Can't Take The Heat?

CAN’T TAKE THE HEAT? HAILEY SHORE Copyright © 2023 by Hailey Shore All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review. Created with Vellum CONTENTS Chapter 1 Chapter 2 Chapter 3 Chapter 4 Chapter 5 Chapter 6 Chapter 7 Chapter 8 Chapter 9 Chapter 10 Chapter 11 Chapter 12 Chapter 13 Chapter 14 Chapter 15 Chapter 16 Chapter 17 Chapter 18 Chapter 19 Chapter 20 Chapter 21 Chapter 22 Chapter 23 Chapter 24 Chapter 25 Chapter 26 Chapter 27 Chapter 28 Epilogue Acknowledgments Also by Hailey Shore 1 Calico Cove Spring Birdie Mistakes were made. I’m a grown-ass woman so I had no problem admitting that. I have made some mistakes. First mistake, thinking things with my father would be different this time. Second, that I didn’t break up this trip in a reasonable way, so now I was strung out on caffeine, exhausted and rattling down a gravel road in Old Blue in the middle of the night. Third mistake, and maybe the most important. I forgot to text my aunt to let her know I was coming. My aunt lived alone in a trailer on a dead-end road in Maine. Stephen King country. Showing up close to midnight, I was going to give her a heart attack. Should I flash my lights? Would that be worse? Honk? Would she recognize the general size and shape of Old Blue…I hit another pot hole and all the drawers in the back escaped their tiny little latches and banged open. I hit another pot hole and they banged closed. This had been happening for a while. My left eye twitched. From the residual effects of my fight with Dad? The stress? The seven hundred cups of coffee and no sleep? Yes. Yes to all of the above. Like I said – mistakes were made. Every shadow on the side of the road I was sure was a bear. Or worse, a moose. I was hallucinating. If I hit a moose, Old Blue would crumple like a tin can. Also the bear would eat me. This was Maine. Shit like that happened. Another pot hole. Bang-Bang. I came up over a little rise and my headlights finally landed on my aunt’s trailer, nestled into the woods. It was like a fairy encampment. There were hundreds of lights, comfortable seating around a fire pit. A garden surrounded by netting to keep out the deer. A barbecue next to her really swanky vintage Air Stream and a picnic table inside mosquito netting. There, in the middle of the road, was my Aunt Za. In a robe and fuzzy slippers. Her steel grey hair up in curlers on her head. The knot in my chest abruptly relaxed. Home. She put up her hand and I stopped. “If you’re not my niece,” Aunt Za yelled, “I’m going to put a hex on you.” “You don’t like hexes. Too much dark energy,” I shouted out the window. At the sound of my voice, Aunt Za shrieked and clapped her hands. “Darling! Quick, get inside before the bugs get away with us.” It was April, so the bugs were just beginning to bloom in full force. I turned off Old Blue who shuddered in gratitude. She was not made for long hours on the highway at top speed. But after leaving brunch with my dad in New York, I hadn’t wanted to stop. Six hours later, and we were both at the end of our ropes. I gave the dashboard and hula girl I inherited when I bought the thing a loving pat. “You did good, Old Blue. I promise you an oil change and tire rotation before we get back on the road again. Pinky swear.” The hula girl had both her plastic hands raised, which made this easy. Then I sprinted out of the truck, through the buggy night and into my aunt’s waiting arms. “Birdie,” she sighed, squeezing me tight. “Aunt Za,” I squeezed her back just as hard. Home, I thought again as we made our way to her trailer. Inside, her trailer was even more beautiful. An old couch covered in quilts. Bookshelves full of books. A reading nook. A tiny little galley kitchen. There were three shut doors down a short hallway. A bathroom that was surprisingly spacious. Her bedroom, which was palatial. And a tiny little spare room with a single bed that she kept for me. Aunt Za closed the door behind us. “What do you need? Food? Wine? Coffee?” I flinched at the word coffee. I might never drink another cup of the stuff for as long as I lived. “I’m good,” I said, and collapsed into the bench seat around the table. “Well, you look slightly…terrifying.” I laughed and touched my hair. It was an absolute mess. My favorite One Direction t-shirt was covered in crumbs and coffee stains. “I’ve been on the road since New York.” Aunt Za hummed and put on her kettle. Then turned back to me. She put her hand on my head and then my face. “You’re aura is all out of whack,” she said. “You’re usually pure blue, honey. Blue as the sky and now you’re all yellow and orange.” She pulled a face. “Brown.” “You saying my aura is shit?” “I’m saying you’re tired, but there’s more going on than just tired.” She made an incredibly good living reading tarot and telling fortunes in Calico Cove, especially in the summer tourist season. A lot of people didn’t believe her, which was fair enough. But I’d seen her be right more than she was wrong. Maybe that was just powerful intuition or the law of averages, but I liked to believe in her magic. That she was successful in her unconventional life made my father absolutely crazy.