This Wicked Rush

by Jessie Evans

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  All Rights Reserved

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  About the Author

  One Perfect Love

  Melt With You

  This Wicked Rush

  Wild Rush Book One

  by Jessie Evans

  Chapter One

  Caitlin

  Tis sweet to drink, but bitter to pay for. –Irish proverb

  One moment really can change your life.

  One moment, one kiss, one wild night when you color outside the lines, step outside the box, stop playing by the rules….

  Gabe and I only spent a few hours together, but now everything is different. Now, the day-to-day grind that was grueling, but survivable—even fun at times—threatens to break me. Now, facts of life I took for granted seem ridiculously unfair. Now, I know how easy it is to turn the tables, and take what the world refuses to give people like me.

  A chance. A shot at something more if I work hard and give it everything I’ve got—that’s all I want. But it’s something I may never have if things don’t change.

  If I don’t make them change.

  At six in the morning, lying on my lumpy second-hand mattress with the threadbare tee shirt I slept in sticking to my skin in the June heat because there’s no way we can run the air conditioning and buy groceries at the same time, with the acid reflux I can’t afford to treat burning the back of my throat, it seems like a no brainer. I should call Gabe. I should take him up on his offer to do it all again, to find a new victim, map out another robbery, and take fate into my own hands.

  The kids will be out of school in two weeks. After all the snow days in January, classes are running late this year, but come June fifteenth, I’ll have three kids in daycare—four if I can convince Terri at the Kiddie Kottage to take Danny, even though he’s twelve, and technically too old for daycare.

  I can’t imagine leaving Danny home alone. He’s already getting into trouble. So far he’s only been cited for defacing public property—he and the Baker boys down the street decided to spray paint penises on all the neighborhood stop signs, and were dumb enough to get caught. But give my brother a summer to run wild and I have no doubt he’ll have more incident reports in his folder down at the police station come August. If I want to keep him out of juvie, I need to make sure Danny has adult supervision while I’m at work.

  But adult supervision costs a pretty penny, almost more than I can afford, even with a full time waitressing job, a part time gig selling popcorn at the movie theater, and a subsidy from the state. After paying for daycare last summer, I took home less than four hundred dollars a week. That’s sixteen hundred dollars a month to feed, clothe, and shelter a family of five—six if you count my father.

  Since he’s been shacking up with Veronica, Chuck doesn’t technically live at the house anymore, but he still sleeps here sometimes—when he’s too drunk to remember that he moved into Veronica’s apartment above the Laundromat, or when Veronica sobers up enough to realize she’s sleeping with a man who regularly forgets to brush his teeth, and kicks Chuck out for a few days.

  And when he sleeps here, Chuck eats here and makes messes here and inevitably ends up costing me far more money than he donates to the family coffers. He hasn’t had a job in almost a year and drinks away every dime of his VA pension and disability.

  So…six people. Six people on sixteen hundred a month.

  It’s no wonder I almost lost the house in April. If I hadn’t robbed the pawnshop, my three brothers and two-year-old niece, Emmie, would be in foster care, and I would be homeless. Homeless, after working my ass off to raise four kids by myself for two-and-a-half years. After dropping out of school, giving up my academic scholarship to Cristoph Prep, and putting every dream I had on the shelf, I would have lost everything. I would have lost my family, the only thing that makes all the backbreaking work worth it.

  The property taxes have been paid and that danger has passed for another year, but we’re not out of the woods. It will be a struggle to get through the summer, a struggle that will continue into the fall when tourism to historic downtown Giffney slacks off and my tips take a dive. A struggle that will intensify come winter when I’m forced to run the heat in our drafty old house and the electric bill skyrockets.

  Gabe was right. There are only two ways out: either let the state take the kids and start looking out for number one—something I could never do, even if I wanted to, even if Emmie, Sean, Ray, and even Danny, that pain in my ass, didn’t mean the world to me—or stop playing by the rules.

  “And eventually get caught and go to jail,” I say to the water-stain on the ceiling, the one I haven’t gotten around to painting over since the roof leaked in November. “And have to live with knowing I’m an awful person, and a horrible example to the kids.”

  But the words don’t sound sincere, even to my own ears.

  The man we robbed in April was a monster, a miserable excuse for a human being who beat his wife nearly to death, on multiple occasions. He deserved what he got, and Gabe promised me there were others like him, other awful, evil people he’d learned about while trolling through his defense attorney father’s files.

  I could help make sure creeps who have gotten off scot-free for their crimes are punished. I would be like an instrument of karma, avenging the innocent while lightening my own load in the process.

  And if I saved up enough money, I could take time off from work to study and get my GED. It wouldn’t take long. Then I’d be able to take classes at the community college, and get qualified for a job that pays better than minimum wage. I’d have more time to spend with the kids on their homework, time to work with Emmie on the speech therapy stuff her therapist said we need to hit harder at home, maybe even time to go out dancing more than once or twice a year.

  Dancing…with Gabe.

  My lids slide closed and I shiver despite the heat that’s making my tee shirt stick to my skin and beads of sweat pool between my breasts.

  Visions of that night—my twentieth birthday, the night everything changed—play out in the darkness behind my eyes: Gabe’s big hands pulling me into his arms, his fingers digging into my hips, his ice-blue eyes holding me captive in that moment before we kissed, promising wicked, wonderful things as his hand slipped between my legs and he made me shatter into a million beautiful pieces.

  But not before he made you beg for it, made you beg him to make you come like some bimbo in a porno.

  I open my eyes with a sigh, ignoring the way my body is tingling simply from thinking about Gabe’s touch.

  I did beg. I begged him to bring me over, and even worse I’d sort of…liked it. Loved it. I loved it so much even the memory is enough to make my panties damp, my breasts ache, and my heart beat faster with wanting more. More of Gabe, more of his kiss, his touch, of the rush I felt in his arms.

  I don’t know how much of that rush was because we’d barely escaped getting shot by the other people breaking into the store, and how much was Gabe—it had all been too tangled up together—but I know the feeling was dangerous.

  It was the kind of feeling that made my mother run away with her AA sponsor
, never to be heard from again. The kind of feeling that made my big sister bail on her two-month-old daughter, and take off to Columbia with her new, drug-dealer boyfriend.

  It was the kind of feeling that could destroy what’s left of this family.

  Chuck won’t even look for a job, let alone take on the responsibility of running a household and raising four kids. If I’m not here for my brothers and Emmie, no one will be. They’ll go into the system and be placed in foster homes, homes that could be even worse than the placements I endured when I was younger.

  Lice infestations, shaved heads, older foster kids who pinch and hit, foster parents who spend your lunch money on cigarettes, and biological kids who are given your share of supper are shitty things, but there are worse ones. Far worse, and I refuse to be responsible for any of my kids suffering like that.

  And, in the end, that’s why I haven’t picked up the phone. That’s why I’ve ignored the text Gabe sent a week ago saying he had a con job on deck he thought I’d enjoy. That’s why I pretend it’s only the June heat that has me waking up multiple times a night, drenched in sweat, with my belly aching and my thighs shifting back and forth in an effort to banish the need that’s driving me crazy.

  I can’t give that need an inch, or I’m afraid it will take a mile, take everything I’ve worked and sacrificed for and leave me hating myself for turning out like my worthless mom and sister. I’m a strong person, but I’m not sure I’m strong enough to survive Gorgeous Gabe Alexander and come out whole on the other side.

  “So forget him, forget that night, and get over yourself,” I say, with a vicious kick to the thin sheet covering my legs.

  But some things are easier said than done.

  Thoughts of Gabe linger in my mind as I hustle down the stairs to the kitchen and shove frozen waffles into the toaster, teasing through my thoughts as I slap peanut butter on bread, drop apples and juice boxes into Ray and Sean’s lunch boxes, and use the last of the ham to make Danny a double-decker ham and cheese so he’ll have energy for softball practice. Visions of Gabe’s stupid-beautiful face flash on my mental screen as I pound back up the stairs, shouting for Sean and Ray to wake up before easing into Danny and Emmie’s room, and tiptoeing over to Emmie’s toddler bed.

  It’s only then, when she looks up at me with her big blue eyes and smiles her sweet smile that my head snaps back on straight.

  “Good morning, doodle.” I gather her into my arms, kissing the warm curve of her neck beneath her blond curls, that place that is still kitten soft and smells like the baby she once was instead of the busy toddler she’s becoming.

  This sweet little girl is worth the hard work. She’s worth living right and staying away from boys like Gabe, and all the trouble that would accompany him and his easy answers.

  There are no easy answers, and nothing comes for free. If I let my morals get any more twisted up than they are already, I’ll pay for it, one way or another.

  “I have a note,” Danny says from his bed behind me, his voice thick with sleep.

  “What kind of note?” I kiss Emmie’s cheek and lean down to fetch her Happy—her name for her pink-and-white-striped blanket—from her nest of covers. She clutches it in her chubby hands and presses it to her face with a content sigh, making me smile.

  “From Mr. Pitt. It’s in my backpack.”

  My smile vanishes. “Why didn’t you give it to me first thing after softball yesterday?”

  “I forgot,” Danny says with a grunt, followed by a heavy thud as he jumps from the top of his lofted bed

  “Don’t jump out of bed,” I snap as I turn, hitching Emmie higher on my hip. “You’re going to fall through the floor. What’s the note about?”

  “Special conference.” Danny grabs the jeans he wore yesterday from the back of his desk chair and shoves one of his skinny legs inside.

  He’s shooting up so fast he can’t keep on weight. By the end of the summer, he’ll be taller than I am. I’m only five foot one, so that’s not saying a lot, but still…I can’t believe my brother’s getting so big. It scares me a little. He’s only twelve, but he’s growing up so fast. Soon, he’ll be too old to care what his nagging older sister has to say, and way too big for me to have any hope of making him listen.

  Danny stretches, his ribs showing through his skin as he pulls a tee shirt from the pile on the floor and sniffs the pits before tugging it over his head. “I think he wants to talk to you after school.”

  “Crap, when?” I shove my tangled hair off my forehead. “Not today, I hope. I don’t get off work until four and I have to be back at the theater by—”

  “I don’t know! God, just read the note,” Danny snaps before vanishing into the hall, headed toward the bathroom.

  “Tone, Danny!” I call out after him before turning back to Emmie with a sigh. “Your uncle is a pain in my butt.”

  “In da butt,” Emmie repeats with a grin.

  “Yes,” I say with a serious nod. “Like a fart.”

  Emmie’s grin becomes a giggle. She doesn’t talk as much as the doctors would like a nearly three-year-old to talk, but she loves fart jokes, and I’m not above potty humor in the name of making her dimples pop.

  “You ready for breakfast?” I ask, pressing a kiss to her forehead.

  She nods, and we head down the stairs to the ground floor bathroom so the boys can have the one upstairs.

  The rest of the morning passes in the usual state of barely controlled chaos. Ray drops the book for his book report in the toilet and I end up blow-drying it with one hand while putting on my make-up with the other. Emmie spills her orange juice on my last clean pair of uniform shorts and I have to dash back upstairs to change into the hideous dress with the puffed sleeves I try not to wear on Fridays because that’s the day Mr. Noel comes in for pancakes and his hand has a habit of drifting.

  Sean realizes he forgot to do his spelling pre-test and Danny has to give it to him as I’m changing Emmie out of her orange-juice-soaked sleeper and giving her a quick wipe down at the sink. No sooner do I have her clean and dressed for daycare than Ray manages to break the zipper on his backpack and Sean bursts into tears because he got two words wrong on his pre-test and Danny is giving him shit about it.

  When I finally herd the savages out the door at ten ‘til eight, I’m already exhausted and not looking forward to a six hour shift at the restaurant, followed by another five hour shift at Cinema Eight later tonight.

  By the time I’ve dropped Sean and Ray at the elementary school, deposited Danny at the junior high with a strong warning to stay out of trouble and a note for Mr. Pitt saying I’ll have to push this afternoon’s conference to Monday, and sprinted Emmie to the front door of the Kiddie Kottage—hopefully giving myself just enough time to grab a coffee at work before I have to clock in—my mind is already drifting back to that easy way out.

  As I maneuver the ancient family van through downtown Giffney, it dangles in my thoughts like forbidden fruit, so sweet and juicy I don’t see how I’m going to resist taking a bite. I’m hungry for it, starving, so ready for a taste of that easier life it promises, I can practically feel it exploding on my tongue.

  And then I see him, Gorgeous Gabe, leaning against the weathered bricks of Harry’s Diner, his jagged brown hair hanging low over one side of his forehead, looking so delicious in wrinkled black jeans and a whisper-thin gray tee shirt it should be illegal. The moment our eyes meet, his full lips draw into a grin that promises the best kind of trouble, and something breaks inside me.

  Inside, I’m already falling, tumbling into the waiting arms of temptation with a sigh of pleasure, standing on tiptoe to claim his lips and taste his wicked taste and tell him how much I’ve missed the way his eyes light up when he’s thinking naughty things about me.

  My outsides, however, are a different story.

  On the outside, I am calm, cool, collected, and not the least bit interested in what Gabe has to offer. As long as I can hold that facade together, I’ll be all ri
ght.

  “Keep telling yourself that,” I mutter as I slam the door to the van shut behind me and start across the street.

  Gabe’s icy blue eyes drift up and down, taking in my uniform with obvious amusement. “Nice dress.”

  “What do you want?” I ask in a flat tone, crossing my arms beneath my breasts only to uncross them a second later when I remember how low cut the stupid ruffled collar is. “I only have a second, or I’ll be late for work.”

  Gabe’s smile doesn’t falter. “I’ve missed you too, sweetheart.”

  “I’m not your sweetheart,” I say, but I can feel the blush spreading across my cheeks.

  A part of me would like to be his sweetheart, to be Gabe’s girl, and, more importantly, his partner in crime.

  “But you could be.” He pushes away from the wall, closing the distance between us, not stopping until he’s so close I can smell his soap and trouble smell, the one that makes my mouth water and my skin feel too small. “What do you say? Up for another job? This one needs a feminine touch.”

  I shake my head as I back away, my pulse leaping at my throat. “No,” I say, even as my heart screams yes and my fingertips begin to tingle, remembering the rush of plucking a thousand dollars in jewelry from the pawnshop’s glass case.

  “You don’t mean that.” He falls in beside me as I start toward the diner’s front door. “Come on, Caitlin. Come play with me.”

  Play. That’s all this is to him, some stupid game to help pass the time this summer while he’s home from college and working part time at his dad’s law firm. Gabe’s dad is a successful lawyer, his mom is a high-priced interior decorator, and his grandmother is descended from the town founders, and richer than God. Gabe told me he could buy and sell my entire family at least twice, and I believe him. He isn’t desperate the way I am; he’s simply bored.

  I can’t remember the last time I was bored. I’m too exhausted and overworked and stressed out to be bored. Boredom sounds like fucking heaven to me, and the fact that the boy breezing into the coffee shop beside me doesn’t realize how lucky he is to have the luxury of boredom pisses me off, and gives me the strength to turn to him and say—