Truly, Madly, Whiskey
Melissa Foster
Chapter One
CRYSTAL MOON’S STOMACH knotted as she drove through the gates of West Millstone Estates Wednesday evening. Estates. She scoffed, her eyes darting to a group of scraggly looking guys smoking beside the rusted chain-link fence that surrounded the trailer park where she’d grown up. The “gate” hadn’t functioned since she was ten, when a stoned neighbor had driven his truck through it. Doing her best to ignore the lascivious stares coming from another group of guys standing by the run-down trailer on her right, she focused on the road, mentally ticking off the only names she’d ever associated with the people who had lived in the trailers as she passed each one.
Hateful. Creepy. Sweet. Staythef*ckaway.
With the exception of her mother, she no longer had any idea who lived in each trailer, but the names she’d given them when she was a kid would stick forever, like the dirty feeling that clung to her like a second skin every time she returned.
She parked behind her mother’s old Toyota. Decomposed leaves lay like skeletons on the hood. Dirt caked the wheel wells and lower half of the door. She’d made the mistake of giving her mother money to get a new battery ages ago, but her mother had spent it on alcohol. She scanned the street for her older brother Jed’s truck. Uttering a curse, she pulled out her phone and called him.
He answered on the first ring. “Hey, you.”
“Don’t ‘hey, you,’ me. I’m sitting in front of Mom’s. Did you forget? Third Wednesday of the month.”
“Oh, shit. I’ll get a ride and be there in ten.”
The line went dead. She’d forgotten his driver’s license had been suspended for too many unpaid tickets. Mike McCarthy, a local cop, had a personal vendetta against Jed, and pulled him over every chance he got, doling out the highest points possible. Jed swore the guy had a homing device to keep track of him, but Crystal knew their hatred went back to their high school days, when Jed had slept with every girl Mike had dated. She had a feeling it hadn’t stopped after graduation, but that was one confirmation she didn’t need. She loved Jed to the ends of the earth, but he was a bit of a hoodlum and had spent his teenage years in and out of trouble, and as an adult he’d spent a few months in jail for stealing. He said it was in his blood, but Crystal could attest to the fact that, unless she was born from different parents, it wasn’t. It was simply Jed.
She zipped up her hoodie and glanced at the stack of designs she’d been working on for Princess for a Day, the boutique where she worked with her best friend, Gemma Wright. She’d met Gemma at a café shortly after escaping from her second bout with hell. When she’d left the dregs of the trailer park, she’d thought she’d left that nightmare behind. A few years later she found out that hell came in many forms, and the trailer park hadn’t looked quite so bad. She hadn’t returned, though. She’d been broken, not stupid.
Pushing those dark thoughts away, she cut the engine.
Untrusting of the cachectic, shirtless dude standing across the street, holding the chain of a vicious-looking barking dog, she shoved the designs into her bag and slipped the strap over her head and across her body. A barrier. As small as that thin strap was, anything separating the person she’d become from the mother who bore her was worth its weight in gold.
She made one last sweep of her car, searching for anything theft-worthy. The 2010 Ford Fusion might not be much, but it was hers. Her eyes caught on the colorful worry doll hanging on her rearview mirror, a gift from her father. He’d made it out of twigs, fabric, and yarn when she was eight, and he’d given it to her the first week they’d moved into the trailer park. He’d been making her dolls for years, but this time he’d given her a reason. Give these dolls all your worries, and then you’ll be free of them. Like magic. Her eyes drifted to the smaller doll hanging from her key chain. Little reminders that she’d once had a parent who’d loved her. She snagged the doll from the rearview and stuffed it in her bag. It would piss her off if it got stolen. She’d hang it up again when she left.
She stepped from the car and locked it up, bracing herself for the visit. It’s only once a month. One hour, twelve times a year. She could suck it up for an hour. Then she’d return to her life in Peaceful Harbor, Maryland, forty-five minutes away. Just far enough to allow her to pretend that this part of her life didn’t exist.
Her phone vibrated with a text, and she pulled it out, ready to give Jed a hard time for whatever excuse he might use to skip dinner. Him flashed on caller ID. She rolled her eyes, trying to keep her body from heating up from head to toe. It didn’t work. It never did. She’d listed Bear Hot-as-Fuck Whiskey as Him in her contacts in an effort to fool her mind into thinking of him in generic male form. The problem was, there was nothing generic about the six-three, bar-and-auto-mechanic-shop-owning, tattooed biker.
She opened and read the text. Bear.
One word was all it took for fire to ricochet through her body like lightning. Traitorous body. The guy was relentless. He’d been acting as if she were his ever since she’d met him more than eight months ago, when Gemma had first met her fiancé, Truman Gritt, who was Bear’s best friend. The harder she’d pushed Bear away, the more determined he’d become. He’d been texting her his name for weeks, always out of the blue. It wasn’t like he knew she’d changed his name in her phone. He was just being Bear. Did he really think texting his name would change her mind?