Adventures in Amethyst Series, Book 11: Trio of Holiday Romances by Karen Wiesner

Never a Bride, Book 8

Halloween

Chapter 1

October 25

Was it possible to be so overcome with emotion, you felt nothing? Charlize Seagrave had realized she couldn't cry at the funeral. That felt wrong to her, but to come here, to Gran's house, and still be as dry-eyed as a stranger was unforgivable. The first person she'd ever loved, the only person in the world who'd ever cared about her, was dead. Being here in her house was almost enough to choke Charlize with nostalgia, and yet no tears came as she looked at every familiar thing, smelling the lingering scent of burnt coffee in the air. Gran had liked her coffee burnt and bitter, and she had the blackened percolator to prove it.

I was safe here, Charlize thought. Instead of putting the old aluminum, stovetop percolator in the box she'd brought along in case she found anything she wanted to keep, she set it on the floor next to the equally ancient stove and moved slowly through the rooms. Even when she'd first come to live with her grandmother, the house and all its furnishings had been rundown and threadbare, yet they chugged on, providing the service required. Just like Gran. God, she was stubborn as a mule...but she was a fortress. How often did I think if I just stayed here forever, nothing could ever touch me?

If only Gran's goodness had rubbed off on her only daughter...

Often Charlize concluded that her personality had to be a direct result of her mother's heroin addiction, her drinking and smoking while pregnant (not to mention before and after). It was a miracle Charlize hadn't died in the womb instead of being born a month early an addict herself and forced to undergo hardline withdrawal for the first tenuous weeks of her life. If the courts hadn't obligated her mother to go through rehab for the remainder of her pregnancy when her doctor reported her, Charlize surely wouldn't have survived. Instead, she was alive, but damaged in ways she was still calculating.

Have I been living my life at all since I left here? Or wasting it? Can I even answer that with any degree of accuracy? But Gran would defend me by saying I was doing what I needed to do in order to make my mark on the world, shake off the past, and move beyond it.

This house had been her sanctuary, the one place she could always come back to if she needed to. Yet she hadn't. When she left, she hadn't come back because she'd discovered a dark, terrifying side of herself she couldn't break free from, nor did she actually want to deep down. And she'd known if Gran saw her, in a single glance she'd realize how far she'd fallen.

Gran took me in when my big-time dealer parents were finally caught and arrested. By that time, I was already a miserable child. But she somehow knew exactly what I didn't need: She wouldn't let me disappear for long. She encouraged me but not in the same way my parents' friends and clients did, like I was a freak. When I was a tiny little girl, I'd taught myself to play a discarded guitar. But I had to make up my own way of playing because my fingers were too small to make the chords properly. Those stoned deadbeats rewarded me with money and gifts that I squirreled away in my rat hole in case I ever needed to run and become invisible out in the world instead of inside their sprawling estate.

Here in her grandmother's house, Charlize learned trust, love, respect, security, and goodness. But leaving these walls taught her she was different from everyone else. She'd never fit in at school. She was teased relentlessly for how small and pale she was compared to the other kids, for her inability to know how to act in nearly every situation, for her crippling shyness. But she didn't fight back. She hid even there. She recalled her grandmother saying she wished she could homeschool her, but that had never been an option. Her husband had died young, just after their only child had been born, leaving behind debts Gran had never been able to catch up with or pay off. She'd worked two jobs for as long as anyone who knew her could remember. Their poverty was no doubt a big part of why Charlize's mom went looking for wealth, even if it meant becoming the very definition of immorality.

Gran had been too proud to accept a handout--from her own daughter, of course, considering where that money came from. But Gran had refused it from Charlize, too, when she'd legitimately made her own money as Nyx, the guitarist/pianist/singer-songwriter in the cult-followed, death metal band Brideshead Ripped. Gran had taken care of herself right up to the end, when her Type 1 Diabetes got away from her and she developed diabetic ketoacidosis.

Charlize sat down on the twin bed in what had been her small room during her happy years here. It looked exactly the way it had when she left, down to the thick, black curtains her grandmother had sewn for her, knowing her sensitivity to light, and the warm quilt she'd also made by hand.

I was always cold, still am, in any weather. Heroin baby. I learned how to sleep with both eyes closed in this room. I woke up without fear at the sound of Gran's gentle voice calling that breakfast was ready. I was always hungry. She never complained at how much I ate, only about the way I tried to sneak food into my room and hide it in case I got hungry. She said I didn't need to do that. Whenever I was hungry, her food was my food.

Charlize took a deep, shaky breath, remembering the things she'd thought about in this room. Tiny dreams, never big enough to cause waves. She'd wanted to write music, play it, have people enjoy it...though she never wanted to step into the spotlight. And she hadn't needed to even after she got a three-contract deal with Randall Records, one of the biggest record companies in the business with some of the most famous artists like Gregg Stevens and Rain. Freyr, the lead singer of Brideshead Ripped, craved the spotlight along with all the control. Charlize had been the talent that drew the interest of Paul Randall, but Freyr always wanted to be the leader of the band, the focus. She hadn't cared enough to do it herself, occupying the darkest corner even on stage and wearing masks to hide her identity, and so she'd let him take charge, just as Seker (drummer) and Bes (bass guitarist) had.

Charlize closed her eyes on the memories she wanted to fight. She couldn't cry, but the emotional overload she'd been shouldering since Paul Randall called her and told her about her grandmother's sudden death felt too heavy. Always, since she'd left here, she'd fallen back on her old self-soothing techniques and a bunch of new, destructive ones she'd learned. Maybe Freyr couldn't take the blame for all of them, but he'd taught her about pleasure, oblivion, becoming what and whoever you wanted to be. He'd been so different from everyone else, just like she'd always been.

To this day, she had no idea what made him the person he was. She only concluded it'd started happening to him in the womb and even after he emerged. He was an officially diagnosed psychopath, but at first he'd simply been wild, exciting, breathtakingly reckless to her, introducing her to hedonism in all its forms. She hadn't realized then that he'd molded himself into the character he wanted to play, altered slightly in every situation. Did even he know who he was? She doubted it. But she'd gotten addicted too fast to pull back.

When it was too late, she'd had to find a way to escape, but she'd never been tempted to run back here. Freyr knew nothing about her grandmother or her quiet, safe life in this place. She'd never told him her real name any more than he'd told her his. There was no way he could find her at Gran's, but she'd refused to take any risks. Instead, she'd checked herself into a multi-condition, long-term rehabilitation center in New York at the beginning of the year. Only Paul and his wife Wendy and her grandmother had been aware where she was, but she hadn't told any of them right away either. Paul and Wendy were like cool, protective and loving parents to her and, in the time they'd worked together, she'd come to trust them implicitly.

Paul said he'd never felt close to anyone else in the band except her. He'd only accepted the others because they came with Charlize. He'd personally developed their group into something marketable, though he'd had to fight Freyr more often than not. By the time they'd fulfilled their contract for three albums, Charlize had wanted to be done with Freyr's insanity. Their other bandmates had enough as well. Fame with their first album had gone straight to his head. They'd had a cult following in Los Angeles and Japan, barely making a blip anywhere else. Freyr took over the band fully on the second album, corrupting Charlize's songs to the screamer thrash crap he preferred and, because she hadn't wanted to fight him, Paul hadn't either. But their last two albums had done little to increase their following.

While she'd been in rehab, Freyr forged her signature, along with Seker and Bes's, on a new contract with Randall Records. That one had been a cautious deal in which Randall Records would contractually provide financial backing for making a single EP with a maximum of four songs and the band wouldn't receive any royalties until they'd paid back the advance in full. Months had passed without any progress being made, and Paul had finally got hold of her to find out what was going on. He'd hated dealing with Freyr if he didn't have to.

Long story short, he'd found out the psychotic showman had tricked him with the contract, taking the money for himself. Whether Freyr intended to convince the three of them to make an album or never had any intention of it, there was no way to know because he'd gone underground as soon as the cash crossed his palm. No one had seen him, least of all Charlize.

Paul had believed Charlize, Seker, and Bes knew nothing about Freyr's signature forging on the contract. He'd even offered Charlize a solo record deal under her terms--namely she chose her identity, didn't have to do the concerts she hid in the shadows and masked herself to avoid. Paul also wanted to protect her against Freyr, even offering to hire a bodyguard for her. She couldn't live like that, but she knew as well as Paul did that Freyr was after her.

What would've happened if I'd come here instead of gone into rehab? Would Freyr have found me? There's no way he could. But maybe Gran would be alive now. I could have been here when she developed pneumonia that sent her diabetes crashing. In the past, she's always managed her condition without issue. The pneumonia must have put her over the edge. By protecting her from Freyr by not coming here, did I miss my chance to take care of her and provide for her for once?

Rehab had taken so much of the money Charlize had hoarded. She'd gotten by as long as she had since then by being frugal...and holing up with one of the friends she'd unfathomably made during rehab through most of the summer this past year. She'd stayed there far longer than she intended, telling herself she'd done it because a body at rest tended to stay at rest. But the mere thought of that place brought a face to her mind that disrupted her thoughts completely.

It couldn't have been because of Ben. No way. Because he was in a committed relationship at that time, and I didn't and don't have the slightest interest in anything that spells permanent.

Almost without thinking, Charlize gathered up the quilt the bed was made with, folding it carefully and moving back to the front door to place it in the box waiting there. When she straightened, she saw one of the few photographs of her and her grandmother stuck into a framed, handmade painting her grandmother had done of her garden.

Plucking the photo out of the old frame, Charlize looked at her own small face, whiter than snow, her odd, dark red hair so bold against the contrast of her sickly face. Her ice green eyes disturbed nearly everyone who looked into them. In the curled picture, she'd been thin, shapeless, forever smaller than everyone around her. She couldn't guess what age she'd been. But Gran looked old. She always had, from the first time Charlize met her. The lines on her face were wear and tear, harsh-world symptoms. Yet the kindness was evident, too, especially in this picture.

Hurting and dry-eyed, Charlize stuffed the memento into the back pocket of her ragged black jeans.

Quickly, she detoured to the side door between the kitchen and the living room, where the porch was. Like clockwork, Gran had come out to her rocking chair to smoke her one cigarette a night. Even on cold evenings, she'd indulged in her only vice. She hadn't wanted her granddaughter to join her on the porch while she was out there, and Charlize knew it was because she didn't want to subject her to second-hand smoke. More than once, Charlize attempted to point out she'd come into this world addicted to the worst crap imaginable. What difference would a little cigarette smoke make? Gran refused to bend to rationale, if any existed in Charlize's claim.

In the still afternoon, the late October air was chill and she rubbed her leather-jacket clad arms for warmth as she looked out at the old tire swing Gran had hung from an apple tree. Even when she'd been a teenager it'd been a favorite spot and activity for Charlize. Her feet carried her to it now, the dry leaves crunching beneath her worn, black, strappy buckle boots. Before consciously aware she'd decided to have a swing, she was slipping into the "seat". She was little bigger than she'd been as a child or teen, but the creaks coming from the thick branch made her wonder if the bough would break.

This had been the only way her Gran would let her join her at night for her smoke. Charlize would swing, far from the smoke, and her mind would be a million miles away, just like when she played her guitar. This was a place to get lost, to become invisible. But never for long. Her grandmother wouldn't risk Charlize's health if it was too cold to stay out for long, given her respiratory issues.