by Tracey Ward
Table of Contents
Prologue
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
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
CUT
DEVIL’S DUE
BOOK ONE
By Tracey Ward
CUT
DEVIL’S DUE
BOOK ONE
By Tracey Ward
Text Copyright © 2017 Tracey Ward
All Rights Reserved
All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author, except as used in book review.
This is a work of fiction. Characters, names, places, events, or incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to places or incidents is purely coincidental.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Prologue
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
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
About the Author
Prologue
Harlow
We sit Sixteen Candles style on my bed; Josh and I, and a candy bar between us. The crinkly, red wrapper shines in the candlelight like bold fire. Encased inside are sweet and sugary twins laid side by side. One for him. One for me.
“Happy birthday to you,” Josh sings softly, his mouth quirked in a crooked, self-deprecating grin. “Happy birthday to you. Happy birthday to Harlow. Happy birthday to you.”
I press my fingers to my lips, shaking my head in amazement. “Wow. Thank you. That was really something.”
“You’re welcome.”
I drop my hands and the act into my lap. “I’m being sarcastic.”
“No, I know. I can pick up on basic social cues, thanks.”
“You can’t sing, Josh. You remember that, right?”
He chuckles. “I sit here and serenade you with my heart and soul, and that’s the thanks I get?”
I take his hand in mine, squeezing it hard. “If that was your heart and soul, you have a darkness in you that I didn’t know about.”
“You are such a bitch.”
I laugh, releasing him. My palm feels instantly cold. Neglected. “You’ve known me for eighteen years. You don’t get to act surprised by that tonight.”
“How does it feel?” he asks semi-seriously. His tone is light but his eyes are intent on mine, watching for micro-emotions that might flicker across my face without my consent. “Do you feel any different being a legal adult?”
I take a deep breath as I glance around my room. It’s the same cell I’ve been in my whole life, this house my prison since the day I was born. But as of one minute ago when the clock struck midnight, the locks magically dissolved. I could walk out the door right now and there’s nothing my dad can say or do about it.
It’s an impossible idea to understand.
“I feel like I should,” I confess to Josh hesitantly, “but I don’t. Not yet.”
He nods in understanding. “You will. Tomorrow when you leave for good, you’ll feel it.”
My stomach knots, rising into my chest to compress it painfully. “God, I’m so nervous about that.”
“Are you worried about what your dad will do?”
“What can he do?” I ask, honestly wondering. “I’m eighteen. I’m free.”
“But you don’t feel it.”
“No.” I look down at the Twix between us, my fingers toying with the rigid edge of the wrapper. “Or maybe I do and I just don’t know it. I’ve never been free before so how the hell would I know what it feels like?”
“Do you feel relieved?”
“No.”
“Hmm.”
I look up at him expectantly. “What’s that? What’s with the ‘hmm’?”
He shrugs. “I don’t know. I feel relieved that you’re getting out. I thought you would too.”
“You’re relieved I’m getting out but you don’t like the way I’m doing it,” I call him out.
“Yeah,” he mumbles. “Something like that.”
“Exactly like that.”
“It doesn’t matter what I think.”
“Since when?”
He sits up straight, leaning back from me. His eyes are everywhere but on my face, roving the room for something to anchor himself to. There’s such a mix of emotions that rides this current, one we’ve been down so many times before. Sometimes it’s hard to keep your bearings.
“What do you want me to say, Harlow? I think Devo is an okay guy, but do I think it’s a good option to jump on the back of his bike and go be his old lady after only a few months of dating? No. I don’t.”
“I know that.”
“Then why do you keep quizzing me on it? I’m never gonna give you a different answer. I don’t like it but I can’t do shit about it, so… that’s it. It—that’s that. Right?”
“Right,” I mutter half-heartedly.
I’m annoyed that we’re talking about this, but I brought it up, didn’t I? I always do. I don’t want to talk about it but I can’t stop asking him to. Like a kid with a bruise they can’t stop pushing on. Pressing into the purple coloration to test the sting of it.
The subject hurts as much tonight as it did three months ago when I beat it into my skin, telling myself that this is my exit. This is my only way out.
Josh is looking at me now. Studying me. He licks his lips before softly offering, “If you’re not sure, you don’t have to go to the club with him. I mean, he just pledged an MC. It’s not like pledging a frat. They’re pretty intense about it, aren’t they?”
“Yeah, you’re right, but I need to get out of here.” I rub my tired eyes with the heels of my hands. “That’s about the only thing I’m sure about.”
“You could get your own place. Pops would help you.”
“I can’t afford it and neither can he. My dad has made sure I have exactly zero dollars to keep me dependent on him.”
“You can come live with Pops and me.”
“It’s
just next door. I’d still see him every day. I want distance. Like, a lot of distance.”
“I know, but it’d just be a couple of months until I turned eighteen too. Then we could move across town and get a place of our own.”
“Devo would never go for that. I can’t live with another guy while I’m dating him.”
“So, stop dating him.”
That’s new. Everything up to this point has been rote, a script we follow very precisely every time we talk about this, but that – the suggestion that I dump Devo – is a massive deviation. I’m not totally sure what to do with it.
I frown, opening my mouth to reply.
Nothing comes out.
Josh nods in understanding, reading my silence better than a book. “Yeah, alright. You won’t leave Devo, you can’t live with me, and you can’t stay here another day. You don’t have money to get a place of your own and you won’t take any from Pops. You don’t have any girlfriends to go live with because you’re shit at making friends.”
“I’m not shit at making friends,” I laugh.
Josh smirks. “Oh really? Then why am I your only one?”
“Because I struck gold with you. Why would I look any further for a friend?”
“That’s good. Nice one.”
I smile. “You like that?”
“Yeah, it was very smooth.”
“I’ve learned from the best. Pops is the biggest sweet-talker in town.”
“And even he couldn’t talk you out of leaving tomorrow.”
My face droops with my spirits. The lightness that was rising around us falls like ash from a fire, slow and delicate. Destroyed.
“I have to go,” I insist irrepressibly. The words are out of my mouth before I can choose them, but I feel them. I know they’re true. And so does he.
“Yeah, I know,” Josh relents gently. “I just don’t like the way you’re leaving. I won’t see you anymore, Harlow. And that’s fucking horrifying.”
“We’ll see each other.”
“When? While you’re working inside the bar I can’t get into or when I’m on campus going to class?”
“In between. When I call you up and say, ‘Hey, Stratford, I haven’t seen you in too long. Wanna split a pizza in the park and talk shit about all the rich kids you’re going to school with?’”
He smirks, a half-smile that I stretch to infinity in my mind, wrapping myself in its warmth. “I could be into that.”
“Then that’s what we’ll do. We won’t lose each other, Josh. I promise.”
He doesn’t look convinced. He looks as worried as I feel, but he lets it go. He sits forward, reaching around to his back pocket before pulling out a small, purple envelope.
“Here,” he says, giving it to me; nearly shoving it in my hands nervously. “I got you this.”
“I thought the candy bar and the company were my birthday presents.”
“It’s your eighteenth birthday, Low. You deserve more a sugar high.”
I feel uncomfortable holding the envelope between my fingers. Pops and Josh are the only people in the world who have ever given me presents. My dad doesn’t believe in them. My mom wasn’t around long enough to give them. I’m not good at taking them. They’re like compliments; I don’t deserve them.
“Just open it,” Josh pushes gently. “It’s nothing huge. I know better than that.”
I gingerly rip the top of the envelope open. When I tip its contents into my palm, they fall heavy and cold, jingling like silver bells at Christmas. I stare down at the keychain he’s given me, confused.
Josh reaches out to turn it over in my hand so I’m looking at the face of it instead of the back. “I know they’re not your initials, but you always said once you turned eighteen you were changing your last name ‘cause you didn’t want your dad’s. So Pops and I agreed to give you ours, if you want it.”
I can’t breathe. I can barely see as tears fill my eyes, pooling distortion across my vision. The keychain is small and silver with two linked letters filled with a beautiful green stone.
HS
Harlow Stratford.
“Josh,” I croak, my throat thin as lace.
“It’s not a big deal,” he promises, heading off my freak out. “It’s not a ring or anything. It’s just… you’re already our family. And if you’re going to get a new name anyway, you may as well have ours.”
My whole life, my dad has told me that I’m shit. That I’m ugly. I’m stupid. I’m worthless. That he’s the only one who will ever love me because, really, what’s there to love? As I’ve grown up, I’ve learned that’s not entirely true. Men love me because I’m beautiful. I’m hot and fun to look at. To touch. And I’m good at touching them. That’s where my value lies and that’s what I’m comfortable with. That’s the truth I can handle.
The truth I’m not so comfortable with, the one that staggers me every single day, is that Pops and Josh love me for something else. Something more, something I can’t see. They say I’m funny. That I’m kind. That I’m smart and strong. Maybe they believe that and maybe they don’t, I don’t know, but it’s a fantasy I’ve never been able to buy into. Especially now as Josh offers me everything I’ve ever wanted in my whole fucked up life; a family.
I can’t stomach it. I can’t understand it. And I definitely can’t accept it.
“Josh, I—”
“Don’t,” he interrupts gently. “Seriously, Harlow, don’t. I’m not taking it back. Keep it or trash it, it doesn’t matter. Do whatever you gotta do with it to be okay. But don’t even try to give it back to me ‘cause I’ll never take it. I’ll never retract the offer.”
I don’t know what to say or what to do. How do you thank someone for something like that? How do you manage the blaze of emotions that run through you like fire through tinder? I can’t, I never could, so I push it away. I put the keychain on my nightstand. I turn my back on it, telling myself to forget it. To leave it when I go in the morning.
Unaffected by my insanity, Josh lifts the candy bar between us, ripping the wrapper down the middle. He offers me both bars.
I smile, taking one. “Thanks.”
“You can have both pieces. I’m not very hungry.”
“Me neither.”
Josh nods, not looking at me again. He does that when he’s working on something. He avoids eye contact as he sorts things out, processing every big idea and plot that runs through his mind at warp speed. Josh is smart in ways I could never dream of. In ways that should make me feel dumb by comparison, but he carries that cleverness so lightly, it doesn’t weigh down on the people around him. He doesn’t lord it over you like an asshole. Like I would if I had it.
“What time is Devo coming?” he asks suddenly.
“Nine. I think.”
Josh nods silently, accepting what he can’t understand.
Devo is pledging The Devil’s Due motorcycle club. They operate out of a bar on the outskirts of town. My dad used to go to go there all the time, mercifully leaving me with Josh and Pops so he could drink himself stupid, but he was banned five years ago for starting a fight he couldn’t finish. Bear, the President of the club, finished it for him. Broke his arm and part of his right eye socket before tossing him out on his ass.
That was the first time The Devil’s Due caught my eye. The second time was when Devo rolled up on me in the grocery store with that Prospect cut on his back, a sexy smirk on his lips, and an education on choosing the right avocado from a mountain of leathery, black mysteries. I stood there with him for ten minutes gently squeezing produce and reminding myself to breathe every time he smiled at me.
I made him guacamole at his apartment that day. He made me come on his couch that night. We’ve been together ever since.
And Josh has hated every second of it.
“It should be me,” he tells me now.
I frown, shifting my fingers nervously on the bar in my hand. It’s melting under the heat of my skin; slick and saccharine. “I don’t know what you m
ean,” I lie quietly.
“It should be me getting you out of here. Not Devo.”
“It doesn’t matter who does it as long as I get away.”
“It matters to me,” he argues obstinately.
“Devo is—”
“It’s not just how you get out, but who you get out with,” he continues, barreling past my defenses. “It should be me. You and me, Harlow. Together.”
Goddamn, I can’t handle this. Not tonight. Not now. I feel dizzy as his words bounce around inside my head, pinging off my skull painfully until the backs of my eyes burn. My stomach rolls, sending bile up high into my chest.
“Josh,” I whisper pleadingly. “This isn’t… We can’t talk about this again.”
“We’ve never talked about it before.”
“It feels like it’s all we talk about.”
“You know, I get that feeling,” he agrees brusquely, “because it’s all I think about. And I know you think about it too, but we never talk about it.”
“What is there to say?”
Josh laughs, but the sound is so far from happy I think it’s more of growl. “You’re leaving in the morning with Devo, so I guess there’s nothing.”
“I can’t…” I take a deep breath, closing my eyes. Finding focus in the darkness inside. “I can’t be with you, Josh.”
“See, it’s shit like that that makes this so hard to deal with.”
“Like what?”
“You can’t be with me. You aren’t saying you don’t want to be.”
I open my eyes, meeting his head on. It’s hard. It’s one of the hardest things I’ll do today, on one of the longest and most arduous days of my life, but I owe him that. I need him to see what I’m thinking. What I’m feeling. I need him to understand all the things that I don’t.
“I don’t know how to talk about this with you,” I confess weakly. “I’m not like that. I’m not like you.”
“Like what?”
“Healthy. Smart. You can say exactly what you want and what you mean and you’re not afraid, but I’m terrified. I’m scared of everything. Especially you. That’s the problem. That’s why I can’t go with you and why I’m leaving with Devo. I don’t give a shit if things go wrong with Devo. It doesn’t matter. He doesn’t care and neither do I. But if it was you… with you, I would—” I swallow hard, trying to sort out my head that’s spinning wildly, thoughts flying past like debris in a tornado’s eye. As soon as I spot them, I lose them. I’m not fast enough to grab them. To understand them. I never have been. “You matter. You’re the only one who matters.”