The Girl in the Mist: A Misted Pines Novel

by Ashley, Kristen

  “Babe. I didn’t keep this from you. I just lived it so long, and so much other shit was going on, I honest to fuck forgot she still had legal ties to me, and I needed to do something about that to be free for you.”

  “There are precisely zero people on the planet who could get away with that excuse, Bohannan, except you. No. There are five. You. Jace. Jess. And Special Agents McGill and Robertson. Maybe Harry, and not Jace and Jess. But since none of them have a teenage daughter with her first real boyfriend along with some murderer playing games, they also don’t count. So it’s just you.”

  I got even closer to him.

  And finished, “I get it. I know you’ve had a few things on your mind, honey.”

  “You’re safe here.”

  I wasn’t feeling playful anymore either after I heard the steel with which those three words were spoken.

  He continued, “With the kids. In my home. In our lives.” A meaningful pause, “With me.”

  “Bohannan,” I whispered.

  “You belong here. It’s not about you cooking. It’s not about you looking after Celeste. It’s not about you making me happy. It’s about you being a part of us.”

  I put my hand over his mouth. “Stop talking.”

  He wrapped his fingers around my wrist and pulled it away.

  “This is important.”

  I knew it was important.

  I’d had to make my own families in order to belong somewhere, and two of those disintegrated along the way.

  I’d never had the bedrock Bohannan offered in a partner.

  Case in point, with my history—if he hadn’t built the trust by being who he was to his kids, to the town, to his work…to me—him understanding just how huge of a blow this might be to me.

  But he’d built that trust.

  And he understood how deeply I needed it.

  So yes.

  I knew it was important.

  I knew it far better than him.

  I told him I was falling in love with him.

  He showed me he was falling in love with me.

  It was my turn to show him.

  And I wasn’t going to do it by making love.

  I was going to fuck him.

  In other words, I attacked.

  Bohannan counterattacked.

  In the end, we had a fuck/wrestling/making love session where he didn’t fight fair, considering he wrung two orgasms out of me, and it was biologically impossible for me to compete.

  He lay on his back, I lay flat out on top of him, and he pushed out, “No more heart to hearts. It’s gonna kill me.”

  “You bitch about the craziest things.”

  “Babe?”

  With effort, I raised my head to look down at him.

  Big mistake.

  He looked fabulous during sex.

  After it, all sated and content and big cat got his cream, he was everything.

  “I might have to pounce again,” I warned him.

  “It’s you,” he said to me. “I had her, but all along, I’ve been waiting for you to get to me.”

  Honestly?

  I was fucked out.

  So I shoved my face in his neck and belatedly agreed, “No more heart to hearts.”

  My voice was husky.

  He stroked my spine and whispered, “No more heart to hearts, baby.”

  Forty-Six

  Like the Wind

  Megan and I pushed into Aromacobana, and I was unsurprised it was busy.

  It was normally relatively busy for one.

  It was the weekend for another.

  And it was sunny, and the season was upon us.

  The Kimmy season.

  The Christmas season.

  Although I was about to find out that all hell had not stopped breaking loose in Misted Pines. I could report that the town council still made certain the Christmas decorations were out and up by the weekend after Thanksgiving.

  The vibe wasn’t effervescent, but people were doing their best to find some cheer and live their lives.

  As for me, I’d just gotten back from a long weekend in LA.

  I went to see my daughter. I went to shop for Christmas. I went to shop because I didn’t have a lot of clothes for colder weather. I went to shop just because I wanted new clothes. I went to pack up some things from my house and ship them to Washington. And I went to see my stylist, because Celeste was skilled when it came to hair, and we’d had some girlie sessions in her bathroom, and she’d tided me over.

  But it was well past time.

  I needed Joaquim.

  He was complimentary of her, genuinely and to her face, since Bohannan had given her permission to fly down Friday after school to be with me. He’d also pulled some strings so he’d walked her to the gate, and at LAX, a TSA agent had walked her to me.

  Another bonus of being with Bohannan.

  We’d shopped. Joaquim did her hair too. We had facials and mani-pedis. She’d helped me pack even more things because there was stuff in my closet she wanted to wear. She’d bonded further with Camille and Joan.

  And with those reinforcements, I decided to tackle the boys/consent/choice/sex talk.

  She did not seem at all uncomfortable with me.

  What she seemed to think was that I was crazy.

  “I know that, Delly,” she’d said when I got through the consent part, and the inferred at the end of that sentence was a yeesh. “I mean, I know there are girls who really like boys and they’ll do like…anything. But boys who are stupid are just stupid. Everyone knows that.”

  Did they?

  I glanced at Camille and Joan.

  They appeared just as surprised as I was.

  I treaded cautiously.

  “When you say ‘boys who are stupid,’ what do you mean?”

  “I mean like, if you say no, and they don’t stop. Or if you’re like, ‘I don’t wanna drink,’ and they’re all, ‘C’mon, everyone’s drinking. Let’s play beer pong.’ Beer pong is stupid too, by the way. But anyway, it’s like, you know, beer doesn’t taste good, and people act dumb when they drink too much of it. Some people think it’s funny. But me and my friends just think it’s, well…” Big shrug and, “Stupid.”

  She proved she got my drift when she went on, a might huffily.

  “Will’s not like that, you know. He might drink a beer, but he thinks all that being loud and crazy and obnoxious is stupid too. I never saw him do that before, but he might have done it. Still. I think it has to do with Alice. It’s like, a really crappy silver lining. You know, he’s learned life is too short to act like a moron. Life is serious. You don’t have to act serious all the time. But there’s no time to be a moron. Am I making sense?”

  She was.

  And this made me feel even better about Will, who was still over a lot, and I’d come to like him.

  He was broody (understandable).

  He was intense with Celeste (she was very into him, and he needed someone who cared, so maybe he was just soaking it up).

  But mostly he was quiet and polite, serious like she said. He studied with Celeste. He went to hockey practice. He played in his games. He took Celeste out to the Double D or the Lodge. He went home to his grandmother. He avoided his parents like the plague.

  And that was that.

  So obviously, onward to the more difficult part: sex came in a wide variety of ways, and people should feel free to enjoy the ones that felt good to them.

  She glanced at Camille and Joan that time, before she replied, “I know gay sex isn’t bad.”

  “That wasn’t gay sex,” I told her.

  “I wasn’t finished, Delly.”

  “Okay,” I mumbled.

  “Gay sex or you know,” her voice dropped, “anal. Or like, dress up or um…that stuff they do in those famous books.”

  “BDSM,” I choked out and caught Joan elbowing Camille and definitely heard Camille fight snorting.

  Celeste heard it too. “Yeah. Whatever. You can be gay and bi and a lo
t of things. A friend of mine, she, uh…finds stuff and reads it and watches it, and she thinks she’s pan.”

  I had nothing to say to that. Though I was glad her friend was exploring so she could know herself, I still worried that “watching things” at sixteen might be a bit early.

  “It’s just like, you know, whatever you want, whoever you are, right?” she asked.

  “Right,” I answered.

  “Right,” Camille and Joan chimed in with me.

  Then she shared she’d figured me out.

  “I know I called it gross, but I didn’t mean what the Pulaskis were doing was gross. Okay, it was. Because they’re parents. And I’m sorry, Delly. That’s gross.”

  I waved my hand in front of me because I had to give that to her.

  It wasn’t gross, but I’d get why a kid would think that.

  “It’s gross they let it out so Will could see it,” she concluded. “It’s gross they let their stuff mess him up. That was gross.”

  That was definitely gross.

  Thus endeth our discussions, and I was pleased to be able to call Bohannan and report his daughter was enlightened as well as beautiful and intelligent and sweet.

  And although it wasn’t that he had nothing to worry about, at least she had herself together.

  His reply?

  “That’s great, baby.”

  I went through all that for him (and Celeste), and that was it.

  I’d take it.

  I would because it wasn’t the words, it was the tone.

  Now I was back. It was a couple of weeks before Christmas. We had decorations up in my house and Bohannan’s. My master bath was done, and a spruce up of the downstairs powder room was in full swing. My book was half written, and I might make my deadline by the skin of my teeth. I had most of my Christmas shopping complete.

  And no one had been killed.

  So things weren’t great.

  But they were all right.

  And now Megan was filling me in on everything else that was breaking loose in Misted Pines.

  “Apparently, even the governor can’t snap his fingers and remove a sheriff. But he did whatever he had to do, and while you were gone, Dern was removed. I’ve heard he huffed, and he puffed, but he’d already blown the house down. Harry is acting sheriff until the election. So far, it looks like he’s running unopposed.”

  Another quick update: I’d been right. It was a big thing that much ado had been made over, the fact that I’d landed such a badass hot guy, but attention on me and Bohannan had been thankfully brief.

  And apparently, Leland’s Hail Mary play hadn’t worked.

  “I’m sure that’s a relief,” I replied to Megan.

  She gave me a You Know It look and shared, “Harry cleaned house and he’s gotta recruit a bunch of deputies, but he brought back Polly, so at least he’ll know where everything is.”

  I shot her a smile.

  She leaned into me. “Now for the juicy stuff.”

  I was intrigued.

  “That wasn’t juicy?”

  It was.

  But I’d find what was next was juicier.

  “Audrey filed against Dale. Dale is gone. Bobby’s gone. Jay and Dwayne haven’t been seen in public since ‘the incident,’ and word is, Jay’s interviewing for jobs up in Alaska. But Dale and Audrey’s house is up for sale. Bobby and Lana’s too. I know because I’m listing them. But I’ve seen hide nor hair of the men. Lana and Audrey are handling everything. Audrey told me she’s moving to Spokane. Where Dale went, I do not know. Poof,” she said. “Vanished.”

  Megan and her husband, Dan, owned a real estate agency in Misted Pines.

  This was why Megan could stop for Aromacobana and have coffee with me whenever the mood struck us.

  She was very good at what she did, so that was why she had nice handbags like me.

  Probably needless to say, when media interest turned to Misted Pines because of me and Bohannan and dead girls, as I noted, I’d been right, of a sort. They were interested in us for a second.

  But then something else caught their attention.

  And that something else was that it took no time for them to sniff out the sex scandal. As the video clips weren’t exactly kept under wraps, and they were all kinds of salacious, and the woman scorned angle was too good to pass up, those went from MP viral to globally viral.

  The national media chewed on that for an entire week.

  So I wasn’t surprised that Dale and Bobby, who both had other things they were dealing with, took the opportunity to disappear.

  “Lana is living it up with her stud muffin,” Megan continued. “I honestly don’t know whether to admire her or think it’s crass.”

  I might not be at one with the extreme vindictiveness of the grand reveal, and not simply because two of the men involved had just lost children.

  But I’d also seen Lana out and about with Dean, and when I did, her two sons were with them.

  She wasn’t exactly living it up. She didn’t hide her grief.

  What she was, was defiant.

  She was doing exactly what countless men had done (and still do).

  She was thinking first about her own happiness.

  In doing that, she’d moved on to a younger, better model who did it for her.

  Unlike some men, though, she loved and took care of her sons along the way, and I sensed she had genuine, and strong, feelings for Dean.

  Though, as had many women, along the way she’d made sacrifices. She’d learned lessons. She’d eaten shit.

  But now, she couldn’t care less what Megan or anyone thought of her.

  She had a man who made her dinner and did it for her in bed and rushed to her side when she needed him. A man who I knew would listen to her when she told him to calm down because he was scaring her by being upset and driving (not that Dean would do that, but the point was pertinent).

  And for that, I applauded her.

  Silently.

  “You admire her,” Megan said, and I caught her watching me.

  “I think it’s none of my business.”

  She clicked her teeth. “Oh please.”

  “It’s true. I have an opinion about it, but my opinion doesn’t matter. I’m not her. I’m not one of her boys. I hate she lost her daughter. I hope the FBI can get her answers and justice and give her and her family some peace. Other than that…” I shrugged.

  “I’m finding it’s no fun having a world-weary, superstar friend who’s had people in her business for…” She was turning to the line when her eyes widened, and she came back to me. “Oh Lord, it’s Ray.”

  “Ray?”

  I started to assess the line ahead of us, regardless that I didn’t know who Ray was, and she caught my forearm and whispered, “Don’t look.”

  I whispered back, “I don’t know who Ray is.”

  “Shelly’s beau.”

  I turned and looked for cheerleader Shelly.

  I saw her in the area where people waited for their coffee. She stood under an arm that was attached to a tall, muscular, dark-blond, handsome—

  I swung to Megan like a timid teenager caught checking out her crush.

  “Oh shit, that’s Ray?”

  “Yes,” Megan hissed as we shuffled closer together at the same time we did the same forward in line. “It’s Ray.”

  I couldn’t help it, I looked back.

  Right into the eyes of Ray, who was staring at me and who knew we were talking about him—and why—and he wasn’t a fan.

  I gave him a small, noncommittal smile and pinned my eyes to the line in front of us, talking while trying not to move my lips, “He saw me.”

  “Of course he did,” she muttered back, and I knew she was talking the same way. “I told you not to look.”

  “Shelly didn’t break up with him?”

  “According to word on the street, Shelly doesn’t know.”

  That made me look at her again. “That can’t be.”

  And it couldn
’t, considering Ray was the man who was fucking Bobby in that video.

  “Shelly isn’t, you know…” She gave me big eyes and went on, “She’s sweet, but not all that bright.”

  “I feel like I’ve seen that video fifteen times, and I’m trying to avoid it. She’d have to be on another planet to have missed it.”

  Megan grimaced.

  We shuffled forward in line again.

  “I was really shocked, you know, because he adores her. Dotes on her. They’ve been together, I don’t know, at least two years. Her mom,” she leaned in but did a furtive glug glug with her hand, using me as a shield from Shelly and Ray. “That whole family is a mess. Except Shelly. Her older brother is a disaster. Her dad leaves, comes back, leaves. I don’t want to cast aspersions, but I swear the man deals drugs. Ray shows up and sweeps her off her feet.”

  “Shows up?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Oh no, I mean, he’s been around, I don’t know, four years. More. I mean,” she gave me a look, “he’s hard to miss.”

  He was that good-looking. I-could-see-him-in-a-Marvel-costume good-looking.

  So I understood her look.

  “She’s a hairdresser in town. She taught Celeste a few things,” she told me.

  “Living at home with that mom, probably trying to find a way out. They start dating. Moved in together.” She straightened a bit and said, “Obviously, marriage is sacred, but for Shelly, I could see why she’d just go.”

  I was feeling something strange at the same time fighting not looking at Shelly and Ray again.

  “And once Malorie was found, he went off the deep end. By that I mean protective. Takes her in to work in the morning, picks her up after.”

  “What does he do?”

  We shuffled forward again.

  “He runs the rec center. Got some grants, started some after-school kids’ programs. My kids are older. Too old for them. But I heard they’re really neat. I hope the Bobby thing was, you know, exploring or something, and he marries her because he’s probably not going to stay in town. Especially after that video thing. But also, Kenneth says he’s super sharp. It was a real feather in the council’s cap to get him to run that service. They won’t keep him long at the center.”

  “Who’s Kenneth?”

  “Kenneth Warner. The president of the Town Council. The man I’m going to replace in the upcoming election.”