by Sierra Hill
Reckless Abandon
Book 2
Reckless Serial – The Smoky Mountain Trio
by
Sierra Hill
Copyright © 2018 Sierra Hill
Published by Ten28 Publishing
Cover Design: Porcelain Paper Designs
Photography: Shutterstock (Standard License)
Editing by: Two Naughty Book Babes
All rights reserved.
Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without prior written permission by the author, except where permitted by law. The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book without permission is a theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like permission to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), please contact [email protected].
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or used factiously, and any resemblance to actual events, locales or persons, living or dead, business establishments, or educational systems is entirely coincidental.
All products and/or brand names mentioned are registered trademarks of their respective holders/companies/institutions.
Other Books by Sierra Hill
The Physical Series
Physical Touch (Book 1 in the Physical Series)
More Than Physical (Book 2 in the Physical Series)
Physical Distraction (Book 3 in the Physical Series)
Physical Connection (Book 4 – a MM novella)
Standalones:
One More Minute with You (A standalone novel)
The Reunion (A standalone novella)
Character Flaws (A Standalone RomCom)
New Adult/College Sports
The Sweetest Thing Series
Sweetness (Book 1 Ainsley and Cade)
Sweet Girl (Book 2 Kylah and Van)
Sweet Summer Love (Book 3 Logan and Carver)
Sweet Disaster (Book 4 – Kady and Gavin)
Sweet Little Lies (Book 5 – Mica and Lance)
The Reckless Serial
Reckless Youth (Book 1 – London)
Reckless Abandon (Part 2 – Cam)
Reckless Hearts (Part 3 – Sage) – Coming soon
Part Two
Cameron
Contents
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
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Chapter 1
I hold the gun in my hand in front of me, cocked and loaded.
It trembles from my shaky nerves and it makes me seethe with anger.
I can’t even pull the goddamn trigger because I am a coward.
The same coward I’ve been all my life. The same one that walked away from the girl I loved and his best friend because shit got too real and I couldn’t deal.
The same boy who turned into a man, hiding in the military because he was too fucking scared to face his guilt. The same one that made piss-poor decisions that had a ripple effect on the rest of my life.
The consequences that would unfold.
The mistakes that would be made.
If I could take back some of the things I’d done in the last ten years, I would. Without a doubt. All but one.
But that’s not how life works, is it?
And now here I sit, overlooking the Smoky Mountain range, my feet dangling off a dock at my parents’ lakefront home, regretting almost everything. Regretting all the stupid things I’ve done, the decisions that can’t be undone and the things I couldn’t save.
I couldn’t save my friendship with Sage.
I couldn’t save my sister from the cancer that ate away her insides. Or my mom from having to suffer through the deaths of her only daughter and her husband.
I couldn’t save those on my watch and in command, who died and left widows and fatherless children behind.
I couldn’t save my doomed-from-the-start marriage.
And I couldn’t save myself from breaking London’s heart when I left her, kneeling on the ground, tearing out her heart through her tears. The pain to see her like that was so great it cost me a piece of my soul.
I was a coward then and I’m a coward now.
The gun in my hand is the only thing that reminds me that I’m a man and I have courage. That I’m doing the right thing and will save my son from looking up to a man he calls Daddy and finding out later the devastating truth. That his father is a lying piece of shit and a no-good, worthless man.
My breath is stilted as I lift the cold, metal gun and press it into my temple, as I have to consciously drag air into my lungs.
The irony in all this is that London once called me her protector. She thought I was some goddamn hero. As did my family and friends, and those in my pararescue unit in the USAF that I served with. And now my crew in the Tennessee forest fire rescue squad. All those men and women who thought the pins, stripes, medallions, and plaques that have been bestowed upon me over the years prove that I was meant to be revered.
If only they knew…
I’m nothing but a shell of a man, hiding behind a made-up heroic façade.
Closing my eyes, a myriad of memories flash through my head. Like the explosions in the night sky that I escaped countless times in missions in my special ops pararescue unit.
In a blink of an eye, the last ten years appear, at first bright and bold and then clouded with the black stain of death, regret, and guilt.
Everything changed that prom night ten years ago. Every moment and step I took after that was marred by the stupidity of my youth. My ignorance and arrogance. My recklessness. And my naivete of how people – and hearts – can change in a single moment.
My heartbeat ramps up, beating wildly on a collision course as I waffle back and forth over what I must do.
If I want to save my son – the only one that I can honestly save at this point in my life – I must take control of this one final decision.
I mentally count down my last seconds on this earth.
Ten.
Nine.
Eight.
Seven.
I breathe in through my nose, inhaling the crisp, fall scent of the land and earth around me. The fragrance of my childhood.
Come on you coward, just do it already.
Everyone will be better off without me.
Six.
Five.
“Daddy! Daddy!”
The small, excited voice of my son, Taylor, reverberates off the water, as I hear him calling me from the top of the hill close to the house I grew up in.
Shit. He was supposed to be gone with my mother in town. I was supposed to be alone.
Dropping the gun to my lap, I quickly snap on the safety and slide it in the holster between my thighs. Turning to look over my shoulder behind me, I place a smile on my face, reserved solely for my son. Shielding my eyes from the direct sun to see the shadowed and silhouetted body of Taylor running down toward the lake dock.
Fuck, what if he would’ve found me?
A sick feeling of despair rumbles inside my stomach, retching to climb out. He wasn’t supposed to be here. I’m a selfish prick. What was I thinking?
Taylor flies toward me, his five-year-old spindly legs leaping in gigantic strides and arms flailing in all directions from his sides. He looks like a crazed octopus from one of those cartoons.
Standing and sliding the gun into my back pocket, I stretch my arms out wide and welcome him home.
“Hey buddy. You’re home. What are you doing back so soon?”
He slams into my body and I pick him up, swinging him around in the airplane toss he practically lives for. His joyful giggle worms into my heart and eats away at my guilt.
“Hi Daddy! We came home ‘cause Nana brought someone to see you.”
I’m sure confusion is etched across my face. Our trip home was an unexpected visit and I can’t imagine anyone knows I’m here or would stop over to see me. I don’t have any friends left in this town anymore and the ones I once had…well, I burned those bridges a long time ago.
“Who is it, buddy? One of Nana’s friends?” I inquire, thinking maybe it’s Helen or Marjorie, my mother’s church friends.
Taylor shrugs his bony little shoulders at me, wiggling from my grasp and jumping out of my arms and onto the wooden dock. He runs toward the edge of the platform and I have to grab his wrist and pull him back with a hard yank to keep him from barreling into the water.
My son is fearless. Like I was at that age.
But that trait is long gone for me.
Taylor grins widely, crinkling his nose up and laughs.
“I don’t know,” he giggles, running back in the other direction. “Some lady named London.”
My legs nearly buckle from the weight of that name. In fact, I have to sit back down on the dock to keep from falling over.
London.
Chapter 2
Ten Years Earlier
My first reaction upon hearing the news that blared from our texts and messaging apps was how to comfort London.
Sage was arrested for murdering his father?
It was unfathomable. Like one of those stories that start with a small grain of truth and then spreads like a wildfire, picking up more crazed ideas until this is its distorted reality.
I looked from my phone to London’s face, her expression riddled with panic, horror, and alarm. Her face was white as a ghost and she teetered on her heels, still half naked.
Jumping into action, I gently pulled her down to the bed and wrapped a blanket around her shoulders. Her body trembled violently, as if in shock, as she slumped against me.
My voice had an oddly serene and calm resonance to it. “I’m sure it’s all a very big misunderstanding. We’ll find out the truth.”
She vehemently shook her head to the contrary. “No. I knew something like this was going to happen. I didn’t do anything, Cam. I let it happen.”
I’d never heard sobs as gut-wrenchingly loud and pained as I did in that moment. It was as if a torrential rain was pouring through the room, so loud and destructive. Flooding us with grief.
“Baby, you know there is nothing we could’ve done.” But even as I said the words, I knew they were a lie.
Over the past few years, we’d both claimed witness to the bruises and black eyes that appeared on a regular basis on Sage’s body. He’d blow it off any time we asked about it, but we knew. It was so obvious they were from his father. The SOB was a nasty drunk and it wasn’t often when he wasn’t drinking. If Sage wasn’t careful to avoid him, his father would beat the shit out of him.
I wasn’t sure when it all started or how long it had gone on, maybe his whole life, but Sage never talked about it. Not even to me when we were alone together. If I said anything that sounded even remotely like a question about his home life, he’d tell me he was fine and to “let it go.” And I did. Because who was I to say anything? What could I have possibly done to help him against the brutality of an abusive, alcoholic dad?
Sage’s dad was infamous in our small Tennessee town for being a public disturbance and a regular in the town jail. I don’t know why everyone turned a blind eye to the possibility that if Merle Hendricks was such a menace in public that there was a probability he was twice as bad to his kid in private. But nobody dared to get involved. They simply looked away and “prayed for the little Hendricks boy” in church on Sundays.
Fucking hypocrites. Fat lot of good that did.
I searched around for our clothes that had been scattered around on the floor of the hotel room, handing her the beautiful prom dress she wore not twenty minutes earlier. I felt a stab of fear and anger pummel me in the stomach, which churned with the possibility of what might have happened if everything had gone as planned that night.
It was supposed to be a celebration. The three of us together. Sequestered away together in a small hotel room in the neighboring town where we’d be able to do the things we wanted with each other. Our last night together before we graduated and took the world by storm.
But those plans came to a screeching halt the minute we were notified about Sage.
Not knowing what to do or where to go, we dressed in relative silence, just the occasional sniffle and tear coming from London. The evening shouldn’t have ended this way. It was supposed to be a perfect night for the three of us.
My thoughts drifted back to Sage and the conversation we recently had over our futures.
“You gonna leave for Nashville right away, man?” I’d asked him as we sat in my dad’s fishing boat and fished for crawfish in Pitney’s Pond – which was more of a lake than a pond.
I should’ve known things weren’t good by the way Sage gave me an unnerving sidelong glance and smirk.
“As soon as I fucking can. Wouldn’t you?”
I’d shrugged my shoulders, uncertain of what to say in response to that.
But Sage let me off the hook with a chuckle. “The only things here for me are you and London. No other reason to stick around this town any longer than I have to.”
His voice is forlorn and lost. I knew his childhood was riddled with pain and adversity. He lived in a run-down trailer off Marsh Road, just past the Gleason’s farm. His dad had a beat-up old truck that only ran half the time, and Sage had to get around to and from his job at the grocery store on a second-hand bike.
Where London and I shared a commonality of two sets of parents that loved us and provided us good homes, Sage had nobody but us.
We’d always been friends. Different people with different upbringings, but something bound us together. The three of us. Although we all had our own interests and lives outside of school – I had sports, London with her dance and academics, and Sage had his music – we just gelled. People thought we were an oddity, the three of us. Like peanut butter, jelly and mayo. You wouldn’t think we’d work, but it just did.
I’d also come to know over the years, since maybe our early teens, that Sage liked me as more than a friend. It was in the way he’d smile at me, his brown eyes glinting with something darker and needier. Heavier than a way you’d look at just a bro-friend. He’d always be careful not to touch me, but his gaze would linger when he thought I wasn’t looking.
Sage had never come right out and told me he was bisexual, but I knew. Maybe that should’ve bothered me that he didn’t confide this in me since we were best friends and all. But I was too much of a coward to ask, afraid of what he might say. I didn’t love him in that way. But I still loved him as my friend and I stood by him no matter what.
London’s terrified voice shifted my thoughts back to the present, as I buttoned the last buttons of the rumpled tuxedo shirt I’d worn to prom that night.
“What should we do, Cam? Go down to the jail and ask to see him? Should I call my dad? We need to help Sage. We have to be there for him. He needs to know we’re there for him.”
Wrapping my arms around her trembling body, I kissed the top of her head
, the fruity scent of her shampoo wafting through my nostrils, her hair now soft and wavy, streaming over her shoulders.
“Let me call my dad first and see what he thinks. He knows a few attorneys and was in the military long enough to know a little bit about the judicial system and process.”
I wasn’t worried that my dad wouldn’t know, but I worried he would hold me back from getting involved. And that just wouldn’t do. No sir. I’d do anything to make sure Sage was okay and wouldn’t need to spend even one night in a jail cell.
We gathered up our remaining things and walked to the door. Glancing back, I took one last wistful sweep of the room, mentally giving a good-bye to the night we had planned. Sage and I had wanted to make it perfect for London. He’d even written her a song he was going to play for her on his guitar.
It wasn’t supposed to end like this. It was supposed to be a final farewell to the three of us. Our send-off before I went to boot camp and joined the Air Force, Sage went off to Nashville to start his music career and London went off to college.
But sometimes the universe tips you on your side, shaking loose any semblance of control you thought you had, and knocking you on your ass. Those earthquakes are meant to remind us that we have no fucking control over anything.
Chapter 3
Present Day
“Hi,” London says with that soft lilt that always had a way to melt my insides. “I’m sorry to have just shown up like this, but I ran into your mother in town and she said you were back. I had to come see for myself.”
I don’t know if I should laugh, cry or hug the shit out of her. Of course, my mother would mention I’m here. She was always a fan of London’s and always thought of her as one of her own children.
I lift a shoulder. “Gotta love small town news. It travels faster than the FedEx truck on speed.”