Deceit in Bloom (The Love Unauthorized Series Book 1)

  Copyright © 2016 by Jennifer Michael

  All rights reserved.

  Cover designer: R.B.A Designs, www.rbadesigns.com

  Editor and Proofreader: Adept Edits

  Interior Designer: Jovana Shirley, Unforeseen Editing, www.unforeseenediting.com

  No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  ISBN-13: 978-1537771946

  A Glimpse of Deceit...

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Acknowledgments

  Did You Enjoy Deceit in Bloom?

  Jennifer Michael's Reading Group

  About the Author

  To those who have stood by my side through all the ups and downs and have helped carry the load along the way.

  I’ve been deceived. Bits and pieces of the life I once knew lie crumbled and torn at my feet. I believed I was untouchable. I was untouchable. Until I wasn’t.

  A girl.

  The destruction—my undoing.

  Lust. Lies. Loss.

  The crumbling of a family. A betrayal marked by blood.

  The good and the bad run together, twisting into so many knots I have no clue what is what anymore. The lies are deeply rooted and more complicated than I could ever untwine. The reality is I’ve been played for a fool and never saw it coming.

  My body is running on adrenaline, fueled by anger. I’m thriving on the madness inside me. The fear radiating off her is electric. Her eyes stare back into mine. Eyes that are glazed over and unreadable to me. My stupidity taunts me as I stare down the barrel of my gun. Every wrong move and misstep screams inside my head, tormenting me like a nightmare I can’t escape. My mental commentary is self-loathing one minute and geared to take down the world the next. Months have led up to this moment. Months of lies, games, and errors on my part. My finger rests on the trigger with certainty and hesitation, both at once. Time stands still. I search for any sign of the answers I want from her, but her face gives nothing away. Our time together plays in my head on a loop. The naïve side of me sees truth and sincerity, while the skeptical side sees deception and lies.

  Inside that house are my answers. Only about one hundred feet away are dozens more dots to connect. Through that door is what I came for.

  Paisley

  My eight-year-old nose crinkles at the sharp tang of mothballs clinging to the lady who is dragging me away from the last place I called home. She tugs on my hand harder and pulls me along faster than my little legs can move. That last home wasn’t bad, but the couple I was with couldn’t keep me anymore. Too many kids. Existence as a foster child leaves you feeling like a number. One of many . . . in a house, on the state’s plate, to the world. The term “abandonment issues” isn’t anywhere near an accurate description for the scars the lifestyle leaves behind.

  The couple I had been with before them was bad. The lady used to make me sit in the back seat of her car while she put needles in her arm. I hated needles at the doctor, so I never understood why she did it. She must have been very sick. The car was always too hot, and she’d fall asleep for hours after she took her medicine. One day, she put the needle in her arm, and I couldn’t get her to wake up. The sun went down and then came back up. I shook her, but she just kept sleeping. A man in a uniform came and took me away. I never saw her again. I didn’t miss her. She never let me play with the kids on our street.

  Mothball lady doesn’t stick around long. She brings me inside, takes a look around, and is out the door with barely a few words spoken between her and the man she leaves me with. She never even said good-bye.

  I don’t like this new man she left me with. He doesn’t look nice. He didn’t even ask me if I was hungry. I haven’t had anything to eat. He just pushed me into a small room to meet my new sister. His words, not mine. The kids at these houses aren’t my brothers or sisters. I barely stay anywhere long enough to remember their names.

  With the door closed, I’m left alone with my new friend. She’s tiny with dirt smeared on her face. She doesn’t say hi or ask me to play with her. She stares at me until I have the urge to cry. I’m scared of my new home, and it doesn’t seem like this little girl wants me here. She moves around the room and grabs something from behind a dresser. It’s a doll in a pink dress.

  “Hi. My name is Paisley.”

  The little girl looks at me and smiles. Maybe she will be my friend.

  “My name is Braelyn. You can share my room, but don’t touch my dolly and don’t tell Joe about her. We’re not supposed to have toys, but I found her.”

  Thump.

  No toys? That doesn’t seem fair.

  Thump.

  “Why doesn’t your dolly have a head?”

  Thump.

  “I didn’t like her face. So, I took off her head. She’s prettier without it.”

  Each bang on the wall pulls me farther away from memory lane. My thoughts drift from the day Braelyn and I met to our current reality as her headboard crashes against the wall. Braelyn moans obscenely loudly in our room, like a porn star. I guess for her it is a performance, similar to those shown in skin flicks. She’s been whoring herself out for money and material things since she was about fifteen. We’re so different, but she’s all I have, and honestly, I’m not even entirely sure how she really feels about me. I’ve never been sure.

  She’s a con artist—that much I do know. Running cons on the street, or coming up with all kinds of ways to make a quick buck or swindle it from someone is second nature to her. I’m totally not sure if she’s been playing me all these years too. Kind of sad, isn’t it? Does my sister, my only friend in the world, keep me around because she loves me, because she doesn’t have anyone else either, or is it a keep your enemies close type thing? Fuck if I know.

  We grew up in foster care together once I stopped bouncing around from one group home to the next. I’d lived in more places from the years four to eight than I could count at that age. My memories from before I met Braelyn are virtually nonexistent, and I don’t know what happened to my parents. The social workers assigned to me were always vague about my circumstances concerning how I ended up there. At eight, I was finally placed into a permanent foster home and moved into a bedroom with Braelyn. She’d grown up in that house, and I stayed there until I was fourteen, which is when we left. It was
a horrible place—days of hunger, nights of fear, and maximum isolation. Eventually, neither of us could take it any longer. We’d had enough of being starved and treated as punching bags for a lifetime. Hostility oozed from the walls of that dilapidated mess of a home. After a while, those emotions tainted our souls. We also knew we didn’t want to chance finding out if another home could be worse, so we took off.

  It seems as if that life was forever ago. I flip through the pages of my magazine, trying to focus on the words instead of the noises one room over. I often leave the house when she’s entertaining a client, but today, I don’t feel like moving.

  Braelyn and I lived together on the streets for a while, which is where Brae picked up her hooking habit. When I was old enough, I nabbed a job at some fast food joint, and we saved up until we could afford a run-down studio. Finding a landlord who wouldn’t ask questions about two sixteen-year-old runaways was first priority, but it meant we were stuck with the dregs. My suspicion was always high that Brae compensated the landlord for his cooperation and silence, but I never found out for sure, and I never asked. We fled that apartment as soon as we were old enough to sign a real lease.

  A man’s grunts of ecstasy interrupt my train of thought, and goose bumps coat my skin at the idea of myself having ever gone down the same path Braelyn took. It’s easy to say I never would’ve ended up like her, but the reality is it’s what happens to a lot of girls in our situation.

  I obtained my GED at eighteen. Brae never made it past the sixth grade and didn’t seem to have any interest. She was “home-schooled” her whole life, as I was while at that last home. However, our days were certainly never filled with learning or books. She’s never really held a job besides whoring. The minimum wage pay and long hours always sent her right back to blow jobs for cash. I suspect she must make more than what our measly bills amount to for this one-bedroom apartment. Hell, even I have cash stashed away, and I’m not selling my pussy for the highest dollar. I’m saving up to try to do something . . . anything. My whole life I’ve been surviving to get to the next point. I want to travel. I want to take classes. I want to try new things—see snow, climb a mountain, leave the country . . . anything and everything within reach.

  The bedroom door slams, and some greasy-haired man who looks to be in his late fifties walks into the living room, where I sit on our old, Goodwill couch. He’s still pulling up his pants on his way toward me. I hate that she brings her johns back here, and we’ve had endless arguments about it. She never seems to listen. I’m pretty strong-willed, but Brae does things her own way, no matter who has a problem with it.

  The man notices me as he gets his pants situated.

  “How much for you next time, or better yet, both of you?”

  I snarl back at him, hoping the look on my face helps him make a timelier exit. “I’m not for sale, dick. Keep moving.” The man has the gall to look as if I’ve offended him when he’s the one who offered to buy me. He grumbles something about stupid bitches as he makes an exit through our front door.

  Brae comes skipping out of the room in nothing but her bra and panties and heads toward the fridge. I have no idea how she could come out of the room, after doing that, with pep in her step and humming a tune. We live very different lives, but you’d think after having to fuck that guy, she’d need some mental recovery time. He even looked like he smelled bad.

  “Get that judgmental look off your face. I can feel it even with my back toward you.” Well, she’s right. I tried for a long time not to judge what she does, but I don’t get it. If she were in a different situation, I probably wouldn’t be so hasty. I mean, if she really needed to do this to survive, then hell, I would understand. But that’s not the case with Brae. She doesn’t want to work a real job, but she wants expensive clothes and bags and shit. She refuses to dress in anything but the best.

  I stopped trying to understand her a long time ago.

  With water and an apple in hand, Brae plops down on the couch next to me, and I retract my legs just in time. She takes a big bite and then directs her attention toward me, talking with a mouthful. “Okay, let’s hear the speech. ‘Braelyn, why do you do this? You deserve so much more. Please don’t bring these men back to our apartment.’ Blah, blah, blah. Let’s get the redundant conversation over with.”

  I close the magazine I’ve been reading and turn to fully face her. “We obviously don’t need to have the conversation again. You have my lines down, and you’re not going to listen to me anyway. There’s no point in wasting my breath. But you’re being reckless with both our lives.” I tell her we don’t need to have this conversation again, but I can’t help trying to drive home my point. She’s not going to listen to me, but it makes me feel unsafe in my own home. Eventually it’ll most likely be the reason I move out. The familiarity of living with Brae, despite my occasional uncertainty about her, is what keeps me here. She’s all I have. We’ve been through a lot together, so it doesn’t feel right leaving her behind.

  “The guys I bring back are regulars. I never bring a first-time client here. I have a good idea of who they are. Most have wives and families. They aren’t going to do anything crazy to fuck up their own lives.” She pauses to throw a condescending look. I internally roll my eyes as she continues. “It makes sense from a business standpoint to bring them here. I don’t have to worry about being caught on the street. I don’t have to worry about how I’ll get somewhere or spend money getting home. They come, they have their way, they pay, and then they go. In one day, with only one client, I make what you do in a week. It’s ridiculous that you can’t see the logic in that.”

  There is logic to her words, but it doesn’t change that it puts us in danger. Growing up, we were constantly unsure of our safety, and I want to live my adult life without fear. Those experiences made her immune to the fear she brings into this house on a daily basis. Sensing my defeat in changing her mind, I return to the magazine I’d been reading before I was disturbed without further comment to her. Brae doesn’t like when she’s the one dismissed in conversation, or in any situation really, and I’ll most likely get some heated words from her next, but I’m so done with this.

  “What the fuck is wrong with you? Get off your high horse. You live your life like a freaking hermit. We escaped a living hell and both of us have worked our asses off to get where we are. You’re twenty-five and all you do is work and sit on that couch reading and dreaming about one day living your life.” She grabs the magazine from my hand and throws it across the room, like a child angry about not getting her way. “Why don’t you get the fuck up and do something? Life isn’t going to find you. At least in between my hustling, I get out of the damn house, do shit, and don’t just sit there wasting away. When you have your life together, then come talk to me. Until then, keep your comments and your judgments to yourself.”

  As she stomps off back to our room, which is really more her room since I sleep on the couch most nights, she throws the core of her apple wildly, hitting a lamp. It falls to the floor and shatters into a million pieces as the bedroom door slams and our apartment shakes.

  Paisley

  We’ve been sleeping in an abandoned gym for the last week. It won’t last much longer, because cops will soon chase us away like always, and we’ll have to find somewhere else to sleep. Places like this are hard to find. Enclosed and not already taken by street lifers. There’s even a park close by where we can wash up in the public restrooms. Being homeless in Florida is sweaty.

  The sun has been down for over two hours, and Braelyn is still nowhere to be found. I’m torn between aggravation and worry. We make it a point to stick together after dark. I pace the concrete floors, trying to decide if I should go look for her.

  We’re teenage runaways, living on the street. Braelyn never acts like it, though. She lives in her own world. Running from the cops is an adventure. Dumpster hunting is a trip to the mall. It’s not that she enjoys these things. I think she invents her own reality. I’m reminded o
f that fact when she casually walks into our temporary home, covered in bruises like she doesn’t have a care in the world.

  “Braelyn! What the hell happened to you? Are you okay?”

  “What? What are you talking about? I’m great, Paisley. I made us money. We can eat tomorrow.” There is no way she’s not aware that she’s black and blue. She may live in her own world, but I can clearly see the marks of a handprint around her neck, even in the darkness of this run-down gym. I move closer to inspect the damage. “Oh. That? That’s nothing. Paisley, I solved all our problems. We won’t have to live like this for much longer.”

  What the hell is she talking about? Her delusional world can be frustrating when I’m so obviously aware of our real life circumstances. It’s like I’m the only one living this way, and she’s on a grand vacation. It’s lonely not being able to relate to the only person I have, especially when I so clearly should.

  “Braelyn, you’re bleeding! There is blood running down your leg.”

  “Shut up and listen. The blood is a one-time thing. It won’t happen next time. Focus, Paisley. I made fifty dollars today. I met a girl, and she taught me everything we need to know. I’ll teach you. We don’t have to worry about money anymore.” She glosses over the blood like it’s nothing. The bruising, the blood, the money. I’m getting a picture of what happened today, but I hope I’m wrong.

  “Oh, fuck. Braelyn, you didn’t? You didn’t do what I think, did you?”

  “I sold my virginity. The girl I met told me just what to do, and it worked. I can make money this way. Well, not by selling my virginity. That’s gone. But the idea is still the same. We’re going to get off the streets. We’re going to be okay. I’ve figured it all out. Tomorrow, I’ll teach you how to sell your virginity.”

  Drip.

  My mouth hangs open. She did it. She did exactly what I suspected. I can’t believe it. She wants to do it again? Wants me to do it with her? What the hell is she thinking? “Braelyn, I don’t want to sell myself. I won’t. This isn’t the answer. You’re hurt. This man hurt you. This woman took advantage of you. You can’t do this again. You can’t!”