by JA Huss
Contents
Sin With Me
DESCRIPTION
Dedication
Chapter One - Tyler
Chapter Two - Maddie
Chapter Three - Tyler
Chapter Four - Maddie
Chapter Five - Tyler
Chapter Six - Tyler & Maddie
Chapter Seven - Maddie
Chapter Eight - Tyler
Chapter Nine - Maddie
Chapter Ten - Tyler & Maddie
Chapter Eleven - Tyler
Chapter Twelve - Maddie
Chapter Thirteen - Tyler
Chapter Fourteen - Maddie
Chapter Fifteen - Tyler
Chapter Sixteen - Maddie
Chapter Seventeen - Tyler & Maddie
Chapter Eighteen - Tyler
Chapter Nineteen - Maddie
Chapter Twenty - Tyler
END OF BOOK SHIT
About the Authors
Copyright © 2018 by JA Huss and Johnathan McClain
All rights reserved.
Edited by RJ Locksley
Formatting and Cover Design by JA Huss
ISBN-978-1-944475-36-9
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.
DESCRIPTION
Two broken people in a city fueled by sin.
Maddie isn’t looking to be saved. She knows the only person you can count on is yourself. Her moral compass might not point true North these days—but at least she’s still standing.
The military taught Tyler about loyalty. Being there for your brothers is the only thing that matters—but when it mattered most, he wasn’t.
She’s got a ticket straight to Hell. He’s already been there and back.
She needs to win. He just needs to stop fighting.
Some sins scar your soul so deeply, you'll never be the same.
But this Devil in disguise might just be the angel he needs to forgive himself.
Dedication
For anyone who has ever slipped and kept climbing.
J.H. J.M.
Chapter One - Tyler
I never dreamed Heaven would look like this.
To be fair, for a long time, I never really dreamed at all. I trained myself not to. Because the dreams I hoped for would never come and nightmares would fill the void. So maybe what I mean to say is that I never imagined Heaven would look like this. I dunno.
Semantics.
Point is that had I dreamed, or imagined, or fucking speculated on an idea of Heaven, I doubt very much that it would look the way it does spread out before me now. Which is kind of like an Apple Store, but without a bunch of goddamn computers and watches and shit. Just clean white desks against clean white walls—that aren’t actually walls, because there seems to be no terminus to the sprawl—and lots and lots of people asking stupid questions.
Oh. And it smells like frankincense. I know because I got used to the smell when I was stationed in Somalia. I like it. It grows on you.
The angels (I’m assuming that’s what they are) are overly friendly. Not to some, I suppose, but I don’t trust anyone who’s too nice. Never have. And just because they’re angels doesn’t mean they get a pass. Fuckin’ angels.
And besides, OK, sure it’s Heaven and all, but that means I’m dead. And I don’t need some cocksucking angel trying to make me feel OK about it. I wonder if they get paid. Probably not. Not in money at least. In eternal salvation or whatever. Whoopie.
Oh, and they’re wingless. No wings? Yeah, I really don’t trust these fuckers. One of them did get me a cup of tea, though. She was pretty hot. The blue shirts they wear on earth tend to make them look kind of shapeless, but this angel chick has tits that defy the laws of physics. And they’re real. I kind of brushed up against them when she brought me the tea. Mostly by accident. So yeah, she’s definitely some kind of angel. I’ve never fucked an angel before. I wonder what that would be like.
The tea is rooibos, I think. I also like rooibos. Developed a taste for it in Saudi Arabia. Even though rooibos is from South Africa. Not that these things matter.
Details.
So. Here I sit, in clean, white, frankincense-infused Heaven, being tended to by blue-shirted, perfect-titted, wingless angels, drinking a cup of what I think is rooibos tea, waiting to talk with, I assume, God. Who—based on the current surroundings—will look like, I dunno, probably James Franco.
And I’m dreading it.
Because as soon as He checks the list on His GodBook Pro, He will realize that there has been a huge fucking mistake and my tea will be taken from me and I will be escorted out and sent promptly to a place that—I have to assume—will replicate approximately the back of the line at the DMV. Or the bathroom of a midtown Manhattan Starbucks. Or Afghanistan.
Shit. That sucks. I really like it here with this tea. And that angel with the heavenly tits. I start wondering how I can talk ’em into letting me stay.
And that’s when the explosion happens.
An eruption of flame that consumes all the clean and white, and paints it in a bleeding orange and piercing blue, followed by a shrieking red. The screams are familiar. I’ve heard them before. They aren’t screams of pain—that comes in a moment. For now they are screams of fear. Which is the worst, because fear implies hope. It means that they don’t yet realize they’re all already dead. People fighting against the inevitable always gives me the hardest time.
I look over at my angel and she is still there, only now she is wearing a hijab. Somehow the flames haven’t touched her. All around her is a boiling cauldron of chaos, but she remains whole. I see her pretty green eyes framed by the dark headdress and try to let her know that while I can’t save everyone, I can save her. I believe I can. So I start running through the flames, and the wailing, and the burning flesh.
I reach her and time slows. She smiles. It’s unsettling. Because it’s not a smile of relief or joy, it’s a smile of… something else. Mournfulness. Accusation. She takes my face in her hands and that’s when I realize that she hasn’t escaped the same fate as the others. Her palms are being immolated as they reach my cheeks. But it doesn’t hurt. It feels familiar somehow. She draws my ear close to her lips and she whispers:
“You brought this.”
And that’s when the rumbling, thunderous, final wave of flame engulfs us all.
And I wake up.
Wait. I wake up?
Are you shitting me?
Fuck.
An iPhone is vibrating next to my head on the bedside table.
On the other side, a cascade of black hair is spilled over my chest. And spread across the black hair is a wash of blonde hair. Oh, right. It’s coming back to me. Blackjack table—no! Roulette. That’s right. Then dancing at Tao. Then shots. Then Ecstasy. Then… well, then everything gets kind of muddy. It only pops into my head in flashes, but I do have a clear recollection of someone shouting, “Never stop fucking me!” Whoever said it is clearly disappointed now that the fucking has, evidently, stopped.
Let me think… I assume the bodies attached to these heads of hair have names, but I have zero clue what those names might be. (For some reason I want to call them Kerosene and Glycerin, but I’m sure that can’t be right.)
The phone is still vibrating. The screen says it’s Evan. I have no reason to believe the phone is lying, so I answer, “Hey. Everything OK?”
I roll out from underneath Kerosene. (The dark-haired one. Obviously.) She reflexively grabs for my side. Glycerin (but I think I’ll call her Glys) rolls the other way and falls off the b
ed. She moans but doesn’t wake up. Maybe she knocked herself out. I dunno. Whatever.
Evan answers my concerned salutation. “Yeah. Everything’s fine. Why?”
“Because it’s—” I glance at my watch. “Oh. It’s noon. Well, still. It’s noon on a Saturday—it is Saturday, right?”
He laughs. “Yeah, dude. It’s Saturday.”
“Jesus. The week went fast. Anyway. There’s no emergency?”
“No, man. I’m not at work. We’re going car-shopping today, I thought.”
Shit. That’s right. I’ve been putting it off because I just don’t care that much, but I should get one. I haven’t really driven a car in damn near twelve years. I had a piece-of-shit Corolla in high school, but that fuckin’ died as I was trying to get the hell away from home to make it to training. And then I got deployed to Iraq, so… Iraq? I think it was Iraq. Pretty sure that was my first deployment. Honestly, I can’t remember anymore. But I had to drive in the Middle East a couple of times and I really learned to hate it. And after I mustered out, I just kind of went from train to plane to fucking… llama and shit for a long time, deciding what my next move was gonna be.
I’ve only been back in Vegas for a few months and because this ridiculous apartment is right in the middle of the Strip I haven’t much needed a car here either, but then last week I was with this chick I picked up at the Cosmopolitan and she wanted to go fuck in the desert because that’s like her thing or whatever—
(She said that when you’re fucking and come into the earth you’re replenishing the planet’s life energy, or some kind of Burning Man bullshit. Didn’t really care. Her ass was so perfect she looked like a cartoon character. If she had said she wanted to fuck in a feeding trough, I would have made it work.)
—and so we were in the middle of the desert and after we finished “replenishing the planet” she got pissed about the fact that I said, “Thanks.” Which is just something I say. It’s kind of a reflex. Not sure where I picked it up. But, I mean, if you have a problem with it, uh, go fuck yourself. I’m just trying to be polite. But she yelled, “I’m not a whore!” pulled her pants up over her bubble butt and jumped into her stupid Mini Cooper or whatever it was and left me there. (At that point I started to suspect she maybe has some issues.)
And, of course, there’s no cell service in the middle of the fucking desert, so I had to hump it like ten miles in the goddamn cold-ass desert night before I could get enough bars to call Evan and wake him up to come find me, which is incredibly shitty because he had just come off working third watch for Vegas Fire and Rescue for three nights in a row because they were short-handed, so the poor guy should have been allowed to sleep. But he’s the only person in town I still know well enough to call in the middle of the night to drive out and pick me up in the desert—we’ve known each other since we were two—so he did it, because he’s a goddamn champ, but as we were driving back he did say, “Bro. You gotta get a car.”
Am I rambling?
I feel like I’m rambling.
I do that. Sometimes out loud, but usually just to myself. I try not to let anyone see. But I can’t shut my fucking brain off. I think I need coffee.
I head out of the bedroom and into the kitchen to make coffee. By which I mean drop a pod into a thing that looks like R2D2. And make toast. If I can. This toaster that came with the apartment is so fancy it took me like an hour to figure it out the first time. I’m still not sure I have it right.
“Yeah.” I sigh. “Let’s go fucking car shopping.”
He laughs again. He’s such a good dude. “That’s the spirit! You ready to go now?”
“Uh…” I glance through the open bedroom door at Kerry and Glys. Glys is snoring pretty loudly. I take that as a sign that she didn’t knock herself out.
“You’re not alone?” he asks. It’s a rhetorical question. Again, guy has known me for twenty-eight years.
“No. But I can be ready in an hour.” I can probably be ready sooner, but I don’t know how long it’s gonna take to get… Jolie?… and… Witherspoon? (no, probably not) out of here.
As we continue talking, I wander over to the living room. I suppose? This is one of those apartments where every space just kind of blends into the next. I don’t have much in the way of furniture so it’s sort of hard to determine where one part ends and another begins. But I stand in what I’m calling the living room and stare out the window. Window. Ha. This whole fuckin’ place is nothing but windows. Floor-to-ceiling. All the way around. Corner apartment. On the Strip. Overlooking everything from the fountain at the Bellagio to the faux Eiffel Tower at the Paris to the fake Statue of Liberty at New York-New York. Seems fitting. Because I’m not supposed to be here. I’m a fake king, in a fake castle, looking out over a fake kingdom.
In fairness, it’s not like I didn’t earn it. I did. I suppose. Depending on how one defines earning. Is it “earning” if it comes at other people’s expense? I start wondering, can anyone ever really get anything in life without taking something from someone else in the process? Those steps we climb to get where we’re going? More often than not, they’re built on top of the discarded bodies of the less fortunate.
And suddenly I’m thinking about Nadir. And then I get fucking sad. Because all Nadir was trying to do when he came on as our platoon translator was to keep his family safe from being shot or blown the fuck up, and somehow I managed to fuck that up real bad and get him killed.
And then I remember that Nadir wasn’t the first person I’m responsible for having managed to get killed.
And then I get fucking sadder.
Christ. My only job as an EOD Tech was to defuse and dispose of shit that can blow you up, and then me and Nadir and three other guys walk right into a fucking explosion that was created by a goddamn twelve-year-old. Killed Nadir and the others. But for whatever bitter joke of a reason, I lived. And by virtue of that bullshit we went through, I managed to wind up falling ass-backwards into all this damn money that I never asked for and don’t even really want. But that’s the way it goes, isn’t it? Some people get shit on and die, some people get shit on and live, and some people get shit on and then get to wipe themselves off with more money than they can spend in five lifetimes.
I don’t know why that last one is me. I’ve given up trying to figure it out.
But it is why, after kicking around for a few years trying to decide what to do with myself now that I’m all rich and fancy and everything, I moved back home. Because nobody but Evan knows me anymore and I don’t have to explain myself to anyone. Because Vegas… well, Vegas is the kind of town where a terrible fucking tragedy can occur on Sunday and by Wednesday everybody’s already gotten back to whatever fucked-up, selfish hedonism they’re into.
The kind of place where I feel at home.
Because it is. Home. It made me. And now it has to own me.
So I bought this crazy corner penthouse that overlooks my city, so I can sit up here high above everyone and look down on them all with a big suck-my-dick expression plastered all over my face.
(That’s probably something I should talk with my shrink about, but then I don’t really think it’s all that complicated.)
I must be rambling in my head again because the next thing I hear is, “OK? Tyler? Dude? OK?”
I actually forgot that I was holding the phone against my ear. That’s disturbing.
“Yeah. No. Wait. What? Sorry?” I pretty well plead.
“I said I’ll meet you at the Land Rover dealership at two.”
“Why do I have to get some fancy new car?”
“Because you can afford it and because I’m not picking you up in the fucking desert again. You feel me?”
“Yeah. I feel you…”
“Bro? Are you OK?” He sounds concerned. Shit. Is my inside-my-head voice creeping out to my mouth?
“Yeah, man. I’m OK. I just…” I pause to debate how much I feel like sharing.
“Yeah? You just what?”
“I… I
was having a dream when you called.”
“K. What kind of dream?”
Seems like a reasonably straightforward question.
“… I have no idea. Something about Heaven and tits.”
I can feel Evan’s brow furrow on the other end of the call.
“That’s… specific. You want me to come pick you up?”
“No. No. I’m OK. I’ll see you soon.”
“OK, brother. See you in a bit. Peace.”
Evan never says goodbye. He always says, “Peace.” I have no idea if that’s with everyone or something special he reserves for me.
As I’m pulling the phone away from my ear, I get, “Omigod, what the fuck happened to you?”
At least it sort of sounds like that, only way more slurred and with fewer definite consonants to distinguish the sounds as actual words. But I get the gist.
I turn around and Kerosene is standing in the doorway, naked, teetering a little bit. She’s got a nice body. Fake tits, but they’re good ones at least. She clearly spent somebody’s money on a quality surgeon. She’s pretty too. In a “please, please look at me” kind of a way. I think she told me she and Glys are from Virginia? The Virgin Islands? Fuck, man. I’m starting to get worried about my memory. Regardless, assuming I heard her question right, and assuming she’s not talking about my cock for some reason (she’s not—I have an amazing cock—I like to think it’s my best quality) I imagine she must be referring to the scars.
“I got mauled by a gazelle on safari.”
“Holy shit, really?” she maybe mumbles.
“No.”
If I thought I might like her at all I’d keep fucking with her a little bit, but there’s no chance of us grabbing breakfast and getting to know each other, so dragging out the joke feels like a waste of energy.
I just want to get her and her… friend? Sister? Fuck, I hope it’s not her mother… out of here. I’m used to women having reactions when they see the scarring on my chest and back and sides for the first time. Hell, when I saw it for the first time I almost cried. Not because I’m vain or because I was worried about how people would view me or whatever, but because it looked so… painful. I don’t remember being in pain. I was in a coma for like two weeks after the explosion, so it felt false to get all bent out of shape about it, because I was still alive and I had no real memory of being in pain or shock or anything like that. But when I saw it for the first time, I felt like I had an obligation to feel something. So I got all misty so that the nurses and doctors could pat me on the shoulder and tell me everything was gonna be OK. Seemed like they needed it.
