Chapter 1

ONE

Humming to myself, I select my favorite loose-leaf tea from the lineup of vintage floral tins on my kitchen counter and fill my infuser—a mini teapot with holes. Draping its chain over the edge of my favorite hand-thrown mug, I set it aside to open a tin of homemade hot chocolate mix with mini marshmallows—a special blend I made myself. Heap after heap of chocolate dust fills the bottom of a pink polka-dotted mug until I’m satisfied with its yum factor. That’s a must. Nobody likes a cheap, flavorless hot chocolate—wouldn’t you agree?

From the stovetop, steam rises from my pot of milk just as my kettle of water informs me it’s ready. Wasting little time, I add milk to the hot cocoa. Using anything but milk is blasphemous. The hot water from my electric kettle goes into my mug to steep the orange chamomile tea. A quick mix, mix, mix with a spoon in the hot chocolate, and it’s ready just as the suction releasing my front door rattles the blinds, and the familiar sound of boot heels scrapes across my mahogany floor.

The television clicks on, filling a once peaceful house with noise.

Hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, sending a ripple down my spine as I feel him before I see him.

It’s always been this way.

A sense of knowing.

A strange tether. A connection.

I hate it almost as much as I hate him.

His familiar scent fills the kitchen—rich, woodsy, expensive, mixed with a pinch of lavender and bergamot.

Forcing a smile for both our sakes, I turn to find a muscular shoulder propped against my kitchen wall and arms tucked loosely across a broad chest. He dressed up tonight—black jeans, a navy button-up with a crisp collar, undone at the top, exposing not only his thick neck but his intricate, black-and-gray skull with roses tattoo. It wraps around the front of his throat and ends at the sharp cut of his jawline. His shirt sleeves are folded neatly just below the elbow, showing off his impressive, inked forearms. A stack of leather bracelets adorns one wrist. A black watch decorates the other.

My perusal is quick and detached—nothing more than an appreciation of the human form standing in my home. Before my unwelcome guest gets any ideas, like the desire to chat, I return to my task at hand and busy myself in the kitchen.

In the microwave, I toss in a bag of popcorn and hit the necessary button. Then I scrub the counters I scrubbed an hour ago, ya know, to avoid looking at him, speaking, or pretty much anything else.

“You have another stalker,” he announces.

I heave an internal sigh.

Not this shit again.

I have a lot of things—tattoos, brown hair, and a love of plants, to name a few. Sure, a stalker could be added to that list. They happen without fail time and time again. Most people have a thing . Some are clumsy, so they trip and fall more than the average person. Others might lose their keys all the time or misplace their phone. I collect stalkers like a prostitute collects STIs. It’s my thing …or one of them.

When I don’t respond, Captain Obvious chuckles as if he finds this amusing—finds me amusing.

Trust me, if I had it in my heart to kill him so I could avoid these painful interactions, I would have done it years ago. Unfortunately, I’m too nice.

As the popcorn does its thing, I toss my rag in the sink and cross both arms over my chest to keep from fidgeting. Standing at the tall kitchen window facing the street, I watch his woman pace up and down the sidewalk beneath the faint glow of the streetlights, waiting for him to leave because she refuses to come inside, despite years of endless invitations.

Month after month, this awful cycle persists. The seasons may come and go, but this endures like a cancer, eating away at everything and everyone… well, me.

On the opposite side of the road in our sleepy little suburb sits a blue sedan and, in the driver's seat, my latest stalker, watching me. Sure, I can’t see his eyes, but his body’s angled this way. The man either doesn’t care I can see him, or he thinks the night somehow shields the obvious. I’d guess the former, given how long he’s been parked there—on and off the past week. At first, I thought he was visiting a neighbor. The holiday season is fast approaching, so that wouldn’t be out of the question. Though, we don’t have many neighbors. My street was the last built in this community and abuts a protected forest and commercially owned farmland. There are no houses across from me and only three down the way. That’s why I moved here—the peace and quiet. That’s also why any car out-of-place sticks out like a sore thumb.

Oh, I know. I’m sure you hear the word stalker and freak the hell out. You’d call the cops and file a restraining order. I’d tell you to do the same unless you lived in my world. Trust me, nothing scares me, least of all the man in the blue sedan.

“Earth to Kali.” My visitor’s footsteps grow closer.

My heart ratches up into my throat, emotions clogging there like a stopper in a drain.

Alright, so perhaps there’s one thing that scares me—him.

A hand touches my shoulder in a simple gesture, but I feel it everywhere—a lance through my heart, the penetrating heat through the cotton of my pajamas, the… Fuck this… Shrugging off his touch, I shuffle to the other side of the kitchen. With the island between us, I draw in a lungful of air. Hold. Release. Only then do I set my palms on the cool granite and stare him down… because this has to stop. He shouldn’t be here.

“Leave, Dark.” The weight of my words echoes through the space.

Across the island, he looks down at me with a softness that could only be read as pity… remorse. Something. “You know I can’t do that.”

“Yes. You can. We do this every fucking month. Sometimes more than that. You don’t have to come inside. We don’t have to talk.”

“You’re my wife.”

And there it is.

The same bullshit… a different day.

He’s right, though.

I am his wife. We’ve been married for over twenty years and have two grown sons together.

There’s a lifetime of memories between us.

And a lifetime of deceit.

Shaking my head in disgust, I scoot the mugs to the edge of the counter and give them both a final stir before I remove the spoons and the infuser and set them in the sink to wash later. Retrieving the popcorn from the microwave, I dump it into a bowl from the cupboard and set it next to our drinks.

“Lily,” I call to my adorable, dark-haired, gray-eyed visitor, who looks exactly like her father. “Come get your hot chocolate and popcorn.”

Lily skips in from the living room in her fluffy slipper socks and takes one look at her dad, who blows her a kiss. She catches it with a giggle and smacks it to her cheek before snatching up her goodies and carrying them into the living room for our girls’ night.

“Thanks, Kali!” she hollers around a mouthful of popcorn.

“Pick a movie. I’ll be there in a bit,” I respond with a fond smile, knowing exactly what she’ll choose. It’s tradition. You know how kids are. They get an idea in their head, and it turns to cement. I’ve watched the same movie every month for the past eighteen months. Not that I mind. We recite certain spots, word for word, and made it a game to see who can do it the most. I’ll tell you a secret—I let her win.

The telltale sound of Coraline beginning is my cue to get Dark the hell out of my house and on the date with his woman. This is Lily’s and my time together.

Knowing the only way to get Dark to leave, I return to my spot on the side of the island and pull open the drawer with the hidden compartment. Dark’s eyes widen when he realizes what I’m doing. I extract one of the many guns hidden throughout my home, set it on the counter, and make a show of unlocking the safety. You don’t marry a Sacred Sinner nomad without knowing how to protect yourself.

“Leave,” I growl, staring daggers at him.

The asshole grins and out pops those stupid dimples. “You and I both know you won’t use that on me.”

“Do we?” Because I’m not so sure.

“Kali,” he placates, like I’m a child who needs a pat on the head.

“I asked you to leave.”

“Why are you so fuckin’ pissed at me today?”

“You know why,” I growl.

Most days, I’m civil to Dark. I can be the bigger person. Put on a smile. Endure. Today is not that day… and if he’s asking why I’m pissed, why I’m edgy, why I want to rip his too-attractive throat out, then he’s already forgotten. Not that that surprises me. It’s been years. One never forgets the eve of the anniversary of the day your husband returned from a club run with a new woman and a newborn baby. For eighteen months, he disappeared—fourteen months longer than we had planned. Nobody knew where he was. Nobody could find him. Not even his father.

Eight years tomorrow, he showed up on this very doorstep with that little girl sitting in my living room. He begged to explain what happened and asked for forgiveness he doesn’t deserve. That same week, he bought the house two down from mine, making us neighbors. A month later, he and his new family moved into that house… and he’s been here ever since.

After nearly a decade, you’d think I’d let it go.

I haven’t.

Can’t.

Dark stares at me with his impossibly gray eyes, deep in thought. I know that look well—the wrinkle between his brows, the purse of his full lips.

When nothing registers in that brain of his, I die a little more.

Another crack forms in my already broken heart.

I swallow hard to keep myself in check, refusing to show weakness.

I will not cry.

Not now.

Not in front of him.

Not when Lily is waiting for me to watch Coraline, in our matching pajamas—black-with-white skulls. It’s our thing. She may not be mine. She may be the byproduct of her father's infidelity. But from the first moment I saw her on that stoop, wrapped in her ladybug blanket, I loved her as if she were my own. Alright, maybe not right away. There was shock and tears involved. After that, when things died down, and I adjusted to my new normal, we bonded—hard.

Not giving Dark time to draw his own conclusion and refusing to admit it still bothers me, I return the gun to the drawer, snatch my tea, and find Lily in the living room, snuggled up on my black, overstuffed couch. I set my mug on the end table and drop beside her. Lily drapes our favorite raven blanket across our laps and presses play to start girls’ night.

And just like that… Dark’s forgotten.

Poof.

A distant memory.

At least for a little while.

Whenever he finally leaves to go on his date with Abby, I don’t hear him go.

Lily’s word-for-word reciting of Coraline makes enduring her father worth it.

For hours, it’s us girls and our movies.

After our third show, well past Lily’s bedtime, we clean up our mess in the living room before we finish with our nightly ritual.

Petting a raven’s head that’s perched on a wooden branch on the console table by the front door, Lily whispers a secret into his ear and removes the smudge stick from his mouth. I extract the matches from the drawer in the end table as Lily approaches with the new stick I made with desert sage and lavender—to clean, bless, heal, remove negativity, and promote calmness.

I’m teaching her the ways—of new and old.

Just as my mother did.

Where my sons have followed in their father’s footsteps—Lily’s early fascination with what Mother Nature offers has been an unexpected but welcome blessing.

Together, we light the smudge stick by the front door and walk through my home, turning clockwise within each room and opening a window to let all the negative energy out. We offer the universe our quiet chants, in various tongues, my mother taught me.

At the back door, Lily retrieves the bowl of sand to extinguish the sage and lavender stick.

Now it’s time for rest.

Up the stairs, I follow her to her eldest brother's bedroom—Tarek’s. He moved out years ago. Now a patched Sacred Sinner living across the country, I don’t see him much, but we talk or text often. Lily has turned his old room into her own when she stays the night.

The adorable girl crawls into the bed as I retrieve the chamomile and lavender oil from the nightstand. Sitting on the edge of the mattress beside her, I tuck Lily in as she snuggles down into the pillows and puts her arms out, palms up.

I open the bottle and apply a single droplet to the inside of her wrists. She rubs them together before audibly inhaling the scent and sighing. “I love this stuff,” she notes. Smiling wide, Lily shows off her pearly whites—one crooked, another just starting to come in.

“Do you still have the bottle at home?” Lily loves essential oils, so I’ve made sure she has whatever scents on hand to use, even when I’m not around.

“Yes.” She wiggles around under the blanket, getting comfy.

“Does Dad put it on you each night?”

“If I ask him to.”

Satisfied with her answer, I lean in and kiss her forehead. “Love you, kiddo. Thanks for another fun girls’ night.”

Little arms circle my neck in a brief hug. “Love you, too.” She squeezes once and frees me. It reminds me of the days when my boys were little—our nightly rituals were much like this. We lived in a much smaller home back then—a two-bedroom, single-story 1950s-era rental with their father. That was long ago. Nine years, to be exact. When Dark never returned home, and our year lease was up, I needed to get out. Living there when I didn’t know if my husband was dead or alive, with all those memories held within those walls, wasn’t healthy for me. So, I got my first mortgage with the help of another and started anew in more ways than one. It’s crazy to think I’ll have met this little girl eight years ago tomorrow.

A final blanket tuck around Lily, and her eyes drift closed.

Off the lights go as I depart, leaving my favorite eight-year-old to get a good night's rest. Tomorrow morning, she’ll run home after breakfast, and I’ll handle this stalker situation.

Ugh.

Stalkers.

They’re the worst.