by London Casey
IN HER WORDS
A St. Skin Novel
London Casey
Jaxson Kidman
Karolyn James
Contents
Welcome to Hundred Falls Valley and the world of St. Skin.
Stay social with both authors here:
IN HER WORDS
Prologue
Cass
Cass
Cass
Cass
Cass
Cass
Diem
Cass
Cass
Diem
Diem
Cass
Diem
Cass
Diem
Cass
Diem
Cass
Cass
Diem
Cass
Diem
Cass
Diem
Diem
Cass
Diem
Cass
Diem
Diem
Cass
Diem
Cass
Diem
Cass
Cass
Diem
Cass
Diem
Cass
Diem
Cass
Diem
Cass
Diem
Cass
Diem
Cass
Cass
Diem
Cass
From the authors:
About the Author
Also by London and Jaxson:
Welcome to Hundred Falls Valley and the world of St. Skin.
From the minds of two bestselling authors comes a book and series about love, redemption, and finding fate in the place where you’d least expect to find it.
Written by London Casey (Karolyn James) and Jaxson Kidman
Stay social with both authors here:
Newsletter (part of the Outlaw Romance Obsession team): http://eepurl.com/b9BDKb
St. Skin Facebook fan page: www.facebook.com/stskinseries
IN HER WORDS
A St. Skin Novel
When one night creates a forever they never saw coming.
CASS: I always remember Scarlett as the one night stand that got away from me. I fell in love; she took off. It feels like a lifetime ago now though. I traded in my guitar for a needle, working at St. Skin, bringing other people’s stories to life through tattoos. Though I still think about her, I know I’ll never see her again. But I never knew that after she left our one night, she left pregnant. She never told me. I only find out when her best friend comes crashing into my life and my heart with a baby in her arms - my daughter. With my life turned upside down, I struggle to figure out what it all means: being a father, and finding a new love growing in the place reserved for the woman I lost but thought of as my forever love. It feels crazy – and wrong – but I don’t care.
DIEM: A car accident takes my best friend’s life and now I’m raising her baby. I’ve fought hard to do everything to keep Paisley as my own, but I know her father is out there and he deserves to know the truth. The last thing I expect to find is the sexiest man I’ve ever met – complete with muscle, tattoos, and an attitude to match. I’m not going to force him to be a father and I’m certainly not going to force him to get close to me. But I need the help. Meeting Cass was supposed to make life easier. As I fall for him, I realize everything is becoming more complicated.
Prologue
YEARS AGO
I smelled smoke. Not the kind from Dad’s attempt at meatloaf that one time. Thankfully that didn’t work out since he decided to put both ketchup and mustard into it. Mom totally made a better meatloaf. Even when I wanted to be a vegetarian, her meatloaf brought me out of the hole and back to a satisfied carnivore.
I was sleeping when I smelled the smoke.
It wasn’t a dream.
I rolled over and pulled the covers over my head. There I had the smell of sleep and warmth. My own almost rotten breath, but that was okay. I could handle my sleep breath.
I ran out of oxygen pretty quick under the covers.
I threw them off my body.
The smell of smoke was heavier. Thicker. Almost like another blanket.
I sat up and looked to my door.
The room was dark, but I swore I saw something moving from under the door. Like the cheesy creeping fog in a scary movie.
My instincts were still sleeping.
I fell back to the bed and curled up tight.
My dreams were of a cute boy name Lucas. He played football. He had blue eyes. He had long hair and could totally pull it off. But he had a crush on Megan. Megan was the prettiest girl in my grade. But in my dream Megan had a big wart on the tip of her nose with a curly black hair sticking out of it like an arthritic finger.
And in my dream Lucas looked at me. He liked me. He liked me, liked me. He wanted to kiss me …
I smiled, trying to drum up that dream again.
Oh, but the smell of smoke was bad. I smacked my lips together and swore I could taste it. Like when I got too close to the campfire one time when Dad threw water on it, killing it. The smoke shot up my nose, turned, and went down into my lungs. I coughed for like twenty minutes.
I started to cough.
I pushed myself up on the bed to sit back up.
I turned my head, seriously trying to figure out what was going on. Something was burning. I just didn’t realize it was my house.
When I turned my head, a figure stood there.
Before I could scream, he grabbed me.
YEARS LATER
We all have moments—at least that’s what we’re told life is made up of. Moments we don’t remember. Moments that matter more than they should. Moments that don’t matter at all, but secretly make up the essence of our very existence.
Or intense moments that change our lives forever.
The birth of a baby, for example.
For me, I lost track of my moments the day the role of mom became part of my normal routine. Even as I stood in a tattoo shop in a wild town, my hand reaching out toward a drawing which called to me, I had my moment meter set to an all-time low.
That’s when I first heard his voice.
I jumped and spun around, almost clearing his counter top table thing of all his tattoo supplies.
Honestly, I had never been to a tattoo parlor in my life.
And, no, I wasn’t there to get some sweet ass ink on my sweet ass.
I looked right at him and I knew he was the one.
In more than one way—and that’s what terrified me.
I opened my mouth to speak, but nothing would come out.
How could it?
He was the father of my best friend’s baby … and I was in love with him.
Cass
Years ago
In her words.
I scribbled those three words on the piece of paper and turned it around so she could see it.
“That’s real nice,” she said, smiling.
I noticed when she smiled only some of her teeth on the right side showed. It was also where she had a bigger dimple than the left. She leaned to her right, grabbed the pen, and some hair fell from behind her ear.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“Going to add to it,” she said, looking at me with crystal clear blue eyes.
“No, don’t do that. It’s perfect like that.”
“You think?”
“Definitely,” I said.
She giggled. I laugh
ed.
We were sitting on the stage in an empty venue, beer bottles all around us like medals of honor representing all the time we had killed off together. I had no idea what time it really was, but it had to be close to three or four in the morning.
I was supposed to be back at the hotel, sleeping.
I shook my head. There was no way I was going to the hotel alone tonight.
I plucked the pen out of her hand and dropped it to the notebook.
“So, did you ever think you’d end up here? Like this? Writing a song with a famous rock star like me?”
“Wow, you’re really confident, huh?”
I ran my finger along her chin. “It’s all part of the charm, Scarlett.”
Next thing I knew, we were kissing.
Her hands grabbed my shirt, pulling me closer.
Crazy as it was, I was the one who remembered to grab the notebook of lyrics off the stage, before we were on the move. To a cab. To my hotel room. To the wildest caves of lust and desire, everything you’d expect in a crazy one night stand.
The rock star. The fan.
It was supposed to be as simple as that.
But this story—like everything in life—is not simple at all.
Cass
A FEW HOURS EARLIER
I was nothing more than a glorified guitarist. I toured with anyone looking to hit the road, learned any song needed, and cashed the checks as fast as they were signed over to me. My days of fronting a band and taking the world by storm were long gone, but I made a hell of a living on the road.
Tour bus to tour bus, stadiums to little clubs, collecting magnets and keychains in every state or country I hit, not to mention the women.
Christ, the guitar was like a sex drug for them.
Thanks to the dawn of social media, I became known as the “hottest guitarist in the world”. It was started and voted by a bunch of fans. Next thing I knew I was posted online everywhere possible, jamming riffs and solos, working the stage as though I was indeed the front man to a mega band.
Currently, I was on a ten city tour with an up-and-coming rock band that needed extra sound live. Figures. They were stacked up in the studio with a thick sound but sounded thin live. Until I came along. But that doesn’t matter at all.
I was backstage, where I sipped whiskey, getting warmed up.
The opening band was on stage.
I always made it a habit to watch the opening band.
I used to be the opening band.
With my guitar hanging off my back, like a damn sword, I walked along the side of the stage.
And that’s when I saw her.
A cliché of a moment as cliché could fucking be, my eyes stopped when I saw her tossing her head left to right, her hair dancing around. She only stopped because her friend shook her, pointing at me as I looked at her.
I walked to the gate and leaned there as though I hadn’t actually seen her.
Her friend kept pointing and one thing led to another and we all started chatting. Scarlett was my only interest and I made that very clear. Her friend finally left us be, going to another group of people. I asked Scarlett if she wanted to come backstage and hang out.
A flash of light hit right next to us and that was when I saw just how blue her eyes were. I’d fallen in love many times on the road. And I’ve left all the love right there on the road where it belongs. But the second I saw her eyes, I knew this could be real.
Or maybe it was just the whiskey.
Cass
A COUPLE HOURS LATER
“I’m serious,” Scarlett said. She threw back her beer in such a non-girl style it was weird how it turned me on. She chugged it like a guy, like I would coming off stage after a two hour set. “I’m going to write something famous. Change someone’s life.”
“Don’t all authors say that?”
“And you should talk,” she said, smiling. “Where’s your band?”
“At the hotel.”
“No, your real band.”
“This is a great gig.”
“Do you even get to create anything?”
“I’m creating a memory right now with you.”
“Sweet,” she said.
I stood up and walked across the stage to my bag. I opened and grabbed a notebook and pen before I dropped it in front of her. The smack of the notebook echoed through the small venue.
It was just me and her … and the owner of the club back in his office counting up how much he earned for the night.
“What’s this?” Scarlett asked.
“Songs I wrote. I create stuff.”
She flipped through the pages. “Then why don’t you go solo?”
“The money is really good like this.”
“So you’re selling your soul for greed?”
“When you put it like that, I sound like a real prick.”
Scarlett snorted. She flipped to a blank page. “Okay, let’s write something.”
“What?” I asked.
“Come on, Mr. Rock Star. You and me. We’re going to write a song. Then become famous. You split the royalties so I can fund my writing career.”
“Then we get married and I buy you your dream house,” I said.
“No mansion for me though. Not that Hollywood, L.A. shit.”
“No,” I said. “Of course not. I figure a nice little house. A big fireplace. A nook that’s big enough for a desk. For you. With a big window that looks across something … a lake. A pond, maybe. A lake would be better.”
I saw the way her eyes lit up. She dove forward at me, kissing me.
I kissed her and smiled. “Wow, you’re too easy.”
“Don’t say that,” Scarlett said. “But what you just said—that was perfect.”
“So let’s start there,” I said.
I grabbed the notebook.
She’s everything and everywhere, as it ripples across her heart.
Wearing the day like there’s nothing else to do.
“Here,” I said and tossed the notebook to her.
Scarlett grabbed the pen, squinted her eyes, pouted her lips, before she smirked.
The way she held the pen was amazing. She gripped it like she was making a fist. Her tongue stuck out when she wrote. And her handwriting—was fucking terrible. Yet again, something so little and it was turning me the hell on.
Scarlett shot the notebook back at me.
He’s losing all he’s ever won, spending time like it’s already slipped through his hands.
Night and day, bought and sold, the endless road, the countless toll.
“See, this is crap,” I said.
“What?” Scarlett yelled, her voice echoing through the venue before she covered her mouth and giggled. She leaned backwards and fell to stage floor. I heard a loud thud and she went silent.
Oh, shit. Did she knock herself out?
I jumped forward and hovered over her.
“Scarlett …”
“It’s not crap,” she said.
“No, it’s not,” I said. “Let’s keep writing.”
“I think I’m drunk,” she said.
“That’s the best time to write. All your real feelings come out.”
“What if I said I was in love with you?”
I had my hands flat on the stage. To think that it wasn’t all that long ago I was standing right there, my six string in my hands, playing loud rock n’ roll, watching the way music touched people’s souls. And now this woman—basically a stranger—was touching my soul.
I lowered myself down to her. Inches away from her face.
“Say what you feel and feel what you say,” I whispered.
That was the opportune moment to kiss her. But a kiss right there would have led to a whole lot more. I may have been a rock star, but I wanted to show a rarely-seen side of gentleman and take her to my hotel room first.
I got Scarlett back on her ass, pulling her upright. To my surprise, she asked for another beer. God bless the cooler on the stage whic
h was packed with plenty of beverages.
I got her another beer and we got right to work.
I was officially the rock star who’d rather write lyrics with a beautiful woman than sleep with her.
What can I say though? That whole love thing was flirting around in the air worse than Scarlett’s eyes and smile at me. She had me hooked.
Our lives were going to forever be intertwined.
Cass
JUST BEFORE SUNRISE
She was curled up tight on my chest. I was still coming down from the wicked high of her sex. What started in the hallway finished up in the bed. The first time, at least. Then we went to the balcony for a smoke and a chat. It started all up over again right there on the balcony. Let’s put it this way—Scarlett had a beautiful view of the city while I had a beautiful view of her.
We took the lust back to the bed and that’s where we finished for good.
My arm wrapped around her tight and I kissed her head.
Goddamn, it felt right. It felt normal. It felt so good to have her right there like that. My normal one night stand on the road bullshit sex ended up with the two of us rolling to opposite ends of the bed. I’d offer a pity breakfast the next morning—only if I could remember her name—and then I’d be on the tour bus heading for the next city and the next show.
This was different with Scarlett.
There’d be no pity breakfast.
Fuck no.
I kissed her head again.
I wanted to cook her a goddamn gourmet breakfast. Tomorrow. The day after that.
I smile as she let out a little rumble of a drunk snore.
There was no pity breakfast when we woke up.
Hell, there was no breakfast at all.
Why?
When I woke up, Scarlett was gone … forever.
Cass
A FEW HOURS LATER
I knew the guys in the band, but we weren’t all that close. They took the spotlight, I took the stage and a good chunk of their touring money.
Their manager—Jeff—was who I dealt with.
He was pounding at the door to the hotel room and that’s what woke me up.
When I found the bed empty, I threw the covers off and discovered I was naked. I ran into the bathroom. Empty. The hotel room. Empty. Hell, even the closet was empty. Trust me, I didn’t get the glamour of a penthouse suite. My hotel was what you’d expect for a hotel. But the night before—or hours earlier—Scarlett and I had turned it into our own little mansion of need and pleasure.