I look away, down at the dirt. Yes, I’d heard, it’s all anyone’s talked about for the last week.
Orin Hayle, patriarch of the Hayle family, a rich construction magnate with flowing white hair and a nasty attitude, a man exuding health and vitality, fell down a flight of stairs and cracked his skull on the landing. He was sixty-five.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” I say even though I’m not remotely sorry at all. Orin was a bastard and made my life a living hell whenever he was home, and I’ve spent a quarter of my life thinking up nasty and brutish ways to kill that man.
“I’m not.” Kellen stoops over, picks up the box, and drops it into the hole. He frowns for a long moment before picking up the shovel and covering it with dirt. “I didn’t bother with the funeral. What a fucking farce that must’ve been. Can you imagine trying to eulogize my father? I’m sure my ass-licking cousin gave it his all. I bet he practically rolled out his slimy little tongue and sucked on my dead dad’s testicles one last time, instead of saying the truth. Which would be something like here lies one of the worst humans in the world, the scum of the earth, a real piece of fucking shit, and the earth is better off without him. I doubt a single person in that church is going to miss my old man. I sure as fuck don’t.” He grunts as he covers the box, filling in the hole one shovelful at a time.
“Why are you back then?”
“Because my fucked-up family’s been running Hayle Construction for the last seven years without me, and now it’s time for them to step aside.”
“That seems sort of—” I’m about to say extremely naive, but I stop myself, realizing it’s definitely not my place, and besides, Kellen might be my boss soon. Better to smile and play to his ego.
He looks up, grinning anyway. “Seems sort of unlikely?” He nods and finishes filling the hole. When he’s done, he kicks the dirt around, covers it with leaves, and does his best to make it harder to find the fresh-turned earth. When he steps back, it’s actually hard to spot and will probably be invisible in a day or two.
“I don’t have an opinion either way.”
“You liar. Tara Caruso doesn’t have an opinion? When I knew you, that was all you ever had. Cait used to say you were the smartest person she’d ever met but I thought you were full of shit.”
“Cait said that?” I ask quietly as a sudden, old wound manages to rip open again. I thought I was over grieving for my best friend, but apparently Kellen is still capable of making me feel like shit about what happened to her.
“Among other things. Now, are you going to take me to see my mother, or what?”
“You haven’t seen her yet?”
“Haven’t been inside. I wanted to bury that box first.”
I take a deep breath, steadying myself. His dark green eyes stare at me intensely, and I hate the way he looks down my body, judging me. I’m in pretty good shape from working outside all the time, but I’m wearing old denim shorts, a beat-up button-down shirt and a wide-brimmed hat to keep the sun from my face, and it’s not particularly flattering. I don’t know what he’s thinking right now, and I’m not sure I want to find out.
He and I don’t exactly have a normal history.
No, the first word I think of when it comes to Kellen is complicated.
The second word is asshole.
“You should clean up first. You can shower then maybe—”
“No,” he says, grabbing a black t-shirt from where he had it hung over the branch of a bush. “We’ll go now.”
“Are you sure?”
“Lead the way, Tara.” He yanks the shirt over his head and walks out of the copse of trees, through the bushes, and back onto the path. He leaves the shovel behind, presumably for me to gather up later.
The fucking asshole.
I tear myself from the spot and step out beside him. Kellen lingers close, looking down at me with a tilted head and a half-smile. God, that smile is so familiar, I used to look forward to seeing it whenever I spent time with Cait in this place. Kellen is five years older, but he was close with Cait and made a point to visit the manor as often as he could when he was off at college.
All that changed though. A lot changed after Cait died. An old, twisting guilty feeling spreads through my hands and down into my feet, and sweat rolls down my back, both from the heat and from the memory of my best friend. I glance up at the house, at the sprawling complex of wings and sitting rooms and bedrooms and corridors, and I wonder how I’m still here, like a ghost haunting the place where my life ended seven years earlier.
Kellen stands there, eyebrows raised, that cocky smile beamed directly at me, and I finally sigh and motion for him to follow.
“Right this way, Mr. Hayle.”
“Oh, I like it when you call me that. Maybe add sir next time.”
“Asshole.”
He laughs and we head to the house.