Page 5 of A Fate of Ice and Lies (Fated #1)

Chapter

Three

TEDDY

Years ago, my best friend Ryenne had sent me a screenshot of a meme, which I saved under the Quotes photo album of my phone. It said something about positions and ranks being temporary, but how people would always remember the way we treated them.

Ryenne insisted it was my mantra, and it was by far my favorite quote to read on bad days.

And oh boy, was today a bad day.

Not terrible, like the time I was sixteen and went to church with the back of my dress tucked into my underwear.

I’m still not sure how I didn’t feel the draft, but the second my almost bare ass touched the wooden pew, I shot up and frantically pulled my dress down as Ryenne and her older brother, who happened to be my other best friend, snickered at me.

For a few hours that day, I made sure to let both Ryenne and Donnie know they were my least favorite people. At least until Donnie threatened to punch my ex and anyone else who laughed at me. Like true best friends, they were the only two allowed to make fun of me .

Although today wasn’t show-your-goods-to-church kind of bad, it still sucked.

Not only had two clerks called in sick but we were only four days away from Easter.

While it wasn’t as busy as Thanksgiving or Christmas, we still had people lined up all the way to the parking lot in the hopes of bringing home some donated food they could prepare for their families.

These wives, dads, and grandparents all knew me and expected me to be kind and friendly despite the circumstances.

It didn’t help that our manager, Rita, had yet to have someone come in to look at the refrigerator door for our largest fridge.

You know, the one we used the most but was prone to getting stuck.

One of the workers usually had to pry it open so our customers didn’t break their back trying to get into the stupid thing.

Which meant I spent my time bouncing between the register at the front of the store and the refrigerator at the back.

Talk about getting my steps in.

And to top it off, while most days I didn’t mind playing the unofficial, unpaid babysitter for one of the older moms in town, today hadn’t been the day for her to leave unannounced.

I also wished Collette spent more time with her daughter than she did doing whatever she did when she dropped off the seven-year-old girl, sometimes for days at a time.

At least she’d come back for Victoria this time. Small miracles and all that, right?

Donnie, who in the past eight years had grown up from his wild high school days to become one of the police officers in our town, and Ryenne had come by for a couple of hours to volunteer their time. They were good people like that. Good friends.

By noon, the Colina Verde Community Food Bank had run out of chicken and baked ham although I made sure each family only took one or the other.

Not even an hour after that, we were out of canned and fresh potatoes.

Eggs and dinner rolls were next. Two hours before closing, all that remained was powdered milk and a few assorted canned goods.

My heart had clenched at the almost bare shelves and the dire need of so many in our surrounding communities.

But my small hill country town in central Texas came through for us after my two best friends posted pictures on their Instagram accounts.

Food donations came in for hours after closing.

So much so that the shelves were fully stocked with extra food in the back.

It took hours to inventory and shelf everything by myself, but it was done.

I was exhausted with lower back pain that shot up my spine to my neck and the back of my head.

I blamed that exhaustion as the cause of the strange hallucinations I’d had of a man more handsome than anyone I’d ever seen.

He was almost too perfect in the most inhuman, storybook way, with eyes of the deepest color violet.

He had flawless alabaster skin and a smile that reminded me of sunshine.

He looked about my age, maybe twenty-six, at the most thirty.

At one point, I tried to touch him to see if his skin was as soft and smooth as I knew it’d be.

Which was silly. And when he disappeared right before my eyes, it proved just how childish my imagination was.

Which I guess was no worse than the ongoing dreams I had of some magical woman named Leanora, hell-bent on vengeance.

Leanora’s story made for good writing, though, and I hoped it’d become a fully fleshed-out novel one day.

At least I still had a good fictional book boyfriend to curl up with tonight with the current romance novel I was devouring. Or I would if Ryenne didn’t stay too late for our taco/movie night .

We’d purposely picked a cop movie, knowing Donnie wouldn’t join us since he despised any sort of police-related inaccuracy portrayed in a film.

As much as we both loved hanging out with Donnie, sometimes a girl just wanted to hang with her girl bestie, especially when said bestie was secretly dating her brother’s best friend.

I mean, seriously, who needed a novel when your best friend was living the brother’s best friend, friends-to-lovers trope?

“You really need to set some boundaries with Rita,” Ryenne chimed in via my Bluetooth earbud. “She manages the store, gets paid the big bucks. . .”

I snorted and continued the final sweep of the store, picking up fallen items and making sure all the refrigerator doors were closed.

“I doubt anyone working here gets paid big bucks.” Not when the store’s survival depended solely on donations that sometimes were so low, I gave from the little I had in my own pantry.

“And don’t get me started on Collette,” she said. “She can’t keep pushing her daughter on you like that.”

“I don’t mind,” I reminded her.

“You don’t mind?” She scoffed. “That’s why people keep using you.”

I didn’t mind that either. Growing up, I didn’t have many friends.

I had my mom, our donkey, and the Richter siblings.

It was a good, tight circle, which grew smaller when Mom passed three years ago.

God, I still missed her. The strange thing was, that familiar circle also grew when the people of Colina Verde, people I’d known since I was a little girl but had rarely spoken to, came by with their casseroles and good wishes.

One woman, who’d recently retired from her housekeeping days, came by and demanded she help me clean and go through Mom’s stuff.

If it weren’t for Maria, I would’ve kept every single knickknack and strand of hair I found.

In return, I offered to help anyone and everyone in my small town.

If someone needed groceries or medicine, I became the person to call to pick those items up.

A new mom didn’t have time to do laundry or wash her hair?

I’d pick up her laundry and do the wash myself or sit with the infant while she bathed and shaved both her legs—yeah, I checked after Chrissy came out of her steamy bathroom pink and with a relieved smile on her face but only one leg shaved, which led to a fifteen-minute cry.

As in, she cried, not me, because she was certain her newborn had broken her brain.

I sighed.

“Don’t use that resigned sigh on me like I’m the one being irrational,” Ryenne warned.

I loved my best friend. I really did.

I could picture her stomping her foot the way my donkey did when he was angry.

“Are you at my place yet?” I asked, hoping she’d let me change the subject.

Her sigh came out more resigned and more dramatic than mine. I giggled.

“Yep,” she said. “Already let Hee-haw out to potty, and when his little dorky donkey-ness came back in, he stole my spot on the couch. I swear to you, Teddy, the little shit grinned at me while he did it.”

My smile quickly warped into a yawn that I stifled. I loved Ryenne’s relationship with my pet donkey, and while I’d never admit it to her, I swear he did things just to piss her off.

“Donkeys don’t smile,” I reminded her .

“Hee-haw does, and he’s a menace.”

“Whatever you say, crazy.”

From over the phone, I heard Hee-haw bray in agreement.

I jerked my head toward the door, which I apparently forgot to lock, when a man I didn’t recognize came in.

“We’re closed,” I called out to the man, who stared at the chiming bell over the door.

“Did someone just come in?” Ryenne hissed in my ear.

“Yeah, it’s fine,” I replied. “Let me let you go, and I’ll be home in like twenty minutes.”

“It’s after eleven, Ted. Bad shit happens at this hour.” Her alarmed hiss rang through my ear.

“Okay, Grandma Richter.” I laughed and hung up before she could say anything about my tease, but seriously, Ryenne’s grandma had the worst conspiracy theorists beat with her paranoia.

I took a few steps toward the man, who still stared at the bell in puzzlement.

His gaze dropped to me, and I had to fight my body from taking a retreating step back.

His eyes were sunken and bloodshot, his cheeks hollow and frame thin.

He looked so tired and lost it was as if a small gust of wind could topple him over.

It was obvious he needed help. Food, yes, but also some much-needed rest.

“We’re closed right now, but if you know what you need, I can run and get it for you really quick,” I offered.

He scratched the scruffy beard on his chin. “Do you have anything for a fever for a kid?” he asked. “She’s ten.”

My bottom lip wobbled, but I forced my smile to grow wider. “Sure, I can get that. Has she eaten? We have some canned soup and crackers.”

“I-I don’t know.” His hands went to the back of his neck, where he massaged the base. “I was at work. Just got home. My wife—she’s sick. Cancer, end stages.” He swallowed, and his ashen face turned paler. “My oldest boy was taking care of both of them. I didn’t ask. We have food. We do, but. . .”