Chapter 1 - Lowyn

The worst thing about depravity isn't the threat of hell, it's the hangover.

My head is poundin' as I lie in bed for just one more second. My eyes are crusted over and opening them up is gonna be a process. So I just stay still, letting my mind remain blank for a few more seconds. Maybe I'll even fall back asleep.

It's not like I have to work today. For me, this day right here is a holiday. A sacred day.

Well, maybe sacred is a tick too far, but at the very least the Day After is always a quiet day for me. A time to reflect on my mama and how much I miss her.

That's what last night was about.

I don't make a habit of getting drunk. In fact, I do it exactly once a year. So this headache of mine, though annoying, isn't familiar enough to be distressing.

Besides, this bed is warm, and the covers feel good, so I let out a small sigh, enjoying the little bit of time I have left here in the in-between, before life starts back up again.

In the same moment that my sigh is leaving my body, there's another sigh behind me.

My eyelids fly open and all the little crusties that should've been massaged slowly with gentle fingertips just split apart without a bit of fanfare.

The first thing I see is the sexy face of young Jim Morrison in black and white staring out at me with a rock-god expression like he's about to take over the world. And while I study that sexy face a very heavy, very strong arm glides over my waist and pulls me close.

Oh, no.

Oh, no, sir, this is not happening. I did not bring the one-night stand home with me last night. I did not! Immediately my mind is racing, trying to put all the pieces of what happened back into some kind of coherent order.

Woke up, went to work, blah, blah, blah. Bryn and I had lunch and, of course, she tried to talk me out of what came next—which was my annual ‘get drunk day,' in honor of our mama, of course.

See, our mama died when I was nineteen and Bryn was seventeen and yesterday was Mama's birthday. Some people remember lost loved ones on ‘the day,' as in the death day. But not me. That day can go to hell. That day sucked.

But Mama's birthday was always a happy time for us. It was a day when Bryn and I would take care of her instead of her taking care of us. And she would let us do that. She would let us make her meals that day, and do her laundry, and pick out her clothes, and bake her a cake.

If it was a school day, we got the day off because we would go into work for Mama. She ran the flea market right on the edge of town, just this side of Disciple. She would go in with us, of course, but Bryn and I took over that day and we greeted and cared for the customers who wandered in from outside places.

I was always someone else on those birthdays. Louder than my normal self. Carefree like a butterfly on a summer day. And spontaneous, like anticipation was my motor and I was just lookin' for a reason to press my foot on the gas.

And it was all that much more special because in my everyday life I am nothing like that at all. I'm quiet, and careful, and deliberate.

Now that she's gone, this is how I honor her. Not the one-night-stand thing, though that is part of my be-more-spontaneous plan. It's not the purpose of the letting go, just the end result. And if I'm being honest, if I didn't give myself permission to let go once a year, I might be in a dry spell something terrible as far as sex goes.

No, I honor her by being the girl I was on her birthdays. Because Mama noticed how different I was this one day a year. How much I laughed and smiled on those birthdays of hers. How I let go of the burden I felt to be good.

On this one day every year I am Lowyn the Laughing. Lowyn the Lighthearted. Lowyn the Lover. In other words, I'm not Lowyn the Lonely, or Lowyn the Laborious, or Lowyn the Leftover.

Which is a harsh way to characterize myself, I do realize this, but why fight it? It's sorta true. Because the other three -hundred and sixty-four days of the year I am a responsible business owner. I am goal- oriented. I am diligent, and hardworking, and nonconfrontational. I am in control one -hundred percent of the time.

Control works for me. Schedules work for me. Ten-year plans, exceeding expectations, and organized growth all work for me. I thrive in this environment.

And I don't always throw so much caution to the wind on Mama's birthday. Some years, if I have a steady boyfriend, I don't have a one-night stand at all.

But if I'm being honest with myself—and what's the point of having a rolling internal monologue if you're not gonna be honest?—I have noticed over the years that I tend to break things off about a month prior to the Day.

Not that I want a one-night stand. Not particularly. It's just… what is the point of pointless dating? I mean, a girl knows if he's ‘the one.' You just know. And I would not want to skip my one day of giving Mama the version of me she liked best for some random nobody who barely passed the Valentine's Day test and is never gonna make it to Christmas.

My mama loved me for the studious, serious overachiever I was. She did. I know she did. But when I would let go, let my hair down and just flow, I saw the way she looked at me. Like this was the girl she knew I was.

I try to be that all the time, but I'm just not her.

Even on the Day I'm mostly pretending to be this girl. If Mama's up in some spiritual realm looking down on me, then I want her to see me as the Lowyn she knew, and not still-single, too-picky Lowyn who will never fall in love again.

However… it is not like me to bring the one-night stand home.

Granted, this is the ten-year anniversary birthday of Mama being gone, so… perhaps I got a little overzealous?

I reach up and push some hair out of my eyes, gently rubbing the crusties so I can see better. I let out a long breath. Who was it? Who is in bed next to me?

Please, I silently beg. Please, if there is a God above, and if you care about me at all—please, please, please do not let the man in bed with me be Grimm.

Please.

This is a small town. In fact, the entire Trinity area is small-town 101. I grew up with everyone in my dating pool and there are only so many single men to go around, one of them being Jameson Grimm.

But I don't get drunk in Disciple. No. No, no, no. That's a big fat no. I go over to Bishop. Which is the unlikely choice given my nearby options include the small town of Revenant, but I'm not ready for that kind of letting loose.

So Bishop it is.

I get a room there at the Bishop Inn where my sister, Bryn, works as a chef, and then I walk into the center of town and get drunk at the Pineapple Pub. I drink, I dance, I might even karaoke. And then I take a man—most years, it's a tourist—back to my room at the inn, have a lovely romp in the sack, then wake up and go home. Alone.

Grimm doesn't care for Bishop. His first choice for a night out is typically Disciple, but he would go drinkin' in Revenant long before he'd go to Bishop. So after giving myself this common-sense pep talk, I let out a breath of relief because I have a better than reasonable chance that the man in bed with me is not Grimm.

My once-a-year celebration is as safe as a plan as one can make when letting loose to drown sorrows that are not sorrows, but only because you refuse to give in to the idea that you are the kind of person who drowns her sorrows.

Or… has them.

In addition to being goal-oriented and fastidiously organized, I'm also perpetually optimistic. Bryn calls it my worst fault. Says I hide behind rose-colored glasses. Literally. She tells me this all the time. And my response, every time—and with a perpetually optimistic smile—is that I can live with it. Rose-colored glasses are right up my alley. Also literally. Because my go-to sunglasses are those round John Lennon ones, tinted rose.

It makes sense in the world of me.

However… it is curious that I didn't stay in the room at the inn. Surely Bryn was babysitting me. That's kind of her job. So… how did I get home?

Must've been the guy.

OK, Lowyn. It's time to turn and see who he is. This is the Day After now and while you might be hungover, and Mama's birthday is a holiday so you won't be going into work, reality is something you face, not hide from.

I grab the covers and pull them up to my chest so I don't flash him accidentally when I turn, but this is when I realize I'm not naked.

Hmm. In fact—I wiggle my toes—I've still got my boots on.

And my pants.

What the hell happened last night?

I mean, I didn't even get laid?

I turn over and study the man in bed next to me.

He's massive. Like broad massive. And fit. He, unlike me, is not fully dressed and I can see all the hills and valleys of his muscular back, shoulders and biceps. But he's got his head tucked under the pillow so I can't see his face.

One good thing—this is not Jameson Grimm. Grimm has dark hair and the hair peeking out from under the pillow is something between blond and brown.

Plus, this man has tattoos. Kind of a big one that covers the shoulder I can see. Something military, I think—an eagle, and one of those shield things they put on badges or patches. Inside the shield, in neat thin-line lettering, is the word ‘Silence.'

Weird.

But not important. I need to get this guy out of here. I can't start my day with last night's… whatever. He's still got one arm around my waist, but it's not tight. So I just slip it off me, sneak out of bed, and tiptoe out of the bedroom.

I close the bedroom door behind me, sighing with relief that he didn't wake up, then hit the bathroom. When I come out, I've got my boots in my hand and I take them over to the front door and put them in their cubby.

My foyer is a testament to order. Every pair of boots, sneakers, and flip-flops has their place in a cubby. Every coat has a hook to hang on. Every pair of gloves, every scarf, every hat has a basket to live in on the long maple bench and there are two cupboards on either side that hold anything that is too ugly to display.

I'm a freak about organization and presentation. It's everything. Having an ordered home with pretty things on display just makes me feel good even when my head is pounding with a Day After hangover.

I hit the kitchen for vitamin C and coffee. Orange juice first, then a steaming cup of Sexy Cinnamon with a splash of cinnamon-vanilla creamer.

I take that first sip leaning against the counter and sigh as I stare up at my disgustingly cheerful kitchen.

My cabinets are old—like pretty much everything in this house—but they have been brought back to life with lots of sanding, and paint, and love. My favorite color is sea-foam green, so that's the color I painted the cabinets. There is a splash of tangerine orange here and there—curtains, dishtowels, bowls—to make it all pop and all of this looks pretty fun contrasted with the dark walnut butcher block counters. The floor is also walnut, wide planks that were harvested a hundred years ago. I salvaged them from a house three hours away in Kentucky and since my house is modest in size, I was able to do the entire first floor with that wood.

I love this place. It's not the biggest house in Disciple, but it's definitely the most loved, at least in my opinion. Our town is cute. The homes in Disciple were all built right around the same time about a hundred years ago. They all started out pretty much the same—Craftsman-style—but over the years people have customized them. Most have two floors, but some have three now. The paint colors change every once in a while. My house is not sea-foam green on the outside, but it's as close as you can get without being obnoxious. More of a sage, I guess. The porch is the best thing about this house. It's all cobblestone with cedar trusses and beams. In fact, all the trim and accents on the outside of the house are cedar and cobblestone. It looks like something out of a woodland fairytale and it's all just so lovely, I sigh every night when I get home.

To say that I am a vintage girl would be an understatement. It's literally my life because I own McBooms, a retro antique shop that was made world famous when Jet Shadows, host of Jet's Junk on that one cable channel we all love, came to my store and did a whole episode. Then he came back! Three times over the next two years.

One of those years—mmm. I take a sip of coffee and chuckle—he was my one-night stand for the Day. That was fun.

I look over at my bedroom door and wonder if that's Jet in there. But no. Jet doesn't have tattoos. Plus, we haven't talked in a couple years now. He got engaged, then broke it off, then married the woman in Vegas. He called me that night to tell me goodbye and his life was over and that he secretly loved me. He's kind of a dramatic guy.

I haven't heard from him since.

It's not Jet and it's not Grimm. So who cares? I'll wake him up in a few minutes and kick him out and then get on with my life.

I look out my window as I sip the coffee. It's a nice spring day. The leaves started coming back on the trees a couple weeks ago and even though there are still a few gaps on the hills, they will be an almost impenetrable cover of green in just another week or two. April in West Virginia is extraordinary.

When evaluating one's life, and looking down at a diagram where chaos lives on one side of the line and perfection lives on the other, I'm solidly in perfection territory. Business owner, homeowner, same friends since childhood. It's all pretty nice, and organized, and in order. But becoming an adult started off kinda rough in my case.

Losing our mama was an unexpected blow and it completely derailed my college career and dreams of being a veterinarian. I came home from West Virginia University to take care of Bryn—who isn't the kind of girl who normally needs taking care of—and, well, I never left Disciple again. Not in the literal sense, of course. I leave town all the time for my picking adventures. I do that one week a month. This week, in fact.

But I don't have plans to move out of Trinity County. I don't have plans to go back to school. I'm here. And I'm gonna stay here.

Much to the chagrin of my best friend, Clover. She's always bugging me to go on adventures with her. Her life didn't get derailed in college. She was at WVU too and she went on to graduate with a degree in business. Now she works for a super-fancy-fancy hotel in Virginia as an event planner. She's two hours away, so we don't get together all the time, but we have a regular once-a-month date where I check in to her super-fancy-fancy hotel and we spa together. Sometimes she comes down this way and we will drink a little bit of wine, play old vinyl records, and dance in my living room.

Clover was born rich. Well, rich for these parts, which is to say her family looks rich, but cash flow around here is almost always a problem. Her parents own a huge Civil War-era mansion on the very western edge of town just as you go down the hill towards Revenant and Clover has been paying the reno bills for a few years now since her parents retired to Florida.

It's a lovely estate. And every time she comes, we go over there and walk the grounds, and reminisce about how we spent our childhoods riding her horses through the surrounding woods. She's been working hard on that place for nearly five years now and the reno's still going. I really hope?—

A noise from the bedroom pulls me out of my thoughts and back to reality.

I cringe a little. I don't like the awkwardness of the morning after. I don't want to see this guy, let alone serve him a cup of coffee. My one night of reckless behavior is over and he needs to go.

I'm just about to go in there and give him a hint when the bedroom door opens with a creak.

I hold my breath, preparing for the inevitable. But he doesn't appear from around the hallway. Instead, he goes to the bathroom.

The breath comes out. It's a short reprieve, but I'll take it.

I'm just about to start rehearsing my you-need-to-go speech when a noise from outside distracts me. A tune. No. A ringtone. Specifically, my ringtone. The chorus to Son of a Preacher Man.

What the hell? Did I drop my phone outside last night when I came home?

I go to the front door, pull it open and swivel to my right. The sound is coming from the hedge. I have a big porch. It's wide and long and there is a railing between me and this hedge, which is formidable. I've been carefully shaping the shrubs surrounding it for the better part of three years now, so the only way to really get to the phone—which is somewhere inside the one on my right, hidden from view—is to lean over and shove my hand into the soft green leaves.

I smile when my fingers find the phone and then straighten back up so I can look at the screen.

Bryn. Calling to check up on me. I accept on speaker. "Hey, sis. I'm fine?—"

"Oh, my Gawwwdd!" She says this loud, her voice scaring some birds away in the nearby elm tree. "I've been calling you for six hours, Lowyn! What the actual fuck!"

My sister is as loud and obnoxious as I am quiet and contemplative.

"Sorry. I was sleeping and just found my phone in the hedge."

"You're not in your room!"

"Oh. Yeah. I went home."

"Went. Home?" She says these two words in a weird way. Like I'm speaking a foreign language or something. "With him?"

I huff out a small laugh. "Yeah. He's still here. In the bathroom. I'm just about to kick him out. And I didn't even have sex with him, Bryn. Was I like super drunk or what?"

Silence.

"Bryn?"

More silence.

I shake the phone. I do this sometimes. I don't know why, but it's a habit I have because of all the vintage phones I've owned over the years. Sometimes the speaker wires get loose and if you shake it a little, it pops it all back into place. Of course, this is irrelevant for a cell phone. It's just a habit. "Bryn? Did I lose you?"

She lets out a long breath. "OK. Let me get this straight."

"Oooo-kayyy."

"You took him home?"

"Yeah. I don't remember how we got here. I don't actually remember anything."

"Wait. You don't know who you took home?"

"Nope. I woke up, looked over at the guy next to me—who is fucking hot from the back, Bryn. But I didn't see his face. He had it buried under the pillow, but—" Then I pause. Because this head-pillow behavior reminds me of a guy…

Now I go silent.

"Lowyn?"

No. No, it can't be.

"Loooowww-wyn."

And just as she says this, the floorboards—those perfect, hand-scraped, carefully salvaged and repurposed walnut floorboards—creak behind me.

"I'll call you back." I press end.

"Mornin', peaches." His voice is a low, husky growl. "How ya feelin'?"

No. No! This is not happening.

"Lowyn?"

My head slowly turns to the left and this is when I see the Jeep. It's not the same Jeep, obviously. That thing was already forty years old when he left here for the Marines twelve years ago. But there is a Jeep in my driveway.

Correction. His driveway.

And this Jeep is sleek, and black, and lifted, and… ya know, like… sexy. As all fuck.

"No." I say it out loud this time. Just a small whisper. But he's barely a breath away.

"Oh, this really is happening, Lowyn. It really is."

I turn and there he is. Collin Creed. The man who broke my heart. The guy who joined the Marines without even discussing it with me, left town, and never came back.

Until now, apparently.

He's smiling at me, his eyes dancin', laughing at me. "You don't remember anything from last night, do you?" He points over his shoulder. "Can we talk about this house of yours?"

"Get out."

"In fact, let's start with that bedroom."

"Get. Out." I point at the Jeep, my finger shaking.

"Lowyn." He laughs out my name like it's a joke. "You didn't even take down the Jim Morrison poster."

"Get. The fuck. Out of my house!"

"Your house?" His smile falters. His voice lowers. His eyes narrow. "Your house, Lowyn? This is my house. What the actual fuck have you done to it?"

"It's not your house. I bought it from your parents eight years ago, you asshole. It's mine now."

He points to himself. "I grew up in this house. There are still marks on the fucking bathroom door that say ‘Collin, age eight.' You bought my childhood home, turned it into a retro freak show, are sleeping in my teenage bedroom, and didn't even take down my fucking posters?"

He guffaws now. And I go fire-hot with anger and embarrassment.

Collin taps my head and I step back to avoid contact, but not fast enough. "That's mental, Lowyn. Completely fuckin' mental."

I push past him, trying to get back inside. In this same moment my phone rings again and he blocks me with an arm.

I look up and meet his eyes. Oh, God. Those fucking eyes. With those mesmerizing swirls of golden brown mixed with sea-foam green. They are so familiar, but at the same time distant and strange.

Twelve. Years.

I yank my arm from his grip, go inside, and slam the door right in his face.