Love Bites Read online

  Love Bites

  a novel by

  Annabelle Costa

  Love Bites

  © 2018 by Annabelle Costa. All rights reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without express written permission from the author.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, incidents and places are the products of the authors’ imagination, and are not to be construed as real. None of the characters in the book is based on an actual person. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental and unintentional.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  Prologue: Tom Blake

  Chapter 1: Brooke

  Chapter 2: Tom Blake

  Chapter 3: Brooke

  Chapter 4: Brooke

  Chapter 5: Brooke

  Chapter 6: Brooke

  Chapter 7: Tom Blake

  Chapter 8: Brooke

  Chapter 9: Brooke

  Chapter 10: Tom Blake

  Chapter 11: Brooke

  Chapter 12: Brooke

  Chapter 13: Tom Blake

  Chapter 14: Brooke

  Chapter 15: Brooke

  Chapter 16: Tom Blake

  Chapter 17: Brooke

  Chapter 18: Brooke

  Chapter 19: Brooke

  Chapter 20: Tom Blake

  Chapter 21: Brooke

  Chapter 22: Brooke

  Chapter 23: Tom Blake

  Chapter 24: Brooke

  Chapter 25: Brooke

  Chapter 26: Brooke

  Chapter 27: Tom Blake

  Chapter 28: Brooke

  Chapter 29: Tom Blake

  Chapter 30: Brooke

  Chapter 31: Brooke

  Chapter 32: Brooke

  Chapter 33: Brooke

  Chapter 34: Brooke

  Chapter 35: Brooke

  Chapter 36: Brooke

  Chapter 37: Brooke

  Epilogue: Brooke

  Prologue: Tom Blake

  October, 1905

  Over the past several months, I’ve had a feeling someone is watching me.

  I have not witnessed anyone actually watching me. There have been no eyes staring at me through the window of my bedroom, no ominous footsteps crunching leaves behind me as I trudge the half a mile to the schoolhouse. It is a feeling—nothing more. Yet I have never had such an intense feeling in my life.

  Sometimes I feel that prickling on the back of my neck and I whirl around, certain I’ll catch someone only inches behind me. But there’s never anyone there.

  When I don’t find someone, it is relief I feel rather than disappointment. If Pa found a man following him around town, he would surely punch the fellow square in the nose. If I were to turn around and find a stranger lurking in my shadows… well, I don’t know what I’d do. Run? Yell? Going on the attack would be far down the list. Then again, I am only sixteen and do not have arms like tree trunks the way Pa does.

  Yet my relief is always short-lived. The feeling something is behind me is so intense, so certain, there are only two other possibilities, neither of which are appealing.

  The first possibility is I am imagining things. Yet I am no longer a child—far too old for imaginary friends. The only people older than children with that sort of active imagination are people like Harry Cross, who mumbles to himself as he trudges down the road, not looking any of us in the eyes. Mr. Cross lives with his elderly mother, who cares for him because he is unable to hold down a job. Pa says Mr. Cross lost his mind.

  I do not want to consider the possibility I am imagining things the way Harry Cross does.

  But the only alternative is even more disturbing. If I am right—if there really is someone following me who I am unable to see with my naked eyes—then there is only one other possibility:

  Whoever is following me is something other than human.

  Chapter 1: Brooke

  July, 2018

  “Sydney is toxic and we’re dumping her.”

  Gabby makes the declaration twenty minutes into our dinner together at the local bar. She’s downed about half of her strawberry margarita, but I don’t know if this is an alcohol-fueled decision. She’s been complaining about Sydney for months now, and the fact that she was a no-show to our meal tonight is apparently the last straw.

  “I’m sure she has a good excuse,” I say, even though I’m actually sure of exactly the opposite. Sydney never has a good excuse. Ever. Maybe somebody she liked better asked her to dinner. Maybe she just plum forgot. But she always says it like it’s an excellent excuse. Of course I forgot! How could you actually expect me to remember our plans together?

  “I even texted her this morning to remind her!” Gabby points at her iPhone as apparent evidence. “And she texted me back. She confirmed, Brooke!”

  I lean back in my seat and sigh. When Gabby gets an idea in her head, it’s hard to talk her out of it. I’ve known her for seven years now—she’s the first friend I made in New York—and I know she’s relentless when she wants to be. If she wants to cut Sydney out of our lives, she’s not going to give in until she convinces me.

  “What’s your evidence that Sydney is toxic?” I say.

  Gabby’s round face lights up like she was waiting for the question. “I read an article just this morning on toxic friendships,” she says, picking up her phone from the table. She’s no doubt got the article bookmarked so that she could pull it up for this very conversation. “Okay, here we go. Warning signs that you’re in a toxic friendship…”

  This should be good.

  “Your friend is a freeloader,” Gabby reads off the screen. She looks up at me triumphantly. “When is the last time Syd picked up a check? Do you ever notice she always has to go to the bathroom just when the check appears?”

  Okay, now that she mentions it…

  “Your friend is always criticizing you,” she continues. She nods emphatically at me. “Remember when you were first dating Brian? She was always talking about what a jerk he was.”

  I wince at the mention of my most recent ex-boyfriend. The pain of that relationship is still less than a month old. “He was a jerk.”

  “Well, yes,” Gabby admits. “But she shouldn’t have said so.”

  “You said it.”

  “Well, not off the bat, at least,” she backpedals. “Not till you said it first. And remember when I got that pixie cut, she told me I wasn’t able to pull it off?”

  I keep my mouth shut. The truth is that Gabby can’t pull off her pixie cut. When she got her admittedly frizzy brown hair chopped off a few months ago, I almost had a heart attack. Really, I’ve been meaning to say something to her about it, but it’s a difficult conversation. What am I supposed to say? Gabby, I love you, but you look like the Keebler Elf.

  I secretly think one thing Gabby doesn’t like about Sydney is how attractive she is. I mean, I’m not someone who walked into a wall or anything, but Syd is on a whole other level. She’s taller than my five feet four by several inches, and she towers over Gabby’s five foot one buxom frame. She’s slender but with nice boobs, and she’s got long, flowing blond hair. Yes, I said “flowing.” Her hair flows. It’s like a river.

  Suffice to say that going out for drinks with Sydney guarantees Gabby and I won’t get a second glance. I’ve gotten used to it in the two years that we’ve been hanging out with her, and I honestly find the attention she attracts more fascinating than anything. One time a guy on the street was staring at her so intently that he literally walked into a mailbox. Syd and I nearly died laughing.

  Gabby looks back down at her phone. “Okay, how about this one: your friend is untrustworthy. Meaning she says she’s going to show up for dinner, then the two of us are sitting here w
aiting for her like a couple of idiots.”

  “Don’t pitch a dying duck, Gabby,” I say drily.

  That’s Sydney’s favorite expression. Pitch a dying duck. She’s so New York chic, but she’s originally from the South, and that’s the one expression she’s retained and uses liberally to tell me to calm the hell down. Don’t pitch a dying duck, Brooke. I’ve heard her say it a million times. And no matter how upset I am, it always makes me smile.

  I check my own phone again to see if Sydney responded to my text asking where the hell she was. She hasn’t.

  “And if she does show up, she’s always late,” Gabby adds. “Like our time isn’t as important as hers? Like we have absolutely nothing better to do than just sit there, waiting for her to show up?”

  I don’t want to admit that Gabby’s arguments are starting to sway me. Everything she’s saying about Sydney Lancaster is absolutely true. Sydney is cheap, she’s mean, and she keeps us waiting all the time. But she’s also really funny, and the most fun person I know to go drinking with—and that includes Gabby.

  “She’s probably with that new boyfriend of hers,” I say.

  Gabby rolls her eyes. “Oh yes, the elusive boyfriend. That super handsome guy she’s been seeing the last few months, but she won’t tell us anything about him. Do you even know his name?”

  “Um…” I think for a moment. “John?”

  “I thought it was Alex?”

  I shake my head. “No, that’s not right. I don’t know. Didn’t she tell us what letter it started with…H, right?”

  “Why so secretive?” She takes another sip of her margarita, although it’s actually more like a swig. “He’s probably a huge loser. He’s probably bald and fat and lives at home with his parents.”

  “That’s not a very nice thing to say,” I tease her. “Maybe you’re the toxic friend?”

  She laughs. “Of course I’m a toxic friend. Too bad you’re stuck with me.”

  I take a sip of my own drink—a Sam Adams. “If Syd got a date tonight with Mr. Perfect, I don’t know if I blame her for ditching us. I’d be tempted to do the same.”

  Gabby swipes some of the salt from the edge of her margarita glass and licks it. “Me too. God, it’s been a long time since I’ve been out with a decent guy.” She sighs. “Actually, sometimes I wonder if I’ve ever been out with a decent guy.”

  “Me too.”

  “Right, but at least you’ve got decent guy options,” she says. “Nice guys ask you out—you just turn them down.”

  I want to tell her she’s wrong but I can’t when she’s so clearly right. I’ve got a penchant for men who are too good-looking for their own good and who correspondingly treat me like crap. It’s why I’m nearly thirty years old without even a hint of a relationship. I’m sure Sydney would take this opportunity to point out my impending birthday, but Gabby (apparently the less toxic of the two) thankfully keeps silent.

  “We’re not really going to stop being friends with Sydney, are we?” I ask. Not that it’s up to Gabby who I’m friends with, but… well, it’s hard to say no to that girl.

  “No, we’re not,” she sighs. “But next time we agree to meet up, you and I are going to show up ten… no, twenty minutes late!”

  I check my phone again to confirm that Sydney hasn’t sent out a text. I hope whatever she’s doing, she’s having a good time.

  _____

  My apartment building is closer than Gabby’s, so she walks me home from the bar while we continue to grumble about Sydney’s toxic friendship. To be honest, I’m surprised she no-showed without so much as a word. Toxic or not, it isn’t like Sydney.

  Out of the dusk, I see a familiar figure approaching the building just as we get there—it’s Jamie Kramer, my downstairs neighbor. Jamie has lived two flights down from me for the past three years, and in that time, we’ve become really good friends. Aside from Gabby, he might be my best friend.

  Jamie waves when he sees us, and Gabby nudges me not-so-subtly because she firmly believes I should try to start something up with Jamie. She thinks he’s one of those decent guys that I could go out with if I had any common sense. Jamie is actually very nice-looking, maybe in his early thirties with light brown hair and clear blue eyes that crinkle adorably when he smiles at me. He wears rimless glasses, which actually really work for him—he’s got that cute nerd thing going on for him. He has some job in computers that I don’t quite understand, and he’s essentially made himself on call 24-hours-a-day for my chronic computer issues because he’s just that great a friend.

  “Having a girls’ night out on the town?” Jamie asks us when we get within earshot. “Lots of alcohol and casual sex?”

  “Oh yeah,” I confirm. “I’m having sex right now. As we speak. Can’t you tell? Oh, baby.”

  He grins. “I thought there was something different about you.”

  “Actually, it was a completely pathetic night,” Gabby says miserably. “We didn’t get even one free drink the whole night.”

  “That’s hard to believe,” Jamie says. “Two gorgeous girls like you? Those guys must have been nuts.”

  Jamie grabs the railing of the three stairs leading to the front of our building, and lifts his cane onto the first step. That’s one thing that’s different about Jamie than most other guys—he uses a cane to help him walk. And not the kind of cool cane that one might use in a tap dancing routine or whatever dance number might require a cane. He’s got a hardcore cane that he clearly badly needs. It’s got four prongs at the end that rest solidly on the ground, and he leans on it heavily when he walks, the tight muscles in his left arm flexing with each step.

  When I first met him, I thought maybe he had an injury and the cane was only a temporary thing—but it wasn’t a temporary thing. It’s a forever thing.

  I hardly notice the cane or his pronounced limp anymore. But I wonder if it’s at least part of the reason a great guy like him is still single.

  “How about you, Jamie?” I ask him as I follow him up the steps in a fraction of the time it took him to get to the top. He’s readjusting his grip on his cane, trying to regain his balance post-stairs. “Did you have a hot date tonight?”

  He hesitates. “I had a date…”

  “Not a hot date?” I press him.

  “Well…” He shrugs as he opens the door for me and Gabby, even though it’s tricky for him to balance while holding the door—I’ve tried to get the door for him in the past, and he always looks at me like I slapped him in the face. “It’s not even ten o’clock and it’s over. So… no, not too hot.”

  “Was the girl hot?” I say.

  He raises an eyebrow. “Why so curious, Brooke?”

  Gabby nudges me hard enough to throw me off-balance. “Yeah, why so curious?”

  My eyes meet Jamie’s, and his cheeks color and he looks away. Jamie and I are really good friends, but there are times when I wonder what his true feelings for me are. Gabby insists he’s madly in love with me, but I don’t see it. Maybe he liked me when we first met, but now we’re completely immersed in the Friend Zone. We don’t think of each other that way.

  Sometimes I wish something would have happened with Jamie before we got stuck in the Zone. After all, he’s exactly the sort of boyfriend I should have—the quintessential nice guy. He doesn’t have a drinking or drug problem, he doesn’t borrow money from me because he’s lost his job or spent it all at the racetrack, and he’s been nothing but kind to me in all the years I’ve known him. And on top of all that, he’s hot. Mostly he’s got the boy-next-door kind of good looks, but when he’s got his shirt sleeves rolled up to his elbows, I can see all the lean muscles in his forearms and it gives me an involuntary tingle.

  But it wasn’t in the cards for us.

  “Maybe we should hit up another bar,” I mumble to Gabby. “Maybe we’ll have better luck.”

  She shrugs. “Okay, sure, not like I’ve got anything better to do.”

  “Want to come, Jamie?” I ask him. “The night�
�s still young, right?”

  I see him considering it. He looks tired—the effort of walking for him is probably about three or four times what someone else his age would have to expend—but he almost never says no to me.

  “If we go,” he says, “we’ve got to go to the west side. The police are still crawling all over Gramercy Park.”

  “Police?” Gabby’s eyes widen. “Why are there police?”

  Jamie raises his eyebrows. “You didn’t see them? I think some girl was, like, found murdered there.”

  Murdered? A sudden sick feeling comes over me. I look at Gabby and I can tell she’s thinking the same thing.

  Sydney no-showed. She didn’t answer multiple text messages and one actual phone call. She would have had to pass by Gramercy Park to get to the bar from her apartment. Is it possible that…?

  “What was her name?” Gabby asks Jamie.

  “Huh?”

  Gabby looks like she wants to shake him. “The girl who got murdered. Did you hear her name?”

  “Oh.” He scratches at his light brown hair with his free hand. “Um, no. Honestly, I got away from there as fast as I could. The crowds…” He looks down at his cane, which I’ve witnessed firsthand is a tripping hazard when there are a lot of people around. “Why?”

  Gabby looks at me, her eyes panicked. “Brooke, what if it’s her?”

  “I’m sure it isn’t,” I murmur.

  “I called her toxic!” she moans. “Our best friend was probably being murdered to death while I was calling her toxic!”

  Jamie frowns at me. “Is Gabby okay?”

  Gabby whips out her phone and starts typing. I look over her shoulder and see the words “Gramercy Park,” “woman,” “murdered,” and then “Sydney Lancaster.”

  “Nothing’s coming up,” Gabby says. “That’s… good? Is it good? Oh my God, I’m freaking out here.”

  I glance over at Jamie, who has his eyebrows scrunched together. “Our friend Sydney didn’t show up for dinner tonight,” I explain to him. “Gabby thinks it’s possible Sydney might be the one who…”