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  What readers are saying about

  Strassel’s writing takes off from the first page of this novel and doesn’t stop until the very end. Her approachable and vividly charismatic writing paints this enticing world right before your eyes.

  —Pure Jonel

  Kristen's books aren't for the faint of heart, but if you enjoy vampires, rock bands, and a dark edge, I recommend grabbing a copy and diving in for a thrill.

  —Psychocat Reviews

  Books by Kristen Strassel

  Night Songs Collection

  Seasons in the Sun (Night Songs Collection #0.5)

  Because the Night (Night Songs Collection #1)

  Night Moves (Night Songs Collection #2)

  We Own the Night (Night Songs Collection #3)

  Silent Night (Night Songs Collection #4)

  For my writing partner and partner in crime, Julie Hutchings, who saw these stories grow from scribbles in a notebook to real, live books.

  “Nine to fourteen inches!” Jamie nudged me with his foot from the far end of the couch. “I can’t wait!”

  “That’s what she said.” I peeked at him over my laptop and we both burst out laughing.

  “Dude, they are going to be shutting this state down! You’re totally going to have the day off tomorrow.” Jamie swayed back and forth to the beat in his own head.

  “Wouldn’t that be awesome?” God, I hoped so. The bank I worked at never called off work for anything. Everyone in my department was considered an essential employee. “We didn’t get to try out the hill at all last year.” There was a huge hill, just outside our apartment building, perfect for sledding. Last year we didn’t get any snow. “You should go to Benny’s tomorrow and get sleds.”

  “Yes. That’s what I’m talking about. We’ll run those little fuckers that live across the street right off the hill.” Jamie got up to grab a pen and paper. “What else do we need?”

  “Hot cocoa, and something to mix in it.” I tapped my finger against my chin then smiled at him. “And condoms.”

  Jamie dropped to his knees. “Thanks be to Jesus.”

  Now it was my turn to kick at him while he bowed at my feet. “It hasn’t been that long.”

  “My darling Melanie, my sweet darling Melanie. The box I had withered and blew away in a strong breeze.”

  “You’re a brat.” I put down the laptop beside me and slid off the couch so I almost landed in his lap. “I hate that stupid job. I just want to hang out with you. Maybe it will snow forever.”

  “Quit.” He whispered in my ear, then nibbled on my neck. I gasped, it felt so good and it had been way too long. This had been the most contact we’d had in weeks.

  “Soon. I hope.” I pulled him in closer to me. But enough about work right now. We had more important things to figure out. “What do you want me to wear under my snowsuit?”

  Jamie moaned, peeling himself away from my neck just long enough to answer. “Do you still have that red lacy bra and panty set?”

  “I bought a garter belt and stockings to go with it.”

  He looked up at me, his eyebrows high. “And I’m finding out about this now?”

  “I wanted to surprise you.”

  “I want you to make snow angels in nothing but that outfit.”

  “I’ll get frostbite.”

  We stopped kissing only to watch the updated weather report. Now they were calling for fourteen to eighteen inches. Everything was working in our favor.

  Jamie picked up where he left off when the report went to commercial. I shied away from him and he groaned in frustration.

  “I just need to get this done.” I’d totally killed the moment. “Tomorrow, I promise.”

  This storm was just what we needed. Now I just had to pray I got the day off.

  “Are they ever going to let us out of here?” I asked Stacia in the next cubicle. She never talked to any of us, so she just shrugged. The governor had ordered everyone off the roads by four that afternoon. The snow stuck to the huge window at the end of the room, and the cars below were being swallowed in snowdrifts. I just hoped I’d be able to find mine when we finally got to leave.

  “They don’t give a shit about what the governor says.” Pat, my savior at this place, rolled his eyes as he took out his headphones. “You know they all have suites at the Holiday Inn across the street.”

  “After three wine coolers, they’ll all be sucking each other’s faces off.” I shuddered at the visual. “It’s like the highlight of their lives.”

  Financial consultations for the obnoxiously rich were far too important to be interrupted by little things like natural disasters. The office manager, Lydia the Lion as Pat and I called her behind her back, actually said, “Hardy New Englanders shouldn’t freak out over a foot or two of snow.” Out loud. Of course, she just had to walk to her hotel room and fall in bed with Lloyd in the mortgage department.

  I had someone else to be falling in bed with.

  “Really looking forward to bumper car derby all over Route Three. I need to get home,” I said, foot tapping.

  I had a promise to make good on. Before last night, Jamie had already been striking a big red line through every day on the calendar in our kitchen. When I asked him what his countdown was for, he told me it was a count of the days since we’d had sex.

  He thought he was being funny, but it made me want to die inside. When we first got together, we practically needed both hands to count how many times we were together a day. One pointless, soul-sucking job later, we hardly spoke to each other.

  As the month drew to a close, those red lines taunted me like twenty-two middle fingers sticking up at me as I made my coffee every morning at four forty five. Usually he left me cute little notes by the coffee maker, but this morning, there wasn’t one. He must still be pissed about last night. So I’d left him a note instead. I even dug my lipstick out of the bottom of my purse, and after I wiped the lint off of it, I put it on and kissed the note.

  “Honey?” I peeled off my wet winter layers as I entered the darkened apartment. We’d already lost power. The fire alarm screeched in the hallway. I’d expected Jamie to greet me at the door like a hungry dog. He’d be dying of boredom without his computer.

  “Jamie?” Maybe he was napping? He practically scheduled naps into his day since he worked from home doing web design. If it wasn’t for the on and off trickle of money he dragged in, I’d think it was just a fancy way of saying he spent his days screwing around on the internet. For once, his nap didn’t annoy me, and gave me the opportunity to wake him up with a nice surprise. That red panty set.

  I heard murmurs and soft laughter as I rounded the corner. Weird. The apartment walls were thin. I’d hoped later on we’d be louder than the kids that lived downstairs, bouncing off the walls, trapped inside with nothing to do. The voices grew louder as I rounded the corner to the bedroom.

  “What the fuck is this?” I exclaimed, as I entered our bedroom.

  “Wha—Oh, hey, babe,” Jamie said, wiping hair out of his eyes. His naked body jumped up slightly over the bed. He couldn’t go too far, since a very important part of him was inside Angela, our crazy white trash bitch of a downstairs neighbor.

  I didn’t say another word. My whole body shook as adrenaline took over. Jamie’s ass was frozen in midair, his arms straining to hold him up over the skank’s body. Her ridiculous fake boobs jutted out from tangled sheets. I would have found them funny if the tax dollars I busted my ass for at that bastard of a job hadn’t paid for them.

  “Let me guess, this isn’t what it fucking looks like?” I marched over to my bed and grabbed a handful of Jamie’s overgrown snowboarder hair. With strength I didn’t know I had, I slammed his head do
wn into Angela’s makeup-plastered face. Pissed that blood splattered against my beloved Pier One upholstered headboard, I did it again. Jamie was still sputtering excuses and I couldn’t listen for one more second. I didn’t stop smashing his head down until I saw Angela’s brain oozing out through her brassy blonde hair onto my pillow, down to those giant, ugly boobs.

  I dropped Jamie’s limp head into the mess. Even broken and bleeding, he still looked peaceful. He never did know when to take me seriously. I backed away from the bed in horror. A scream stuck in my throat, threatening to choke me.

  I didn’t mean to do this. I didn’t want him to be dead. I covered my mouth with the hand that had been on his neck. This was my fault. Sure, I caught him in bed with that nasty slut, but why couldn’t I have just given him a little bit of attention before it came to this?

  God, I hated my job.

  As I began to come back to this planet, a different kind of shock washed over me. I had two dead people naked in my bed. And a state issued order to stay in the apartment with them.

  “Shouldn’t that man of yours be doing that instead of you?” Jess, our only neighbor who wasn’t crazy or just plain trash asked as we began the ritual of digging our cars out of almost two feet of snow. The state had lifted the travel ban and I couldn’t bear to spend another minute in that apartment, with them. There was no erasing what I had done. Even if I didn’t go into the bedroom, even if I attempted to shut my brain off, a murderous aroma had overtaken the apartment.

  I needed to go.

  “He’s got a headache.” I mumbled.

  Jess sighed. I was surprised she’d heard me over the still whipping wind. “Is he ever going to grow up?”

  “Nope.” Especially not now. Jamie’s childlike exuberance for life was one of the things I had loved about him. And recently it was one of the things that drove a rift between us. When we met in college, he liked me because I could beat him at beer pong, and challenge him with everything else. But ever since I got this job as an advisor at a financial firm, what I used to agree was fun now just seemed annoying. I’d convinced him to stay in Massachusetts after school instead of returning to Oklahoma, because he could do his work anywhere and I was held captive by the corporate machine. I made him abandon his home, only so I could abandon him here. And then I made him pay even more for it.

  Jess rolled her eyes, the only thing visible between her knit hat and matching scarf. “Next you’re going to tell me he’s got his period.” I wish I’d never told her that I paid all of the rent. She’d looked down her nose at him ever since.

  I laughed, maybe a little too nervously. Nervous energy had fueled the last twenty-three hours. Unable to sleep with two bodies rotting in my bed, I’d spent the night planning my escape by candlelight. With my tee shirt pulled over my nose and my hair hanging in my face so I couldn’t see them, I packed a bag full of clothes. I dug things up from the back of my closet, things I’d decided I was too grown up to wear anymore when I started working at the bank. After yesterday, I wasn’t the same person anymore, no matter what I wore. I also dug the black hair dye out of the medicine cabinet that we’d used to make Jamie into Elvis last Halloween to cover my once long auburn locks. I chopped my hair shoulder length, and gave myself Bettie Page bangs, just like the ones all the college students had that I envied in the city. Thankfully, Jess couldn’t see my new hairdo under my hat. She would ask too many questions that I didn’t want to answer.

  Jesus Christ, I was thinking like a criminal. The criminal I was now.

  “I’m sure he’ll feel good enough to be snowboarding down the hill later.” My voice sounded thin as I said it. I wish I hadn’t said anything. Jamie loved any outdoor activity, warm or cold. My heart fell into my stomach, realizing he’d never snowboard again.

  “Seriously, Melanie, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about him, but I never catch you. You work so much.” Jess leaned against her shovel. “You’ve got to watch out for that Angela. I’ve seen her coming out of your apartment a few times. I hate to think the worst, but you just can’t trust that bitch.”

  My body numbed, not from the cold but from fury. Jess looked like she regretted saying anything. I stabbed a chunk of dirty slush clinging to my back tire with my shovel. “I’ll take care of it.”

  My eyes widened at the sound of my own words. Incriminate yourself much, Melanie? Jess didn’t seem to hear me, all her attention had turned to a new snow drift as the wind whipped through the parking lot, crying out in the cold, taking my words along with it.

  We finished our work in silence. More small talk was bound to just get me in trouble. As soon as I could get my car out of the parking spot, I went back into the apartment to grab my bag. The stench of decomposing bodies sucker punched me as I opened the door. I threw up all over the kitchen floor. I debated whether or not to stay and clean it, but I couldn’t. I needed to get as far away as possible.

  I had to wait for the sanding truck to make another pass before I could go. A pickup truck pulled up in front of our building and two little girls in matching pink and purple snow suits bounced out and ran to the front door.

  Angela’s girls.

  Fuck.

  I couldn’t worry about them or what they would think when they couldn’t find their mother. Honestly, they were better off without her. It was an awful thought, but true. The cops knew our building well because of Angela. How she held on to custody of those girls as long as she did was beyond me.

  I knew I wasn’t going to miss her and her drama. Or this place. Or my life. Who was I kidding? I had no life. I just had a job. I certainly wasn’t going to miss that.

  But I did miss Jamie already, terribly. His beautiful boyish face with high cheekbones and dark glittering eyes, always laughing. He knew better than to take things too seriously. I missed the way he smelled, spicy and earthy. I ached to hear him tease me, in his slow southern drawl. I’d do anything to touch his lean body again, hardened from a life of rough play.

  Why did I say no when I had the chance to keep him happy? He didn’t ask for much. Why did I want him so badly now that I could never have him again?

  But both of us made bad decisions, which led us here.

  The roads were still bad enough to make me concentrate on driving, taking me out of the whirlwind in my head. I turned the radio up. It blared as I sang along to every song, no matter how awful it was, it pushed all the horrible images from the last day out of my brain.

  I had the highway all to myself and I didn’t look back.

  I didn’t have a clue where the fuck I was going, I just drove. West, South, West.

  Away.

  But I couldn’t get those two little girls out of my head. The gravity of what I had done weighed heavy on my heart. How often do we swear we’d kill someone who wrongs us? Well, I did it.

  And I wished to hell I hadn’t.

  It was only a matter of time before they traced Angela to my apartment, found the bodies, and then realized I was missing. They’d know I’d seen the bodies. I left my insides splattered all over the kitchen floor. Then they’d figure out that I saw my boyfriend in bed with another woman. That I’d killed them.

  My eyes burned from lack of sleep. The road rippled in front of me, a winding thin ribbon that was hard to keep my car on. A couple of times, I swerved out of my lane, brought back from my thoughts by a blaring horn from an eighteen wheeler.

  Thank God I didn’t kill anyone else.

  I gave up for the night when I reached Scranton, Pennsylvania. Cheap chain hotels lined the highway, their billboards bragging their wares from the side of the road. I pulled into the closest one to the highway. The parking lot was full of buses and tractor trailers. My Corolla was swallowed in the parking lot between the heavy machinery and snow drifts.

  Perfect.

  The room cost seventy dollars. I paid cash. Jamie had never bothered to establish much of a credit history and usually had more cash on hand than I ever thought was safe or smart. Even at home, I still
tried to sell banking products. For once, his refusal to be an adult worked in my favor.

  The aroma of hamburgers wafted into the hotel lobby from the attached restaurant. Heavenly. I hadn’t been able to eat since yesterday. I followed the scent after checking in. My rumbling stomach guided me in to the restaurant before I could even get my bag to my room

  Thank God this place had a bar. It made it less conspicuous to eat alone. I saddled up on a chair at the end, under the television. I stared intently up at the hockey game playing on the screen behind the bar to shield any self-consciousness I had about being here, or about having blood on my hands.

  “I’ll have a diet coke.” I smiled weakly at the bartender and then buried my head in the menu. It was only a matter of what kind of cheeseburger I was going to have. I needed to keep my strength up and my wits about me. Ugh, there I was again, thinking like a criminal.

  “Oh come on, that’s it? It’s not like you have to drive anywhere.” I jumped at the voice beside me. I had purposely sat away from the crowd in the bar, but some guy had managed to find his way to the seat next to me. Of course. Because a single girl sitting at a hotel bar on a Saturday night must be desperate, right?

  Buddy, you are so not getting laid tonight. I pulled my eyes away from the menu to glare at him.

  Holy shit. I’d be damned if this guy didn’t look exactly like Ryder Maddox. I must really be delirious. I worshipped the man in high school. My best friend Erin and I lied to our parents and followed his band, Soul Divider, on tour around New England for a week one summer. We tried so hard to party with them, but being kids we had no idea what to do. The only one we managed to get close to was the bassist, Chaz, and he was too ugly for even a pity fuck from a star struck teenage groupie. Erin felt bad for him and gave him a blow job anyway. Even thinking about it grossed me out, but she’d thought it would somehow get her closer to Drake, the singer. She was so infatuated with him. The next night at the show, Chaz pointed me and Erin out to Ryder and Drake from the stage. They smiled and nodded at whatever Chaz said. We were horrified. It didn’t get Erin any closer to Drake, but I’m sure she made an impression.