Reckless Radiance by Kate Roth Read Free Book Online

ahead of us,” Valerie said.
    As the words came out she glanced at Gabriel and stopped suddenly.
    The room was deafeningly quiet as she held her breath. His hand was limp in hers and she watched closely but his chest never rose and his lips never parted. He was gone.
    And soon after, so was she. Gabe told her from the very beginning he’d never begrudge her leaving without saying goodbye and that if she needed a break, she should take it. He said he knew it would be bad from the beginning until—the end and that he trusted Valerie would know herself well enough to know just how much she could or couldn’t take. She couldn’t take watching him be lowered into the ground. She left a note for Alicia and her parents, packed her things and drove to Somerset. She was going to be a college girl, reinvent herself and take classes like Women’s Studies and Philosophy 101.
    But she was ill-prepared for that life. Her lack of concentration and passion for academia showed quickly in her grades. So she did the only thing she felt she could do and dropped out. She rarely talked to her parents. She emailed her brother a few times a month but for the most part she was just as much of a ghost as Gabe was. Too ashamed and scared to go back to her tiny farm town, she walked in to Penny’s Pie Diner one day with the Help Wanted sign in hand. And with that it was clear the fairy tale was over and the life she never really wanted very quickly became all she had.
     

Chapter Ten
     
    Valerie sighed and tried with all of her energy to wake up. She blinked to clear the sleep from her eyes and caught a glimpse of the room. It was dark. Maybe it was all a dream. Maybe Russell was a dream.
    A voice called out to her from near the window. "Are you awake, Valerie?" Henry asked.
    She sat up and grimaced at the realization that the horror she remembered wasn’t a dream at all. Glancing at her hands, her stomach twisted in knots seeing the dried blood that was caked into her nails and crusted onto her skin in ruddy brown splotches. Quickly, without thinking, she rubbed her hands together and felt the crumbles of gore falling from her fingertips. She thought she might vomit at the sight.
    She pushed herself off of her futon bed to find Henry. He was standing at the only window in her tiny apartment staring into space, impatiently tapping his foot.
    “It’s a little after ten,” Henry blurted. Their eyes met and neither one needed to say what they both were thinking.
    “What should we do?” she asked, daring to step closer to him.
    A laugh burst forth from Henry’s lips. “ We aren’t going to do anything. You are gonna drive him out to your parents’ place and bury the bastard.”
    Her mouth gaped open. “I can’t just drag a man out to my parent’s farm and bury him! We have to call the police.”
    “You’d have me arrested? Shit, don’t you understand? I can’t have this happen to me. I wanna do something with my life. I’ll be ruined. Look, I’ve already put him in your trunk,” Henry rambled as he paced the apartment.
    “You did what?” she screamed.
    Russell was dead because of his drunken fury and now he’d done the unthinkable. Her thoughts were racing as Henry moved toward her with the same rage in his eyes she’d seen before. In an instant she was shoved back, Henry‘s strong hands forced into her chest. Her head banged against the wall behind her and she felt an odd sense of deja vu.
    He stood eerily calm as he stared her down. “You’re going to do it and that’s the end of the conversation.”
    She knew the gun was still near. The alcohol on his breath and the new arrangement of empty bottles on her kitchen countertop were more clues he’d kept drinking after she fainted. There had been moments in their past when she feared him but none like this. He was now a murderer which meant he was capable of killing her, too.
    With Henry’s palms putting bruises into her collarbone, she nodded slowly and slinked out of