by Megan Hart
“So much has changed around here,” she said.
Alicia nodded. “Yep. You haven’t been back in a long time.”
“No. I wouldn’t have come back at all, if not for my dad.”
“I’m sorry. It’s hard to lose someone. When Jennilynn died, it seemed like it would take forever to get over the loss. To be honest, I’m not sure I ever did. I know my parents haven’t done a great job. And Ilya…” Alicia shrugged, looking embarrassed. “Sorry, I didn’t mean to hijack your grief.”
“It’s fine. I didn’t take it that way.” Rebecca sipped coffee. “I’m sorry about your sister, too. It must have been harder for you all. She was so young, and it was so unexpected. My dad had been sick on and off for a long time.”
“I don’t know if that makes it any better. Losing someone you love is always hard, no matter what.” Alicia gave Rebecca a small, sad smile.
Rebecca glanced at her watch. “I should get back to my mom. I left her napping. If she wakes up and I’m gone, she might worry.”
“Sure, of course. Thanks for the coffee. If I can help you with anything else, let me know.”
They both stood.
Rebecca hesitated, thinking of the long ago night when she and Tristan had been in his room and Jennilynn had barged in with his dad. It hadn’t been much longer after that before the girl had been found dead. Neither she nor Tristan had come forward with that information back then. Steve Weatherfield had skipped town. She and Tristan had…well. They’d ended things, and not on a good note. Rebecca had gotten pregnant. Married. She’d left town. She had no idea where Tristan might have gone, or if he were still around.
Back at her parents’ house, she checked on her mother. Still sleeping. With a bottle of wine and a crystal wine glass, Rebecca went into her childhood bedroom and opened up her laptop. It took only a few seconds to log in to her Connex account. She wasn’t active on there, preferring photo-based social media because it was easier to keep track of her pictures that way.
She found Tristan’s profile with only another minute or so of searching. She scanned it. According to the information, he was married, and he still lived in Quarrytown.
Married, she thought. Well. Damn.
Then she closed her laptop and went about the very serious business of drinking that wine.
Chapter 22
Jenni
On the Night She Died
Jenni’s skin crawled at Barry’s touch. She’d known it, known he was a fucking perverted creepo who’d be down to get it on with her. Even when she showed up with the bloody mouth and the start of the black eye, all she had to do was crook her finger, and he was ready to go.
“What the hell do you mean, give you the pills? You give me the cash,” Barry demanded when they’d finished what had passed for their sordid coupling. He hadn’t even been able to get hard. She should be glad he only slobbered all over her. “That’s how this works.”
“Nope. How this worksh...works,” she restated to be more clear, “is that you’re going to give me the pills and the money. I’m getting out of here. I need product, and I need cash.”
Barry shook his head. “No fucking way.”
They hadn’t met at the house, because Galina was home from work. She was the one who stole the pills from the hospital, but she’d always insisted she never wanted to know anything about what happened to them after that. Barry and Jenni had met in the old equipment shed instead. Cold rain slanted through the holes in the roof, and Jenni shook with the chill. Her chattering teeth annoyed her, and she clenched her jaw to make them stop.
“What happened to your face?”
“You asked me that already.” She touched her lip. She knew it should hurt, but she’d taken a couple of pills and wasn’t feeling much of anything.
“You didn’t answer me.” Barry pulled his coat up around his neck. “Jesus, Jennilynn. You’re a mess. What the hell is going on with you? Who did this? Dillon?”
“Not him. You.” She tried to laugh, but it came out mushy and unformed. She jabbed a finger at him. “You did this to me. Or that’s what I’m going to tell everyone unless you give me those pills. Oh, and the money.”
“Not happening.” Barry shook his head.
Jenni took a step toward him, but the ground was uneven and her balance no good. She fell forward, smacking her knee against a rotting office chair and hitting her head on the shed’s wall for good measure. She fought off Barry’s hands when he tried to help her up.
“I’ll tell them you hit me! And raped me! And whatever else I want!” That’s what she thought she shouted, but the words stuttered and wouldn’t come out right. She laughed again, the sound a mumbled jumble, a slurring mutter. It was really all she could manage. “I’ll tell Galina you fucked me.”
“Jesus, we barely…we didn’t even.” Barry recoiled.
“She’ll believe me. Doesn’t matter if the cops don’t, but they would too.”
Barry shook his head. “You’ve clearly been fucking someone else.”
“I’ll tell them, and show them, and what the hell, I’ll tell them about the pills, too. Then you’ll be the one who gets fucked.” This seemed hilarious to her. Barry didn’t seem to agree.
“Jesus, fuck. Don’t. Please,” he said.
Pathetic piece of shit. Jenni wove, standing still but unsteady. She hated him. If not for him, she’d never have done any of this. She would never have gone with Steve. She’d have worked at the diner and made money like a normal person, and she’d have kept it all.
“Give me the pills! And the money!” She shouted, her voice hoarse and breaking.
“Shit,” Barry cried. “What the hell am I supposed to tell Galina about the money? She counts it, you know! All of it! And she’s the only reason I get the fucking pills in the first place!”
“You think I give one tiny little damn what you tell your wife?” She sneered the word.
“I don’t have any of it. You think I carry all of that around with me all the time?”
He was lying, she thought. “Why’d you meet me here, then?”
“To get my money from you, you stupid little bitch.”
Jenni spat a fresh gobbet of blood onto the ground. “Why is it that men always call us stupid bitches when they don’t get their own way?”
Barry didn’t answer her on that. He pushed past her, pausing in the shed’s rotten doorway. “Just…get some help. I don’t care about the money. If you tell me who he is, I’ll make him stop hurting you.”
She didn’t answer him. Barry left. He didn’t really want to help her, Jenni thought. Nobody ever did.
Outside, she fought through the chill rain and the trees that slapped her in the face and bruised her even more. She stumbled from the edge of the treeline and made it to the passenger side of Steve’s car, parked in the dead end of the cul-de-sac. Ballsy of him. If anyone in her house or the Sterns’ across the street looked outside, they could possibly see it, even though the black car blended into the night. They’d wonder who was parked there. They might even come out to check, or call the police.
The door didn’t open. Locked. Motherfucker. She went around to the driver’s side. He rolled down the window.
“You get the stuff?”
“He didn’t have it!” she said, trying to get his door open.
Steve pushed her hand away from the handle and then pushed her back with a rough shove to her chest. She stumbled and went onto her ass. Startled more than hurt, since she was still feeling hardly any pain, Jenni got to her feet.
“I’m out of here,” he told her. “Go home, little girl.”
“Wait. I thought we were leaving town. Together?”
Steve spit into the rain. “Nah. Not unless you can get me the stash and the cash, bitch.”
Again with the bitch. She was fed-fucking-up with this bullshit, but when she tried to tell him so, all she could manage was a garbled mutter. Jenni tried to stand up straight but couldn’t quite manage. Another rush of rain pounded down, soaking he
r.
Steve revved the engine and pulled the car around the cul-de-sac’s curve so fast she had to jump out of the way. She fell on her ass again, this time in the muddy grass on the other side of the curb. She stayed there, trying to shout a few curses at him but unable to get her mouth to work right.
He’d left her.
He’d taken her money, and now he was leaving her behind. She’d let him beat her fucking face to threaten Barry, and he was still dumping her. She tried to scream but found no voice. Her fists clenched, her nails digging into her palms. She went to her knees, gouging at her cheeks. Slapping her own face.
Stupid bitch. Stupid bitch. Stupid bitch.
She had no money. Barry would probably refuse to let her sell for him anymore. She’d pushed Ilya away. Lost Steve. Lost everything.
She.
Had.
Nothing.
Fuck Steve. Fuck Barry and Galina, and Ilya Stern, fuck everyone in this town. Jenni staggered through the grass to the woods beyond. The trail was invisible in the dark and rain, but her feet found the way by long years of habit, not sight.
She didn’t think about where she was going, or why. She thought only of the slow rise of pain in all the places she’d allowed Steve to hurt her. Of the pain beneath all the bruises and cuts that none of Barry’s pills could numb. She thought of plans and fear and grief.
She thought of love, and the lack of it.
The rock outcropping where they put their towels in the summer was slick with wet and dark as the night surrounding it. Jenni went to her hands and knees on the rough surface. Her chin hit the rock. She pushed up on her hands, crawling to the edge.
Water below.
Water from the sky above.
Water, all around.
She got to her feet and put her toes to the rock’s rim. Arms out. Face tipped to the sky, mouth open so it could fill with rain. She stayed like that forever, an eternity. For the rest of her life.
One step forward was all it took. She hit the rocks. Then the water.
There was no more pain.
* * *
The Quarry Street Series…
This sexy romantic drama from New York Times and USA Today bestselling author Megan Hart begins with the tangled lives—and loves—of childhood friends in All the Lies We Tell…
Everyone knew Alicia Harrison’s marriage to Ilya Stern wouldn’t last. They’d grown up on a remote stretch of Quarry Street, where there were two houses, two sets of siblings, and eventually, a tangled mess of betrayal, longing, and loss. Tragedy catapulted Allie and Ilya together, but divorce—even as neighbors—has been relatively uncomplicated.
Then Ilya’s brother, Nikolai, comes home for their grandmother’s last days. He’s the guy who teased and fought with Allie, infuriated her, then fled town without a good-bye. Now Niko makes her feel something else entirely—a rush of connection and pure desire that she’s been trying to quench since one secret kiss years ago. Niko’s not sticking around. She’s not going to leave. And after all that’s happened between their families, this can’t be anything more than brief pleasure and a bad idea.
But the lies we tell ourselves can’t compete with the truths our hearts refuse to let go…
The story continues in All the Secrets We Keep…In the riveting conclusion to Megan Hart’s passionate new family drama, the secrets they keep are no match for the truths their hearts will never let go.
Still stuck in his small Central Pennsylvania hometown, Ilya Stern is used to feeling like a disappointment. After his high school girlfriend, Jennilynn, drowned, he married her sister, Alicia, only to divorce a decade later. The business they started together is threatened by a luxury development—and Alicia has already sold her stake. Now that Babulya, Ilya’s gentle Russian grandmother, has died, there’s no one left who believes in him. Or so he thinks.
Theresa Malone was Ilya’s stepsister for only a year, until his mother threw her pill-popping father out of the house in the middle of the night, forcing teenage Theresa to follow. Now she’s returned for Babulya’s funeral—and to facilitate the quarry-development deal. As she tries to convince Ilya to sell, she realizes her feelings for him have ignited—from sisterly into something more.
Working together closely, Ilya and Theresa struggle to define their intense attraction. When the details of Jennilynn’s death surface, will Ilya and Theresa’s deep connection keep their hope for the future afloat—or submerge them once and forever in their tragic past?
All the Lies We Tell
All the Secrets We Keep
The Quarry Street Series continues…
All the Truths We Reveal
Coming soon!
Tristan Weatherfield grew up a cliché. Wrong side of the tracks, poor family, trouble with the law. He was the quintessential bad boy with a thing for the golden good girl. Rebecca Segal, smart, poised, heir to the fortune of one of Quarrytown’s most prominent families.
Of course Tristan and Rebecca were wrong for each other.
Of course they fell in love.
Or lust, at least. Passion. Furtive and delicious and exciting and fraught with guilt.
The night they witnessed some of fellow student Jennilynn Harrison’s final moments signaled the end of a relationship that had never been meant to last. Bonded forever by what they saw that night and the death of their classmate, Tristan and Rebecca nevertheless part ways and don’t keep in touch.
Now, Rebecca’s father has passed away and she’s back in Quarrytown. Dealing with her ex-husband, her former high school boyfriend, her estranged son and her distraught, helpless mother, leaves Rebecca ready to flee this small town the first chance she gets…just the way she did so many years ago.
Yet when she and Tristan get back in touch, their former passion and friendship is undeniable. With even more secrets between them than either of them know and neither willing to be vulnerable, their past seems destined to haunt them forever worse than any ghost ever could.
Also by Megan Hart
All the Lies We Tell
All the Secrets We Keep
A Heart Full of Stars
Always You
Broken
Castle in the Sand
Clearwater
Crossing the Line
Deeper
Dirty
Don’t Deny Me
Everything Changes
Every Part of You
Flying
Hold Me Close
Indecent Experiment
Lovely Wild
Naked
Out of the Dark
Passion Model
Precious and Fragile Things
Reawakened Passions
Ride with the Devil
Selfish is the Heart
Stranger
Stumble into Love
Switch
Tear You Apart
Tempted
The Darkest Embrace
The Favor
The Resurrected: Compendium
The Space Between Us
Vanilla
About the Author
I was born and then I lived awhile. Then I did some stuff and other things. Now, I mostly write books. Some of them use a lot of bad words, but most of the other words are okay.
I can’t live without music, the internet, or the ocean, but I have kicked the Coke Zero habit. I can’t stand the feeling of corduroy or velvet, and modern art leaves me cold. I write a little bit of everything from horror to romance, and I don’t answer to the name “Meg.”
Megan Hart is a USA Today, Publisher’s Weekly and New York Times bestselling author who writes in many genres including mainstream fiction, erotic fiction, science fiction, romance, fantasy and horror. If you liked this book, please tell everyone you love to buy it. If you hated it, please tell everyone you hate to buy it.
Find me here!
www.meganhart.com
[email protected]
ht She Died: A Quarry Street Story