Blood in the Past (Blood for Blood Series) Read Online Free PDF Page B

calling Susannah’s death a suicide. That was good news for Jillian. Apparently, pocketing the teacup proved practical. So she asked herself, Why don’t I feel relieved?
     
    Jillian exited the shower, dressed, and plugged in her phone to call her family and close friends. Then she laughed hysterically. She had none of either. Longing for someone she could assure of her well-being—though she most decidedly was not well—she dialed Mel’s number. Mel had moved back to Ohio right after graduation, about a month after the mugging. So entrenched was Jillian in her relationship with Calvin that she’d barely lifted her head to say goodbye. Jillian regretted that. They could hardly be considered close friends, but they had bonded enough after the mugging that Mel had practically become the only friend Jillian had.
     
    “Where the hell have you been?” Mel screeched. Jillian still hadn’t eaten and her head throbbed with its own pulse, palpitating in her ears. She held the phone a foot from her face, but she could still hear her former roommate clearly. “I’ve been calling you. Your phone just kept going to voice mail. I didn’t know what happened to you in that fucking city.”
     
    “Relax, Mel.” The irony was not lost on Jillian that she had contributed to the city’s swelling crime rate, even if Susannah’s death had technically been ruled a suicide. “I’m fine.”
     
    “What happened?”
     
    “Nothing.” Although her phone was nowhere near fully charged, Jillian unplugged it, allowing her to pace throughout the apartment.
     
    “Don’t tell me nothing.”
     
    “It’s...Cal.”
     
    Mel sighed. “You’re still seeing that piece of shit married cop? Really, Jill, you can do so much better.” Mel had found out about Calvin when he showed up at graduation, and she never held back her disapproval of the relationship.
     
    “Spare me right now, okay? It’s something else. I don’t want to talk about it over the phone.”
     
    “Oh my God, he knocked you up. You didn’t tell him, did you? Don’t tell him. You’ve seen those Lifetime movies, right? Dudes get crazy when their mistresses get pregnant.” Mel placed an awkward emphasis on the word “mistresses” as if it were foreign to her vernacular.
     
    Jillian chuckled nervously. “I’m not pregnant, Mel.”
     
    “Well, what is it then?”
     
    “Nothing. Never mind. I shouldn’t have called you. I gotta go.” Jillian listened to Mel’s garbled voice for a few more seconds before hanging up and reconnecting her cell phone to its charger. She’d thought she craved human contact, but her rapid breathing and blurry tears proved she wasn’t ready yet.
     
    The next day, Jillian’s bedroom door swung open. Mel ambled in carrying several bags of groceries and clutching a bottle of vodka by its neck. Jillian would have preferred something she could actually drink, but she should have expected nothing less from Mel.
     
    “Still have your keys, I see,” Jillian said. Despite the late afternoon hour, she remained buried under the covers. Their weight bore down on her like a physical manifestation of her guilt. She kicked at them and, once free, sat up against her pillows. “What’d you do—drive all night after we hung up?”
     
    “Of course not. I flew out this morning. And we did not hang up. You hung up. I was still talking. I don’t know what the fuck’s wrong with you, but I felt like it might be serious.” Mel searched the room, and her gaze fell to the dark stain in the corner. A scrub brush and a canister of foaming carpet cleaner lay near it. Neither had done much for the stain. Mel wrinkled her nose. “Looks like I was right. Besides, I needed to ship the rest of my stuff out to Ohio. I see you boxed it up for me. You should move them away from the door though. I almost tripped and broke my face.”
     
    “You’re welcome.”
     
    “Yeah, yeah. Get up. Outta bed.”
     
    Jillian followed Mel to the living room and