by Cate Ashwood
Table of Contents
Blurb
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note from J.H. Knight
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
About the Authors
By Cate Ashwood
By J.H. Knight
Visit Dreamspinner Press
Copyright
When the Devil Wants In
By Cate Ashwood and J.H. Knight
John Turner has been living a lie most of his life. Growing up in the rural Georgia town of Magnolia Ridge, he’s only ever let one person truly know him: his best friend, Chloe. To the rest of the world, they’re the perfect couple, but just between them, she’s helping John hide in plain sight.
Matt Kinsley, a cop from San Francisco, moves to town looking for a slower pace and to reconnect with his Southern roots. Starting over in Magnolia Ridge means taking a step into the closet, but Matt finds that with John for company, he doesn’t mind so much.
As the two start to explore a possible relationship, a horrific murder rips the town apart but brings John and Matt together in ways neither could’ve imagined. Matt must decide where his loyalties lie while John resists the urge to run again. Together, they have to discover who the real devil is before another life is destroyed.
Acknowledgments
A HUGE heartfelt thank-you to everyone who helped us along the way to finishing this book. If it wasn’t for the patience of our families, the kindness of our friends, and the incredible meticulousness and care of our beta readers and editors, this story would never have been told.
And, as always, a giant thank-you to our readers.
Author’s Note from J.H. Knight
GETTING TO write this story with Cate has been such a joy. At times it was like stepping back to my family in Georgia. Their voices are in much of the dialogue. And when I picture Magnolia Ridge, I think of my mother’s own small town where she grew up. I think of her house with the tin roof. I think of her barefoot in the tall grass, chasing fireflies when she was Birdy’s age. I think of my grandmother’s cooking, my aunts talking and laughing. I wasn’t born there, but Georgia’s wild beauty and its quirky, lovable people are settled deep in my heart. I’m glad I got to visit there again, if only in my memories.
Chapter One
“Y’ALL WANT some biscuits to go with that chicken?” Ilene—well, Momma to John—asked as she finished putting together the picnic basket. “They’re fresh from the oven….”
“Have I ever turned down your food?” John asked as he stepped around her to the ice machine on the counter. He grabbed two mason jars and then loaded them up with sweet tea and lemon slices before putting the lids on them.
“Guess that was a stupid question,” she said as she wrapped four warm biscuits in a napkin and set them in the bottom of the basket. She glanced at Chloe and asked, “What about you, hon? I’ve got some blackberry pie left over from last night.”
His mother was a nice plump old thing, and she loved to cook and feed people. She always said it was her way of doing God’s work, that you couldn’t hear the spirit if your stomach was growling.
“I’m fine, Mrs. Turner, but thank you for the offer.” Chloe smiled with her whole face, from her bright green eyes to her apple cheeks and her full red lips. She made everyone’s name sound like a compliment.
“You better start calling me Momma, or shoot, even Ilene. You and Johnny have been together for too long to call me Missus anything, for heaven sake.”
Chloe blushed, but her expression was playful. “I’m sorry, Miss Ilene.”
Ilene huffed a laugh and rolled her eyes. “That’s close enough. For now.” She turned to John with the picnic basket and said, “Here ya go, son. Now gimme some sugar before y’all leave.”
John didn’t need to be asked to give his mother a hug and a kiss, but Ilene always told him to anyway. “I’ll see y’all in the mornin’. Tell Daddy I said g’night.”
“I will. He’s in town fetchin’ some paint for that back porch of yours, but he should be along soon.”
“Shoot, I told him I’d do that tomorrow.”
Ilene started cleaning the countertop, getting ready to cook dinner. She was always cooking something. “Well, you know him. He doesn’t believe in putting things off.”
Given the fact that they hadn’t planned on painting the porch for another three days, John didn’t think of it as putting anything off, but he knew better than to argue. “Well, tell him thank you for me and I’ll pay him back when I see him.”
Ilene waved her hand, shooing a fly or her son, he couldn’t tell. “You two go on now. Have fun and be safe, all right?”
“Yes, ma’am.” Nearly twenty-seven years old, but he sometimes still felt like a child when he was at home. It would probably help if he’d stop shopping in his mother’s fridge, but that was beside the point.
As John stepped off the front porch, he had to pull at his T-shirt, feeling it cling in the hot, heavy air. March in South Georgia was always a strange month with plenty of rain and plenty of heat, but this year felt even more oppressive than usual. He put their picnic into the back of the truck before getting the passenger door for Chloe. She didn’t really like it when he did things like that, felt like he was—what was it she said? Infantilizing her? Denying her equality? He couldn’t remember, but he did it anyway, at least when his mother might be watching out the back window.
“You are such a momma’s boy, John Turner,” Chloe said as she climbed into the truck. She glanced over his shoulder and probably caught his mother watching. “If you were my son, I’d tell you to make your own damn lunch.”
John leaned in and pecked her on the cheek, mostly for show, and they both knew it. “If I were your son, this would be awkward.”
He closed the door and went around to his side. As he got behind the wheel, Chloe said, “If you were my son, this wouldn’t be necessary.”
“True.” John loved his family dearly, and they loved him; he really believed that with all his heart. At the same time, though, he had no desire to be one more thing for his mother to weep and pray over. It was bad enough when his sister, Melonie, had come home knocked up, not wanting to tell them who the father was. They’d nearly disowned her. But a gay son? He’d be kicked out of the family for sure. Or at least be on every prayer list in the county, whispered about behind his back. Hell, half of those good ol’ boys who sat beside his mother at church would just as soon beat the shit out of him as look at him if they knew. And he called a few of them his friends, worked with them on the road crew. Just, no. Not happening.
“How’s your sister doing?” Chloe asked from beside him, changing the subject.
The road narrowed down to one lane as he drove farther from home. “Still married to the shitbag.” John wasn’t a fan of his brother-in-law. Not only was the guy a total alcoholic, he was a total asshole. John was fairly sure he’d started beating his sister, but he had no way of proving it. “I was thinking I might tie him to my
tailgate and take him for a jog next time Mel tells me she tripped and hit her face on a door.”
Chloe made an annoyed sound and reached into her purse for a smoke. “I’m still not clear on why she married him to begin with. Or, hell, why she ever even looked at him, for that matter.”
John wasn’t so sure himself. Yeah, she’d been pregnant, and yes, their parents were pretty insistent about not wanting her to be a single mother. Still, though. There were worse things than raising a kid on your own. Much worse. “I think maybe she was just hoping to find someone to love her, make her think she could be something… more than whatever she thought she was before.” That was his best guess, anyway.
“Someone should’ve told her she’d find the more inside herself. Probably sometime after high school.”
“We should all be told that,” John said as he turned onto the dirt road out of town. He steered around the potholes as best he could, but it was damn near impossible in a few spots. “At least she graduated.” She’d been eight months pregnant and married to a pile of shit, but she’d done it. That alone said something about her. “And I did get the prettiest niece in the world out of the deal, so there’s that.”
Chloe laughed and gave him a nudge, passing him her cigarette. “You’re such a sucker for that kid. You’re never gonna save up enough to move to… wherever the hell you plan to move, if you keep spoiling her.”
John took a long drag. He didn’t smoke very often, but he thoroughly enjoyed it when he did. “Someone’s got to. Mel can’t afford it since Shitbag drinks his paycheck away.”
“Maybe your parents should since—” Chloe seemed to rethink whatever she was about to say. “Since they’re the grandparents and all.”
“Did you draw blood when you bit your tongue just now?”
“Only a little.” She shifted in the seat, took her seat belt off, and started to wiggle out of her jeans.
John wasn’t too surprised, but she usually waited until they got where they were going before she changed her clothes. “I’m sorry, did you want to share the same space as my windshield this afternoon?”
“Don’t be such a baby,” she said, grunting as she tried to get her skinny jeans down off her ankles. “It’s too damn hot for these pants, but your mother would start holy rollin’ or somethin’ if I showed up in these.” She held up a tiny pair of shorts that looked more like a belt than anything else.
With a laugh, John said, “She’s not a holy roller.” As Chloe shimmied into her shorts, he added, “She probably would be less keen on us getting married if you dressed like that around her, though.”
“I’ll keep that in mind.”
She was joking, he was fairly sure. Though, he never could tell with Chloe. They’d been best friends since she was barely sixteen years old, nearly a decade now, but she still found ways to surprise him. Or terrify him, depending on her mood. The three years she’d left the state for college were the hardest of his life. In a town so small everyone knew his name, he’d felt impossibly alone without her. When she told him she’d met someone and was dating for the first time in her life—well, dating a straight boy for the first time in her life—he’d thought it might kill him.
He still felt guilty for how relieved he was when she came back home. Her brother had just been killed in Afghanistan, her family devastated. Chloe herself seemed like a carved-out shell, like there was nothing left of her but tears, grief. But even still, some small part of John had been grateful. Not that Billy had died, but that Chloe had come back to him. He’d never felt more like a selfish son of a bitch in his life, and he probably never would again.
But he was still grateful.
Spanish moss hung from the trees on either side of them as he pulled off the road into the Mud Creek Filling Station. It was the last stop for gas before the swamplands took over.
Chloe asked him, “What’re we doing?”
“Gettin’ gas. What’s it look like?”
“A beer run, you liar.”
Yeah, she knew him too well. “I can get gas and beer, ya know.” He hopped out and put twenty dollars’ worth in his truck. When he was finished, he went around to Chloe’s window. “You want anything in here?”
“I’ll come in with ya, but you have to carry me in the parking lot.”
John rolled his eyes, but he opened her door for her and turned around. “Is there a reason you can’t just put your damn shoes on?”
“It’s too hot for shoes, but I don’t wanna get motor oil on my feet.”
He turned around and leaned back for her so she could wrap her arms around his shoulders and hoist herself onto his back. Considering all she’d done for him, all the thousands of ways she was there for him over the years, a few piggybacks wasn’t too much to ask for. “And you say I spoil my niece.”
Chloe kissed the back of John’s head and then kicked her heels as if he were a horse.
On their way toward the store, Jenny, a girl John had known since grammar school, stepped out and held the door for him. “How y’all doin’ today?” she asked, her smile bright, the sun shining warmly on her blonde hair.
“Doin’ just fine, Jenn. How about you?” He always felt a small pang of regret when he ran into her. Fifteen years ago, she’d been on her way to a young artists’ program at Julliard. Until an accident at the river had destroyed her chances. John hadn’t been there, but he’d damn sure heard about it after. The whole town had.
“Same as always,” she said with a laugh. “What’re you two doin’ this evening?”
“Gonna go get us a few catfish for supper.”
Chloe snorted a laugh. “John’s gonna get the fish. I’m gonna watch.”
Jenny smiled and said, “I’ll buy mine.”
“You sure?” John teased, smiling as he walked a few more steps inside. “Could come along. We’ll teach ya how….”
“Pass,” Jenny said, but she smiled at them one more time before letting the door fall shut.
Inside the store, the clerk raised an eyebrow as John walked Chloe around the aisles, but the guy didn’t say anything. “Grab some Slim Jims too,” Chloe instructed on their way back to the refrigerator section.
“If you have me grab too much, I’m gonna have to put you down.”
“I’ll grab it. You just don’t do anything too crazy and drop me.”
“I promise I won’t drop the beer, but that’s as far as I’m going.”
She bit his ear for that.
By the time they were done with their trip through the junk food row, they’d probably made quite a spectacle of themselves, but, again, the clerk didn’t say anything. On second thought, the guy had probably seen much stranger things. Hell, he’d probably seen John and Chloe do stranger things.
John piled everything on the counter and tried to reach for his wallet. “How’s it goin’ today, Cletus?” he asked as he twisted his arm back so far he felt like he’d pull a muscle. Chloe let go with one hand and presented her debit card for him. He could only assume it had been stashed in her back pocket.
“Slow,” the clerk said as he swiped Chloe’s card and set it aside while the machine cleared it. “When are you gonna quit callin’ me that?”
“When you get yourself a new pair of coveralls instead of wearin’ Cletus’s old ones,” John teased. Truth be told, he couldn’t remember the guy’s real name. Cletus had been the previous owner, retired when John was just a boy.
“These are perfectly good. No need to buy new ones.”
John looked at the holes, the oil stains. Even the embroidered name tag was tattered around the edges. “They could walk around on their own, they’re so old.”
The clerk snorted a laugh and looked at Chloe. “Why’re you still puttin’ up with him?”
“Habit, I reckon.” Chloe pulled back from John and shifted until he put her down. She stood on the concrete floor with her bare feet and leaned on the counter, smiling at the clerk as she pulled her phone from her back pocket. “Listen here,” she said,
her tone playful, kind. “Let’s get us a picture in those old things so we don’t forget ’em, then you can buy yourself some fresh ones.” She turned around and snapped a selfie with the old man.
The clerk smiled and rolled his eyes. “You two are my craziest customers.”
“And your favorite customers,” Chloe added.
“Maybe so,” he agreed with a soft chuckle.
His grizzled face and nicotine-stained beard probably put some people off, but not Chloe. She couldn’t help but be friendly. As the register printed out their receipt, he handed Chloe her card.
John grabbed the bag off the counter and smiled at the old man. “Have a good one, Cletus,” he said as he stooped down to let Chloe climb onto his back again.
“You’re lucky I’m so old or I’d whoop your ass.” There was no real threat in his tone. He and John had teased each other for years.
On their way to the truck, Chloe said, “If he doesn’t have himself a new pair of coveralls—with the right name on ’em—by Christmas, we oughtta get him some.”
John shrugged before opening her door and shifting her inside. “We’ll have to remember his real name first.”
Chloe laughed softly. “I bet your momma knows.”
She was probably right about that. His mother knew just about everyone, even the new folk that moved into town. In the end, John said, “What’s say we go catch us a few catfish?”
“I’d rather sit around and drink that six-pack and watch you catch catfish.”
John hopped in the truck and put on his seat belt. “You say that like it’s different from any other time we go fishing.”
FOUR BEERS in—well, one for John and three for Chloe; she had been serious about drinking the whole six-pack and watching him fish—John had only caught one. They’d managed to eat all the fried chicken, the biscuits with apple butter, the potato salad, and the two pieces of pie his mother had snuck in. John was ready for a nap, but he sat up and kept an eye on the fishing poles he’d wedged between a rock and a tree. He picked at pine straw and enjoyed the simple comfort of being with someone who he could be entirely himself around.
