Vegas Baby

by Winter Renshaw

  “I’m going to bed,” I say in a too-cool-to-care tone.

  Royal captures my wrist and pulls my fingers from his mane, rising slowly. Our eyes catch in the dark, and I wonder if he can hear how hard my heart is beating now that we’re standing so close.

  “Friday night,” he says. “I’ll pick you up at seven. We can go into the city. Do anything you want to do.”

  “I don’t want things to be different between us,” I say, “if we go on this date.”

  “You know what I’ve noticed about you?” he asks.

  “What?”

  “You’re always waiting for the other shoe to drop. No matter what, you’re always expecting the worse. Always on edge. Always waiting for something bad to happen.” He cups my face in his hands and tilts his head, studying me. “Everything’s always going to work out. And I can say that, ‘cause I’ve been through some shit and I’m barley eighteen. You have a beautiful life, Demi. Perfect friends, perfect family, perfect house.”

  “I know.” I fold my arms. “I’m thankful for everything I have.”

  He shakes his head, biting the inside of his lip. “Saying that doesn’t make it true.”

  My lips button. I can’t tell him that my entire life, I’ve had this weighted feeling in the pit of my stomach that the second I reach my pinnacle of happiness, it’s all going to be swept away without any kind of warning.

  I’ve never told anyone that. It makes me sound crazy. They’ll chalk it up to anxiety. Mom will ask me to see a shrink. I don’t need talk therapy. It’s just a feeling I’ve always had. Like I was born with it. It’s always been there, like an invisible cloud of darkness lurking over my shoulder.

  “Whatever, Royal.” I move away from him and eye the stairs. “I’m going upstairs now. Don’t forget to ask my dad if you can take me on a date. He’s old-fashioned like that.”

  “Done.”

  I stop, turning back toward him. “Excuse me? When?”

  “Don’t worry about it. But Robert’s cool with it. Laid down some rules, but we’re good.”

  “What did he say?” My curiosity is alive and well. Growing up, Dad always said we couldn’t wear makeup, swear, or date until we were out of the house. I’m sure he was exaggerating, but I can’t imagine he gave Royal his blessing without making it into a big thing.

  “He basically made me promise to marry you someday.” Royal smirks. “More or less. Maybe in not so many words. But the threat was there. Implied really.”

  I roll my eyes. I can see my dad putting the fear of God into Royal.

  “He won’t have to worry about that.” I chuckle and amble toward the landing of the stairs. With my hand on the railing, I look back at Royal, standing in the middle of the dark living room bathed in moonlight. For a fraction of a second, he looks older, wiser, more worldly. I blink and he’s back.

  “Won’t he, though?” Royal winks.

  “Night, Royal.”

  “Night, Demi.”

  ***

  Demi, Age 18

  {18 months later}

  I love him.

  I love him, I love him, I love him, I love him.

  The curtains to my bedroom window are pulled, and I’ve been watching the driveway for hours. Royal had to head upstate to visit some family. I didn’t even know he had family. Never really mentioned anyone, never really talked about his past. But apparently someone needed him because he left in a hurry late last night with a backpack and a half-charged phone. Said he’d be back by dinner Sunday night.

  I roll to my stomach, propping my head in my hands and tapping my fingers along my cheek to the beat of the song pumping through my ear buds.

  Every song reminds me of Royal. I can’t listen to the radio anymore without feeling all the feels, every emotion magnified, every sensation intensified. Nobody ever warned me being in love was like a constant dopamine high.

  I’m addicted. Obsessed. Consumed.

  And so is he.

  He is mine, and I am his.

  We’re going to be together forever.

  Never thought I’d be almost nineteen years old and already head over heels in love with my soul mate. And I think I always knew it would be him; I just didn’t want to admit it.

  The clock on my dresser reads eight. He should’ve been back hours ago.

  I try his cell again, but it goes straight to voicemail. I send a text I know he’ll never read because his phone is obviously dead. The irrational notion that maybe he’s home, and I missed him, creeps through my mind, so I tiptoe to the basement, where he’s been staying since he was kicked out of foster care last year when he turned eighteen.

  His room is empty, but I linger for a moment because it smells like him, and I need my fix.

  I crash on his bed and bury my face in his pillow. A smile creeps across my lips when I remember all the naughty things we’ve done in this private little corner of the basement. Thank God for locks on the door because my parents would flip their shit if they ever walked in on us.

  But we can’t help it.

  Can’t keep our hands to ourselves, and why would we want to when being together feels like winning the lottery a million times over? The stupid smile on my face has become a permanent fixture in the last year and a half because of that boy. And I hope it never fades.

  I pull myself off Royal’s bed when I hear Mom calling out that dinner’s ready. We’re eating late tonight. Apparently I wasn’t the only one waiting for Royal to come home.

  Selfishly, I hate that he had to run off and help someone. Every hour apart is torture. We’ve spent every waking moment together this summer, remorsefully counting down the days on the calendar as we get closer to the weekend my parents move me to my dorm at Hargrove College.

  We’re staying together. Royal promised. But we’ll be a couple hours apart for a while. He’s going to try to find a job closer to me, but until then, we’re soaking in these carefree summer nights like they’re going out of style.

  Climbing the stairs, I amble down the hall and see Mom removing an extra place-setting at the end of the table.

  My heart drops and my hands weaken. I take another step and grab onto the back of Delilah’s chair.

  “Why’d you do that?” I ask Mom. “Why’d you take Royal’s plate away?”

  She turns to me, her expression sullen. “He’s not coming.”

  “He’s not coming…for dinner?” I need clarification. I need context.

  Mom’s gaze lifts across the room to meet my father’s. His lips straighten, and his chest rises and falls with one loaded breath. And then he nods.

  They know something I don’t.

  My chest flutters, opposite my churning stomach.

  “He’s not coming back, Demi.” Mom’s shoulders fall and she turns away, returning his plate and a handful of flatware to their rightful places in her meticulously organized kitchen.

  I laugh. This is a joke. It has to be. Royal’s always messing with people. He’s going to pop around the corner and surprise me with a dozen red roses and two surprise tickets to see the traveling Broadway rendition of Les Mis in the city. He’s random like that. It’s why I love him so.

  “What do you mean, he’s not coming back?” I stumble back until I hit a wall.

  No one’s smiling. No one’s laughing.

  Delilah and Derek stare at their empty plates. Daphne twirls a fork between two fingers.

  “What happened? Is he okay? Did something happen to him?” My words come so fast my lips feel like Jell-O. “Where is he?”

  Dad clears his throat and rises. “You and Royal are through, Demi. That’s all you need to know. He’s not to come back here. And you’re not to see him again. Is that understood?”

  “Robert.” Mom’s voice breaks. From where I stand, I see her clutch her hand across her heart and shake her head, though her back it is toward all of us. I’m sure she’s wishing Dad would’ve delivered his message with a little more compassion, but there’s no delicate way to drop a bomb lik
e that.

  “No. No, no, no, no…” My voice escalates. I repeat the same word over and over, until the back of my throat is raw and it hurts to swallow.

  Thick tears trail my cheeks, and I find myself on the floor after a minute, my knees pulled up against my chest and my face buried. Someone’s arms are around me. Delilah maybe? No, feels like Daphne. I don’t bother looking up. I don’t have the energy.

  “No…”

  I close my eyes for just a second, and when I open them, I’m alone in my dark bedroom. Buried under a mountain of covers. Broken.

  Chapter One

  Demi

  {Present Day}

  “You’re a saint, Demi. You really are. Brooks is so lucky to have you.” Brenda Abbott kisses the top of my head as I sit at the foot of her son’s hospital bed, rubbing lotion into his dry skin. “He’s going to wake up soon. I just know it.”

  She pouts her lips, her eyes swollen and void of makeup.

  The gaudy three-carat cushion diamond on my left ring fingers sparkles beneath the low light above his bed. Forty-eight hours ago, I took it off. Forty-eight hours ago, I called the caterer, cancelled the band, and begged the photographer for at least some of our deposit back.

  Brooks called off the wedding with some bullshit excuse about not being ready and peeled out of the driveway in his red Mercedes CLA. The one he crumpled and shredded when he ran off the road and hit a guardrail. The one currently reduced to a pile of scrap metal in some junkyard on the bad side of town.

  It was late. I still don’t know where he was going, but clearly he was in a hurry to get there.

  I poured myself a glass of wine and went to bed wearing an old t-shirt of an ex-boyfriend’s out of spite. Couldn’t sleep that night. Just laid awake beating myself up for feeling relief over anguish.

  “He’s going to be fine,” I assure his mom, though I’m not exactly qualified to give that kind of reassurance. I went to school to teach kindergarteners, not diagnose the uncertain futures of trauma patients.

  The steady gush and hiss of a machine that breathes for Brooks fills the tiny room.

  A nurse knocks on the door. “So sorry, folks. Visiting hours are over. You can come back in the morning.”

  Brenda slips her bag over her shoulder, refusing to take her eyes off her swollen and mangled son as if she might miss a hint of a twist. I don’t remind her that his coma is medically induced, and she’s probably not going to miss a thing until they try and bring him out of it.

  “You going to be okay tonight, sweetie?” Brenda rubs the spot between my shoulder blades. Small, hurried circles. Comforting yet detached. I’ve been with Brooks since our senior year at Hargrove, and I’ve known Brenda for years. I always thought she was strong, but now I’m beginning to think she just sucks at showing emotion.

  “I’ll be fine,” I say. She doesn’t need to worry about anything other than Brooks. What happens to me is insignificant compared to everything he’s going to be dealing with when he wakes up.

  If he wakes up.

  The doctors say he might not be able to walk or talk. They’re unsure about the amount of brain damage he’ll have to contend with. Every organ in his body is swollen. None of the tests they’ve run have given us much in the way of optimism.

  “You’ll stay with him, right?” Brenda lifts her eyebrows.

  My gaze snaps toward hers.

  “He’s going to need your help,” she says. “He’ll have a lengthy recovery ahead of him.”

  I nod. I don’t want to think about tomorrow or the day after or the months to follow. I’m taking things minute by minute, hour by hour.

  “I’ll make sure he knows you never left his side,” she says. “I’ll remind him every damn day for the rest of his life.”

  Brooks’ nurse clears her throat from the corner. I cover his legs with a white flannel blanket, set the lotion aside, and gather my things. I need a shower. I need a hot meal. I need a full night’s rest.

  Brenda slips her phone from her pocket and leaves. She’s been doing that all day, taking phone calls, spreading the word. One of his aunts started a Go Fund Me page for his “likely lengthy recovery and the medical bills he’s going to face” despite the fact that the Abbotts are one of the wealthiest families in Rixton County. And despite the fact that we don’t even know if he’s going to pull through. On at least four occasions, I caught Brenda taking screenshots of various headlines from online news articles discussing the accident. She claimed she pinned them to a Pinterest board to make a “digital scrapbook” for Brooks to see when he wakes up.

  I guess we all deal with things differently.

  Twelve hours I spent with that woman today and I still didn’t have the courage to tell her Brooks and I broke up the night of his accident. I imagine the way her face might fall when I tell her. I imagine half of Rixton Falls will hear within hours. And I imagine the snickers and stares I’ll face from locals who balk at my timing.

  “Yeah, sure,” they’ll say. “Nice timing.”

  No one will believe it. I’ll be branded a shitty human being.

  The pads of my shoes make soft, sticky noises as I leave the hospital. Outside an early November snow begins to fall. The flakes are huge, but they don’t stick. Nothing ever really sticks around Rixton Falls.

  Except idiots like me.

  I climb into my Subaru and crank the ignition. Cold air blows through the vents, and I shove my fingers up against them as if that might possibly make the air turn warm any faster.

  Five minutes later, I’m floating down the quiet streets of my hometown, past the blue-roofed library with the iron lizard sculpture. Past the Diary Queen. Past the nursing home and the movie theater. Past the hill we used to sled down every winter. Down the avenues we used to cruise when there was nothing better to do on a small town, Friday night.

  They all blur together like a messy streak of memories, and they all silently whisper his name.

  Royal.

  In the darkest hours of every day, my mind wanders to him. I’m stuck treading these same waters. Day in. Day out. Going nowhere. Feeling it all.

  I want to shove a fistful of my hurt down his throat so he can taste an ounce what he’s done to me since he left.

  We could’ve been happy, Royal and me. We were supposed to end up together. We had it all mapped out. And then he disappeared without so much as a goodbye. Now it appears as if I’ll spend the rest of my life taking care of a man who informed me just forty-eight hours ago that he did not want to marry me after all.

  And in an ironic twist of fate, I don’t think I ever really loved Brooks anyway.

  Royal Lockhart ruined my life. Maybe not directly. But it’s all the same.

  I hate him.

  I hate him, I hate him, I hate him.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Winter Renshaw recently celebrated her third 29th birthday. By day, she wrangles kids and dogs, and by night, she wrangles words. She loves peonies, lipstick, and balmy summer days. Chips and salsa are her jam, and so is cruising down the highway with the windows down and the air blasting while 80s rock blares from the speakers of her Mom-UV.

  She would describe her writing style as sexy, conflicted, and laced with heart. Her heroes are always alpha and her heroines are always smart and independent. HEA guaranteed.

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  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  Last, but certainly not least, I wanted to thank some of the lovely people who helped make this book possible. So, in no particular order…

  Katrina
…thank you for the relentless brainstorming sessions and for always being at my disposal and never acting annoyed when I vent to you about the same things 100x a day.

  Valorie…thank you for always squeezing my edits in on such short notice! I’m so glad we get to work together!

  To my family…so much support it’s insane. Thank you for letting me believe I can juggle it all, even on those days when it’s painfully obvious that I can’t.

  Camp Winter…just a simple shout out to say I heart you guys. Thanks for always answering my silly questions, participating in my polls, and letting me occupy your newsfeed for the most random of reasons. ;-)

  To my ARC reader/reviewers…thank you for your support. Your enthusiasm warms my heart (and strokes my ego-ha ha) every time!

  To my readers and fans…thank you for choosing MY books. There are so many amazingly talented authors and so many incredible books to pick from, but the fact that you selected me is incredibly humbling. You’re the sparkplugs in my engine. You keep me going! If it weren’t for you, none of these books would happen. <3