Bed Of Roses

I’m afraid of death.

Working at a funeral home will do that to you. And when my parents died, that fear became impossible to ignore. I needed out. A clean break. So I ran to a forgotten little town in Utah where no one knew my name.

The rental was cheap, a so-called fixer-upper. I didn’t mind the work. But no one warned me how bad it really was—shattered windows, Pepto-pink toilets, peeling yellow wallpaper. Oh, and the bloodstains on the floor.

Or that the last tenant vanished without a trace.

They also didn’t mention the man sent to do the repairs: brooding, intense, hot… and freshly released from prison.