Kristen Ashley - At Peace

I stared at the dark ceiling and listened to Axl Rose demanding to be taken to Paradise City.

The song was sweet, as was the AC/DC, Poison, Whitesnake and Ratt that had preceded it but it wasn’t sweet at…

I turned to look at my alarm clock on the nightstand…

Three thirty-three in the morning.

The party had started at twelve twenty-two. I was okay with that, seeing as it was a Friday. I figured in this neighborhood they’d cool it at one thirty, maybe two. I also figured, if it went beyond that, Colt would go and have a word. Alec Colton was my neighbor; he lived across the street and one house down. He and his girlfriend, February Owens had a new baby and he was a cop. I couldn’t imagine he’d put up with a trip down memory lane, 80’s hard rock style, until nearly four in the morning, not with a new baby and all that entailed to your sleep schedule (or lack thereof).

But the music hadn’t stopped.

My neighborhood was quiet or, at least, it had been for the four months Kate, Keira and I had been living in it. It was February. Who had loud, late parties in a quiet neighborhood in February?

At least Kate and Keira were at sleepovers. If they’d been home, I would have lost it way before now.

But, I lost it…

I looked at the clock…

At three thirty-four in the morning.

I threw back the covers and went to the bathroom, snatching Tim’s old, plaid flannel robe off the hook on the back of the door. His Mom bought him that robe. He’d had it before we’d been married. Now it was soft as plush, worn in but not worn out and it was still super warm.

Shrugging on the robe, I stomped out of my room, through the open plan study into the living room that fed into the dining area that fed into the kitchen. Then I went to the side door in the kitchen where a tangle of footwear littered the floor.

Both Kate and Keira were early bloomers. They were now both my height, even Keira, though she was only fourteen, and we all wore the same shoe size. I yanked out Keira’s hot pink wellingtons with the big daisies on them and pulled them over the thick socks I had on to ward off the night chill. I jacked the thermostat way down at night, saved on heating, saved on utility bills. Money wasn’t exactly flowing and raising two teenage girls, money was an important thing to have. Then again, it was even without two teenage girls, though I hadn’t really known a time in my life when there weren’t kids in it. One day I was a kid, the next I was a wife and mother.

Never regretted it, not a single day, not until one year, three months, three weeks and two days ago. Then I didn’t really regret it but life sure as hell changed.

I disabled the alarm, unlocked the side door, stomped into the night and stopped dead.

I had no idea where the music was coming from but I wouldn’t have expected it to be coming from my next door neighbor. This was because whoever that was, they were never home. In the four months we’d lived there, I’d seen a shiny, black, new model Ford pickup truck in the drive a few times, maybe two, three. I’d seen the lights on in the house once. Other than that, no one home.

But now, it was lit up like a beacon, the music was way louder standing outside. So loud, it was a wonder the windows didn’t bow out with the sound.

But there was no shiny, black, new model Ford pickup truck in the drive. Instead, clear as day because of the lights blazing from the house, I saw a shiny, red, new model Porsche.

This all struck me as a surprise. No word, no sound, no nothing from that house in four months and now it was lit up, loud music blaring and there was a non-American car in the drive. As far as I knew the only neighbor on the block who didn’t own American was February and she owned a convertible Beetle. Everyone else, including me, had American-made.

And no one on this block could afford a Porsche, not in their lifetimes.

Even living there for such a short time I knew my neighbors because this was a small, Indiana town. We’d lived there a week and we’d met all our neighbors. They’d come over with cakes, cookies and casseroles. We’d been invited to Christmas parties. We waved and called hellos, or good-byes, or even walked over to have a gab if we were out shoveling the walks or getting in our cars to go somewhere or we were coming back. We chatted when we ran into each other at the grocery store, post office, Frank’s restaurant or a high school basketball game. Kate, Keira and I had lived there four months and it felt like we’d been there fourteen years.

But I didn’t know my neighbor with the shiny Ford pickup who lived next door and I didn’t know them because they were never home.

Now, whoever they were, I was going to meet them.

I stomped through the snow, hearing it crunching underfoot even with the music. The top of the snow had refrozen with the frigid night but I didn’t feel a thing, I was too angry. I had to work tomorrow, be at the garden shop at eight which was only a few hours away. I’d been woken up with AC/DC’s “Hell’s Bells” and had been tossing, turning and fuming ever since. Now my blood was boiling and I was going to have to take care not to lose control. I had a temper, unfortunately. I didn’t blow often but when I blew, I blew.

And one of the reasons I was angry was because if Tim was here he’d be doing this. He’d have done it three hours ago, approximately halfway through “Hell’s Bells”. Tim liked his sleep but it wasn’t that. He didn’t tolerate anything that might bother his girls. If it woke me up, it would wake him up and he would know I’d been disturbed and that would tip it for him and he’d be out the door like a shot. He’d take his gun and he’d take his badge and he’d take his pissed off, big man, hotshot cop attitude and he’d put a stop to it, make no mistake.

Fuck, but I missed him.

I made it to my neighbor’s front door and didn’t delay. I lay on the doorbell and knocked on the door, knowing they’d never hear one or the other and even with both it would be a miracle to be heard over that sound.

It was now Van Halen. David Lee Roth was singing “Panama”. Another of my favorites. It was a memory song. Good times were had when that song was played, good times being ruined by that song being used to piss me right the fuck off.

I knocked louder and kept my finger pressed to the buzzer.

“Hello!” I shouted to the door.

It was thrown open, the blazing lights from inside blinding me for a second, then I focused, my blood cooled about a hundred degrees and I stared in complete shock.

“Who are you?” she asked on a shout over the music.

Holy shit, it was Kenzie Elise. Kenzie Elise. Kenzie freaking Elise.

I’d seen nearly all of her movies (except when she started to branch out and do those crappy art house films which made little sense to me or the critics, even though she was doing them trying to become known as a actor rather than a rom com sweetheart and she kind of failed at this endeavor).

I loved her movies, especially the rom coms (the thrillers were pretty good too). I loved her. She was awesome.

But now, with her standing in a crackerbox house, in a crackerbox neighborhood, in a small town in Indiana, I was staring at her in shock.

Kenzie Elise couldn’t be my neighbor. That was impossible.

But there she stood, tall because she was really tall anyway but she was also a step up and she was wearing sky-high, platform stripper shoes with straps that wound up her skinny calves. And skinny they were. She was ripped; every muscle in her body could be seen. As could her breastbone, prominent and, I had to admit, immensely unattractive. I could see all this because she was wearing an emerald-green, lace teddy, deep-cut down her non-existent cleavage, high-cut up her bony hips. She had to be ten, fifteen, maybe even twenty pounds underweight. So skinny, it was a little scary. But she had that trademark mane of wild, long, strawberry blonde hair, cornflower blue eyes and cute-as-a-button face.

And she was standing in the doorway of the house next door, the blue eyes in her big head on her stick-figure body staring down at me.

“Who are you?” she repeated and I jumped, coming out of my trance.

“Um… your neighbor,” I replied. “Could you turn the music down?”

“What?” she shouted but when I was going to respond, her blue eyes left me and looked over my head.

I saw lights flash on the house and I turned around to look too.

A shiny, black, new model Ford pickup truck was turning into the drive.

Shit!

I turned back to see she was smiling, really pleased about something. Her face had gone soft and knowing in an intimate way that made me feel highly uncomfortable.

From the look of her Daddy was definitely home. I was big time third wheel of this particular party and I needed to get out of there.

“Listen, can you turn the music down?” I asked on a shout but she ignored me, her eyes riveted over my shoulder.

I’d seen the lights go out and now I heard a door slam.

“Excuse me!” I yelled over the music, getting a bit desperate. “I live next door,” I lifted my left arm to point at my house, “and your music is really loud. Can you turn it down?”

“Hi lover,” she purred and how she purred over that music I couldn’t imagine but she did it.

I turned around and froze.

Standing behind me was a man, a big man, big in every way. He was tall, taller even than Tim and Tim had been six foot two. He was also broad; his shoulders in his black leather jacket were wide and unmistakably powerful.

And he’d been beautiful, once. It was plain to see, under what he was now, that his features had once been perfect, high cheekbones, an appealingly sharp slant to his square jaw, a strong brow. Now there were lines coming in arrays from his eyes and more around the sides of his frowning, full lips.

And there were also scars down his left cheek, two from about a quarter of an inch under his eye that curved over his high cheekbone coming closer together and ending where, if he had a dimple, his dimple would be. These scars were not puckered or disfiguring outside of the actual marks. They just marred the faultless male beauty that had once been his face, making it, with the addition of the lines, rugged and interesting and more than a little scary.

All of this, with his dark, unruly, way overlong hair, was enough to make him look sinister in a compelling, magnetic way.

And then there were his eyes. Sky blue eyes. Sky. Fucking. Blue.

Kate and Keira had their father’s gray-blue eyes, striking as they were framed with Tim’s long, dark lashes. I’d never seen eyes as beautiful, as striking, as breathtaking as Tim, Kate and Keira’s.

Until now.

He was using those eyes and that rugged face to glower at a point beyond me. Actually glower. And he was doing this in a way that I felt a chill glide down my spine. He scared me so deeply, being so dark, so scarred, so huge, so obviously furious that I was rooted to the spot. I couldn’t move even though I really wanted to.

Then he moved. He strode forward right by me and automatically, as if compelled to do so by the sheer force of his aura, I turned as he walked passed. I watched as he planted a big hand in Kenzie Elise’s emaciated breastbone and he pushed her off.

My mouth dropped open as she flew back on her platform stripper shoes, her arms flying out to the sides to find purchase as she wheeled backwards. There was nothing to grab onto and she tripped gracelessly off the side of her shoe but righted herself before going down.

I stared, unable to do anything else. It was like watching a hideous accident caught on film and aired on television. You didn’t want to see but you had no choice but to watch because, no matter how your brain screamed at you to do it, you couldn’t tear your eyes away.

Without stopping he stalked into the house and disappeared. Then the music abruptly stopped.