Providence Series Books 1-4

by Mary B. Moore

  “Why deprive the town of seeing this first hand? So, is anyone up for some breakfast at the diner?” We all turned and walked back to the SUV leaving whoever was their security detail behind to watch them. “Hey, can you record it when they start to wake up?” I shouted back at one of Coleman’s guys who was still standing glaring at the twats. Thankfully he nodded, so we got into the car and went for something to eat.

  Cole

  “So, who's idea was it then?” Mom asked as she stood at the top of the table with her arms crossed over her chest while we all sat staring into our mugs, doing our best not to yak all over the place.

  “I think I’m dying,” Tony whined, letting his head fall forward to smack onto the table with a thump, making us all groan at the loud noise.

  “How are we going to get it off our faces?” Brett grumbled, still rubbing at his with a wet cloth.

  “That’ll teach you not to get drunk and touch markers, won’t it?” Mom snapped. The girls hadn’t been here when we’d gotten home, and they still hadn’t returned. We knew that they were safe, though, because Baz was with them, but they weren’t answering any of our text messages and calls.

  “I don’t know what you’re worried about, fuck face,” I snapped. “You’re not the one with a glittery rainbow unicorn horn Duct Taped to your forehead!”

  The worst bit about that was that it had an elastic band that would have held it to my head, but whoever had put it on me had gone the extra mile and had taped it to my forehead. We didn’t see it until I tried to take it off and moved my hair out of the way. I was dreading pulling it off after the pain of the tape restraints.

  “Oh sweet Jesus,” Parker mumbled, looking at the screen of his phone. “Have any of y’all been online today?”

  “Funnily enough, it wasn’t a priority,” Brett snapped, still rubbing his face until Mom reached across and snatched the cloth away from him. I’m pretty sure if he rubbed anymore he’d have hit brain.

  Turning his phone around, we all moved in our seats so that we could see what he was so int…

  “Those evil bitches!” Tony shrieked, after what we were looking at had sunk in.

  There weren’t just a couple of pictures of us all passed out, there were group photos and close ups and…

  “What the fuck are you doing, Brett?” Parker shouted as he got to a picture of Brett’s face in Parker’s crotch.

  “I always wondered, you know?” Ren shrugged as he looked at the photo and then between Brett and Parker.

  “Fuck you. Go back to the Labyrinth,” Brett grumbled, making me snort at the awesome David Bowie joke.

  “Kiss my ass. Besides, Cole’s the one with crystal balls!”

  There was silence as we continued looking through the photographs. I still couldn’t understand how the fuck they’d got me on the wall like that, and none of us could remember it either. If I didn’t know better, I’d say that they had help from someone who was sober. The video of us all waking up proved that, but there had been six of Coleman and Baz’s men there when we’d woken up so it could be any of them, if not all of the assholes. The second the tape gave way and I’d fallen on top of them had been recorded, in slow motion. Unfortunately, Mace might be harboring a small grudge against me for the rest of my life seeing as how my arm had remained taped to the wall and he’d been sitting underneath me, so rather than landing flat, my ass had ended up in his face. It was shown perfectly not only on the video, but there were also photos of the moment.

  I would never admit that I made sure that those markers were permanent, and that Jilly had been more than willing to get them out of the storage room for me. I’d decided after the ‘Stang incident that I was going to get revenge on them all for everything that they’d done. This one had almost worked out perfectly if it wasn’t for the unicorn horn; the next one was going to be better.

  Right now, though, I was dying a slow and painful death and whatever was left in my stomach was making its way back up at an alarming rate. When I got to the porcelain God, I flung my head forward to get it all into the bowl, but unfortunately, poor unicorns weren’t designed to throw up in toilets. The horn connected with the back of the toilet, keeping my head over the seat instead, meaning that what came up at that moment went everywhere. The collision had been strong enough though to rip the duct tape sticking the horn to my head off, taking a billion layers of skin with it. Thankfully the next heave of the contents of my stomach went into the bowl…unfortunately so did the glittery horn. Good, I fucking hoped one of those assholes got butt Pepsi and sat down without looking! They’d totally get the point…

  Ebru

  Two weeks later…

  It had been two weeks since drunkgate, and a week since I’d been to visit my mom after her surgery. She was doing well, and they were happy with her progress and ready to start her treatment. It had been hard seeing her lying in bed attached to all of the machines and tubes, and was made harder by the fact that I knew exactly what they were all for and what all of the discoveries and diagnoses meant. The outlook was good, though, and Dad was hoping to bring her here in a couple of months for the weekend.

  We were all at the lake now celebrating Cole’s twenty-fifth birthday, and the guys were in the water playing around on jet ski’s and water skiing. We’d tried to get a turn on one of the jet skis, but they’d refused to share, so we had come out of the water and were lying out on blankets with the babies miraculously still asleep. How they slept with the amount of noise being made, I’ll never know, but I guess if you’re a Townsend or Montgomery you need to be able to sleep through anything.

  Lying at my feet was the tiny micro piglet that I’d bought Cole for his birthday after seeing how upset he was when he had to give Pippa and Dash back to Ren and Maya last week. His family had also bought him a puppy that was lying curled up next to the piglet. It was an Irish Setter, which I’d never heard of before, and the dark red color of its fur was just beautiful. It also had these big old flappy ears that made my heart melt. You’d never have guessed that they’d just met the night before at Cole’s parents’ house given how close they were lying to each other at the moment. I’d expected Cole to name them immediately, but he was so shocked when they’d been brought in that he’d had a total brain fart and couldn’t think of any names. Personally, I was rooting for Winston for the piglet and Poppy for the dog, but who could tell with Cole.

  At that moment, a couple of the EMT’s that I knew from work walked up to us, and I introduced them to Isla, Maya, Ava, and Scarlett. They spent a couple of minutes talking to us, but it was long enough that all of the men got out of the water and walked up to us practically growling. Mace had been driving the boat while Cole water ski’d, so it was a shock when I looked up and saw that he was one of the guys walking towards us. Looking behind them, Cole looked like he was in agony as he slowly made his way out of the water. When he reached the bank, and I saw how stiffly he was walking and that his knees were slightly bent, I jumped up, but Colette got their first.

  “What happened, kiddo?” we heard her yell out. The guys and EMT’s all turned and looked over at him, their jaws dropping open at the same time when they saw how he was walking.

  “Someone,” he hissed, glaring at Mace, “didn’t give me any warning. Someone, turned so quickly that the handle was yanked out of my hand making me land on my ASS!” he yelled.

  Rolling his eyes, Mace scowled at Cole. “Stop being such a fuckin’ drama queen. We’ve all fallen!”

  “Really?” Cole snarled as he walked up chest to chest with Mace. “If I’d fallen on my ass, I’d be fine. But this wasn’t a fall. I ski’d across the water on my ass!” he raised his voice on the last two words, and I’m pretty sure that we were all trying to figure out why this was so bad. Admittedly, I’d never ass ski’d, but it couldn’t be that painful, could it? “Do you know what happens when you water ski on your ass, Mace?”

  Mace just shrugged and continued looking bored, but Cole had all of our attention now. E
ven the puppy and piglet, who’d woken up, were staring at Mace.

  “You get a high-speed enema you pimple dicked fuckwad!” he yelled. The chorus of gasps told me that his audience, and most likely everyone else around the lake, was now feeling his pain.

  “You’ve got shit luck Captain Glitter Horn,” Tony broke the silence, getting the finger in return.

  Cole

  I couldn’t help chuckling as I put what I needed in my cart. It had been a couple of days since my birthday celebrations at the lake, and I’d finally cleared the water from my ass. That was one of the most painful experiences of my life. Until you’ve had water going up your ass hole at what felt like five hundred miles per hour, you’ll never know the pain that I went through. How people had that shit done voluntarily, I’ll never know.

  I was walking down the pet aisle looking for some dog food and treats for Sparky, well Poppy as Ebru insisted on calling her. I was hoping that she’d get used to the name Sparky and I could tell Ebru that it was a fluke that she preferred my name to hers. On the shelf in front of me, I saw the cutest cuddly bunny with a squeak inside of it and threw it in the cart too. Next to it, was an elephant, so I got that for Winston. He may be a piglet, but the little shit was like Pippa and had humped the fluffy yellow chick we’d bought him from one side of the living room to the other the night before. That poor chick was now living in shame, so to give it a break I’d get him the elephant.

  I’d been planning my revenge over the unicorn Mustang incident, and pretty much everything for a while now, and the opportunity was too good to miss. Carrying the bags with the revenge bounty in them to the car, I couldn’t stop grinning. Revenge was going to be mine.

  The next day…

  I’d just sat down at the table in my parents’ house and was enjoying a quick catch up with Ebru and my Mom and Dad. They were discussing her mom’s treatment and how she was doing, and I took a second to appreciate the difference in Ebru from when I first met her to now. She’d always been beautiful, but her face was relaxed now, she gave genuine smiles, she laughed, and she just looked…brighter. My Mom and Dad had said it the other day too, and I loved that the weight on her shoulders had been lifted enough for the change to be noticeable.

  I’d just picked my coffee cup when my grandparents came in arguing over something. If I didn’t know for sure how much they loved each other, there would be days that I’d expect one of them to hold a pillow over the face of the other one and not let go. My bets would be on Gram doing it to Pops.

  “I don’t care,” Gram said firmly as she sat down. “It’s not happening!”

  “What are y’all arguing over?” Mom asked. After all of the years that she’d known them, she still asked, but I’m sure it was more out of duty than genuine interest.

  “He wants to go to one of those nekkie resorts in the Caribbean,” Gram explained as she fixed her coffee and I choked on mine.

  Not one word was said as I tried to cough the coffee out of my lungs, and not one of the shit heads at the table lifted a hand to help me as I choked. Instead, they were all sitting staring at my grandparents in horror.

  “Look, we’re not going to be able to join in for long,” Gramps said, just as I took a brutal sounding and much needed breath. It must have snapped Eb out of her horror because she belatedly, and unnecessarily by this point, started patting me on the back.

  “The answer is no.” Gram focused her attention on the rest of the table.

  “But I got me one of those man things that goes in the cheeks of your ass,” the old bastard said as I, unfortunately again, took my next mouthful of coffee and started choking. “I saw them on television, and on the world wide web they say that the place I wanna book us into is the one to go to. You only live once, Lindy!”

  I was at the stage now with the coffee in my lungs that I was genuinely thinking that my final moments on earth would be filled with my grandparents arguing over going to a nudist resort and my Pops talking about man thongs. As calm as can be, Mom got up from her chair and walked around and started whacking me on the back as hard as she could. I swear I heard a vertebrae or a rib crack, but it cleared the gallon of coffee that had settled into my lungs and allowed me to take a deep breath in.

  “Anyway, I already booked us in and got you the girl one of the butt spreaders,” Pops sat back in his chair and looked at Gram with the stubborn expression that we all knew meant he wasn’t bending. The flaw in his plan was that Gram had been married to him for two hundred years, and she did stubborn better.

  “Well, you go wear your butt floss to the lake and see what people think. If you get good news back from people, and don’t end up getting sued for mental trauma to the population, then I’ll think about going to one of those nekkie hotels with you.”

  “For the love of all things sacred, I’m begging you - stop,” I croaked out. I couldn’t hold back my thoughts anymore, and the flashing lights behind my eyes had stopped, which I assumed meant I at least had oxygen now.

  Grams winked while Pop just glared at me before turning back to Gram. “We’re going, and that’s final!”

  We were all saved from more mental and emotional trauma, as well as the life-altering mental images that you couldn’t help but get, by the front door slamming open and Ren yelling.

  “Where is he?” I could hear Maya trying to calm him down through her laughter and smiled when she walked around the corner holding baby Crystal.

  I was holding my hands out to take the baby, when Ren walked around the corner, and everyone froze for the second time in ten minutes. I’d decided to put orange dye in some orange colored body wash and green dye in his shampoo, so what just walked into the room was like a streaky Oompa Loompa on steroids.

  “What in the ever loving fuck?” Pops mumbled.

  “You,” Ren pointed at me. He looked as pissed as the time I took his Playboy and stuck photos of Mom’s face over the Playboy bunnies. “I know you did this ,you skinny dicked twat flap.”

  “And you know this how?” I asked, sitting back in my chair doing my best not to laugh. He looked like he was about to jump over the table to kill me when the door opened again with a bang, and I heard Brett bellow through the house.

  “Whichever one of you did this you better fucking run…”

  When he walked through the doorway, I realized that I’d mixed his and Ren’s bottles up. I’d put more dye in Ren’s because his hair was darker than Brett’s. He looked like the love child of one of those trolls with the crazy hair and the Oompa Loompa that created Ren.

  I think we all had the same expression on our faces as we looked at Brett and Ren standing next to each other, breathing like bulls. Admittedly, I hadn’t thought that the dye would make that big of a difference. I figured they’d look jaundiced at best, but what was facing us was Sunkist type orange, and the green was a neon color, so consider me corrected.

  The final recipient of the dye chose to arrive at that moment. I’d done something different with his, though, seeing as he had blonde hair.

  “Calm down, honey,” we heard Isla say after the door slammed. “You’re upsetting Dewi.”

  “I’ll fucking kill them for this. I have a meeting tomorrow that…oh my shit,” Luke said as he walked into the kitchen and saw Brett and Ren standing there. The irony when he burst out laughing wasn’t lost on us, especially as I’d put a neon turquoise color in his shampoo that had apparently dyed his eyebrows too and left streaks down his face. On top of the orange, it was…striking.

  “You look in the mirror, asswad?” Brett snapped, reminding Luke of his own predicament.

  “It had to be you,” he growled, making his way around the table to where I was sitting. Thankfully, I was now holding baby Crystal so I was pretty certain that they wouldn’t beat the shit out of me. Well, not at this precise moment in time anyway.

  “I’ll repeat what I just said to Brett when he said that. And you know this how?”

  Apparently, an indignant hand sweep of his body was
the answer to the allegations, but it was hard to take him seriously when his hair and his skin were the color of highlighters. Fuck it, I love the internet. That one gesture broke the rest of the room out of the stupors that they’d been sitting in as they sat staring at the ‘Jaundiced Jacks’ in front of us, and the sound of laughter at a deafening volume took over the room. It was so loud that the back door opened suddenly and a bunch of Baz and Coleman’s men poured in with their guns out, coming to an abrupt stop when they saw the three twat holes who were standing glaring at us. I’d like to say that they were going red with anger, but it was impossible to tell. They joined in the still laughing audience with Coleman and Baz standing behind them with twitching lips.

  “I hate to disappoint you, but I was with Eb all morning.” Maybe I was begging to get the crap beaten out of me when I shot them a smug shit-eating grin after saying that, but hey.

  “Then you did it at some other time,” Ren snarled, only holding back because I had his beautiful baby girl in my arms.

  Shrugging, I looked over at Isla and Maya and said, “Did either of you see me in your homes at any point? Did you let me in?”

  Both of them looked at each other and then looked back at me and shrugged. The twitching of their mouths told me that they so knew that I’d snuck in, which was true.

  Losing the control on what little patience he had left, Brett stood up and glared at me. “I don’t know how you did it you little shit, but I know that you did do it. You wait, I’m gonna…”

  “It seems to me that if he did do it, that you have tortured him numerous time over the years. Perhaps you were due this? Consider it…” Ebru paused and took a sip of coffee. “Karma.”

  All three Oompa Loompa’s looked at her in shock. That’s right, my girlfriend is totally the shit.

  Walking around the table, Ren took Crystal out of my arms and gave me a smug look before walking away with Brett beside him. The joke was on him, my smug look was warranted. That little angel was totally shitting herself when he took her away. In fact, I’d been about to hand her back to her mother, so he saved me a job.