But she had a big surprise for Dane. Bud had brought Dane’s old Harley by last week, cleaned up and ready. Stella wanted to look at it one more time, rushing to the door of the garage but leaving it open so she could hear the phone ring. Stella had gotten her own motorcycle license last year, practicing on Corgie’s beat-up Yamaha until she felt like she could handle the Harley. No other way to pick him up from prison than that.
She skipped back through the house she’d been renting the past year, tucked onto a little street only a few blocks from the prison. She loved going out on the porch where she could see the watchtower on the corner closest to her, an area that Dane had explained included the lower yard. He sat there most afternoons, and some days she felt closer to him just by looking up at that glassed tower and knowing he was looking at it too.
Bud and Clarice would be waiting to hear from her. Dane would call her with the news, then she’d relay it to them, then Beatrice, whom she still talked to every week to keep up with the gossip in Holly. After Janine had given birth to twins, they’d lost touch, although Stella always sent the babies gifts on their birthday. She patted her own stomach, still lean and firm at 34. She’d never been sucked into eating the grease-laden dishes at the cafe, which had turned poor Cayenne into a puffball before she’d finally quit around the time Rennie retired.
With any luck, they’d have their own baby before too much more time passed. They planned their own simple wedding ceremony at a chapel nearby, just waiting on the date for Dane’s release. They could have done it while he was in, but in the end, Stella wanted to wait. She still remembered Janine’s wedding day, and she wanted something of her own, without the peeling walls and guards standing in the back.
Just thinking of Dane being free to hold her without people watching loosened Stella inside, that part of herself she’d held so tightly reined for over a decade. A lot of catching up to do. The four times she and Dane had been together were moments she often pulled forward into her memory and held on to. The water tower, Ryker’s sofa, the woods, and the phone booth. She was ready to be an old lady now and try a real bed.
The phone rang, and Stella tripped over the rug trying to lunge for it. She grasped the receiver, shaking her foot free. “Hello?”
She expected the recorded message that she was receiving a call from an inmate, a system that had replaced the operator-controlled collect calls years ago, but instead, a curt woman came on the line. “Stella Ashton?”
“Yes.” Stella freed her foot and sat on a chair, fear curdling in her.
“This is Violet Humphrey from the Reentry Transition Team.”
Stella breathed a little easier. “Hello, Violet.”
“I have instructions for you for the release of Daniel Scoffield.”
Stella snatched a note pad from the shelf. “I’m ready.”
“He’ll be released from the administrative building at two o’clock tomorrow afternoon. He has indicated that you will be here to receive him.”
“Yes.”
“All right. He must report to his new workplace, the Joplin Refinery, in three days, at eight o’clock on Monday, for training.”
“Got it.”
“You know the location?”
“Yes.”
“It’s vitally important he make it on time.”
“Will do.”
The woman rustled some papers. “His parole officer will be in contact about his weekly check-ins. Those are also vitally important.”
“I understand.”
“Is this the phone number the officer should call?”
“It is.”
“And you’ll be at the prison gates tomorrow at two?”
“Yes.”
“Thank you. That is all.”
“Okay. Thank you.”
Stella hung up the phone. It was happening. Tomorrow, Dane would be out. He’d be free.
49
Fresh Start
––––––––
DECKER, one of the guards who had been on Unit 2 as long as Dane had, stepped up to the cell door. “You ready to get out of this cage?”
Dane stood up, looked around one more time, and picked up the cardboard box that held the few things he had accumulated in twelve years. Some pictures. Letters. The hot-pink bit of fabric from Stella’s torn shirt.
Having a cell to himself all this time had helped keep him isolated from the other prisoners. He had few friends on the inside, not that anyone could really be called friends. He learned to seek out the lifers, the older ones who’d weathered decades of hotshots, gangs, and thugs. By the time Dane had been moved from the plate factory to the garage, which was outside the walls, he had a congenial relationship with a couple of the more skilled tradesmen, and had been able to work on newer models of cars as well as the machinery and trucks that belonged to the prison. This helped keep him employable for when he got out.
He never told Stella that his workplace was outside the gates. She wouldn’t do anything, but she didn’t realize that some of the regulars at the cafe were always seeking out the women of other inmates, pumping them for information, trying to see who might be an ally on the inside. His position in the garage, while a step up from the factories, made him vulnerable, and by extension, her too. Still, they had made it.
Decker opened the iron door, slapping Dane on the back as he passed. “About time, old man, about time.”
The other inmates on his walk came forward, waiting in their cells for the end of the midday count, to see him off.
“Nice threads!” one called.
“Your mama dress you?” asked another.
Dane smiled. He’d asked Stella to send him clothes, but Bud had insisted on providing the outfit, remembering his own day out, when Clarice had sent a brand-new suit.
And so his father had sent some pinstriped gray number, white shirt, tie, and all. Stella was going to bust out laughing when she saw it. But he could look forward to her stripping it off him, piece by piece.
They left the housing unit and took the path to the administrative offices, now as familiar a walk to him as the path to school as a kid. Today the red-and-white stripes of the squat building stood out bright and fine. He’d never be looking at the back side of those walls again.
They turned down a new corridor, one he’d never been on. Dane had expected to meet up with Stella in visitation. The hall was long and empty except for a figure at the end, a broad woman. As they approached, he recognized Maggie. No more shoulder pads or helmet hair, just a simple suit and a sleek head of gray. She still wore soft pink lipstick.
“Good-bye, Dane,” she said. “I asked to be the one who brought you out.”
Maggie had been kicked upstairs years ago, moving from caseworker to supervisor. Dane nodded at her. “Thank you.”
“These are the best days.” She laid a small box on top of the larger one he already held. “Your things from storage.”
He remembered the spiked belt and watch chain. Things he’d worn the last day with Stella. They would enjoy looking at them again.
Maggie led him toward a doorway at the end, spilling light in through a bar-less window.
“Your paperwork is all in order,” Maggie said. “Your new job starts on Monday.” They reached the door, and she squeezed his arm. “I’m very glad to hear Stella is coming to get you.”
Dane felt his throat thicken. If it weren’t for Maggie, he might never have written Stella. Never gotten to this day. “Thank you” was all he could manage.
She pushed open the door. The light was blindingly bright. He blinked several times, trying to adjust, and he thought at first he might be seeing a mirage. His Harley, looking just as good as 1984, better probably, as they’d crashed it just before his arrest, and on it, Stella, in, of all things, a full-on wedding gown.
“You’re looking kind of sissy for a ride like this,” she said. She held one helmet in her lap, and a second one dangled from a handlebar.
“You’re looking like you might
get caught in the wheels.”
She hitched up the dress, revealing how the hem was tucked into her underwear. “Not gonna happen.”
“I’ll just take those.” Bud stepped forward and relieved Dane of his boxes. Clarice gave him a quick hug.
Dane scarcely noticed them as he slid a hand up Stella’s thigh and tucked the dress more tightly up around her legs.
“Looks like we’d better get on to the church,” Clarice said. “Then dinner to celebrate?”
Bud pulled her back, smiling broadly. “I think we’ll take a rain check on the dinner. Tomorrow, maybe.”
Dane paid them no mind. They could wait. He straddled the Harley behind Stella. His own license had expired years ago. “You know how to drive this thing?” he asked.
She shoved the helmet at him. “When I jump creeks, I don’t end up in the dirt.”
She stomped on the starter, revved the motor, and he held on to her slender waist in the beaded gown. Bud, Clarice, and Maggie waved as they cruised toward the guards, who opened the gate, and they sailed past the guard towers onto Capitol Avenue, ready for whatever came next.
About the Author: Deanna Roy
Deanna is a passionate advocate for women who have lost babies. She has several books on the subject, including her bestseller FOREVER INNOCENT, a romance about a couple whose baby is taken off life support at seven days old.
She has run the website PregnancyLoss.Info for fifteen years, including many large spin-off support groups both online and in person.
To learn about new releases, sign up for her subscriber list or visit her blog at www.deannaroy.com. She has regular giveaways in conjunction with major pregnancy loss events.
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Forever Innocent
"Our baby died on prom night, and nothing was ever the same again."
Corabelle doesn't feel like any of the other college girls. On what should have been one of the happiest nights of her life, she and her boyfriend Gavin watched a nurse disconnect the ventilator from their seven-day-old baby. During the funeral two days later, Gavin walked out and never returned.
Since then, her life has been a spiral of disasters. The only thing that has helped is her ability to black out whenever the pain gets too hard to bear, a habit that has become an addiction.
When Gavin shows up in her astronomy class four years later, he is hell-bent on getting her back, insisting she forgive him. Corabelle knows she can't resist the touch that fills the empty ache that has haunted her since he left. But if he learns what she has done, if he follows the trail back through her past, her secrets will destroy their love completely. And once again, she'll lose the only person who always believed she was innocent.
A WORLD AWAY by Lila Lacroix
Chapter One
As I looked out over the water, I couldn’t believe that my life could possibly get much better than it was right now. It was evening on a late August night and the sun was just beginning to set. I was sitting in one of those plastic lounging chairs, sunglasses shielding my eyes from the last of the sun’s rays before it dipped over the tip of the trees onto the other side of the lake and over the horizon for the night. A soft breeze tickled my skin, the only sound that of the waves lapping softly against the shore.
I looked over to my left where Mike, the love of my life, sat in the chair next to mine. Everything else in the world paled compared to Mike. His hair, dark blonde and scraggly, hung almost to his shoulders, the last drips of water from our afternoon swim still hanging onto the tips, and he turned to look at me, grinning.
“This is a pretty epic last night here, don’t you think?” he asked.
“I was just going to say the same thing. Couldn’t possibly ask for better.”
“We’ll have to do this again next year, hey?”
“Definitely.” My heart swelled as he implied next year. I had always been shy around boys, in high school I was never the type to have two or three boyfriends during the year. I dated Jim Wilson in the ninth grade for a few months, but that was it. I had always been shy, and while I wasn’t a straight A student or anything, I was more studious than popular, so it wasn’t like guys were clamouring to date me, and I was always too shy to ask them out myself. When Mike came into my life, I was ecstatic. He was the perfect boyfriend for me. He gave me space when I needed it, he took things slowly, and he respected my desire for commitment. I didn’t want to date people randomly, breaking up willy nilly. If I was going to be in a relationship, I wanted it to be serious. That was just the type of person I was. A bit of a personality quirk, if you will.
I considered Mike and I to be serious. I knew it was probably getting ahead of myself slightly, but as we sat together by the lake, on our last night of a weeklong camping trip before I started my sophomore year and he started his senior year of college, I couldn’t help but think that maybe in the distant future Mike and I would get married. We’d have two kids (a boy and a girl) and we’d live happily ever after in one of the suburbs of San Francisco. I’d leave my job for a couple of years to take care of the kids while we lived on the money Mike would get working as a finance guy for a bank, then when our kids started school I would get back into the workforce, part time.
That was getting a little bit ahead of myself though. For now, I wanted to enjoy this moment. I wanted to enjoy being here, I wanted to enjoy the absolute perfection that was my life.
I knew how to appreciate the good things in life, because it wasn’t until pretty recently that I knew what they felt like. I definitely didn’t have what you would call a stable home life growing up. My father left before I was born, and my mother was an alcoholic who barely managed to support me. I hated being at home. There were always strange men around, it smelled like alcohol, and the only times my mother said anything to me it was either a command to find her something, or to complain about the fact that I was never home and didn’t do anything. In an attempt to stay away from her, I spent as much time as I could in elementary school in the library after school, until every night at five when they closed it I was finally sent home. As a result, I learned to love reading, and my grades were actually pretty decent. The librarian encouraged me. I think she understood why I was always in the library, and she did her best to help me find books that would let me lost myself in a fantasy world. Age appropriate, of course. By the time I got to high school I was pretty close to the top of my class, despite my upbringing. At that point I was old enough to understand that the way out of the life my mother lived was to study hard, and that was what I did.
When I graduated from high school I was immediately accepted at San Francisco State University on a partial scholarship. I moved out from the studio apartment my mom rented and found a room with three other freshmen students. I didn’t think I’d find a job in the terrible economy, but I lucked out, and got work as a waitress at a local Chinese restaurant. Three nights a week I made minimum wage plus tips, which was enough to pay for my food and a small part of my rent. Student loans took care of the rest, and while they were starting to accumulate, I wasn’t too worried. After all, everyone else also had student loans, and while the job market was so horrendously shitty at the time, I was hoping by the time I graduated in three years it would have improved.
I decided to major in business, with a focus on marketing. Mike was in one of my classes, a second year human resources course I decided to do a year early, and which he decided to do a year late. We sat next to each other in the front row, and while I was way too nervous to speak to him, he wasn’t too nervous to speak to me after a few days.
“Hey, I’m Mike” he introduced himself.
“I’m Sophie.”
“Cool. Wanna grab a coffee after class?”
Everything afterwards was history. Beautiful, loving history. Mike took my virginity three months after we started dating, and now we were here, discussing coming back to this campsite next year. Who knew, maybe we would make it a tradition. As we fell asleep in
each other’s arms that night in our tent, I smiled to myself. My sophomore year was going to be amazing. I just knew it.
Three days later I was on campus once more, buying my books for the new semester, when my best friend Clara appeared out of nowhere.
“Hey girl, how was your romantic vacation?” she asked, hugging me lightly.
“It was amazing,” I gushed, telling her all about the fun we had making campfires, hiking, swimming and just generally being together.
“That sounds crazy. Mike is so the perfect guy for you. I’m so jealous, you don’t even know.”
I laughed. Clara was gorgeous, with wavy brown hair, skin the color of mocha and almond shaped eyes deeper and browner than any I’d ever seen on anyone else. We were polar opposites, with my slightly frizzy blonde hair and blue eyes. She looked amazing, and she knew it. Every month Clara had a new boyfriend, she changed them so often I sometimes had a hard time keeping track of the name I was supposed to say hi to when I wandered into our place and found them together. We didn’t look alike, our personalities were about as different as two people could be, and yet we had an instant connection. We were best friends the instant I moved in with her and our other two roommates.
“You’re crazy, Clara. You’re so beautiful, you can absolutely have any man on the planet.”
“Sure, I might be alright to look at, but you’re not too bad yourself, and besides, none of my guys are really the same calibre as Mike. They might be nice to look at for a few weeks, but none of them are long term material.”
“Well, that’s your own fault. You know damn well you choose them that way.”
Clara stuck her tongue out at me. “Fine. But it doesn’t mean I can’t be jealous of what you have.”
I laughed and wrapped my arm around her waist as I headed towards the checkout line. I knew it was going to be a long wait, there were at least two dozen students ahead of me also waiting to buy their books. This was my least favourite thing about the start of the new semester.
Tangled: A New Adult Romance Boxed Set (12 Book Bundle of Billionaires, Bad Boys, and Royalty) Page 137