I coughed to hide a pending sob, and my feigned strength faded. Simon’s words had broken me into a thousand tiny shards of gloom and despair, each one labeled with a happy memory I would have to drink myself into oblivion to forget. Hence, my reason for being in the bar. That was what I told myself, anyway.
“Little Kelly Devlin.” Keaton zinged the six-ball into the corner.
I nodded and concentrated all my energy on draining the cold beer in my hand to block out the intensity of the stinging in my stomach. I couldn’t lash out at Simon. Well, I could have, but it wouldn’t have been fair. He’d been honest. More so than I cared for. He couldn’t help if his heart wasn’t as emotionally invested as mine. Probably.
In a desperate effort to end my suffering, I’d called Grace, master plotter and revenge seeker, to lay out my tragic tale--complete with mistaken hope for a proposal--and in true best friend style, she said to hit him where it would hurt. And that meant going after Jocelyn.
If we’d been in a superhero comic, she would have been my arch nemesis, my kryptonite, the anti-me. The idea of taking her down made me smile. On the flip side, it would involve Keaton, the boy who’d been my friend even when it hurt him. Vengeance would never be more than a pleasant, daydream kind of fantasy. Grace’s plan would destroy Jocelyn, but it had the potential to kill him. I couldn’t do that.
And Speaking of her… “When did Joss say she’d be here?” Saying her name made my beer bitter. She wasn’t just anyone. She’d been Keaton’s wife since he graduated college. Most interesting to my cause, she was Simon’s sister, the person he loved more than himself.
I’d spent eight long years tolerating her, calling a truce to our war because I loved him. Yeah. The idea of hurting her sounded better by the minute, and I almost went with it. Then I caught a glimpse of Keaton…broken, drunk Keaton, whose eyes glittered with tears.
He was too wrapped up in his misery and probably the rumors of his doomed marriage circulating Storybook Lake to notice me right in front of him.
“About an hour ago.” The pool stick clattered across the felt cloth covering the table and rolled to a stop resting against the eight ball. His shoulders slumped. “I don’t know why I’m so anxious for her to get here. She’s going to ask me for a divorce…leave me, anyway.”
I imagined the pieces of his heart fracturing more by the minute.
Life hadn’t been kind to them recently. They’d lost a baby. His picture perfect dream crumbled, but so had mine. Still, chatting about his heartache, helping him, felt infinitely better than wallowing in my own. “You want to talk about it?”
“No. I want to drink until the words won’t hurt anymore.” His half smile slid into a grimace, and he lowered his head as his shoulders shook. He really loved her, and I almost picked up my bag and went out to find her. I would have loved to unleash my last twenty years of frustration in a butt-kicking she needed. Instead, I handed him one of the hundred proof shots I’d bought on my way in. When he finished his, he handed me his empty glass, snatched mine, and smiled as he tipped it back.
“You better slow down, golden boy. The she-bitch isn’t gonna wanna come in here and find you all drunked up.”
“Don’t you get it, Dani? She doesn’t care enough to come in here and find me at all or she would have been here already.” A lone tear fell. “She’s gonna leave me.”
“No, Keats. You’re her Romeo.” They were the original star-crossed lovers, doomed to eternal misery.
“Not anymore.” His tears came freely, and I took three steps closer invading every square inch of his personal space. He rested his ass against the wooden edge of the table with one hand braced on each side of his hips. Before he could shrink completely away, I cupped his cheek, forcing him to look at me.
“She’s a fool, Keats. I would fight for you with every breath in my body.” I gave him a little shove. He swayed, then hunched forward, putting us at eye level. His head dropped again, and I moved between his legs, then leaned down to press a kiss to the nape of his neck. “I hate seeing you like this. If she doesn’t realize what she has, then it’s her problem. You deserve someone who will love you for what you are, not what she wants you to be. Let’s get out of here.”
He didn’t flinch, but tilted his chin slightly to the left and looked at me from beneath droopy eyelids. “Yeah?”
I couldn’t be sure whether he meant it as a question or encouragement, but I knew which way I took it and continued nipping, then soothing his sensitive skin with kisses. To be held, to share the freshness of my suffering with someone eased my broken heart. Every fiber in my body needed someone to look at me, to see me. No matter how wrong, Keaton was there.
“Love isn’t supposed to hurt, Keats.” I lowered my hand to his belt, then his zipper, ignoring my conscience as though its screaming warning was no more than a whisper. He squinted up at me with wild eyes, glassy from the alcohol, then lifted me onto the pool table and kissed me like no one else existed in his world. Before it occurred to me to reconsider, I threw myself into kissing Keaton, holding him, running my hands over his skin.
I didn’t need to see her walk in. Her anger charged the air in the room and her shouted threats fell on deaf ears as I climbed off the pool table. Instead of paying attention to her, I hurried out to the bar to get another drink from Scotty. If I could drown my hurt, maybe my shame would die an equally alcohol soaked death. Somehow, Grace’s plan had come to life and I’d done nothing to stop it. Nothing at all.
I slid onto the stool, ordered a new beer and a shot. As Jocelyn stormed out the door, Keaton stumbled behind her. Scotty pushed a bottle in front of me. “What did you do, Dani?”
I swallowed hard, pasting on my mean girl smile--the one I’d practiced in front of the mirror until I had it just right. “I don’t get mad, Scotty. I get even.”
And so the reign of the evil Danielle began.
Chapter 4
Once the story of how I broke up Keaton and Jocelyn grew legs, the new rumors spread in sheets on the wind. First, they said I had sex with Keaton right there on the pool table. Then they added a fist fight with the poor, brokenhearted Jocelyn. It didn’t help that she worked in the bakery and everyone saw her dragging herself to work with eyes swollen from crying and wrinkled uniform shirts from ignoring her iron. Her telling anyone who would listen how I destroyed her marriage also did considerable damage to my reputation.
It took a while for the entire town to shun me, but my long-standing feud with Jocelyn made the rumors more believable than I cared to fight. The ladies who played bridge with my mother started it. They turned up their snooty noses when I walked through the kitchen during their regular Tuesday night card and wine fest. The guys who sat outside at the barber shop jumped in the bridge-lady boat, concentrating way harder on their chess games when I walked past, avoiding so much as a semi-sociable hello. All the animosity only added to my bitterness, and I didn’t bother concocting a defense.
Because he’d lost his golden boy status, landing with a thud into my realm of shame, Keaton waited a couple months, then turned tail and ran. After he left, I didn’t waste much time booking my own flight out.
He went west and proceeded to lose himself in whatever bottles of alcohol he could get his hands on, trying to drown his sorrows over losing his precious Jocelyn. When his mom told my mom where he’d ended up, I changed my flight from destination-anywhere-but-here to Arizona. Not quite finished with the job of ruining my own reputation, I decided to take it a few steps further and make sure Simon and Jocelyn found out my exact endgame. They’d hurt us and deserved a taste of the pain.
Instead of using one of those private Internet search sites, I booked my flight through the Planes of Passion travel agency, which sent out a weekly newsletter to the entire town. The column, Who’s Headed Where, arrived on Jocelyn’s doorstep on a Wednesday, and the name calling reached an epic high on Thursday. As a side note, and also on Thursday, Simon and Kelly very publicly anno
unced their relationship, before she tootle-ooed her way back across the country to her job in LA. I’d finally lost the boy of my dreams for good.
I couldn’t leave soon enough. Breaking their hearts went a long way to healing mine, but I would never be healed in Storybook Lake. Besides, drinking with Keaton was better than drinking alone in the stable with only the horses to chat with.
Mom and Dad wouldn’t even look at me, and took trips of their own to get away from the embarrassment of having the town harlot for a daughter. In the six months it took me to decide to leave, they went on four vacations. My parents were probably the only fifty year olds in the world who insisted on a yearly trip to Disney World and left the kids at home--another week of sun and sand for the over-worked psychologist/house wife and the international banker. Maybe they left because of their love for the beaches or the draw of the giant man-sized mouse and all his merchandise, but that year, they couldn’t take enough trips to Florida.
They didn’t postpone their latest holiday even after I told them when I was heading out, and my overwhelming and somewhat surprising guilt gave way to relief they wouldn’t be around to witness my escape. I’d heard enough long, disappointed sighs from my mother, and I didn’t need any more stern looks from my dad to send me on my way.
Whenever they jetted off on a new adventure, they asked Simon to feed the horses, so I spent a lot of time hiding in the loft watching his muscles expand and contract as he scooped feed and shoveled stalls. He never tried to come in the house or see me, but once I’d heard him talking to a horse about me.
Why’d she do it?
I’d waited too long to tell the truth for anyone--most especially him--to believe me now, so I pretended I hadn’t heard and went on ogling him in secrecy.
I spent the night before drinking with Gatlin Reid, the town salon owner. By drinking, I meant I’d invited him out for a hair-coloring house call. We drank a gallon of homemade wine; then one innocent kiss turned to two, and we fell into bed as though he hadn’t spent the last two years pretending to be gay and I wasn’t pining for Simon. I piled shame on top of sin, blamed it all on Simon, then tried to drink it away. Aside from the daily hangovers, I had no friends left, no one who cared enough to save me from myself.
I walked down to the barn for a last ride. With any luck, I could saddle up and get the hell out of there before Simon showed up for morning feeding time.
* * * *
As I cinched the saddle, Simon strolled around the corner whistling some happy tune that aggravated the not-my-first-wouldn’t-be-my-last hangover pounding in my frontal lobe. My vision clouded and, in true evil Danielle fashion, I blamed it on Gatlin for answering my invitation, then regrettable sex with Gatlin, and finally the homemade wine, which inspired both.
Why couldn’t he wait twenty more minutes to show up? And for the love of God, did he really have to whistle like one of the fairy tale dwarves off to work?
I peered through the wooden slats of Buttercup’s stall. Damn. Where had all those muscles come from? I’d just seen him the previous week, but to my Simon-hungry eyes, he looked better and better every time I ran across him. He’d let his hair grow out, and it blew back on the wind slicing through the barn. He had a walk, a way of being that glowed with something I could only describe as happiness for life…and his clothes hugged all his fun spots. Months of pent-up longing stirred in my stomach. Fool. He left you. The desire rolling in my belly volleyed its reply, but he looks so good.
I stepped out of my far stall hiding spot, and he jumped, shaking his head, his mouth hanging open. “I didn’t know you were here.”
“Don’t worry. I’m leaving.” I had to work at it, but I couldn’t have injected more venom in my tone without a snake and a syringe. Ignoring my saddled horse, I stomped and stumbled through the tall grass alongside the barn. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right foot. The pounding of my heart kept a perfect tempo with my feet. I concentrated on walking to keep myself from focusing on him. I couldn’t blame him for his anger, but damned if I wanted to look it in the eye, either.
“I heard you’re heading out west.” The soft tone of his voice stopped my forward motion.
I turned to find him leaning against the white painted siding of the stable, arms crossed, shoulder holding the wall in place. My ponytail whipped across my eyes as I squinted at him, waiting for the more nasty words I figured would come. Surely, he would have mentioned if Gatlin told him about our one wild night. “I’m flying out tomorrow.”
“To see Keaton?”
“Why do you care?” I had a burning need to know if it mattered to him--if I mattered to him, at all. It didn’t take long for my high hopes to crash. A second grader could have deduced he’d only asked because Keaton belonged to Jocelyn, and because the whole town blamed me for destroying their happily ever after. And no one in history had become more a part of the town than Deputy Sheriff Simon Hunter. “Because you’re killing Joss. This is actually killing her.” If he expected sympathy for her he’d hopped on the long, lonely disappointment train.
“Well, isn’t she lucky she has you? But he’s out there with no one.” I shook my head preparing for a battle I knew wouldn’t end with a shiny ring and a proposal of forever. I’d ruined everything for myself, but I would be damned to burn for eternity before I’d let him walk away without a bit of his own shame. “And what’s wrong with you, anyway? You’re his best friend and this is killing him.” Then again, if I was leaving, why not take one last memory with me? Everyone I’d ever met decided to believe all those horrible things about me, so why shouldn’t I use it to my advantage? Homewrecker, slut--not quite an invisible label when the whispers started wherever I went.
I took three steps toward him. “Besides, there doesn’t seem to be much reason for me to stay here.”
A glimmer of something soft, sweet, in his gaze shot my hopes skyward. One inch forward and our bodies would be within groping distance, and nothing in the world made me happier than a good handful of Simon. “Does there?”
He went mute, standing there with his tongue trailing across the center of his lower lip. I didn’t know if it ever occurred to him exactly how provocative his little move looked, but my pulse sped up every time his nervous habit kicked in.
I slipped my finger inside the collar of his shirt, tugging him toward me. “I mean, you’re all wrapped up in Hollywood Barbie.” She’d moved out to California to stay, and finally, something--their long distance relationship--worked in my favor.
Our breaths tangled together as my hands slid under his warm cotton T-shirt and my lips found the little spot on his neck that lit him up. “I’m just in the way here. Right?”
He stayed quiet as my hands attacked the button of his jeans and my lips continued tasting him wherever I could reach.
It took a couple more seconds of touching him before he pulled me in and crushed his lips against mine. When he took over, the game changed, and I lost sight of who played who. After a few minutes, he pulled away enough to let his eyes caress my face. My anger disappeared with each skim of his fingers against my skin and with the sheer strength in his arms as he lifted me against his chest and carried me inside the barn.
A roll in the hay was not actually the most comfortable way to say good-bye, but I tucked away the memory for future use, then hopped in my car and drove out of town before he had the chance to break my heart a second time.
Chapter 5
Finding Keaton hadn’t been a problem. I’d stepped off the plane and hailed a cab to the bar closest to the address his mom gave me. We spent the first couple days drunk enough neither of us remembered why we were drinking. By the end of the week, though, his slurred whining began--he missed Jocelyn; he loved Jocelyn; I wasn’t Jocelyn, could never be Jocelyn. I wanted to smack him with one of the empty bottles so I didn’t have to hear her name one more time. Instead, I screamed at him and ran out of the apartment.
Six weeks later, after a straight month
of exhaustion and nausea, I made an appointment with a doctor someone from my new job recommended.
Pregnant.
While I couldn’t be even moderately sure who fathered my baby, I knew one hundred percent for certain who did not.
Once again, shame ate at me and I dawdled my way through cleaning up files that didn’t need my attention, shuffling papers, and restacking them into a normal order. The last thing I wanted to do was tell Keaton about my impending motherhood. I’d never been able to talk him into my bed. Or seduce him into it. Or keep him sober long enough to find it. Even falling down, slobbering onto the sofa cushions drunk, it would take him about six seconds to figure out the baby couldn’t be his.
I walked into our apartment a couple hours later than usual. Keaton lay half-reclined on the sofa, his eyes closed, an almost empty bottle of Jack Daniels fisted in one hand.
“Hey.”
The sleepy way he dragged out the slur said the bottle had probably been close to full at some point during the day.
“Where you been?”
That he hadn’t consumed enough to take away his concept of time caused a sliver of trepidation in my mind’s eye. I kind of hoped he passed out before I got to the day’s big headline.
“Work.” No point in beating around the bush. Much. “I went to the doctor this morning, so I stayed a little later than usual to make up the time.” I worked at a small law firm as a file clerk. Even if I walked home after my shift and didn’t take the bus, I usually strolled in by five-thirty. I looked at the clock--quarter till eight.
“Are you sick?” He sat up a little straighter, almost seeming to care as he blinked once, twice, then again with three quick flutters of his lashes. Although Keaton had always been one of the prettiest humans I’d ever known, without Jocelyn, he looked beat up. The bags under his eyes were deep purple. His hair was too long to be cute and too short to be rock-star sexy; his clothes were wrinkled and his eyes lacked their usual sparkle. He took a long swig from his bottle less beautiful than I’d ever seen him.
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