Fool Me Twice

by Aarons, Carrie

  Fool Me Twice

  Carrie Aarons

  Copyright © 2020 by Carrie Aarons

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Editing done by Proofing Style.

  Cover designed by Okay Creations.

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  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Epilogue

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  About the Author

  Prologue

  Henley

  She had picked a light blue dress.

  Normally, if you’re being laid to rest, the family opts for black. Normally, the outfit would be reserved and bland, something that wouldn’t draw attention to the fake color in your cheeks … or be ruined as you were lowered into the earth.

  But, I guess normally, one wouldn’t actually pick out their own funeral attire at the age of eighteen. That was Catherine though, always wanting to be prepared. I remember the day she picked it, that she made me go online shopping from her hospital bed. It was morbid and made me want to vomit, but the first dress she pulled up was one meant to make me laugh.

  The dress was skin-tight and leopard print, and wouldn’t have covered her ass cheeks. It looked like something one of those reality TV skanks would wear at a jungle-themed party. It did the trick though, broke the ice as I began cackling into Catherine’s bald skull. After that, I insisted on finding the perfect dress for her to wear when we said our final goodbye.

  And dammit, we had found it. My best friend laid in her casket, two days over the age of eighteen. Someone, I think her mom, had picked the perfect shade of blond wig to memorialize her with. She’d lost all of her hair during chemo, but right now, as I looked at her, she looked like the old Catherine.

  The one I met at dance class when we were four. The little girl I had my first sleepover with and was my first call when my parents finally caved and let me get a cell phone at the age of thirteen. Catherine was the one I cried to when my first boyfriend broke up with me, and I was there for her when her parents got divorced a year into her first recurrence.

  She knew me better than anyone, and I her. And now she was gone.

  I’m so goddamn mad, so heartbroken, that I could just about slap her right now. How dare she leave me? And how dare she pick a dress so beautiful, it only makes the jagged edges of my heart crack more.

  The dress is the color of the ocean off some enchanted, exotic island. So blue and crystalline that it’s almost translucent. It’s more of a prom dress than something a person should be buried in, but I guess since Catherine didn’t get to go to her prom, it’s only fitting. The cap sleeves are made of lace, and the A-line skirt is laid right down to her simple gold flats that I know are under the casket lid, because I helped pick those out too.

  If I pretend, it can almost be like she’s Snow White, waiting for true love’s kiss to wake her up. If only that was possible.

  You think you’re prepared for it … the death of someone you love. But you can’t know. You can’t know the kind of dagger, the dull kind inserted slowly into the muscle that the world views as the symbol of love. It rips apart every piece of flesh, every nerve, every vessel, every synapse.

  I thought I was prepared, I thought I could take the weight of Catherine’s death, but as I stand here, looking at my best friend in the hours before I never see her face again,

  I want to ruin something with my bare hands. Tear down the world, scream at God. There is no reason for this, none at all. Who the hell decided a bright, gorgeous, hilarious teenage girl should be taken from the world at an age like this?

  Who said I can survive without her?

  I’m stalled, standing here in front of her too long. I can feel the eyes on me, the sympathetic ones, the reproachful ones, the pairs from my parents and Catherine’s that are watching my every move, waiting for me to explode.

  The list is in my pocket; I made sure to stuff it deep down into the lining of the beige pea coat that falls past my knees. Even though it’s a cloudless May day and we’re in the church, the one we made our first holy communions at together, I’m freezing. My bones are frigid, rattling together like they’ll never get warm again.

  My fingertip rubs against the worn paper. The ruler-sized notebook paper with three hole punches that Catherine ripped out of one of her school binders last year. She’d written the list in her scrawled cursive only a week after the doctor delivered the news that her cancer was back for a third time.

  We knew then, what little time we might have. So my best friend wrote a bucket list:

  1. Go skinny dipping

  2. Travel to Paris

  3. Complete the local hot wing challenge

  4. Road trip to the ocean

  5. Send out a message in a bottle

  6. Dye my hair

  7. Have sex

  8. Camp out in a tent

  9. Go bungee jumping

  10. Get revenge on Lincoln Kolb

  We crossed off a bunch before Catherine got too sick, and the trip to Paris was done with her parents as one last goodbye trip. I think they knew that this time would be the last as well.

  The night before she died, she called me into her hospice room and I laid down on the bed, pressing my cheek to hers. Without saying anything, she handed me the list. I knew what she wanted me to do.

  So now, as I bend down to place one last final kiss on her forehead, I rub my fingers over the notebook paper.

  This summer will be dedicated to crossing items six through nine off of Catherine’s bucket list.

  And when the first semester of my college career starts in August, so will the plan to take down the one guy who broke my best friend’s heart.

  1

  Lincoln

  Three Months Later

  “Fuck, it’s a fantastic morning to be a fantastic stud.”

  I snicker at the statement as my sneakers pound across the pavement. My best friend, Janssen, isn’t wrong, it’s a fucking beautiful day. The perfect kind of scene for the first day of a college semester; bright, with sunshine streaming through every tree leaf and the smell of fresh-cu
t grass stinging our nostrils as we jog a brief five miles through campus.

  Warchester University, the place I’ve dreamed of attending college since I could throw a damn spiral. They have the top football program in the state of North Carolina, division one, and last year they played in a championship bowl game. I’ve idolized the players who’ve run these paths, played in the stadium, and gone on to national league fame.

  And now, it’s my turn. Lincoln Kolb, national champion quarterback of the Warchester Bulldogs. Can’t you just see it now?

  “It is. But who said you’re the stud?” Derrick asks, his breath coming out as if he’s merely sitting on the couch.

  I’m not out of shape by any means, but we’re on mile four and I fucking hate running. It’s why I’m a quarterback. I run short distances, and my arm is the one that makes me the big bucks. Well, not yet, I guess. And not that I care about the money. I’d throw a football for a living if you paid me in pizza, which isn’t a bad deal now that I think about it.

  But I’ve been working on my endurance this summer, gearing up to fight for my spot as QB number one. The senior currently occupying the position isn’t declaring for the draft, and although he’s won Warchester a bowl game, he’s just okay. Me? I’ve been written about for years as the second coming of Peyton Manning. That job is mine, and I don’t care who I have to defeat to get it.

  “Chill, gentlemen, there can be two studs.” I hold up my palm, glad that my fitness watch dings with a notification that our run is almost over.

  “Meaning, not three?” Janssen pouts.

  I shake my head, the bun I tied up at the top of my skull bouncing, our pace intensifying as we reach the last leg and hook a right onto the main path through campus. “Nah, you two can be the studs. I’m the big fucking man on campus.”

  My smile stretches across my entire face as I hold my biceps up in a flexing position, showing off as we encounter more students. I notice the way their eyes stick to me, both men and women, and I don’t shy away from it. Being the center of attention has always been one of my favorite past times.

  “You’re a dick.” Derrick smacks my arm, causing it to falter from its position in the gun show right now.

  Janssen, who is one of the cornerbacks, runs to the right of me while Derrick, the starting tight end on the university team, runs to the left. We’ve been doing this run on weekday mornings for a month straight, ever since pre-season began, and now that the campus is filling up with other students, it’s a bit harder.

  Because … distractions, man.

  As we coast to a walk in the quad, I can’t help but let my eyes linger over all of that exposed flesh. Freshman girls, upper-class girls, tan, skinny, curvy, short, tall … all of these gorgeous co-eds sunning themselves and goddamn, it’s a fantastic day to be a fantastic stud.

  See, a lot of people view me as this cocky, arrogant asshole. Like I walk around with big dick energy and spit words that way too. I probably do. But if you’d seen half of what I have in my life, you would be the same way.

  I don’t take one day for granted. I don’t leave any opportunity to be selfish, or take what I want, on the table. I don’t hesitate to use a pickup line, ogle sexy girls, have another beer, go another round in bed, or to throw a fucking sweet Hail Mary pass.

  You never know if you’ll be breathing in the next second after this one. Which is why I take every chance those precious seconds give me.

  “So, which group are we going to hook up with first?” Janssen rubs his hands together.

  We’ve been living in the empty dorms for a month now, no girls in sight, and we’re all horny bastards right about now. We’ve had our time to get the lay of the land, sneak our way into the best bars, and check out the coolest houses off campus. Now it’s time to solidify ourselves. I wasn’t joking about the big man on campus thing … I’m fucking ready to own that title.

  “Them,” Derrick says before I can answer.

  He nods his chin in a typical bro salute to the group of four blondes in tiny-ass bikinis. I groan as one flips over, the thong of her bottoms inching farther up those beautiful round cheeks. My cock twitches in my pants, and good lord these girls are smoking. God, I need to get laid. It’s not healthy for a man to abstain for an entire month, much less an entire day.

  But just as I’m about to head over there to chat them up, my phone vibrates in my pocket. Pulling it out as Janssen hands me a water bottle he must have gotten from someone, I unlock the screen.

  It’s a text from my dad, something about another hearing date. My smile falls as I read it, knowing that there is even more shit to come in the next couple of months.

  My parents have been trying to adopt my cousins from my mother’s sister for almost a year. Aunt Cheryl has never been the greatest mother in the world, but about two years ago she started dating her drug dealer boyfriend and the situation got too dangerous for the kids to stay. Now, the prick is trying to convince her to take them back, probably so he can use them or manipulate Cheryl more.

  Tyla, my four-year-old cousin who loves Peppa Pig and unicorns, and Brant, an eight-year-old with the same penchant for football I had at that age, belong with us. Growing up, it was just my brother, Chase, and I. He’s six years older than me, and lives in Chicago now, but we’re still close. Our extended family was small, so when Tyla and Brant came along, it was like having more siblings in the mix. Except, they were younger and hung all over us and we freaking love them more than ourselves.

  I would never put them in harm’s way, and fire burns through my veins every time I think about what a shit parent my aunt is. Who would actively put their children in a dangerous situation? Who would pull them from a safe, loving home because of their own selfish reasons. It makes me want to spit nails.

  But I can’t worry about that now. The best way to show up for them is to play my hardest, study my hardest, and have a lot of fucking fun in between. Making it out of Warchester as the number one draft pick, and then signing a major rookie contract, is my number one goal. That’s how I provide a better future for them. If this court case drags out, my parents will need the money, and I’ll do whatever it takes to help them adopt my cousins.

  “Bro, keep up. We need to invite at least half of the girls on this lawn to our party tomorrow night.” Derrick raises an eyebrow to me like I’m stalling.

  Shaking my head to clear the thoughts, I slap a big grin on my face. “Oh, hell yes.”

  I’ll have a knockout practice today, solidify my spot as the game one starter, and then get hammered tomorrow night, and hopefully fall into bed with one of these hotties.

  Goddamn, this year is going to be fucking awesome.

  2

  Henley

  Look at him, strutting through campus like he’s got his dick in his hand, and every girl wants a taste.

  Jesus Christ, he’s preening more than a world-class peacock.

  I pull my sunglasses down to the bridge of my nose, peering over them as Lincoln Kolb swaggers his way through the Warchester Campus quad. There are two other bros flanking him, big beefy guys who wear the same smug, shit-eating grins as their leader. How the guy is already a legend, by the way guys fist bump him and girls fawn as he walks by, escapes me.

  It’s like that scene in Beauty and the Beast when Gaston sweeps into town. All of his idiotic, adoring fans practically crawl on their knees in his wake.

  Only this time, Lincoln Kolb may be their god, but I’m here to bring him crashing back down to earth.

  Warchester University is the typical idyllic college setting. Perfectly green grass, massive oaks shading the exact right portion of brick and ivy-covered buildings. Benches, donated by each graduating class since the late eighteen eighties, lining the quad that is filled with students. It has its various clubs you can join, fraternities and sororities to pledge, and majors that vary from early childhood education to sports marketing. The weather is balmy for the end of summer in North Carolina, and there are more than a dozen girls in
bikinis sunning themselves as Lincoln and his goonies leer over them.

  Warchester wasn’t my first choice. Wasn’t even my second. I had my sights set on a liberal arts college in the middle of New York City. It has a kick-ass photography program, and the city provides the perfect canvas for the type of street, close subject photography I like to shoot. I even got in, back before Catherine died and my whole life changed.

  But this was my promise to her. And to fulfill every last task on her bucket list, that meant keeping Lincoln Kolb in my sights.

  And now, that’s exactly where he is.

  Not that I am going to act on it just yet, and not that Warchester is a bad school by any means. They have a decent photography major, and this semester there is even a visiting professor who worked for National Geographic. So I could kill two birds with one stone; focus on bettering my photography skills while also crossing off the biggest item on Catherine’s list.

  See, Catherine might have been my best friend, but it just so happens our houses stood next to each other, on the dividing lines of two towns. While I grew up in Little Port, Catherine lived in Winona Falls. Meaning we went to different schools, even if our bond was unbreakable.