painted walls, threw down some new flooring, and called himself a contractor because it sounded legit. Beyond transforming her living space, he could build her some sweet custom cabinetry and display cases downstairs for her store too—if she would just fucking say yes so that he could set aside some time to do it.

So far, she kept cockblocking him. Both figuratively and literally. His balls were getting blue, and his hammer was getting rusty waiting.

Yet something in her eyes—an occasional lingering gaze that held long enough to make his dick twitch and his heartbeat pick up speed—kept him coming back and trying again.

Right now, though, Abby wouldn’t make any kind of direct eye contact with him. She wouldn’t with Braden either, for that matter. The cold fluorescent light in the kitchen rained down on her, highlighting the tight, grim smile she clearly tried to make seem airy and effortless. Wasn’t working.

“Beer good for both of you?” she asked.

Braden shrugged out of his jacket, revealing a beat-up USF sweatshirt, and tossed the black leather on the countertop. “I’ll take a bottle. Or a can. Whatever you have.”

As Abby opened the refrigerator, Rodrigo asked, “Are you sure you don’t want something hot that will warm you up inside, Bit? Maybe some tea or cocoa?”

Snapping, fiery blue eyes narrowed at him from a half dozen feet away. “Thinking you know what’s best for me again, Santiago?”

Rodrigo stepped in closer and braced his hand on the open fridge door, leaning into her space. Her pupils flared, but he didn’t back off. “You didn’t call me here to lie to you.”

“I didn’t call you here to parent me or solve my problems either,” Abby said through clenched teeth.

“Then why did you call?” Rodrigo shot back. “You still haven’t said.”

“I did too say.” Abby snapped that retort right back at him fast. “I told you on the phone that I wanted some company. I automatically dialed the two of you.” Her gaze stayed on him. When she spoke again, her tone softened. “I called you first, Rodrigo.” A hint of thickness wrapped itself around his name, and Rodrigo felt like a lead balloon hit heavy in his stomach. “I’m sorry that’s not enough for you,” she added, her gaze finally wavering.

Shit. She needed someone and thought of me first
. If he were double-jointed, Rodrigo would kick himself in the ass.
Fuck-ing shit.

“It is enough,” he told her. What in the hell was wrong with him, baiting her when she was clearly in a state of distress? “I wasn’t… That didn’t…”
Shit
. His words became all tangled up somewhere between his brain and his mouth. He clamped his jaw and bit down an awful taste in his throat. “I apologize.”

Abby’s eyes bugged, and her chin dropped down to her chest. “Seriously?”

Rodrigo swallowed down more acrid bile. He knew he had a reputation for not retreating or regretting his comments. He accepted that people thought him rigid and blindingly stubborn. Fact was, he
was
right and did know the best way to handle a situation most of the time, and too fucking bad for those in the wrong on the other side.

But not in this case.

“Yes, for real.” He forced himself to say it again. “I’m sorry.”

Braden slapped Rodrigo on the shoulder. “Thank God you finally managed to spit that out, Santiago.” He turned to Abby. “I’ve never said this to a woman before, but I was about to ask if you both just wanted to go ahead and whip them out so I could measure and see whose is bigger.”

“I have one that would beat you both by a mile,” Abby shared quickly, darting her attention between both men and flashing a smile. A real smile. “I keep it in the drawer by my bed. It’s turquoise and has one hell of a set of balls on it.” She waggled her brows, and the smile lit up her face. “Wanna see?”

What the fuck
? After a split second of speechlessness, Rodrigo let out a sharp bark of laughter. This was his Abby, back in form. A woman unafraid to get right in his face and call him a caveman when he acted like an arrogant ass.

“Thanks for the offer,” he said. Rodrigo didn’t want to think too much about Abby having a dildo tucked by her bedside. Or whom she might picture as she spread her thighs and sank the length into her sweet heat. Not unless he intended to sport a hard-on for the rest of the night. “But I think I’ll just take the beer.”

“Me too,” Braden said. He looked at both Rodrigo and Abby, holding on each for a handful of seconds before going back to Abby again. “For now.”

Rodrigo rubbed the hairs on his neck again, disturbed, as Abby dipped into the fridge and grabbed three bottles of beer by their necks. She stretched her hand out in offering, and Rodrigo and Braden each grabbed one for themselves. They all twisted off the caps and tossed them on the counter. Then Abby crooked her finger, murmured a “follow me,” and led them into her living area, flipping a switch that lit wall sconces on either side of the red-painted room. An opening in the wall to Rodrigo’s right connected Abby’s living room to her bedroom and offered a glimpse in at the unmade bed. Abby settled herself into an overstuffed chair, and Rodrigo and Braden sat down on a love seat.