Page 3

Cathy

A fall breeze wafts through the open-air section of Aunt Nellie’s Fresh Farm Goods, ruffling the hair of suburban moms and their squalling toddlers.

Some of the younger customers are just here for the vibes, snapping photos of rustic wooden posts and weathered bins full of colorful squash, but the mothers are more intentional, determined to jam pesticide-free nutrition down their kids’ throats.

“Excuse me, miss?” The voice is strident, pointed, and the woman’s eyes pierce mine, full of sharp discontent. “These tomatoes don’t look great.” She holds up a lumpy one—fully ripe, probably delicious, but malformed. Not your picture-perfect Pinterest tomato.

These are real, honest-to-god organic tomatoes, not plastic fruit from Ikea. That’s what I want to say, but I’ve learned to bite my tongue.

“How about this one?” I pick up a more symmetrical tomato and offer it to her.

“There was a fly on that one.” She winces.

Yeah, the flies land on everything. It’s a fucking open-air market.

“You can always wash it before you use it,” I counter in my sweetest customer-friendly tones.

Okay, maybe I spoke a little too sweetly. She looks at me through half-lidded eyes. “There’s no need to have an attitude about it.”

“Why don’t I see if I can find some better-looking ones in the back?

” I suggest. This conversation is heading to a bad place, and I don’t have the patience to keep it civil.

For the past few hours, I’ve been feeling…

thin. My emotions, my spirit—hell, my fucking soul —feel threadbare.

Soft and fragile, like jeans worn through at the knees, ready to pop a hole any second.

When I feel like this, I know an episode is coming on soon.

I don’t know exactly when it will hit me, so I have to keep living normally.

Like some kind of secret agent, I mark the exits of every room I enter, chart paths and escape routes in case I need to run, take note of the nearest patch of forest where I can hide.

Right now I’m frayed to the point of breaking, and I can’t deal with this woman anymore. I want to tell her to go to hell—or at least to a chain supermarket, where the produce section is curated for visual appeal instead of natural value.

Before I can say either of those things, I stalk away from her, through the creaky door, and into the air-conditioned interior of the store.

This part of Aunt Nellie’s has the country-store vibe our customers are looking for: a circular table piled high with textured beeswax candles, tiny jars of golden honey with chunks of honeycomb drifting inside, sprays of dried grasses in glazed ceramic pitchers, brass honeybee magnets, hand-carved wooden bread boxes.

There’s a wall of jewel-toned jams, a rack of slim brown packets containing dried herbs, and barrels of old-fashioned candy.

I’m responsible for most of the displays, for the artistic flair and the vibes , because I know our target audience all too well.

I actually don’t despise all of them—just the ones who decide to be dicks.

The ones who want the “organic” label but complain when those products end up being naturally imperfect.

I love things that are raw, wild, crooked, unfinished. They’re so much more honest than things that are cultivated, symmetrical, punched out of identical molds.

I’m sure a therapist would have plenty to say about that.

Pausing by the register, I speak low by Aunt Nellie’s ear. “There’s a woman outside looking for the perfect tomato, one whose virgin skin has never been touched by an insect’s filthy feet.”

“Oh god.” She rolls her eyes, brushes back a frizzy lock of brown hair.

“Fine. I’ll deal with her. Can you go out back?

We’ve got a shipment coming in—that new microbrew Sarah ordered—and I need someone to sign for it and supervise the unloading.

The guy called to say he’d be here in five minutes, and that was… well, five minutes ago.”

“Sure, I got it.”

Aunt Nellie calls Sarah over to handle the register while she goes out front.

I head out the back, closing the door to the retail section carefully behind me.

Then I move on through the dim, dusty maze of shelves in the large storage room to the double doors at the rear of the building.

One of them stands half-open, admitting a swath of pale daylight.

I push it farther back. When the sunlight hits my skin, I cringe.

Sun sensitivity is another sign of an impending episode. Death is coming for some poor denizen of this town—coming soon. My skin feels like it’s crawling, crinkling. I want to wriggle out of it and run—run far away into some dark forest where I can scream and howl at the moon.

I drag my fingernails up my arms, even though I know scratching won’t help.

I’ve tried it before, countless times. There’s only one thing that really helps when my pre-episode jitters get this bad—sex, hard and heavy.

It takes the rhythmic impact of another body to help me forget the torture of being locked inside my own.

Too bad that’s not likely to happen anytime soon.

A truck door slams, and I jump a little. Boots crunch on the gravel, coming closer.

I see his shadow first. Tall and broad. Big shoulders with the casual tension of a man who knows what his body is capable of and is ready to exert that power at a moment’s notice.

Narrow waist, a slant to his gait, more saunter than stride.

Against my will, my whole body tightens with taut awareness.

He’s in the doorway now, a black silhouette against the daylight.

“Got a delivery here for Nellie Earnshaw.” His drawling voice vibrates in sync with my nerves and ripples under my crawling skin. There’s relief in the depth of that voice. A deep well I could quench myself in. Not that I’m desperate enough to try.

With one broad hand, he pushes the second door open, flooding me with bright sun. I wince, fighting the urge to shrink deeper into the shadows.

He huffs a low laugh. “What are you, some kind of vampire?”

I scoff in response, then grimace as the skin between my shoulder blades tightens. It feels like centipedes are skittering up my spine. Come on, Cathy, pull yourself together.

Taking a deep breath, I stride past the delivery guy, toward the pickup. I can do this; I can focus long enough to see him gone. “I need to see the size and number of the crates.”

“Sure thing.” He follows me and pulls down the back door of the pickup so I can see the contents.

The crates are marked with a stamp in dark green ink. Lockwood’s Cypress Honey Lager.

Aunt Nellie’s doing business with the Lockwoods now? Dad’s not going to be happy about this.

As I step back from the pickup, I glance at the delivery guy. I can’t help it.

He looks to be a couple years older than me, probably midtwenties.

His skin is rich brown, a birthright more than a tan, if I had to guess.

Elaborate tattoos cover both his arms right up to the short sleeves hugging his biceps.

More tattoos peek from the scooped collar of the T-shirt and crawl up his sinewy throat.

He’s got clifflike cheekbones, a sharp-cornered jaw, deep-set dark eyes, and black hair falling over his heavy brows, framing his face in shaggy waves.

His pecs swell against his faded gray T-shirt as he reaches up to grip the edge of the truck bed.

God, even his fingers are tattooed. And those long, denim-clad legs of his should be clamped around a motorcycle… or maybe a horse…or maybe…

I swallow, pulling my gaze back up to his face. His dark eyes glint with humor and heat, like he’s reading my mind.

“I’ll, um…I’ll show you where you can put it. The delivery, I mean.” Fuck .

I head back inside, hearing the scrape of wood as he hoists one of the crates out of the truck, the scuff of his steps as he follows me into the gloom of the storage space. I don’t turn on the lights; there’s enough light from the double doors.

“Here’s good.” I point to an empty pallet.

He moves past me, leans over to set down the crate, and sends a spicy rush of amber and sandalwood and male sweat flooding my senses.

My skin, my nerves, my whole body is screaming , aching.

Using sex to ease my tension and soothe some of my worst symptoms isn’t new for me. I’ve fucked a lot of guys in my desperation to feel better. I usually pick the ones who are just passing through—guys I’m pretty sure I’ll never see again. That way Dad won’t find out and literally murder me.

It’s not like I have a choice. Physical pleasure is necessary if I want to stay halfway sane in the hours leading up to an episode.

Masturbating doesn’t do the trick; I need the rush of someone else’s body, the crush of their lips on mine, the rapid thump of their heart, their living soul printed onto my bones.

That throb of life is what I need—the heat of blood under skin, a balm to soothe the scratching claws of Death.

I need the flavor of cum on my tongue to erase the cloying, sick taste of decay.

The delivery guy straightens, looks me in the eyes. Licks his lips. “Is the little vampire strong enough to help me with unloading? I got another run after this one, so the quicker I finish, the better.”

The quicker I finish …

God, I thought overseeing a delivery would be less dangerous than dealing with the tomato woman. Guess I was wrong.

I can’t fuck some random delivery guy. Can I?

“I’m strong,” I tell him.

His eyes crinkle a little at the corners. Not exactly a smile but close. “Of course you are.”

I follow him back to the truck, trying to ignore the furnace roaring through my body, the softening heat between my legs.

He grabs another crate, holds it until I’ve got my arms under it. Our fingers brush momentarily—his are thick, callused, dirty.

“Got it?” he asks.

“Yeah.”