by L. E. Bross
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For all the hopeless romantics who love
Happily Ever After
CHAPTER ONE
Avery
One thing Carrie Underwood forgot to mention: after you take a Louisville slugger to his headlights, and after you slash all four tires of your cheating ex-boyfriend’s truck, you get arrested and charged with willful destruction of property.
“This plea bargain is acceptable to both parties?” The judge squinted at Grant, my asshat ex, and then at me through John Lennon–type glasses perched on his oversized nose. He kind of reminded me of Santa Claus. Well, maybe if Santa wore a black robe and handed out sentencing instead of toys.
“Yes, Your Honor.” My father’s gravelly voice echoed in the judge’s chambers.
“Yes, Your Honor,” Grant’s lawyer replied.
I stared straight ahead and tried to look contrite. Really, the only thing I was sorry about was that someone had taken a video of me destroying Grant’s truck and posted it on YouTube. At least I was on my way to viral infamy. Three million hits and counting.
My father, District Attorney Samuel Hartley, had tried to get the charges dropped until he found out about the video from Grant’s lawyer. If looks could kill, I would be six feet under for sure. See, my father needed his zero-tolerance-policy-on-crime platform to win the mayoral seat he was gunning for. It wasn’t like he could change the rules just because his daughter broke them. He did, however, have all the charges booked under my mother’s maiden name, Melrose, instead of Hartley, to try to distance himself from the mess.
“Very well,” the judge said. He looked at me, and I met his steady gaze. “Avery Melrose, you are hereby sentenced to three hundred hours of community service and restitution in the amount of fifteen thousand dollars. You have six months to complete your community service and must pay the full amount of restitution within seventy-two hours. If you fail either condition of this plea bargain, you will be found in contempt and you will be arrested and will serve the remaining balance of your community service in a minimum-security facility. Is that clear?”
“Yes, sir.” Shit. My father hadn’t told me that the three hundred hours of community service had to be done in six months. This was my senior year at UNC, and I had too many things I needed to do to serve some kind of stupid penance.
“How the hell am I supposed to do community service and go to school?” I shouted at my dad as soon as we were out of the judge’s chambers.
“You might have thought about that before you took a bat to Grant’s truck, Avery. Jesus, what the hell were you thinking?” Dad stuffed the signed paperwork into his briefcase and started toward the exit.
Grant walked by, a smirk on his face. Asshole.
“I was thinking that I had just seen my boyfriend with his dick in some bimbo in our bed.” My voice echoed down the hallway of the courthouse, and several heads whipped around to stare. My father strode back and grabbed my arm.
“Will you keep your voice down? You’re acting like a piece of trailer trash.”
He pulled me past Grant, who now looked a little red in the face. I flipped him off as my father dragged me through the doors.
“You’re not ten years old, Avery. At least try and act like the well-bred lady you were raised to be.” He released me as soon as the door slammed closed. I stood on the steps of the courthouse, my chest rising and falling with anger.
He acted like I was throwing a tantrum. I wanted to stomp my foot, but it would only prove his point. How did he expect me to react when I went to Grant’s apartment and found him balls deep in some trashy-looking whore?
My boyfriend.
Fucking someone who wasn’t me.
And then he tried to tell me it wasn’t what it looked like.
I think that’s what pissed me off most. Like I misunderstood what was happening right in front of me. That he thought I was that stupid.
My normal cool-headed assessment skills went right out the window when I heard him moaning her name. I ran out and grabbed the bat he kept beside the front door and started hitting the first thing of his I saw: his truck. I’d broken all the windows and lights and dragged my keys up and down the sides of the shiny black paint by the time Grant put his pants on and got outside.
It took Grant and his roommate, Bryan, to get the bat out of my hands, but not before I got Grant good in his pitching shoulder. Bastard.
“I’m not sorry,” I said to my father, tilting my chin up. “Aren’t you always the one who says not to take shit from anyone?”
He growled. “Not taking shit and doing fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of property damage are not the same and you know it.”
“Can’t we just get someone to sign off that I did my time and we can move on? I have sorority obligations and studying, and you can’t honestly expect me to do three hundred hours of some kind of menial grunt work.” I looked up at him, giving him a huge pout. “Please, Daddy? Can’t you do something? I made a mistake.”
Already, I was two steps ahead, planning the welcome back party our sorority held every year. This year was especially important because I’d been voted vice president.
“. . . alongside a group of people that are currently on parole.”
Parole? I shook my head. “What?”
“This is exactly what I was talking about, Avery. You have no comprehension of what you’ve done. You’ll take a semester off from college to get this taken care of. The paperwork is already filed. Your three hundred hours will be working with the public works crew, alongside a group of recent parolees.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?” My voice was way too high-pitched and loud, but he couldn’t mean what I was hearing. “I can’t take a semester off! What about Rush week? I have obligations! And you actually expect me to work alongside common criminals?”
A snarl turned his lips up. “What the hell do you think you are now, Avery? This goes on your permanent record! You’re twenty-one. You’re not a child anymore. And I’ve already looked at all the files of every single person you’ll be serving with. I wouldn’t allow you to be in danger, you know that.”
Shit. Shit. Shit. Real tears burned my eyes. Every employer worth working for did criminal background checks. God, I wanted to kill Grant for fucking with my future because he couldn’t keep his dick in his pants.
“I’m sorry, Daddy. I just . . . I loved Grant and I reacted without thinking.” My father was a reasonable person, but just in case he didn’t see my reasons clearly, I appealed to his emotional side. “He broke my heart, Daddy.”
I saw his face soften, and hope leapt to life in my chest. Surely he didn’t want his daughter working around the same dirty lowlifes he fought to put away every day.
“I know, and I’m sorry that you had to find him like that. But it doesn’t change what you did. I’m in a precarious position, Avery. My entire campaign rests on my one-strike platform. Hell, I’ve spent the last four years cleaning up the streets so that I’d be the best candidate for mayor. My hands are tied right now. You do the crime, you do the time.”
“Don’t use one of your campaign slogans on me,” I growled, then stomped down the steps.
“Avery, make sure you report to the public works department at six A.M. Monday. If you don’t show, they will arrest you and there won’t be anything I can do for you.” Before I could say anything else, a rep
orter rushed up the steps and thrust a microphone in my father’s face.
“Mr. Hartley, can you tell us how the arrest of your daughter has affected your campaign plans?” The blond woman smiled up at him, but I could see the gleeful malice gleaming in her eyes. Goddamned vultures.
“I can assure you, Ms. Chambers, that it hasn’t changed a thing. My daughter is going to pay for her lapse in judgment just like anyone else would. I’m serious when I say that I am willing to do whatever it takes to make our city a safer place.”
I glanced over my shoulder and saw my father look directly into the camera, his politician’s smile in place. If he wasn’t running for mayor, he would have pulled out all the stops to get me out of my punishment. That’s how it always worked with us.
But apparently not anymore.
I stormed to the parking lot and yanked open the door to my BMW convertible, a gift from Dad when I graduated from high school with a perfect 4.0. I flicked the AC on full blast, even though the top was down, and stomped down on the accelerator, speeding away from the courthouse as fast as I could go.
Wind whipped the tips of my ponytail against my face, but I ignored it.
No school. No sorority.
My life might as well be over right now.
Damn Grant and the wasted four years we spent together.
CHAPTER TWO
Seth
“Three months of community service and you’ll have served your entire sentence,” my parole officer said from across the desk. “Keep your nose clean, Seth, and you’ve got your entire future ahead of you.”
I sat back and crossed my arms, tried to listen to what Arnold was telling me. His office was a mess and it smelled musty, like there was old food sitting in some forgotten corner. But it was better than the cell that had been my home for the past twelve months.
“You got your GED and even started some college-level courses. That’s very good.” Arnold kept looking at me from over my file. Why the hell did he think he needed to tell me things that I already knew?
“There is a program that will pay for ex-convicts to earn a college degree. With your background and financial status, you’d get it all for free.”
In other words, I was a fucking low-life loser and the state would give me money to spend on a degree that might or might not keep me out of prison. Great use of the working public’s taxes. I’m sure they really appreciated it too.
“I’ll think about it¸” I said. I really wouldn’t. No way could I see myself on a fucking college campus.
He stared at me now. “It’s part of the rehabilitation program you agreed to, Seth. Either a job or further education in exchange for subsidized housing and food assistance. You’ll have to check in with me every week for the first six weeks, and then every month once you get a full-time job or enroll in college or a trade school.”
Christ, if this program hadn’t shaved an entire year off my sentence, I wouldn’t have agreed to it. Still, there was a tiny glimmer of hope that ignited inside my chest at his words. If I really could get some steady income, I could save Sara and get the hell out.
“Here is everything you need when you leave here.” Arnold handed me a manila envelope. “There’s some cash, a key to your apartment, your food benefits card that has two hundred and fifty dollars that can be used at any grocery around here, your state medical card, a transit card, and a current course catalog for UNC. That about covers it.”
I looked inside the envelope but didn’t take anything out yet.
“The address of your new place is in there as well. Now, Seth,” he said, sitting back and crossing his arms across his chest, “I need to remind you that you aren’t to get within five hundred feet of Sara or Davis. If you ignore the restraining order in effect, you will be arrested and you will serve out the rest of your sentence back in jail. No more chances. Do you understand that?”
I clenched my fists. Being out and not being able to see Sara ate at me. How the hell was I supposed to stay away from her when I knew what he was doing to her?
As if my parole officer could see my intentions, he leaned forward with narrowed eyes. “Seth. You’re twenty-two and you have the chance to start over here. You have one of two options: screw it all up and go right back behind bars, or try and use this chance to make something more of yourself. You’re a smart kid, so use your brains and not your fists, okay?”
I shrugged. The walls of his office felt like they were closing in around me. I needed space. Air. “Are we finished here?”
After a few seconds, he nodded. “Make sure you report to the Public Works building at six A.M. Monday. Once your community service is done, you’ll be able to enroll in classes full-time.”
I stood up and started out of his office.
“Seth.”
I stopped with my hand on the doorknob.
“If you need anything, my number is in the envelope too. Otherwise, I’ll see you back here for check-in at five thirty next Friday.”
It wasn’t until I stepped outside and inhaled a huge lungful of fresh air that I forced my shoulders to relax. For the first time in twelve months, I was standing outside without barbed-wire fences or guards watching me from a tower.
I was free.
And it fucking terrified me.
The bright sun made me squint, and I pulled out my sunglasses and shoved them onto my face. Cars zipped up and down Turner Street, and I watched them go by. Life went on. I’d been locked behind bars for twelve months, and everything on the outside had stayed the same.
Sara stayed the same. Even after I fucked Davis up and went to prison for trying to keep her away from that bastard’s druggie friends, she stayed with him. He was her guardian, our stepfather, and should be the one keeping her safe.
Not the one who got her hooked on heroin and pimped her out.
My hands curled into involuntary fists at my sides.
I stood, glaring at an invisible opponent, when a beat-up Ford pulled up next to the curb. A very familiar one I wasn’t sure I’d see again. Something else Ryan had done for me while I was inside.
“You look like you could use a lift.” Ryan leaned across the seat and looked at me over his dark glasses. “I got candy,” he said, waggling his eyebrows.
“Well, in that case.” I walked over and yanked open the door, happier to see my best friend than I had ever been in my life. The same guy who came to see me every weekend and who gave me updates on Sara. Something about seeing him without a huge gray table between us felt surreal.
“How the fuck does it feel to be out of the joint?” Ryan asked, clasping me on the shoulder.
“Shit, man. It hasn’t sunk in yet.”
“So, that’s your life right there? You in a fucking envelope, huh?” Ryan nodded toward the manila envelope in my lap.
“Looks that way. Place to stay, money for food. What else could a man ask for, right?” My voice hitched and I glanced out the window. I didn’t need to spell anything out for Ryan. We’d grown up together. He had my back no matter what.
“How the hell did everything get so fucked-up, Seth?” His fingers curled around the steering wheel. Neither one of us said her name. Ryan took a deep breath in. “So, you wanna grab a drink? The old man quit early today.”
Ryan worked with his father in construction. More like odd jobs when the old guy could get his shit together enough to focus. Why anyone hired him, knowing what a half-assed job he did, was beyond me.
I knew why, though. Because despite everything, Ryan was a hell of a worker and had a knack for knowing how to put crap together. I kept telling him to cut the dead weight and go out on his own, but he wouldn’t do it. Said someone had to make sure his dad was taken care of.
“So, Billy’s?” he asked.
I cringed. Our old hangout. A dive bar would be calling it something nice. “Maybe someplace else?” I couldn’t risk running into Sara, and she’d always loved hanging around that bar, even though she was only seventeen. Said it had atmosphere, w
hatever the fuck that meant.
“Shit. Yeah, you’re right.” Ryan pulled his truck back out onto the street. “There’s a place just outside the limits. Pretty decent food. Good beer. Won’t run into anyone there.”
“Sounds perfect, man.” Already I was feeling antsy. There is something to be said for routine and a finite amount of space. Your thoughts couldn’t go much farther than the cement walls.
Right now, looking out across the city, there was too much fucking space.
Too much room to think.
And I didn’t like where my mind was heading.
CHAPTER THREE
Avery
“So tonight we’re headed to someplace called O’Malley’s,” my best friend Shari announced, triumphantly waving the small scrap of paper in the air.
This was our dirty little secret. Freshman year, we had gone online and found every dive bar to five-star club in the city, then wrote them down on pieces of paper and put them into fishbowl number one.
Whenever we needed to get away from our lives or just needed to unwind after a hellish week, we’d hit the bowl. Neither one of us needed Ben & Jerry’s when things went south. We had the bowls. If one of us had a bad breakup (Shari) or a shitty family day (me), we pulled a destination and identities from the bowls and lost ourselves in whatever the universe had in store that night.
Tonight was all about me forgetting about Grant and all the shit that happened as a result. I just wanted to get drunk and feel something besides anger. Honestly, I wanted to feel wanted, just for a night.
“And who are we this time?” I asked.
Fishbowl number two had occupations.
Shari dipped her manicured fingertips into the bowl and pulled out a piece of paper. She made a huge production of opening it, then grinned at me. “Tonight, dahling, we are Fancy and Bambi, two new-to-town strippers.”
I breathed out a sigh of relief. Thank God we hadn’t pulled Christoff’s as our destination. My father would kill me if he knew we went to a five-star celebrity haunt dressed as hookers.
