The Mighty Anchor
Rogue Academy, Book Three
Carrie Aarons
Copyright © 2019 by Carrie Aarons
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.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Editing done by Proofing Style.
Cover designed by Okay Creations.
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Contents
Prologue
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
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Epilogue
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Also by Carrie Aarons
Prologue
Vance
Christmas Day, Four Years Ago
Tourists don’t understand how to walk on this beach.
With its rocky surface, deep undercurrent and rough around the edges charm, it intimidates them. The jagged fracture of the stones beneath their feet don’t gel with the idea of a shoreline, at least not the ones we dream up in our imaginations when daydreaming about islands. They most certainly don’t stroll along the difficult expanses barefoot.
No, the coastline of Brighton is reserved for its residents, and mainly, I’ve always thought, me.
A lot like this surly landscape, I compare myself to its rigidity, its unchanging and unrelenting nature. The water and sand of my hometown haunt are seldom noisy unless made to be that way by a sudden storm. The tide does not abandon the shore, the true instinct of it completely loyal to a fault. While some might look upon the scene before me and judge it for not being flashy or outright beautiful, I can see its true colors. Sometimes, the real allure of a thing comes from within its core.
On this beach, I am always certain of who I am, even if I can’t grasp it often out there in the noisy world I’ve solidified myself into.
All the townspeople have long taken up in their comfy chairs, bellies full and merriment just beginning to fade from the Christmas Day festivities. Presents have been opened, family has been visited, and the duties of the holiday have been seen to.
In my house, my parents are quietly reading on the same couch in the study, my sister is upstairs applying her latest makeup gift. Me? I suffered through the day, rolling my eyes in secret at the ridiculous charade of greeting and small-talking with relations who only want to pry into my life for the publicity it may earn them.
Last year, I made the mistake of telling Aunt Henrietta, my mother’s sister, that there was talk I’d be sold to an Italian league team. Lo and behold, what story do you think ended up in the papers on Boxing Day?
Now, I keep my mouth shut where the busybodies are concerned. Smile, nod, grit my teeth and bear it until they vacate the premises. The premises that my signing bonus bought.
Not that I hold ill will toward my own immediate family. No, Mum and Dad did a splendid job with what they had when Susie and I were growing up. It’s nice to be able to come home, even for a day or two, to spend Christmas with them. The people I’m loyal to, I’m extremely loyal to. They can go a little wonky, cock something up, and I’ll be there to clean up the mess. To those who show me devotion, I will give it back tenfold.
But … I need my space. Something happens inside me with all of those people, chattering on around me for hours on end. My chest begins to shrink, my lungs fold in on themselves until I feel as if there’s a vise squeezing my internal organs. Until I can’t breathe. A sports doctor I saw long ago once told me I suffer from social anxiety, but the macho side of me wouldn’t allow it to be true.
I’ve never sought help, I simply suffer through it until I can escape to the open, quiet, dark part of the world.
It’s why my parents didn’t question me when I stumbled out of the house in search of solitude. Blimey, they probably knew this was my hiding spot of choice.
I’ve been slowly walking along, my hands in my corduroy Christmas slacks, breathing in the frigid, peaceful night air, when I realize I’m not alone.
A few feet away, someone sits under the moonlight, a haunting song floating through the icy wind.
The quiet melody sweeps into my ears, pulling me closer as if it’s a siren luring a sailor to its mesmerizing tune. Over the crash of the waves on the rock, I can barely make out the words.
“This year’s love had better last …. heaven knows it’s high time …”
The David Gray song, a popular holiday song on the radio stations around Brighton and Clavering, where I spend the majority of the year, has always struck a somber chord in me. Most would say it’s hopeful, that the singer was giving everlasting love just one more shot after being gutted so many times before.
The way I see it, it’s a man trapped in an endless cycle of self-masochism. Who wants to open up his arms and fall into the sweet lies he knows are waiting?
I’m about to roll my eyes and walk off in the other direction, pitying the daft fool who’d take pointers from that song.
Until I glimpse a flutter of daisy gold hair, and I’m rooted to the spot.
It’s her.
Hair that resembles the finest gold in a jeweler’s case, with pale skin the color of creamy, almond milk. In the breeze, those infinite, straight locks swirl around her, the thin profile of her face catching a sliver of moonlight.
Lara Logan looks like something out of a hazy daydream, or maybe a nightmare … the etherealness of her willing my feet to move.
She moved in across the street after I’d already left for the academy. The first time I saw her, I was ten and had come home for my dad’s birthday. There she was, this blond little gangly thing, crouched in the dirt. Without thinking, I’d gone over and asked her what she was looking at. When she turned her eyes up to me, so blue it was like looking into the heart of the sea, I was a goner.
From the moment she pointed at the baby bunny nest she was observing, whispering that weren’t they just so beautiful, I’d been completely smitten.
But my life was in Clavering. My soul was dedicated to football, and nothing else came close. So for eight years
, I’ve watched her from afar. Pined as she turned into a woman, those gangly limbs transforming into slim curves and elegance. Dreamed about what she did, who she saw … what a normal life for a normal girl must be like.
Not that there’s anything normal about Lara in my eyes.
And now, here she is. Lara Logan, sitting on the same beach, on the same Christmas night. All alone, just like me.
In this moment, she turns her head up, as if she was expecting me. Her mouth opens slightly, the subtle pink of her lipstick smudging where she sinks her teeth into the right side of her bottom lip. Neither of us say anything as I sit down beside her, my shoes pointing toward the tide as I rest my elbows on my knees.
Our gazes connect, lingering, studying. We are strangers, but there is something under the surface … a familiarity that begs to be poked at.
“Won’t ya kiss me on that midnight street? Sweep me off my feet, singing, ‘ain’t this life so sweet?’ … This year’s love had better last …”
The lyrics bubble up between us from the speaker on her mobile, the screen of it turned down into the rocks so as to avoid any artificial light. I’m not sure what comes over me. Maybe it’s the faux cheer infused in the air from the holiday. Maybe it’s a right place, right time kind of scenario. Maybe it’s because there is an urgent sense that if I don’t do this, I will regret it for the rest of my bloody life.
Taking her jaw in my palm, I stroke a thumb over it, caressing her cold skin with the pad of my finger. Her eyes ignite, the white hot blue of her irises sparking. Lara doesn’t pull away, but she doesn’t lean in either. This is a creature wholly aware of her power, and what I need to do to harness it.
She’s not the type of girl who wants to be asked to be kissed. I’m not sure how I know this, I just do. She also does not want to be tamed, or controlled. We’re level, the two of us.
So I lean in, a fraction at a time, until our lips are lined up.
I sink my mouth onto hers at the exact moment a wave crashes to the rocks, drowning out all thought and the world around us.
Little did I know, that split-second decision would take my solid existence and change the course of it forever. Like a ship in the midst of a storm, everything I knew about myself, or held dear, was about to be thrown into the depths of the ocean.
And who I emerged as, who we emerged as, was something else entirely.
1
Lara
Watching as my son walks off, his little pudgy hand enveloped in his teacher’s gentle grasp, I have to bite back a sob of complete and utter devastation.
It should be illegal to have to leave your child with someone else while you work for a living. Some days, when I’m caught up in the idealism of motherhood and how a utopian society should run I truly think this. The realistic, modern woman in me knows that not only is it not possible for ninety-nine percent of the population but that I truly love my job and wouldn’t want to completely give it up.
But as I drop my beautiful boy off at nursery school, it’s like carving out a piece of my heart and letting it walk around in the world by itself. I’m actively missing a chunk of my soul when I’m forced to set him down, to wave goodbye and then get in my car and drive away.
I know I’m creating a life for us, providing for him, showing him how strong a woman can be. I know I’m an ace role model for him, and I’m active and attentive when he’s with me. But it doesn’t make the sting of it hurt less.
“All right, bub, Mummy loves you!” I call out desperately, wanting him to turn around just one more time.
Like the brilliant boy he is, he obliges. Waving his fat little fingers, and giving me that mega-watt smile with his missing lower canine tooth, he yells excitedly, “Cheerio, Mummy!”
And then he disappears inside, off for a day of learning, friends, and fun.
My heart sinks, as it has been doing since the day I went back to work when he was only four months old. Having a baby without a partner at the age of twenty doesn’t afford one much of a maternity leave. Not when you have things like rent, electric bills, car loans, and the other million things I have to worry about.
As if the universe and my self-loathing aren’t trying to guilt me enough about being a shite mum this morning, I bump into the ultimate test as I descend the nursery school steps.
“Morning, Lara. Didn’t realize you had to get Mason out the door so early. Isn’t that such a pity?”
Turning, I have to bite down on my back molars hard to keep from reminding Portia that she too had to send her daughter to nursery school. We were in the same boat, both working mums. But apparently, since I became pregnant out of wedlock and still hadn’t reached the age of twenty-three, that made me lesser. In her eyes, and the eyes of the other parents at Brighton Sea Nursery School, I was a chav.
Portia stands a head above me in her posh black heels as she ushers Reese, a two-year-old girl with bright red hair and gap teeth, along up the front steps of the building. She thinks she’s intimidating, a businesswoman with a more important reason to leave her child in the care of another during the day.
“Well, I have to be in my classroom by seven thirty, so yes, it’s up and at ’em in our flat.” I put on a cheery smile, careful not to smooth the hem of my short-sleeved cotton dress.
She clucks her tongue, giving the mother behind her, one of her minions, a faux sympathetic look on my behalf.
“That is such a shame. You know, you might ask Miss Hayne about a teaching position here? That way you could actively participate in raising your son, and wouldn’t have to leave him for such a silly reason. She might even allow you partial tuition!”
As if my job as a secondary school English teacher was a pathetic excuse for enrolling Mason in nursery school. And as if my salary wasn’t competitive, I didn’t receive health benefits and wasn’t saving toward a better future for both my son and me.
As if I hadn’t struck out on my own, refusing the help of my mother and father, when I found out I was having a little boy. I’d carved a life for Mason and myself, through sweat, blood, and tears I’d struggled through the toughest of times for myself and my child.
It was a bloody sad thing that words from a miserable cow could render all of that meager.
Trying to expel a steady breath, I’m about to supply some cheeky comeback, when my mobile buzzes.
Pulling it out, the feeling of dread I’ve been trying to swallow for the past few weeks manifests itself like a cold fist in the middle of my chest.
Vance: I’m in town. I want to see Mason. And we need to talk.
He’s been warning me for weeks, via text message, that he’s coming back to Brighton.
The place where he grew up. The place where I grew up. The place where our son was born.
I have bigger fish to worry about than Portia and her belittling comments. I walk off, completely leaving her in the middle of the dressing down she was issuing. I’m sure I’ll be called some kind of awful name for that, but it’ll be behind my back, so I don’t really care.
If anyone finds out who my son’s father really is, there would be much more scrutiny than the typical nursery school gossip.
As it is, I’m in a panic that my son’s father found out he is a father. Vance Morley left me high and dry … well, I guess not dry. He left me pregnant … not that he knew that. I’m explaining this terribly.
It goes like this. I’d been smitten from the moment I laid eyes on Vance, the boy who lived across the street, when I was ten. At eighteen, he’d come home from his football academy, found me on the beach at Christmas, and snogged the daylights out of me. What began after that was a tumultuous, passionate, mental long-distance affair. We fought hard; we loved harder. I called things off, and he came begging back. He called things off, and I came begging back.
In the end, though, the root of our problem was that I wasn’t the highest priority in his life. And for a girl who grew up knowing exactly what her worth should be in a relationship, I couldn’t handle that.
Football is his wife. I was his mistress. And there was no way I was settling for anything less than exceptional love.
But Vance Morley had left one parting gift … the little boy I just let walk away with a chunk of my heart. The reason his father is on my case about seeing him, and about talking?
I may have been bitter about our final break up. Vance had cut things off ruthlessly, and I took it upon myself to keep the secret of his child from him … for more than two years. The way he left me, he didn’t deserve the love and light that sweet boy brought into the world.
My temples throb as I slam the driver door of my creaky old Saab shut, the frigid autumn wind invading the inside of the door and rattling my bones. It’s barely past dawn and already I have a headache. Twisting the diamond on my ring finger, I feel marginally better. Now, if only I had time for a stop at the coffee shop before my first period class.
I’m an independent woman; a caustic, socially paranoid person who hasn’t had the easiest road to walk in my life. When I found out that Mason was growing in my belly, I gave myself one day. One day to mentally break down, to worry about feeding, clothing, and taking care of a child while not losing myself or my dreams in the process. To mourn the loss of my childhood, of the twenties I’d only just started.
The Mighty Anchor: Rogue Academy, Book Three Page 1