Marty's Horrible, Terrible, Very Bad Day Read online

  The pound of heavy footsteps said she wasn’t going to be able to avoid him. So she turned to face him, and as the snow swirled around them, Hudson stopped in front of her, his eyes searching hers. Eyes filled with confusion and anger and…something else she couldn’t pinpoint.

  That moment lasted but a second before all the pent-up longing, all the long nights of thinking about no one but him, all the missed hopes and dreams, made her do something she’d never done before in all her adult life.

  Grabbing him by the front of his jacket, she stood on tiptoe and kissed him. Placed her lips on his with a sigh of homecoming and kissed him with every ounce of the passion she’d felt since she’d first met him, and since they’d met once more at the In Between forty years ago.

  His lips froze at first, caught off guard, but it was only moments before he gathered her in his arms and pried her mouth open with his tongue, sliding the silken surface along hers and kissing her back.

  Her hands pushed through his damp hair, her fingers entwined behind his head, pulling him closer, pressing her mouth to his luscious one until she almost couldn’t breathe.

  And then suddenly they were no longer locked in an embrace when he gasped. Then he was setting her back from him, his hands still on her upper arms, his eyes wide and bewildered.

  “What…what just happened? What the hell did I just see, Rocky?” He shook his head as though he could shake off something he didn’t understand.

  Tears formed and fell along her cheeks, revealing centuries of pain and fear, desperation and need. She backed away. She couldn’t answer him. How could she tell him she’d been lying to him all along?

  But he reached for her, pulling her back to him, gripping her arms, his eyes no longer confused but wild. “Answer me, Rocky. What did I just experience? Why am I seeing you in my head, lying next to me? Why are we kissing and laughing in a place I’ve never seen before? Why?”

  Her throat threatened to close up, but his eyes, angry and flashing, forced her to answer. “Because…because we know each other,” she murmured.

  He blinked in clear disbelief. “Know each other?”

  “Yes! Yes! Yes! Okay? Yeees!” she sobbed into the howling wind. “We know each other. We’ve met a couple times over the centuries at the In Between, and as recently as forty-years ago, just before your last rebirth—or what I thought was your last rebirth. And…and we had the most amazing night! Sorry, I had the most amazing night. Is that what you want to hear, Hudson?”

  His jaw went tight and hard as the frigid air blew his dark hair around his face. “I damn well knew it!”

  Rocky shook her head and flapped her freezing hands. “Good on you for figuring it out, Sherlock. Now leave me alone. I can get into trouble for telling you that. Is that what you want? Do you want to be right so badly that I’ll pay the price for it?” she yelled up at him.

  “Explain!” he demanded, jamming his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Explain what I just saw in my head!”

  How could she explain something that meant so much to her? How could she explain something so rich and full? They’d only be words to him. He’d never understand the feeling behind that night.

  But she owed him this. This was a man who’d come back to life to nothing—every single time. How could she deny him?

  Backing even farther away, she held up a hand and took a deep breath. “I was at the In Between, on my way back from delivering a soul, and you were there. I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but you reached out to me. You talked to me first. You seemed so lost. How could I ignore you?”

  “And?” He fairly seethed the word.

  Her chest heaved as she tried to control her breathing. “And then we met again, forty-years ago, and this time, I…I couldn’t leave you. I’m not supposed to talk to anyone at the In Between. There’s a huge punishment that goes along with interfering, but…”

  “But you did!” he hollered as the snow pelted his face. “You did.”

  She bounced her head in rapid motion. “I did…and it was like we’d always known each other. Even you said so. So we sat in a field of wildflowers and we talked and…and…”

  “Made love,” he finished, his tone softening only a little before he straightened. “So all this time, you knew who I was. You knew me at the hospital. You knew I had no one and you never said a word. Not a single damn word.”

  “I swear to you, Hudson, it was for our protection! Your protection. I don’t know what they’ll do to me, let alone you if someone found out I messed with a soul at the In Between!”

  His eyes narrowed and glittered in the dark night. “And you didn’t think you could trust me after everything we shared? You didn’t think you could trust I’d never tell anyone? That I’d never hurt you?”

  Oh, God. How could she possibly explain that she was more terrified of him knowing what had happened, and of it happening again, here on earth? How could she explain she’d wanted him so much that having him here, so near her in the flesh, was killing her?

  So all she could manage was, “I was afraid…”

  Hudson didn’t say anything. In fact, if looks could kill, she’d likely be six feet under. Bearing his silence was almost harder than not telling him about that night. It meant he was beyond angry.

  He took one long, last look at her before he stalked deeper into the backyard, flapped his arms and shifted, the sparks of his shift in brilliant scarlet and gold, lighting up the dark sky and leaving her feeling lonelier than she’d ever felt in all her centuries.

  Rocky shuddered a breath in and out, managing to make her way to Hollis’s swing set, where she dropped down into a swing and closed her eyes, allowing her tears to flow.

  Moments later, she felt a strong hand on her shoulder. “So you knew Hudson in one of his lifetimes?” Nina asked, sitting on the swing next to her and pushing off the frozen ground with her work boots.

  Leaning her head against the chain of the swing, Rocky tucked her chin into her sweater and shook her head. “Not in one of his lifetimes. I met him at the In Between. That’s where we first met.”

  Wanda was there, too, her swollen belly jutting forward, her face soft in sympathy. “Oh, right. I remember you telling us about that place. That’s the place you walk between life and death. You travel that road to take souls to their final destination, yes?”

  “Yes.”

  As Nina swayed, she gave her a thoughtful look, her coal-black eyes searching Rocky’s. “But you’re not supposed to talk to anyone when you do it, right?”

  Oh, she was so right. If she’d just shut her mouth and never spoken to him that one time, she wouldn’t be in this jam right now. “Right. It’s…forbidden. I don’t know why. Probably because I imagine some people aren’t ready to go to their final destinations, and shitty reapers like me are easily swayed with sob stories. Imagine the mess the world would be in if we listened to every serial killer tell us why they shouldn’t end up in Hell? But yeah, we talked.”

  “Damn, kid. That’s a shitty row to hoe. So what happened? How was he able to talk to you in the first place?”

  “I guess because he’s a phoenix, he travels that road himself, alone. He doesn’t need an escort because he’s immortal. But he’s a unique immortal, in that he straddles life and death every five hundred years or whatever the time frame is. That he was reincarnated after a hundred and twenty-five years makes no sense to me. But anyway, yes. That’s where I first met him.”

  Nina nodded, her dark hair falling around her face in shiny damp strands. “And he doesn’t remember because he forgets all the shit that happens once he’s reborn.”

  She sighed forlornly. “Yeah… But I think he remembers now.” Her stomach twisted into a knot as a flash of their kiss settled in her mind’s eye.

  Wanda tugged on a lock of her hair before tilting Rocky’s chin upward, her face filled with sympathy. “That must have been some conversation.”

  If she only knew… “I shouldn’t have done it. I don’t even
know why I did.”

  “Because he’s gorgeous, Rocky. Who wouldn’t stop to talk to him if he talked first? I’d stop even if I were in Hell and Satan were hot on my heels,” Wanda said on a chuckle, tucking her sweater around her engorged middle.

  “Jesus, Wanda. You’re one step away from twirling your hair,” Nina said on a laugh.

  Wanda flapped her hands at her friend. “Oh, c’mon, vampire. You know it’s the truth. If you were single and you had a stab at that piece of beef, you can’t tell me you wouldn’t take it. He’s delicious. All that dark hair and those abs, not to mention, he smells like heaven. I might be an old married woman, but I still have eyeballs, and apparently an abundance of hormones,” she said on a tinkling giggle. “Either way, you spoke to him and it’s stayed with you, huh?”

  “The first time I met him, we only talked for a minute or two. It’s rare to cross paths with another reaper at the In Between, let alone an immortal. But I never forgot him. I mean, who could forget him? But the next time we talked, well…”

  “It was all cupcakes with sprinkles and fucking fireworks?” Nina asked as she stopped swinging.

  Oh, it had definitely been cupcakes with sprinkles and fucking fireworks. It had been so many other things, too…

  Rocky scrunched her eyes shut to fend off tears. “It…it was a lot of things. It was the most in-depth, amazing, intimate conversation I’ve ever had in my life, and I’ve had a pretty long life. I’ve dated a lot of guys, but none like Hudson.”

  Nina nodded, tucking her long hair into her hoodie and tightening the strings. “I’m gonna go out on a limb and say you two did the smexy? Because that shit changes everything, and you sound like everything changed.”

  She’d never told a single soul what they’d done. Not one. Not even Pepper, but she found herself nodding as a tear fell from her eye. “We did,” she whispered. But then her head shot up. “And even though it was wrong, even though he remembers none of it, not a single moment, I don’t regret it. I’ll never regret it.”

  “Well, he sure the fuck looked like he remembered something when you laid that one on him a minute ago, before he stormed off like a big-ass baby.”

  Rocky couldn’t help but chuckle. “You saw?”

  Nina gave her a light shove. “Are you fucking kidding? We all saw. Who could miss that shit? The only thing missing was Cupid shooting arrows and some bullshit love song playing in the background. And we know Cupid, by the way—in case you need to know for sure if it’s really love.”

  Her eyes went wide as she looked to the vampire. “You know Cupid? The Cupid?”

  Wanda swatted at Nina. “Oh, hush. Now’s not the time. Let’s finish talking about where we are now and table all meetings with Cupid until further notice.”

  “Wanda’s right,” Nina agreed. “So you’ve been gaga over this dude for a long time.”

  “Yes.” She breathed out the word, feeling indescribable joy at being able to finally say it out loud.

  Wanda ran a gentle hand over her head. “And all this time, all these years, you’ve been mourning this…this encounter, knowing Hudson wouldn’t remember because he was on his way to being reborn and he forgets everything after reincarnation.”

  “Yes,” she managed to say around the tightening of her throat.

  “Aw, honey. So why is it you didn’t tell him? Why didn’t you remind him about what happened?”

  “Because it’s forbidden. Because reapers are only allowed those kind of relationships with other reapers.”

  “Says the fuck who?” Nina spat. “You know, they gave me that load of bullshit when I hooked up with Greg. I lost count of how many goddamn times other full-blooded vampires told me I was impure. Fuck that.”

  “Says my father. You met him. I’m in enough trouble as it is. He’d kill me if I even thought about dating anyone but another reaper. It’s cause for termination.”

  Nina’s head shot up, her eyes glittering. “As in kill-you termination, or like job termination?”

  “As in shun me to a vacant plane. End of. What my dad told you the other night is true. But it’s not me I’m worried so much about. They’d shun my dad, too. I don’t always get along with my father, obviously. You saw that for yourselves. But I’m not sure I could put him through that kind of humiliation or isolation. I’ve never known anyone who’s been shunned personally, but I’ve heard the rumors. At best, they’d only boot him out of the community. It would leave him all alone. So I’d be gone and, worse, he couldn’t be with his own kind, either.”

  Wanda’s sigh was wistful. “I wish I could say I’m surprised, but bigotry and discrimination aren’t only committed by humans. The paranormal have as many ridiculous rules about life mates as the rest of humanity.”

  The misery she was feeling right now clawed at her from her toes to the top of her head. “But it’s not just about my father, Wanda. I don’t know what could happen to Hudson. What if he was sent off to a vacant plane for being involved with me? I couldn’t live with myself if he landed on an empty plane for eternity and had to continually reincarnate to nothing and no one. He’s already alone as it is, but at least there are other people here.”

  Nina twisted the swing to face her. “Well, we know for sure how your father feels about this shit after the other night.”

  Rocky barked a sarcastic laugh. “My father considers a reaper who’s been shunned traitors to their own kind. Reaping is a sacred thing. We’re the messengers of death, and my father takes that very seriously. He considers it a privilege to walk someone through the In Between, and maybe it is for some. But I hate it, and I always have. I’ve struggled with it. I’ve questioned it. It’s damn clear I wasn’t cut out for it, but I also can’t put him through the scorn and solitude of a shunning.”

  “Fucking bullshit is what that is. The shunning shit happens in a vampire clan, too, and it’s a reeeal popular way to keep people in line. But most of all, it’s a load of bullshit. There’s gotta be a way around it.”

  Rocky shook her head with vehemence. “It doesn’t matter anyway. None of it does. I lost track of Hudson when he was reborn. No one was more surprised than I was when I saw him at the hospital. I hadn’t seen him in forever, but he didn’t remember me anyhow, so it didn’t make a difference.”

  “But now he remembers. He’s fucking interested in you now, Reaper. He’s always making stupid eyes at you when you’re not looking. We’ve all seen it.”

  Wanda held up her hand to Nina. “So you bear the burden of what you shared with Hudson all alone, and you’re afraid to strike up a relationship with him—because trust me when I tell you, Rocky, he’d welcome your attention—due to the rules imposed upon you by your kind?”

  In a nutshell, yes. That was exactly the reason. “And by my dad.”

  “Ain’t that some shit. But you’ll never get me to believe there’s not a way around it. We just have to find it.”

  Rocky almost smiled—almost—and then she let her eyes fall to the frozen ground. “What difference does it make anyway? He was pretty angry with me, and for the moment, we have bigger fish to fry. So how about we try and figure out why Hudson isn’t living out his full five hundred years and who might want him dead?”

  “Nice way to deflect,” Wanda said, leaning down and giving her a warm, plumeria- scented hug. “We’ll table this for now, because you’re right. We need to get to the bottom of this. But make no mistake, when we figure out what’s going on with Hudson and Marty, we’re going to revisit Rocky.”

  Her stomach sank. There’d likely be nothing to revisit. How would Hudson ever forgive her for not trusting him?

  How could she explain that she didn’t trust herself?

  Chapter 12

  Two days later, after they’d poked around every corner of the Internet trying to find out who’d killed Hudson in 1716, before Robert Bertrand had killed him and was hanged in 1854, they’d still had no luck.

  They also still couldn’t explain why he was reincarnating at less
than five hundred years, or why Hudson claimed to have been born in 1980 when Rocky distinctly remembered meeting him in 1979.

  Nothing added up, and the only thing that remained was that someone had tried to kill him again the night Marty had a stroke and a heart attack.

  Worse, he now remembered everything about their time in the In Between because she couldn’t keep her lips to herself. So now, every time they passed each other in the hall or sat at a meal, he refused to even look at her, but they both knew what had passed between them.

  As she made her way up the stairs toward the bathroom, connecting to Marty’s bedroom, which had become her hideout because she still wasn’t convinced a reaper wouldn’t come for the werewolf, and she figured lying low was her best option with Hudson, she heard Keegan’s voice.

  Trying to be as respectful as she could, she avoided disturbing what sounded like Keegan doing his daily ritual of sitting with his wife and simply talking to her about his day, but she tripped over Dwight Johnson’s stout body, making him yelp.

  Cringing, she reached down and put a hand over his muzzle to shush him, using her other hand to pat his belly. “I’m sorry, buddy!”

  “Rocky?” he called out, his husky voice floating into the sitting room

  “Keegan?”

  His dark head shot upward, his eyes red-rimmed and bloodshot, tearing at Rocky’s heart. He was so tired. How long could they all keep this up?

  “Is everything okay?”

  Poking her head into the room, she nodded. “Just me and my clumsy. Sorry to disturb.”

  “Hey, Rocky. Have you met my wife?” he asked, his handsome face so proud of the beautiful woman who lay so still on the bed, her long blonde hair falling all around her face and shoulders.