Sin With Me

by JA Huss

  Even Tyler Morgan.

  So it turns out I was wrong. This whole time. There is no right way to do anything. Not make toast, or get to work, or get through life trying to be happy.

  The elevator dings and opens. I walk out, stunned silent and on autopilot.

  “Ma’am?” the doorman says as he opens the door for me. “Are you OK?”

  The next thing I know I’m walking down Las Vegas Boulevard and I can only assume I never answered him. I look down at my feet because I have no shoes on and the sidewalk is cold, and notice somewhere between there and here, I cut myself. Looking over my shoulder I see a trail of red footprints behind me.

  This is Vegas. Home of the weird and sad. So no one takes any notice of me at all. Life goes on all around me in a blur of motion that makes me feel like I’m just an extra in someone else’s movie.

  I head toward Pete’s because I have nowhere else to go. I have no phone, I have no car, I have no money… I have nothing because I am no one. Going back to Pete’s feels like returning to the scene of a crime. The crime I committed was allowing myself to believe that things might turn out OK. I’m not being morose or feeling bad for myself—I’m really not—I’m just confronting a bitter reality. If this is, in fact, reality.

  It takes an hour to make my way back to Pete’s. It’s cold. Desert cold. Dry and dusty and barren. As I approach the alley behind the club, I think of what we did back here. And how good it felt. And thinking about how good it felt makes me feel bad now. I think of what he said to me—“You’re going to kill me”—and I remember thinking that maybe we’d kill each other. Seems more like a premonition now than just a random thought.

  Tyler Morgan. Shit. The potential for some chance at happiness ripped from my precarious grip by the inconceivable arrival of Tyler Morgan. Just one more example of all the equal and opposite reactions I deserve.

  Why did it have to be him?

  Because, the devil on my shoulder says, there was no one else it could’ve been.

  The angel doesn’t even show up to give her opposing opinion. Apparently she’s done with me. I have finally fallen from her grace and there is no amount of penance that can cleanse my soul.

  I shoulda moved to fucking Monaco.

  There’s a car idling in the alley. A Mercedes parked just outside the back door. Its headlights illuminate me in all my wasted glory. I lift my hand and squint to shield my eyes from the glare. Which doesn’t help, but I do it anyway.

  Then the rear driver’s side door opens and a leg extends itself. A man gets out, leaving the door open. “Madison,” he says in his somewhat thick Spanish accent.

  “Carlos,” I say back, not even scared. Just… no longer able to be shocked by the seemingly endless parade of ridiculous shit that’s happening tonight, and ready to get this over with. Just take me to the desert and kill me. My situation would improve dramatically if this whole stupid nightmare called life was over.

  “Would you come with me, please?” he asks.

  “Dunno. Pretty busy just now,” I say.

  Then the driver’s window lowers and there’s Logan. Holding a gun. Pointed at me.

  “Hey, you got a new gun. Good for you,” I say to him. He doesn’t seem amused.

  Logan says, “Shut up and get in the fucking car.”

  I stare at him for a moment. Then I shrug and say, “Yeah, sure,” and head over.

  Just then, the back door to Pete’s swings open and Raven appears, silhouetted by bright white light. Like she’s pretending to be the angel who deserted me. I don’t know how, or why, she decided to come out here at this exact moment, but there she is. Standing witness to my mistakes.

  “Scarlett,” she yells. “Come here.” Her eyes dart to Carlos, then me, as she extends her arm and holds out her hand, beckoning me to her with flicking fingers.

  “Madison,” Carlos says. “Please.” He again gestures for me to come to him.

  Like the devil on my shoulder, he makes a lot more sense than Raven. Because if I go to her, they’ll shoot me, or run me over, or hell, maybe just come back another day to finish me off.

  If I go to her, there’s a chance that this… all this that’s happening tonight… will never end. And I just want it to be over. I don’t want to climb this fucking mountain anymore. I’m so tired of pulling myself back up. I just want to fall now. I’m done.

  I look to Raven, smile a sad but grateful smile—who would’ve thought she’d turn out to be on my side?—and then turn back to Carlos. I walk over, stand next to him, look him right in the eye, and say, “Happy Halloween.”

  And then I slide into the backseat and glance out the window to the dark corner where not so very long ago, a stranger that I once knew showed up and made feel happy and safe and warm.

  Carlos gets in and slams the door shut.

  And as we pull out of the alley and off into the desert night, I close my eyes, lean my head back onto the headrest, and whisper to myself, “Stop climbing now, Maddie.”

  Chapter Twenty - Tyler

  Drywall is easier to punch through than most people might realize.

  I am making a series of companion holes to accompany the one I think I made before. At least this time I know it’s me doing it. This is the only time I’ve ever wished I owned more shit. Because then I would have more shit to break.

  I tear into the kitchen, pulling drawers out of cabinets, throwing silverware on the ground, ripping appliances from the wall. I grab up the toaster—the toaster with the charred bread inside—and I remember the thought I had that if I was burning alive in this apartment, that that’s how I would look to the people on the street below. And I also remember that at the time it gave me great comfort, even if I didn’t know why.

  Now I do.

  I throw the toaster down, race into the bedroom, rip the mattress off the frame, drag it into the main room, and toss it into the middle of the space. I topple the dresser and rip out all the clothes, gathering them into a pile on top of the mattress. I drag the dresser itself into the other room too and throw it on top of the pile.

  Kindling.

  Then I head to the kitchen, open the liquor cabinet, grab the bottle of Johnny Walker Blue, and pour it over the whole thing.

  Accelerant.

  Then… I go looking for a lighter.

  Where the fuck is a lighter? Why do I not have a lighter? Jesus! I should never have quit smoking! Fuck!

  Matches? Do I have matches? I tear through the kitchen cabinets now looking for matches. No matches. Son of a bitch!

  And then I catch a glimpse of myself in the reflection in the windows. Naked, scarred, scared, frantic, insane. I have crossed over. I have crossed over to full-blown insanity. I am no longer in clear control of my actions.

  If I ever was.

  And then I think about MY DREAM.

  Of course it was Maddie all along. Who else?

  I’m so sad that I couldn’t see it clearly before so that I could make it right, right from the start. But that’s why THE DREAM keeps coming back to me. That’s why it’s recurring. That’s why every time I dream it, it’s just another opportunity to crack the code, solve the puzzle, repair the problem, make it right. It’s fucking Groundhog Day.

  All I have to do is find the way to fix it. To keep the world from ending. If I can solve the mystery of what I need to do and how I need to do it, then I can put everything straight. And then Maddie and I can try to start fresh. With each other. AS each other. Not as fucking Ford and Scarlett. As Tyler. And Maddie.

  I can fix this, I know I can.

  I believe it now. I think I didn’t believe it before because none of it seemed real. But this is real. Maddie is real. Maddie is Maddie. Holy shit. I have fallen in love with Maddie. Little Maddie Clayton. I wonder what Scotty would think. He’d probably hate it. He’d probably be, “Dude, that’s my sister!” But that’s only because he wouldn’t know that I’ve changed. Am changing. Have tried to change. If I could show Scotty how I have changed and what
a good guy I am, I know instead he’d be like, “Dude! That’s my sister! Yay!” I know he would. I don’t even have to convince myself.

  But I do have to make this right. I have to. I have to. I have to.

  I have to do it for Scotty. I have to do it for Nadir. I have to do it for my mom. Fuck, I have to do it for Maddie. I WILL do it for Maddie. I WILL fix this. I CAN fix this. I am going to fix this. And then we WILL live happily the fuck ever after. I can feel it. I know it.

  Fuck. I’m calming down. Everything’s going to be OK. It will. God or whoever will forgive me and I am going to be able to make everything turn out OK.

  I know it.

  And in this moment of knowing—this calm, almost Buddhist state of knowing—I find peace.

  And I breathe.

  And I believe.

  She has made me into peace.

  And I know it.

  Which is why I’m just as surprised as anyone when the fire alarm in the apartment goes off, terrifyingly loud.

  And I look over to see that the burners on my fancy gas stove are all lit.

  And then I look down at my hand.

  And I see that I’m holding a menu from a Chinese restaurant.

  And it’s on fire.

  And I have touched it to the bonfire I erected.

  And as I stand here, naked, holding this makeshift torch, watching an escalating wall of flame burning out of control in front of me…

  I am… confused.

  But I’m not scared.

  And I’m not sad.

  If anything, I’m… hopeful.

  Huh.

  Look at that.

  I’m hopeful.

  Why did it have to be you? Her words ring in my ears along with the screeching of the alarm.

  And I say aloud, as if she can hear me… because somehow, I know she can…

  “Because. There’s no one else it could have been.”

  And as the flames begin spreading and fanning out across the great, empty apartment, replacing my magnificent view of the skyline with a blistering mountain of violent orange and red…

  I think of her.

  And I smile.

  GET THE NEXT BOOK, Angels Fall, HERE

  END OF BOOK SHIT

  Well, fuck, you guys. And so ... here we are.

  One only gets to do their first EOBS as JA Huss’s new writing partner once, and I’m not even sure where to start. So, I’ll just start at the beginning:

  What follows is an excised bit of an email I received from Julie’s audiobook publisher, dated 6 September 2016.

  “I've...got 2 different J.A. Huss titles that I thought of you for. Mr. Romantic is one book in a series by Huss, where each book follows a different couple, so we'll be casting a different pair on each.

  Wasted Lust is the other...I've attached both scripts here.

  Now, these titles do venture a bit into the erotic side of romance...Both also have male leads that are a bit on the bad boy side of things (yes, even Mr. Romantic - Huss tends to write complex, layered characters).

  Take a look, and let me know what you think.”

  If you’ve not seen the videos Julie and I did, that’s how it all began. And everything that was pitched to me was true.

  After recording Wasted Lust, I discovered that Julie was following me on Twitter and I followed her back so that I could message her privately. (Up until very recently, I’ve been extremely social media averse. I only had a Twitter account because my manager suggested I get one in 2016 because of a job I was doing. It was literally the third time I had set up a Twitter account, after bailing two previous times over the years. Julie was one of the first people to follow me this time.)

  This is what I sent to her via Twitter, dated 10 January 2017:

  “Hi there! Since you managed to track me down on the webnet, you clearly know that I narrated two of your recent audio releases. So A) thanks for taking the time to find me! That is both gracious and thoughtful. And B) I want you to know that in narrating the last chapter of "Wasted Lust," I choked up. Seriously. Which is, to state it modestly, rare. The adult fiction genre has no dearth of writers, as you know. But the nuance, detail, and - dare I say - sophistication with which you write is, well, a fucking delight to interpret. Thanks for having let me be a part of your storytelling. Best of luck in all things. –J”

  This is part of what she wrote back, two hours later:

  “Dude. I <3 you so much...You rocked Wasted Lust...it's my favorite book, of all the books I've written, and I so wanted you for that project. I loved, loved, loved it. I've listened to it twice (but I skip the sex scenes!) lol. I just can't deal with those. And you did such a great job with Mr. Romantic. Nolan Delaney is the most f-up character ever and you did it perfect. :) Sorry for going all fan girl. You're probably like - OK, that's enough of her. But really, thank you...”

  I have to say, as I sit here and I type this, that’s all less than a year ago and I can’t believe it’s been that brief a time since Julie and I first made person to person contact. I couldn’t have imagined that from that tiny bit of mutual admiration, she and I would have wound up here.

  Jumping ahead to speak about this book, Sin With Me, specifically ... Well, here’s how it came to be:

  After Julie and I finished working on the pilot script for THE COMPANY (in Hollywood, people reference TV shows in all caps – dunno why), and it went as well as it did, collaboratively, she made the now famous phone call when she asked me if I would be interested in writing novels together. It took about two seconds for me to say “yes,” and we were left with trying to decide what we should write.

  And then a curious thing happened: We wound up with like 10 ideas, all spilling out over the top of each other. Julie started talking about stories she’d had percolating for a while but never had the time to take on. I did the same. And then, I mentioned a TV show pilot concept that I had come up with probably nine years ago, that I loved, but that I never found the time to develop into a proper pitch. She said, “Well, pitch me on it now.” So I did.

  The working title of that show was “Blast Radius,” and it was to center around a guy who was a bomb specialist/fire inspector who was himself a live bomb. A guy whose life was out of control and he just kind of set fire to everything he touched. (In my mind, he was always sort of Hugh Laurie from HOUSE, but a bomb guy.)

  And that was it.

  Julie loved the rough idea, and said, “Let’s do this one first.” Once we had this as our jumping off point, we spent some time on the phone developing the major players and the world and where the twists and turns would be, and it became quickly apparent that this was too big an idea for one book. Now, most of Julie’s worlds are too big for one book, but we realized that not just this world, but this individual story was too big. There were so many tendrils, and they just kept sprawling, so we came to the conclusion that to tell this tale properly, we would need multiple books.

  But. We also decided that we didn’t want to wait and take months and months to release everything all spread out, so we concluded that we would do something INSANE and write them all, back to back to back to back, releasing them with just enough time in between for readers to get through one and be ready for the next.

  This excited me because I LOVE a good cliffhanger. But I also HATE waiting for the cliffhanger to resolve. So, this seemed like the best way to address both of those concerns.

  And then we decided ... let’s set it in Vegas!

  At first this was because we had the concept of Sin With Me as the title and Vegas is Sin City, and also because in my research, the Vegas bomb squad division of Fire and Rescue kept coming up as impressive and top tier. Also, both Julie and I know Vegas pretty well and seemed like we could do an authentic job of setting the story there.

  And then 1 October 2017 happened and 58 people were murdered and 546 injured in Las Vegas in the worst mass shooting in US history.

  And Julie and I discussed what would be appropriate. And what we decided
is that it would be disingenuous and wrong not to tell the story we set out to tell. (You may notice that there is a tiny reference to the shooting in chapter 1 of this book, and then we just went back into telling the story we had conceived of.) Because ultimately the story we’re striving to tell is one of redemption and love, and that feels like a way to pay homage as well.

  (Side note: I was in NYC on 9/11. I lived there. I was actually about to go to the airport to catch a flight to LA that morning. I never made it to the airport, of course. Experiencing that event so close and firsthand was a defining moment in my life. I’m the kind of person who, when something like that happens, tends to run toward it as opposed to away from it. Not because I’m brave or noble. Not at all. But because I feel a sense of defiance and probably obligation. I used to say, in the weeks after 9/11, “Shit, if they’d let me go to fucking Ground Zero and set up a tent, I’d live there.” I felt like I ... I dunno ... owed it to NYC to show it that it was still loved. And in some way, I think that’s how I felt about this story and Las Vegas. And, as is evident in this book, I love firefighters. I admire and lionize them. They are, to my mind and as a cadre of society, some of the best of who we are.)

  And then we dug into the details of this specific tale.

  Now ... we have other books planned for the future that will explore all kinds of shit worth exploring. The darker sides of sexuality, or the funnier sides of sexuality, or the surreality of sexuality but for this, our first offering, we wanted to tell simply a tale of alchemy. The story of two people who crash into each other’s lives and must to figure out HOW they work together, WHY they work together, and WHO they are to each other, while simultaneously battling personal demons both internal and external.

  Not at all unlike the way a new writing partnership works.

  And although we created both of the central characters together, I’ll talk about Tyler because my job was really to work with him in this book. (As we move forward in other books, we’re talking about experimenting with all kinds of things – like I may write the woman’s voice and Julie the man’s, we may alternate, we may do a couple of other things with “voice” that change it up completely.)