Forgotten Promises is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
A Loveswept eBook Original
Copyright © 2016 by Jessica Lemmon
Excerpt from Fighting for Devlin by Jessica Lemmon copyright © 2015 by Jessica Lemmon
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Loveswept, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.
LOVESWEPT is a registered trademark and the LOVESWEPT colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.
eBook ISBN 9781101968574
Cover design: Georgia Morrissey
Cover photograph: © tommaso lizzul/Shutterstock
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Running
Chapter 1: Happy Freaking Birthday
Chapter 2: Choices
Chapter 3: Stolen Away
Chapter 4: Now What
Chapter 5: Over It
Chapter 6: Jeremy
Chapter 7: Touching
Chapter 8: Boundaries
Chapter 9: Lightning Flashes
Chapter 10: Regret
Chapter 11: Safe
Chapter 12: Promises
Chapter 13: Opportunity
Chapter 14: Pillow Talk
Chapter 15: One Last Time
Chapter 16: Home Sweet Home
Chapter 17: Set Free
Chapter 18: Shock
Italy
Surprise
Epilogue
Dedication
Acknowledgments
By Jessica Lemmon
About the Author
The Editor’s Corner
Excerpt from Fighting for Devlin
Running
Tucker
Things aren’t exactly going my way. My breath burns heavy and hot in my lungs as I run. And run and run and run.
Not that I should have expected them to go smoothly. After years spent under my father’s command or seeking freedom from it, it’s eerily unsurprising to find I’ve landed myself in this much trouble just one day after getting released from prison.
Yeah. I said prison.
But I didn’t belong there.
I don’t intend on going back.
Working out in the yard at Baybrook Penitentiary, jogging the perimeter every chance I got, has paid off. Blood is drying on my shirt, the sting of broken flesh on my knuckles a physical reminder of what I am capable of. I dig deep and find the strength to run faster.
Now to find a car. I had a friend when I was on the outside. He owed me a favor. I cut across a yard and skirt a big wooden playground set with brightly colored plastic tubes and slides, wondering what it might have been like to grow up in a house like this. I wonder if the kids were protected. Safe. Loved.
But I don’t have time to do a postmortem on my childhood. Praying no one is looking out of a window, I leap a fence to an attached apartment complex and land on my feet on a crumbling pile of asphalt. The weeds are overgrown, the trees scraggly. There is junk in the yard and garbage in the lot, proving that the people who live here don’t give a shit about appearances.
Or much of anything.
People like us have our reasons for feeling that way.
If Lady Luck is any friend at all, she’ll shine on me, and Mark’s Dodge Charger will be parked in exactly the same spot as when he and I used to break laws together. Minor laws. We didn’t kill anybody or anything.
I slink past a few other cars parked under a dilapidated awning, and spot Mark’s Dodge, Chelsea (named for an ex-girlfriend), parked outside of his garage. Similar to the real Chelsea, the car is dull and kind of dirty. But for my needs, the car may as well have a light from heaven shining upon her. This is a blessing when I need one most.
I calm my walk as I approach his driveway, edging along grass that needs mowing, and take a peek through a pair of partially open shabby curtains. My former good buddy is sprawled on his couch snoring, mouth wide open. I wonder if he was able to keep his job at the gravel pit, or if he was fired for one of many reasons he’d been fired from everywhere else. I smile as I remember the fun we had together. Feels like about a hundred years ago, even though it’s been more like two. “Fun” had been a rare commodity in my world back then, and right about now it is extinct.
I consider knocking on his door, asking if I can borrow Chelsea, but I don’t consider for long. The debate lasts exactly two seconds before I turn away from Mark’s window and walk to the car I’m about to appropriate for myself. She’s unlocked so I slide onto the seat and palm the steering wheel, ignoring the sting on my knuckles as I grip the wheel. I haven’t driven a car in a while—not since I stole my father’s Explorer one fated night, and being in the driver’s seat sends a rush of intoxicating freedom surging through my veins.
Freedom I can’t allow to be taken from me. Not again. Not ever.
I am prepared to hot-wire her, a handy trick, but then check the glove compartment—the stupidest place to keep a set of keys second only to the visor.
There, beneath the expired registration is a key taped to the vinyl cover of the owner’s manual.
Jackpot.
Before my luck runs out—given the way every other damn thing has worked out tonight, it very well might—I jam the key in the ignition and turn over her blubbering engine. Loud. Way too fucking loud.
As I back out of the driveway, Mark’s door swings open. He lumbers out, wearing boxers and nothing else, rubbing his eyes, his hair and beard scraggly. I stomp on the brakes and shift into drive. Mark’s stark confusion fades and he smiles.
It’s as good as getting his permission. I jerk my chin in a silent goodbye and gun the engine. The fuel gauge reads three-quarters full, plenty of gas to get me to the shittiest convenience store I can find. I need supplies for where I’m going and if the place is shady enough, the clerk won’t bat an eyelash at my T-shirt covered in blood. One hand gripping the wheel, I keep my eyes on the road while searching the front and back for something to change into. Surely Mark has left a shirt or—My fingers curl around something cool and slick in the backseat and I pull it into my lap. The dark leather smells like pot, and has seen better days—like the nineties—but the jacket will have to do. At least it’ll cover my shirt.
My bleeding knuckles, however…I shake my hand out as I pass a Waffle House, several semis parked in the lot, the inside well lit—a little too well lit. Stopping even briefly to wash my hands is tempting, but risky. I settle for the napkins I spotted in the glove compartment when I was digging for the keys.
Alternating hands on the steering wheel, I wipe as gently as possible, grateful that most of the blood isn’t mine and consider I’m luckier than I gave myself credit for a moment ago. My father was always a fighter. I’ve seen him take down a man twice my size—one who was out-of-his-mind high. I shouldn’t have been a challenge for him tonight, but I had the element of surprise.
What I didn’t have was the proof I went to my childhood home to reclaim. The videotape that would exchange mine and my father’s places in the eyes of the law and anyone with a functioning conscious. The plan was to send him to prison, not send myself back. It was time. Jeremy is gone. Mom is safely out of the country.
But now…now I don’t know what the hell to do. Without proof of what he’s done, it’s my word against my father’s, and there’s no doubt who the masses will believe.
I have no idea how I’m going to get
that tape. It isn’t as if I can go back and ring the doorbell. It’s not like I can go to the police and plead my side of the story.
There isn’t much sympathy for the ex-con who beats the police chief unconscious. Especially when the police chief is his father.
Chapter 1
Happy Freaking Birthday
Morgan
I’m still gaping at my boyfriend from across the table at Pinky’s taco-slash-karaoke bar, and, if he doesn’t proceed very carefully, his final resting place.
Drew has an exaggerated look of remorse on his face I just know is manufactured.
“We didn’t plan to, Mo,” he tells me.
“Don’t call me that,” I manage and it’s the first words I’m capable of since he and Shayna dropped the bomb that they were doing the nasty. An accurate description, I think, mind still buzzing from either the tequila shots or the new information stinging my brain like a horde of angry bees.
“You’re disgusting.” I shoot daggers from my eyes at Shayna, who sits across the table from me and does her best kicked-puppy impression. Screwed over by my best friend. Correction: ex–best friend.
My accusation shifts her face from guilt-ridden bestie to offended bitch in such a short time frame, it’s almost laughable. “Drew has needs.”
She seriously did not just say that. I blink, stunned, and turn to face Drew, who is having a staring contest with his beer.
“I’m sorry?” I say to him, not the least bit sorry. “You have needs involving your penis in Shayna’s vagina?”
“In my mouth, actually,” she interjects, and it’s such a skanky thing to say I feel my mouth drop open. How was this my best friend? What the hell sort of circumstances led to my linking myself to the girl who one by one alienated our combined group of friends. And Drew! I glare at him.
“This breakup is about blow jobs?” I say a little too loudly.
“Several,” Shayna says with a smirk.
Every inch of me wants to tear her dark hair out by the roots. But I’ve seen enough daytime TV to know not to be the girl who yells at the other girl while the man in the room sits smugly and watches them fight over him.
The swine.
A rendition of “Before He Cheats” by Carrie Underwood (being sung by a very drunk blonde in a very tight dress) plays from the stage behind me as I stand from my seat. Neither of my exes seems to notice the blatant appropriateness of the song, but I do. And while I don’t possess a Louisville Slugger, and Drew doesn’t have a four-wheel-drive truck, I feel inspired.
“Any reason you waited until tonight to share this with me?” I ask.
My father had offered to take me to a nice restaurant, give me my gifts there, treat me like a princess. But no. I turned him down. Told him Drew had “special plans” to take me out and surprise me.
In Drew’s defense, I am surprised.
“This was your epic plan for my birthday?” I ask.
“No.” He makes a sharp hand gesture and looks almost excited to have found some ground to stand on that’s not mired in quicksand and R.O.U.S.’s. “This was never the plan. Michaela and Jon and Bethany were planning on coming, too.”
His friends more than mine. Mine have absconded to college where they made college friends, went to college parties, and in general left those of us in Baybrook to our simple lives. Right now, I envy them.
“We were supposed to start here and finish at Milson’s summer party,” he adds.
Oh, my bad. The “big plan” for the night was a crappy karaoke bar followed by a party not thrown for me. What a jerk. I down my last tequila shot, and then, what the hell, Shayna’s tequila shot. I don’t need it, but I earned it.
“I’m going to have to get tested for skank diseases.” I curl my lip at Shayna. She sputters and crosses her arms but, wisely, says nothing. Maybe because Drew has put a hand on her arm communicating that her input would not be welcome at this juncture.
I decide, while watching him stroke her arm tenderly, that I’m not nearly drunk enough to handle my current sitch. I’ll buy a bottle of wine on the way home and drink it in the comfort of my plush bedroom. Surrounded by teddy bears from my youth under my canopy bed. Maybe I’ll even dig out my old diary and write down how much I hate the two people I loved just four and a half minutes ago.
“And where are Michaela and Jon and Bethany? Did everyone just…cancel?” I gesture around me, aware I’m standing and talking loudly and drawing the attention from the girl yowling onstage. She’s trying. She really is.
“I texted everyone and told them to go to Milson’s. I said we were skipping Pinky’s,” Shayna explains. “I didn’t think you’d want them here.”
“We were trying to save you the embarrassment.” Drew’s cheeks turn a ruddy shade. As if my embarrassment is the issue?
“God. You are an idiot,” I say, but the anger is starting to burn off, leaving something ugly behind. Regret. And the kind of palpable sadness that cannot be soothed by Ben & Jerry’s and a Twilight marathon. Loss pings in my rib cage when my thoughts turn to the friends who left me behind. If I had gone to law school like my father had encouraged, how different would my life be?
I can’t do this right now. I cannot have a breakdown in the middle of Pinky’s, for God’s sake. Ire is my only ally.
“We thought it was only fair to tell you before things between us went further.” Shayna’s gaze slides to one side where a pink cosmopolitan in a fancy glass rests by her manicured nails. “Well, that was the plan. We almost made it but couldn’t resist….”
An evil smile twists her lips as she twines those talons around Drew’s hand.
“You had sex with her on my birthday?” I shriek, my temper hitting apocalyptic levels.
The room stills. The girl onstage stops her warbling. All that’s left is the canned background vocals on the track and someone behind me whispering “Wow.”
Through my fuzzy vision and heartbeat sloshing in my ears, I straighten my shoulders and mutter, “You two deserve each other.”
Grabbing Shayna’s drink, I dump it over Drew’s head and leave her to clean up her new bed buddy. As for me, I snatch my new Kate Spade (gift from my father), flip my freshly blown-out and highlighted hair (gift from my stepmother), and march out of Pinky’s without a single glance over my shoulder.
I promise myself as my feet hit the pavement of Pinky’s parking lot that I won’t cry, but I’m pretty sure I’ll lose that battle sooner than later. With my focus squarely on the nearest open establishment who will sell me a bottle of wine, I set off on foot.
I shouldn’t drink and walk, but there’s no way I could ask Drew to take me home, or call my father to pick me up. I can’t tell him about Drew. About Shayna. As for my stepmom…well, I can’t tell her, either, but I totally would call Julia first if she was home. She’s not. She’s spending an impromptu girls’ week in North Carolina. She initially wasn’t going to go because it was my birthday, but I assured her it wasn’t a big deal. Her friend is getting a divorce from a man who recently announced he’s gay and I reasoned that my turning twenty-one sort of paled in comparison to Julia’s friend’s relationship woes.
Arguably, mine is running a close second.
A blister on my baby toe forms after about twenty minutes of walking up the shoulder of Medway Road. There is a closed gas station on one side of the street, an automotive garage on the other, and next to that, a convenience store that looks as welcoming as a back alley lined with hookers and drug dealers.
I bite down on my lip, considering whether it’s safer inside than out here. The bulbs in the lamps flanking the parking lot are burned out save for one. That lone lamp flickers on and off, humming louder than my tequila buzz.
So.
Not the nicest store or the best part of my town, but this is Baybrook, Missouri, we’re talking about. Even the bad parts of town aren’t that bad. Nothing happens here, unless you count Main Street parades, an occasional pants-on-the-flagpole prank at the high school, and a
parasite boyfriend cheating on his girlfriend with her best friend.
Ex, I mentally correct again.
Drew drove me tonight, picking up Shayna on the way. I thought he had been running late because he had to work. I now know it’s because he and Shayna had…ugh.
Idiot. Idiot. Idiot. Only the last “idiot” is meant for me. Because I was the biggest idiot here. I should have seen Drew’s and Shayna’s lies sooner. I should have recognized the way he’d been pulling away from me lately. The way Shayna didn’t talk to me as often as she used to. I should have held on to the friends who mattered and taken my father’s advice about going away to school.
Tears burn my nose and a fat, warm droplet spills down my cheek. Sure, now I’m crying. And what’s worse is there is no one to comfort me when I need it the most. I take one more look around the parking lot, seriously expecting a tumbleweed to blow by, before sniffling and wiping my tears away with my fingertips. I pull myself out of my pity party and grasp the handle of the door to the 7-Eleven.
Rapid-fire blinks quell another barrage of tears and I vow not to slide all the way into the depression spiral until I buy my gas station wine. I’ll take it home and run a bath and listen to Ed Sheeran, and then I can cry. Cry and sit in the water until I’m pruney and freezing.
My tear ducts comply, and soon I am streak-free and composed enough to go inside. I’m going to have to call a cab, though, because I am not hoofing it from here to my front porch in the middle of the night.
I step over the threshold, narrowly avoiding a wad of bubble gum smashed into the dirt on the floor. Lettering stenciled on the back wall announces WINE and BEER and SODA over corresponding coolers. I walk directly to the wine portion and choose a bottle that meets my needs. This stuff will most definitely make me drunk. I figure it will also plague me with an epic headache in the morning, but whatever. Beggars can’t be…
Forgotten Promises (Lost Boys #1) Page 1
