Sunshine Bleeds A Black Edge (The Wild Things (standalone) Book 3)
Page 1
By
A. Wilding Wells
Copyright 2016 A. Wilding Wells
All rights reserved.
This work, Sunshine Bleeds A Black Edge, is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever.
For more information, please contact A. Wilding Wells at aw@awildingwells.com.
www.awildingwells.com
www.instagram.com/awildingwells
www.pinterest.com/awildingwells
www.facebook.com/awildingwells
www.goodreads.com/awildingwells
Table of Contents
Chapter 1 Coming Undone
Chapter 2 Snowvale
Chapter 3 Gossip
Chapter 4 Wishbone
Chapter 5 Hurricane
Chapter 6 Black Edge
Chapter 7 Cherry Pie
Chapter 8 Murder
Chapter 9 Sassy Little Cuss
Chapter 10 Miles And Miles
Chapter 11 Smoke Into Fire
Chapter 12 To The Core
Chapter 13 Flipside
Chapter 14 Too Much Hurt
Chapter 15 Fishing
Chapter 16 Thread By Thread
Chapter 17 Crosses And Lies
Chapter 18 Privilege Of Damage
Chapter 19 This Could Be Us
Chapter 20 Tincat
Chapter 21 Sweet Thing
Chapter 22 What You Wanted
Chapter 23 You And Me
Chapter 24 Martyr
Chapter 25 Lie Worth Living
Chapter 26 Make Some Men
Chapter 27 Unless
Chapter 28 Another Face
Chapter 29 Promise
Chapter 30 A Sliver Of Moonshine
Chapter 31 Good Reason
Chapter 32 Overnight
Chapter 33 Meaningful Things
Chapter 34 Rock, Paper, Scissors
Chapter 35 I Lost You
Chapter 36 Dessert
Chapter 37 Forgiveness
Chapter 38 Surrender
Chapter 39 Then I Ran
Chapter 40 False Bravado
Chapter 41 Crazy Little Town
Chapter 42 The Boy
Chapter 43 Heart And Soul
Chapter 44 Set Me Free
Chapter 45 Helpless
Chapter 46 Bright haze
Chapter 47 On My Knees
Chapter 48 I Loved The Devil
Chapter 49 He Was There
Chapter 50 Rumors
Chapter 51 Fragments
Chapter 52 Redemption
Chapter 53 Hornets By The Dozen
Chapter 54 Stay
Chapter 55 Magically
Chapter 1
Ruby
(Paris, France)
As I peer at the contents in the tiny open box resting on my shaking hands my stomach flips.
Bile rises in my throat as I try to make out the partly smudged postmark. Snowvale, Wisconsin. My hometown. Shoving the box into my bag, I nestle it next to the paperwork for the house I recently purchased in Snowvale. A home on the lake for my mom and younger brother, Echo.
“He’s waiting for you,” Florence, the receptionist says. “And, Ruby, congratulations! Vogue tweeted about your new makeup campaign this morning!”
Breathe and speak. You cannot come undone in the lobby of the biggest modeling agency in the world. I lift my head and look at her, certain I’m seeing triples of everything. Someone in Snowvale knows what happened to me? Air is suddenly scarce, a mere whisper passing my lips. “Oh. Thanks, honey,” I say softly.
“Are you all right?” Florence asks.
“I’m going to be…sick.”
I hurry down the hall and duck into the ladies’ room just in time. How can this be happening? I want to flush the box contents down the toilet along with my vomit, make everything go away.
Staring in the mirror while washing my hands, I see fragments of the girl whose life was forever changed in minutes on her high school graduation night.
Emerald eyes glow back at me, then tears follow, rivering down my pale cheeks. Threading my trembling fingers through my long blond hair, I hear his voice. Rebel Field. I see him standing in front of me on the shoulder of the highway the day I ran away to save my soul. And the sad expression on his face when I told him not to follow me to the airport. Rebel. My best friend, my lover. And, the one man I’ve never forgotten.
“Ruby?” Teddy says from the other side of the door. “Are you okay, darling? Florence says you’re ill.” The door squeals when Teddy pushes through it.
“I’m—
“Ruby…Jesus. What’s wrong?” He wraps his arms around me, his warm, sexy scent enveloping me.
“It’s nothing. Just nerves about going home.” Though I love and trust Teddy, I can’t tell him about my past. Can’t tell anyone. It was enough just thinking about seeing Rebel again when I fly home next week. But now this?
Teddy kisses my wet cheeks, his azure blue eyes wandering my face with concern. He not only founded the agency, he was its biggest grossing model for years. He owns the words mysterious, dark and sexy. “Shorten the trip, go for a week instead of two. Meet me in Cannes, maybe you’ll accept my proposal this time?” He waggles his brow.
That would be his third marriage proposal. Maybe I should accept it and move on. I know all love is not the same. Not all people reach inside you, searing themselves to your memory. I know because I’ve mourned for years the soul-filling love Rebel gave me. “Teddy.” I huff out a breath. “It’s not going to happen with us. I love you, but—”
“I know. Are you sure you’re okay?” He brushes my hair aside and places a soft kiss on my temple. “Hate to see my girl cry. I know we’ve been off for a while, not seeing each other, but still…I love you and I need to know you really are okay.”
“I’ll be fine.”
Fine? Yeah. But will I find out who sent the box? And if it’s linked to the murder?
Chapter 2
Ruby
(Snowvale, Wisconsin)
“Mom, you’re going to throw your back out.” I clutch my mother’s rail-thin arm as she tucks her pet swan, Lake, into the back seat of her rusted-out Wagoneer.
“He goes everywhere with me. He’s suffered enough loss.” She nestles next to her bird, double belts them, smooths her hand down her skirt, and lets the list of deads roll. “Opal and your father. God bless…”
“Goddamn, Mom. Are you going to go through the whole deads list every time you bless anyone?”
She slips her rosary out of her purse, works her fingers over the beads, and continues chanting her list of deads. It’s one of her many lists. And one of her many quirks. She’s list obsessed. The deads, the gays, the riches, the poors, the outs, the down-and-outs. She’s a little different. Always moving sideways. Read: beautifully batty. And, after my sister, Opal committed suicide, she dipped deeper into the buggy pot. Then she had a nervous breakdown and took one more dive. After Dad passed, our long-distance phone conversations took on all kinds of new eccentricities. Opal and Dad sometimes joined in on calls.
The deads were not going to be disregarded, according to Mom.
I slam the car door—too hard. Nerves. I still haven’t seen him. Rebel Rifle Field. Maybe I’ll find the courage to seek him out t
oday. The one guy who stole my heart. Could he still own every beat of it?
Maybe it’s naïve to think he might still want me. And what if he does? What about my life and career an ocean away? Could I ever live here again? Could I leave Paris and my career? My whole life is there now. And this town is the opposite of Paris.
I toss a bag of clothing headed for Goodwill in the back of the Jeep and then ease into the driver’s side.
“Don’t take the Lord’s name in rain. God and damn are not like peanut butter and mayonnaise.”
In rain? Yup, that’s another new thing with her, word mix-ups. Mom clears her throat three times. It’s always three times: one for the Father, one for the Son, and one for the Holy Ghost.
“You must have picked that sass up while you were gallivanting around the world.”
“In vain, Mom, not rain. And, my gallivanting bought the house you and Echo are moving into.” I back the car out of the driveway and head toward town, a sweet-and-sour taste on my tongue as we pass the high school.
Mom clucks her tongue and yells, “Stop correcting me!”
I swing a right on Main Street as Mom waves her errands list, catching my attention.
“I need a hair trap. Stop at Field and Farm first.”
Maybe a tongue trap too.
I break out in a rapid sweat. “So…Rebel’s hardware store? Is that it?” I ask, knowing the answer, my pulse racing.
“That’s it. S’pose I should’ve told you more about him...but…” Mom clears her throat three times. “Was a shame. She got clocked at the Stop-N-Go. One of the deads now. T-boned, don-cha know. Boy lived.”
Mom travels in and out of thoughts so recklessly that it’s impossible to keep up without acting like bumpers on a pinball machine.
“You’re speaking in tongues. Please, Ma. Use full sentences and names.”
Confused and annoyed, I pull over, jam the shift into park, and process the mind dump she’s unloaded. “What are you talking about? One thing at a time. Start with Rebel.” I twist to face her.
Her eyebrows rise as she makes the sign of the cross. “Wife died in a car accident. Went through a Stop-N-Go on red. Has a sixteen-year-old. Name is Rifle, he lived. Paris died.”
He has a sixteen-year-old kid? My heart thumps hard. He was married? I hate this. Foolishly, I’d tried to imagine him single all those years. I made myself believe he missed me. Needed me. I’m as delusional as my mother. “I’ll wait for you,” he said. I guess not.
I huff out a breath. “Paris?”
“Paris was Rebel’s wife.” She smiles. “Bless her soul.”
The list of deads rolls off her tongue while I tap my fingers against the unraveling braid of pleather on the steering wheel.
“The ladies at the salon thought that was droll since you left him for Paris, and he off and married Paris.” Mom laughs and laughs. She laughs so hard that she has to dab the corners of her eyes with a hanky.
The reality of Rebel’s situation screams at me as I hold on to the truth and ramble off a, “Holy fucking shit.”
“That tongue of yours ought to be—”
She was going to say slit. She always said that—until Opal’s tongue was slit by the Kline boys as a warning the night my life fell apart. Mom doesn’t know who slit it. I was the only one who knew everything. Or so I wanted to believe, until that box arrived and changed everything. Except this. My sister died because of me. I’d thought I was saving her by being a martyr. There was never a choice. But I’d thought someone was going to come and save us. I was betting on God or Rebel. Neither showed. I needed Opal to survive. One of us had to. I was willing to die on the inside to save her life. She never would have survived what they did to me.
It never crossed my mind it would kill her to be a witness.
Chapter 3
Rebel
(Snowvale, Wisconsin)
In a town this size, you know everyone’s business. Every affair. Death. Facelift. Stomach stapling. Marriage and miscarriage are gossiped about between grocery aisles and church pews alike. Rumors are spread as easily as manure on the fields. So, the second I heard Ruby bought a place on the lake for her mom and her brother, I knew she was coming home. Call it premonition or faith. Call it cocky. She was coming for me.
I really have no right to stake claim to her after all these years. Even though I told her I’d wait. But then I saw it happen twice in recent years at school reunions. Past lovers reunited. And some of them weren’t much more than a high school fling as I recall.
Ruby and I though… Do we have a chance like that? Can we take what we had back then—magic, love, and lust—and turn it into a future?
She might have gone on and become a famous star to the rest of the world. But, to me, she was it.
My universe.
She’s been back three days. And I have counted every second of each of them. Three days and I’m out of my mind because I haven’t seen her. My Ruby Mae. She’s going to have to come to me. That’s how this is going down. Find me, show me the necklace and the promise ring I gave her, and tell me the real reason she left and wasn’t wearing them when she did.
I tug the back of my son’s collar. “Rifle, help Father H. find electrical tape.”
He leads the pastor toward the tape aisle.
After turning the corner, I crash into someone. When my nerves feel the first jolt, I laugh. “Hey, sorry ’bout that.”
Soft curves fill my grip. Ample breasts splash against my chest. Familiar laughter sparkles like a cache of crystals. And sweet memories hit me hard. Things I still crave: the flesh of her waist, which is now in my hands. Things I need: her love. Things I wanted: stolen.
I quickly drop my hands from her, and immediately clasp the back of my neck, optimistic my fingers won’t move on their own volition back to her. But Jesus fucking Christ, look at her. Ruby Mae Rose. All grown up, a worldly, knowing grin on her face, which I have no business admiring if it’s not gracing a magazine cover or TV commercial. Green, flirting eyes meet mine and punch my gut.
“Hey, Wishbone.”
Her syrupy, deep voice always got me.
“Ruby.” I swallow hard, trying to look away. Good fucking luck.
“Fancy meeting you here,” she says. The grin on her face would make any man do handsprings for her attention.
Is her heart pounding like mine? An intense throb that aches like it’s trying to get to hers. My tongue thickens as my brain—which is consuming itself with what to say—trips over miles of knots forming inside me. She’s here. My girl is front and center, and fuck if I’m not starstruck.
It pisses me off, the way my feelings collide in a muddle of lust, need, and frustration. The necessity to consume her and push her away wars in my mutilated heart. I want to yell at her. I want to love her. Awful as it sounds, I want her to hurt the way she hurt me.
Then she digs into her purse and knocks me flat when she retrieves a clown nose, places it on my nose, and squeezes it singing, “Honky birthday, Wishbone!”
“Thanks. It was last week.” I had wondered if she forgot.
“I know when your birthday is. You look good, Rebel.”
I yank the nose off and stuff it into my pocket. Ruby’s eyes lock on mine, a certain vulnerability in them.
“So, this place is yours?” She looks away and scratches her elbow, where she has a bacon Band-Aid.
She’s still in there.
“I kind of have a thing for hardware stores,” she says. Then she bites her bottom lip, which holds the sexiest smile I’ve seen in seventeen years.
“I meant to come and find you earlier…but Mom needed me to help her with packing.”
“Earlier?” I ask. I’m tongue-tied, unable to say what I ought to be saying. I’ve had years to sort through this shit and all these feelings, and now that I have the chance I’ve got nothing.
Ruby grips then yanks various lengths of thick rope hanging from wheels next to us. My dick twitches as her hand slides up and down the rop
e.
Words finally surface and they’re angry. I glance around, making sure no one will hear me. “Like seventeen years earlier?”
“Ouch,” she whispers. “Let’s try this again. Hey. It’s nice to see you. I know it took me a while, but I’m home for a couple of weeks. How are you?” She shoves her hands into her jean shorts, her slow gaze traveling from my legs to my eyes. Measured and easy, her tongue rims her lips like she’s tasting every inch of me.
“How am I?” I take a wide stance, hands planted on my hips so I don’t do something else with them. Like punch my fist through the boxes to my side. “Is this the first time you’ve wondered?”
“Well, no...I…” Ruby’s gaze darts away from mine.
Maybe she’s feeling the same way. Nervous, edgy, and anxious to figure out how she can make up for lost time. How to bundle all the highs and lows racing through her heart and turn them into something. But what?
The only thing stopping me from berating her is a matching need to scoop her into my arms, take her to my bed, and lie with her all afternoon and deep into the night. To strip her down and make her understand she could still be my girl. The battle, though, is hell sitting in the middle of my personal tug-o-war.
Rifle nudges me. “’Scuse me, Dad. Father H. wants something wider and stronger. That Ape Tape come in yet?”
I drive a hand through his chaotic mess of hair. “Gimme a sec.”
He nods, stepping a few feet away.
“Is that…” Ruby’s gaze jets between me and Rifle. One side of her lips rises, her tongue poking out.
I want to drive myself onto her and kiss that mouth. Those pouty lips I haven’t tasted in years. People can’t change that much, can they? I shouldn’t have kept her in my heart, but some people climb inside you and never leave. They mark you with their charm. They melt into your crevices—the parts of your soul you didn’t know existed until that person abandons you. And then those phantom bits linger deep inside. They hurt like steel splinters pounding into your raw heart. They make you ache and crave; they make you angry one second and hopeful the next.