Free The Promise of Paradise by Allie Boniface

flickering
motion light clicked on as she crossed the back parking lot. Her VW
started up with a hesitation, a little cough before catching, and she
crossed her fingers that it would turn over.
    Probably should get
it looked at. She dropped her forehead onto the steering wheel.
But where? By who? The only repair shop she knew of in Paradise was
the place Eddie worked, and now she couldn’t take it there.
Suddenly, she felt lonelier than the day Colin had left her.
    Ash sighed. She hadn’t
meant to say those things, hadn’t meant to lose her temper. She
just couldn’t help it sometimes. Not for the first time, she
thought she’d probably make a lousy courtroom lawyer. Holding her
tongue wasn’t her strong suit. She bumped her way out of the
parking lot and turned onto Spruce Street, taking the long way home.
    She was better off
anyway, keeping her distance from Eddie. Keeping her distance from
all of them. She didn’t need to listen to him or anyone else say
things like that about her father. Randolph Kirk had screwed up, but
he was still Ash’s blood. Her fingers tightened around the steering
wheel as she passed the silent town square and eased through the
intersection in the center of town. A lonely yellow eye blinked down
at her.
    But why did you do
it, Dad? Even if someone had set him up, even if someone planted
the drugs and spiked his drink, what was he doing in a car with a
girl younger than his own daughters? Tears started up, and as Ash
made her way back to Lycian Street, she braked hard and edged to the
curb. She didn’t know. She couldn’t find the answers. And she
didn’t trust herself to ask her father.
    She looked up and saw a
dark house. If Eddie was home, he’d turned off all the lights, even
the porch one they always kept burning. Now it looked like all the
other buildings on the block: lifeless and cold. She raised both
hands to her face and wept.

Chapter Nine
    Ash balanced a grocery
bag in the crook of each arm and propped open the front door. She
blew her bangs off her forehead. Where was the mild summer the
weatherman had promised back in May? Each day in Paradise, she’d
woken to nothing but humid temperatures that hovered around ninety.
No rain, no relief, just heat and heaviness pouring down from above.
At only noon on a Saturday, she’d already soaked through a T-shirt
on her way back from the store.
    “Ugh.” She let the
bags slide to the floor and checked her mailbox. She’d worked well
past midnight last night, thanks to a lively crowd that kept the band
playing long after regular closing. She really couldn’t complain,
though, not with a pocket full of tips that totaled well over a
hundred dollars.
    Someone giggled.
    Ash closed the rusted
door to her mailbox and spun around. She frowned. No one on the
porch. No gaggle of pre-teen girls walking along the sidewalk. She
heard it again: a giggle, definitely feminine. Turning in a slow
circle, she eyed Eddie’s door.
    “ Woman stays the
night, things get complicated…”
    She swallowed. Looked
as though Eddie had set himself up for some complications after all.
She negotiated the paper bags back into her arms, wanting to get
upstairs as quickly as she could. Sure, her housemate was entitled to
entertain whoever he wanted, whenever he wanted, but that didn’t
mean she had any interest in seeing who it might be. They hadn’t
spoken since that night in the bar, and she’d done her best to keep
it that way. What would she say to him, anyway?
    Ash turned away, but
not quickly enough. Eddie’s door opened, and a petite blonde
stepped into the foyer. Eddie followed. At their feet trotted the
kitten, batting at the blonde’s heels.
    “Y’all are too
much,” she said, with a nudge at Eddie’s chest. “I don’t
believe a single thing you say.” The words floated on the air,
laced with a southern accent. Her mouth crinkled up at the edges as
she laughed. Eddie scooped up the kitten and, with a rough pet across
the top of its head,