Free Drowning (Tears of Sin Series) by Rachel Firasek Page B

bring her over, whatever. Get to know me. I’ll get to know you. We’ll probably fight a lot. But in the end, it will be there. Us. You and me.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.” Not the most flattering declaration. “I just feel it. And that’s what I’m working on. Going with what I feel. And you under my hands feels right. I want you there.”
A shudder rakes through me. His nostrils flare and he drops his chin, resting his forehead against mine. “And Alice, when the time is right, I will claim you, and you will want me to.”
“No.” The word escapes on a breathy sigh. “I can’t.” I shove him aside, turn the knob, and rush across the hall.
He doesn’t follow, but when I look back, he’s rested both arms over his head, hands braced against the door frame. “Bring your sister over next week. Our vocalist will be here and you guys can hear the words to that music you think you know so well.”
“I do know you, Seth.” I open my door. “You and I are like looking in reflective glass painted with pain and hate.” And most of that is reflected at ourselves.
A frown wipes away the smile he’s using to try to coerce me back. A shutter falls across his eyes, and they dull with the knowledge that I do indeed get him.
Survivors know each other. We can walk in a room and find someone like us long before we’ll pick out the predators and the prey. And that’s what makes him so damn appealing. Knowing that there is someone else in the world just as fucked up or possibly more so than me, makes me want him far worse. Because the two of us will always know that no matter what, we are worthy of each other. Tainted blood sinks in its own kind. And we were both drowning. He just doesn’t know it yet.
Molly and Rowena walk in as I am throwing a casserole in the oven. Thank goodness it has come together better than the omelet yesterday. I hurry to take Molly’s bags while Rowena sniffs the air, the arch of her neck beautiful and haughty. She isn’t paying my cooking a compliment. A beige Louis Vuitton drapes over her small shoulder. “Perhaps we should have had dinner before coming back, Molly.”
“Oh, Mom, don’t be that way. Alice takes fabulous care of me.” Molly reaches forward until I take her hand, and grins. “Is it enchiladas?”
“How did you know?”
“Sniffer got better, remember?”
Of course. Since the accident, Molly’s other senses have had to become super sensitive to take over for her lack of vision. I drop the bags on the couch and lead her into the kitchen. Rowena follows, but I know she hates to.
“So, is this an old family recipe?” Rowena helps Molly climb onto a stool behind the bar surrounding our island. “Something your mother taught you?”
“Uh, no. My mom didn’t really cook.”
“She didn’t really do much of anything did she?”
I hope that the murder I feel in my heart doesn’t reach my eyes. Giving her a reaction is allowing her to win, and that won’t happen. “She did your husband quite well.”
Molly gasps. “Alice.”
We all knew this was coming. Rowena and I couldn’t be in a room together for longer than five minutes without insults raining down. I’d hated her since my twelfth birthday. That was the year I found out she knew every despicable thing her husband had done to me. And she’d let it happen.
I snort. “What?”
“Please.”
Rowena has paled under her super-fine sprayed on tan, but other than that, no visible reaction plays on her face. No, she’s too cool a cookie to let me see that pain. She tips her head. “As I recall, so was someone else.”
Touché. One point, Alice. Fifty points, Row. The blow stung deep. Rowena thought we’d had an incestuous affair. I chose to let her keeping thinking that. It had to really hit her deep to think that my father would prefer even his own child over her.
“Mother.”
“What?”
“Have some class.” Molly folds her hands in front of her and lowers her head to rest on her forearms. “Are you staying