I take thirty minutes to stop hugging the sink. Ten minutes to walk to the bathroom door that I didn’t just slam; I felt the need to lock it after me. Not sure how a locked door was going to keep out a bug that can survive Armageddon. Another fifteen minutes to convince myself the roach is not waiting on the other side of the door to fly into my face.
Things go a little faster once I’m out of my tiny bathroom.
I tiptoe to the kitchen, snatching up the Tupperware I flung clear across the room in my mad dash from the kitchen to the bathroom.
Once I’ve secured the largest Tupperware container so the roach can’t run up my arm when I grab it, I separate the lid from the bowl and go looking for it.
It’s near the edge of the kitchen counter, striding around as if it owns the place with its disgusting twitching antennae and Armageddon-surviving brown shell body.Tauntingme with its purposeless existence. I shudder, feeling dirty just looking at it.
After five failed attempts to scoop it up that end with me squealing at the last second and running away, I get serious. I need to sleep in this apartment, and I amnotsleeping knowing thatthingis in close proximity to me. What if I woke up with it on my face?
I scoop it into the container, slam the lid on, and have another—thankfully much shorter—freak out in the bathroom, but it’s done.
I did it.
With a Texas-sized roach trapped in a pink Tupperware and a lid secured firmly on top, I march down the stairs and out to the dumpster, dump the roach and the Tupperware (I’ll get another container for my salads), and hurry back to my apartment to wash my hands five times.
Armed with the medium-sized Tupperware container, I go make sure the roach didn’t have any brothers or sisters.
Chapter 17
Torin
“Still playing the cynic with a hidden heart?” My mom asks, green eyes sparkling.
It’s two in the afternoon, and we’re in her silver and green living room.
I study her over the rim of my glass. “If there was a reason for this meeting, can we get it over with? I have trash to take out.”
The saccharine-sweet smile she flashes me instantly sets me on high alert. “Oh? I heard your little downtrodden omega decidedshewould be the one taking out the trash, and that trash was—” She points a fingernail at me. “—you.”
I drain the whiskey from my glass and set it on the coffee table between the two couches facing each other. She’s on one, and I’m on the other. “Provoking me stopped working when I was ten. Get to the point, Mother.”
Her eyebrow rises. “And here I thought it was when that friend of yours ran off with the girl you professed to love. Just like your little omega nearly ran off with the gardener.”
My jaw hardens, but I don’t say a word.
Her smile is full of impish delight. That’s nothing new. This viper is never happier than when she’s lashing out at someone, and she’s happiest of all when she’s focused on ruining my life.Her knowing my gardenerisnew though. If Mom knew about him,shewas responsible for putting him under our roof and pointing him at Juniper.
“I need you to do something for me,” she says, bored now that I’m no longer reacting.
She doesn’t ask about the gardener. She likely doesn’t care. As soon as he made a move on Juniper, he was out the door the same day and told nothing good would happen to him if he ever showed his face again. And he hasn’t.
“No.” I get to my feet and turn to leave before I wind up like my father: rotting away in a prison cell.
“If you want to see little Charlotte again, you will do as Iask, Torin.” All sweetness evaporates. Something cold, hard and vengeful takes its place.
I stop, my back to her. “She’s sick.”
“And if you want to ensure she gets the medication that she needs to keep breathing, you won’t waste my time with your childish stubbornness.”
Paper rustles, and I turn to face the woman calmly flipping through a fashion magazine with an empty cocktail glass on the table beside her. Most people have fond memories of their parents doing fun activities with them. My childhood is full of memories of my father out fucking anything that moved while my mother drank herself stupid pretending he still loved her.
“What do you want, Mother?”
Pleased, she smiles and sets down the magazine she was probably only pretending to read. “I need you to look after something. People have been at the house looking for papers.”
Cops. I know because they interviewed me about what, if anything, I knew about Asylum, Dad’s private members' club. My relationship with my parents has never been good. I told the police that, and I guess they heard it from enough other peopleto know I wasn’t involved in the sick shit my father and his friends were.
