Chapter 1

PART I:MAMA SI’S PARADISE

They call me Fall,like when a little kid is still learning how to walk and falls a lot.

Like the leaves do from trees when summer ages and decides to retire for the year.

Like snowflakes on a winter night, and rain in a spring afternoon, and stars across the midnight sky—exactly like what my heart was doing when I pushed that door open and I heard the sound of her voice, those moans of pleasure I never quite knew how to fake right.

It fell and fell and fell, then broke into a million pieces long before Brandon walked out of the bedroom, our bedroom, eyes wide and hair all over the place, a sheet—our sheet, wrapped around his hips. As if he was hiding from me. As if I hadn’t seen all there was to see on him a thousand times already.

He found me by the door to our small one-bedroom apartment still, doorknob in hand, unable to breathe or blink or think, only fall and break and fall some more. Just like my name.

“Fall,”Brandon said. “What are you…you were supposed to be—y-y-you were supposed to pick up groceries!”

Yes, I was. It was my job to pick up groceries for the whole week, and I’d made the list and I had it in the Notes app on my phone. I knew exactly what to get, and he’d left me the money for it this morning, too, but halfway to the store, I’d realized that I forgot my wallet—silly, silly Fall—so I came back.

I came back and found this.

Brandon Jones, my boyfriend, the guy I’d convinced myself that I’d grow old with since I was sixteen. We’d been together since then, and we were going to be together to infinity—wasn’t that what he told me that night when we packed our bags and left our miserable town behind? Wasn’t that what he promised a week earlier when he got his job offer and he begged me to come with him so I could take care of him while he took care of his career, so that then he could take care of me?

Wasn’t that what we said we did—took care of each other?

“I’m sorry,” Brandon said.

“I fell in love, Fall. I couldn’t help it,” Brandon said.

“You and I are just not right for each other—you know this. We’ve known this for a while now,” Brandon said.

“She wants you out of the apartment today. I’m so sorry, Fall, but so do I,” Brandon said.

And lastly, “I’ll give you the money for the train ride back home. You will be just fine.”

“To a shitty fucking Tuesday,”Annabelle said, touching her martini glass to mine on the counter. Almost empty.

How much of my savings had I spent on booze already? Couldn’t really remember, but it’s not like I’d saved much, anyway, with Brandon being so goddamn paranoid about money.

But I did have the bills he gave me for the ride back home. Train money.

I smiled at the bartender—why the hell wouldn’t I? “To a shitty fucking life.” I drank the last of my martini and relished the way it burned me on the way down. “You know you shouldn’t be serving such strong drinks to underaged people, right?” I teased.

Annabelle batted her lashes innocently. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You told me you’re twenty-one. The good people of Roven don’t lie about their age. I had no reason to suspect.” She grabbed my empty glass off the counter. “And, sweetie, you look at least twenty-five.” She winked at me.

I flipped her off.

Annabelle’s apartment was in the same building as mi—no. Brandon’s apartment, not mine. He rented it. We’d been sort-of friends since I got here, and she knew very well I was twenty still, but I’d come to her bar straight after I got kicked out that morning, having nowhere else to go, and she, out of the kindness of her heart, had served me all the alcohol I’d needed to be completely wasted within half an hour.

“Cheer up. So, your boyfriend cheated on you—so what? I got cheated on three times before I turned thirty. Not the first woman to go through this, and you will most definitely not be the last—not even for this hour,” she told me, leaning down on the counter so she could be eye level with me.

“It’s not that,” I said, and the words kind of slipped from me almost unintentionally. I didn’t mean to say it’s not that—for course it’s that! My boyfriend of four years cheated on me. What could possibly be worse?

But the truth was, that wasn’t what I was thinking about at all. The truth was, it really wasn’t that.

“So, what is it?” She crossed her arms in front of her chest and raised a blonde brow as she looked down at me, her bright green eyes never blinking like she was trying to hold me hostage with her gaze.

“Just…things.”

“Things, like the fact that he kicked you out of your apartment, or that you actually left without breaking anything and only took a handful of things in that tiny bag by your feet? Those things?” She was judging me and she didn’t even care.

Could I blame her, though? I’d only taken essentials, and a few of my favorite books I could fit in that bag, nothing else.

“It’s the fact that I can’t afford my own apartment. It’s the fact that I didn’t have the balls to tell him everything I was thinking before I left. It’s the fact that I had to take these essentials that he paid for because I’m too embarrassed to walk around naked. Those things.”

Annabelle didn’t even try to hide her flinch.

“Yes, those things will put a frown on your face, I guess,” she ended up saying. “You can crash on my couch for a bit till you get your own.”

I smiled. “I have train money. I can go home.” Even if that word didn’t really have the same meaning for me as it did for other people. “That’s it. That’s all he gave me—train money.” After four years, and two in this foreign place. After so many plans. After so many dreams and so many promises. Train money.

I could have laughed.

Instead, I reached for my pocket to see how much I had left from my savings—which I’d been gathering for almost a year to buy a fucking piano.

Now I almost laughed.

“Fucking prick,” Annabelle muttered as she went to the other side of the bar to pour another customer a drink. I loved her a little bit for it.

And when she was done, I called, “Hey, barmaid. I need more vodka.”

Her bar was tiny and right now only five people were in it, including myself. Possibly because it wasn’t even noon yet.

“A good spanking is what you need,” she said with a roll of her eyes, but she got to work preparing another drink for me anyway. Damn, she really was good at mixing those liquors. She was really good at pouring drinks. She was really good at making small talk with people, too. All skills I severely lacked.

The thought hit me like a freight train in the face.

“I need a job.” I need a fucking job—the revelation of the year for me.

“You need to let this out first. It would help if you cried a little,” Annabelle said, putting my martini in front of me.

“I can’t really cry. And I’m pretty sure I just need a job. Because I only have train money.” And train money couldn’t buy me food and pay for rent or clothes.

“Fall, you just caught your boyfriend cheating and got dumped and kicked out. I’m pretty sure you’ll need some time to process that, don’t you think?”

I did think about it for a moment. “Still pretty sure I just need a job.” Even if I wanted to let out tears, they wouldn’t come. They refused to come. I hadn’t cried since I was a little girl.

She crossed her arms and took that stance again with one foot to the side and her hip sticking out. “You’ve never worked a day in your life,” she reminded me.

“Because Brandon said I didn’t need to. He made enough. I wanted to, though.” But he wanted me home where I could take care of him. So he could take care of me in return. “Does that count?”

“No. It really doesn’t,” she muttered.

I waved her off and took a sip of my extra, extra strong Martini. “You’re no fun.”

“You’re in Roven. Nobody’s hiring even if you had any kind of experience.”

“You can hire me.” I could learn how to do what she did with those bottles, couldn’t I?

“I can’t afford another salary. Why do you think I work two shifts myself?”

I flinched—then turned to the guy at the bar closest to me. He wore a brown suit and looked on the brink of bursting into tears. “Hey, you.” He turned. “Are you hiring people by any chance?” I had no clue what he did for a living or if he even owned a business, but he was wearing a suit and I was drunk, so I didn’t really think much through.

“Do you happen to have a law degree by any chance?” he asked.

“Nope. No degree.”

He shrugged. “I’m afraid I can’t help you.” And he raised his glass to me.

Not that I expected better, but the rejection sucked, anyway.

For the next hour, I drank that martini little by little and tried to get my thoughts in order as best as I could. I was a twenty-year-old girl in Roven, Maine, far away from Detroit where I was born and raised, with no degree and no job experience. I’d just followed my boyfriend, who was four years older than me, to this shitty town because he got a job offer he didn’t want to refuse. It was supposed to be for a year only before they moved him to L.A, but then we stayed another. Then he signed the contract for the third year, too.

He said he liked Roven. I said I liked Roven, too.

I lied.

Stop thinking!

I turned to my phone just to give myself a break, but all my social media apps were full of everything piano. Free lessons, tips, facts. That’s all I really knew. That’s all I’d wanted—to save enough money to buy a piano, and maybe when Brandon felt like he had enough saved to the side, I could pay for some lessons, too.

Now, look at me. That’s all I’d dedicated my free time to, and I doubted anybody in this shitty place was going to care about who invented the piano or how many types there were or how many keys they had.

Then I went through the gallery to look at pictures of Brandon and me. There weren’t many of those. In fact, there were less than I’d thought. I had a lot more of birds, dogs, instruments, and paintings in there than of us together.

Easier to delete, I guessed, and as I went through them, I realized Brandon never really looked in love with me. He looked…comfortable. Very at peace in my arms, but not in love.

And to look at my own face?

Yes, I was even worse. Not only was I not in love, but every smile looked forced. It hadn’t been, though, had it? And there had been no signs that he was cheating on me, either. He was never on his phone longer than usual and he was never out late. There had been no signs…right?

Fuck, I couldn’t remember for the life of me.

“I’ll work at the port,” I said to myself as I turned the phone off. My anxiety, fueled by the vodka, reached sky-high levels suddenly. “I’ll wait tables. I’ll clean.” There were jobs. There was money here that I could earn.

There had to be.

Annabelle heard me. “Or you can use that train money and actually go back ho?—”

“No.” I cut her off before she finished speaking. I was not going back home to Missy. I would rather live in the streets of Roven for the rest of my life.

“Fine,” Annabelle mumbled. “Fine, you’re not going home.”

She knew very well what home was. I’d told her once by accident while we drank wine on the stairs of the apartment building one afternoon when Brandon was at a conference. I hadn’t doubted him then, but now I wondered if that conference had been held between the legs of the woman he’d cheated on me with.

A moment later, Annabelle sighed. “We’ll find you a job. Shouldn’t be so difficult, right?” And she looked at me as if she expected a confirmation.

“Mama Si is hiring.”

We all turned to the other side of the bar, to the woman who was sitting with another man behind the brown suit guy.

I narrowed my brows. “Mama Si? Isn’t that…” A brothel?

“Mama Si’s Paradise. You’ve seen it—up on the cliff. A friend works in housekeeping and she told me they’re hiring,” the woman said as the man next to her smoothed her frizzy curls behind her head and she pretended not to notice.

“Yes, yes, I’ve seen it.” Everybody had seen Mama Si’s Paradise.

Annabelle shrugged. “Worth a shot.”

“Are you serious?” She knew what the Paradise mansion was. Everyone around here did.

“I mean, I heard they pay very well. And they offer living arrangements,” Annabelle said.

“But it’s a brothel.”

“It’s not a brothel,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Besides—what do you care if you’re working in housekeeping?”

I turned around and looked out the small windows near the door. Far in the distance I could see the biggest building in the entire town, surrounded by golden gates and a shitload of trees that hid away some of the white and pink walls.

“People come from all over the country for Mama Si’s Paradise,” the woman said, as she tried to get the man off her hair, but he kept trying to touch it. He was so drunk I had no clue how he hadn’t fallen off the stool yet. “It’s… like a hotel, but with extra benefits.”

“Yes, benefits,” said Annabelle, wiggling her brows. “Which is why it costs an arm and a leg to get in there. Which is why they pay really well.”

“So, go work there yourself,” I muttered, though it really did sound pretty good. I mean, it was housekeeping. I knew how to clean. I’d been cleaning after myself and my grandmother, and then Brandon, since I was like six years old.

“If I didn’t bust my ass for this fucking place, trust me, I would. But you know what else I heard?” She put her hands on the edge of the counter and leaned close to whisper. “Mama Si is an actual witch. She’s been in this town for hundreds of years and she never changes. She can do some type of that voodoo shit that is as addictive as fucking heroin. Actual magic.”

Her eyes were wide and her brows raised, her lips parted as she gave her words a second to sink in.

Then we both burst out laughing.

I did wonder about working at the brothel as I drank my martini, despite knowing better. I did wonder about Mama Si’s Paradise, the pink castle atop the cliff with trees and roses and golden gates—such a pretty fantasy. Eventually, the countertop began to look really comfortable. Maybe that’s why I’d leaned my head against it, had closed my eyes. Job, home, witch, magic, train money—those words spun around in my head like a tornado. I wanted to escape them so badly, and maybe that’s why I’d fallen asleep even though the radio was on and Annabelle was chatting up the other patrons constantly. I heard nothing at all.

Then…

“Wake up!”

My eyes popped open and I straightened up with a jolt, forgetting that I was sitting on a stool at a bar. A miracle I caught myself on the edge of it before I fell over.

Annabelle’s long face filled my vision. “This is on the house, and then you get the fuck out there and walk around for a bit.” She pushed the small cup of coffee toward me, still steaming.

My memory was hyperactive, and the alcohol in my system helped in making all the images coming in front of my eyes so damn vivid.

I wanted to argue.

I wanted to remind her that I had nowhere to go.

I wanted to tell her that I didn’t want to walk around for any amount of time ever.

Instead, I drank the shot of espresso she so kindly put in front of me, paid her for my drinks, left my bag with her to pick up later, and I got the hell out of her bar.

The countertop had been my bed for two whole hours, it seemed. I wasn’t even drunk anymore. My phone said it was almost three p.m. when I walked out into the street.

People all around me. It was mid-April still, but the weather was beautiful, the sky blue, the birds loud, the trees by the sides of the roads thriving. The world looked so happy. I couldn’t fucking stand it—but what other choice did I have? Go back to my trailer park home, to my grandmother who’d told me in plain words that she hoped I died before her so that she never had to see me again, even by accident?

No.

Screw the train money that was burning my ass through the back pocket of my jeans. I wasn’t going home. I was going to get my first job by the end of this day instead.