The First Time: Rogues of Everly Prep Read online

  The First Time

  Rogues of Everly Prep

  Wendi L Wilson

  Copyright © 2020 by Wendi Wilson

  All rights reserved.

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

  Cover by Emcat Designs

  Created with Vellum

  For my mom, who gave the best and worst guilt trips. What I wouldn’t give to suffer one of them now…

  Contents

  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

  Afterword

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Wendi L Wilson

  1

  The first time I heard the name Atticus Kincaid was the day my fucking life changed forever.

  “Pack your things, Chaz. We’re getting out of this dump.”

  Mom’s sultry voice never raised in pitch or volume, and tonight was no exception. Her bright eyes and wide smile were the only indication that she was excited. And dead serious.

  “What are you talking about?” I asked as I pulled the front door closed behind me, trying to decide if she was high.

  I’d never known her to take drugs, but there was a first time for everything, right? My eyes chased around the confines of our small trailer, looking for any evidence that she’d been smoking weed or snorting lines. But the place was as neat and tidy as ever.

  “This is it, baby girl. I found our golden ticket out of this hovel, and we’re leaving tomorrow. I’m getting married.”

  She swooned a little with those last three words as shock and disbelief battled for supremacy inside me. Married?

  “What the hell are you talking about, Mom?” spewed from my lips before I could temper the words.

  A shadow of disappointment clouded her delicate features, as inevitable as the sunset darkening the sky outside the windows of our singlewide. My back teeth ground together as I waited for her reprimand—the kind only a mother with massive shaming skills can pull off.

  It started with watery eyes, quickly joined by a quivering chin. My mother was the master of the quivering chin.

  “Chastity Ann Miller, I didn’t raise you to have such a filthy mouth. Have I failed as a mother?”

  A dainty sniff followed by a single tear trailing down her cheek completed the picture. I should have been immune to it—I’d been the target of that shame for nearly eighteen years—but Mom was a wizard and I was a constant victim of her sorcery.

  “Sorry, Mom,” I mumbled.

  I grew up in a trailer park, went to school with the children of criminals and drug addicts, and worked the night shift at a seedy convenience store just off the interstate. I could handle myself with bullies, snobs, drifters, and handsy assholes, but Mom’s perfected look of shame was my kryptonite. I buckled beneath its weight like a newborn fawn.

  Every. Single. Fucking. Time.

  Her face cleared and her smile returned as she accepted my apology and changed the subject back to her supposed impending nuptials.

  “His name is Atticus Kincaid, and he’s our knight in shining armor, baby.”

  “Atticus Kincaid?”

  She’d never mentioned a guy. Any guy. And now, suddenly, she was engaged? I had to be dreaming. I pinched the tender skin on the inside of my elbow, applying enough pressure to make it sting.

  Nope. Totally awake.

  “Yes,” she said, her face taking on that dreamlike quality again. “I met him at the club.”

  Mom was a waitress at The Silver Fox, a high-class strip club—if there was such a thing—that men from the north side liked to frequent, escaping their prissy, spoiled wives who waited at home in their big mansions, believing their men were working late. Or not believing it, but letting it slide because, hey, they were rich and powerful and brought home nice presents. Stupid bitches.

  “Are you sure it wasn’t just one of those drunk proposals you get every other week?”

  It was a valid question, but a streak of pain flashed through her chocolate-brown eyes despite its validity. She did receive marriage proposals every other week. Being one of the few women at The Silver Fox who didn’t actually take her clothes off made her somewhat unattainable, and the patrons had made a game out of trying to be the first to get her to show them her boobs.

  Money, jewelry, promises of a better life—even marriage proposals were thrown out as tempting morsels meant to make her strip down and show off what the good Lord gave her.

  But she never wavered, always sticking to her principles. She’d serve drinks to them, but nothing else. That’s why her tips sucked and we were trapped in this trailer park while I supplemented her income with my night shifts at the convenience store.

  We were surviving, but I don’t know if I’d call it living.

  “He doesn’t drink,” she said, her nose lifting ever so slightly into the air. “He thinks I’m beautiful and sweet, and he wants to marry me.”

  I stared at her without responding, figuring no response at all was better than the caustic words hovering at the tip of my tongue. Plus, I could honestly only handle the shame-stare once a day.

  If he doesn’t drink, then his only reason for visiting The Silver Fox is to ogle the naked girls. That’s what I wanted to say, but I held it in.

  My mom was gorgeous, no doubt about it. With glossy blonde hair that fell into natural, loose waves combined with wide, brown doe-eyes, and pink, full lips, she was a classic beauty. And even though she was pushing her late thirties and worked nights at a strip club, her face remained as fresh and dewy as a teenager’s, not a wrinkle in sight.

  And she was sweet. And naïve, in a childish sort of way that required a lot of patience and understanding.

  If this Atticus Kincaid thought he could take advantage of her innocent gullibility, he had another thing coming. Not on my watch.

  But then again, what if he was sincere? What if he really wanted to marry Mom and this was her one chance of escaping this shithole of a life?

  No. No. This couldn’t be real. Either the man was toying with her, or something was wrong with him. Nobody in their right mind proposes to a waitress they just met at a strip club. Right?

  “You’ll see,” she said, making my dark thoughts scatter as I refocused on her. “You’re going to love him just as much as I do, baby girl.”

  “You love him?”

  “Of course, silly. Why else would I agree to marry him?”

  I held my tongue, but couldn’t control a wayward brow that arched its way up nearly to my hairline. I didn’t believe in love. And I certainly didn’t believe in love at first sight.

  “How do you know you love him?” I asked, choosing my words carefully.

  “Oh, Chastity, when you know, you know.”

&nbsp
; Well, that was helpful.

  “I can’t wait to meet him.”

  I injected as much enthusiasm into those words as I could stomach. Mom smiled and headed to her room to pack. As I stared at the old, ratty but clean furniture and inhaled the strong aroma of pine-scented cleanser, I realized the words were actually true.

  I couldn’t wait to meet Atticus Kincaid, so I could expose whatever game he’s playing with my mother and we could go back to our normal life.

  It might have been depressing, filled with poverty and loneliness, but it was ours. We were not puppets, and we would not dance to some stranger’s tune. Of that, I would make sure.

  “Hey, babe.”

  I skipped down the steps and across our gravel driveway, meeting my boyfriend as he climbed from his truck. His voice tickled my ears, raspy like he just woke up, or more likely, that he’d been smoking too much weed today.

  Skinny arms wrapped around me and pulled me against a lanky body. Rough lips bruised mine, a long tongue barreling between my teeth to lick against mine. I fought the urge to gag as its tip hit the back of my throat.

  Neal was an overly-enthusiastic kisser.

  I pushed at his chest, putting some space between us before he inevitably tried to take things further. I didn’t need sex. I needed a sympathetic boyfriend to share my feelings with, someone to agree with me about the shitty situation my mother was thrusting us into.

  “Hey, Neal. I need to talk to you,” I said, pulling out of his arms completely.

  “Uh, oh. That doesn’t sound good,” he said reaching down to adjust himself with a sigh.

  I fought the urge to roll my eyes at his dramatics. Like kissing me for two seconds revved his motor, and I was somehow being a major tease by putting on the brakes.

  “My mom is getting married,” I said. “She’s moving us into a stranger’s house, some guy she met at the Fox.”

  “That’s cool, babe,” he said, his words sounding distracted as he leaned over to check out his reflection in the side mirror of his beat up pickup truck.

  I watched him run a hand through his dirty blond hair, then practice what I assumed was supposed to be a flirty smile. My molars ground together as I inhaled through my nose, reining in my impatience and anger. He wasn’t even listening.

  “Did you hear what I said?” I asked once I’d tempered my annoyance enough to keep my voice at an even keel. “We’re moving in with some guy she just met, at a strip club, who she says she’s going to marry.”

  Neal turned his muddy brown eyes back on me and shrugged. “Good for her. It’s about time she got you guys out of this shit-ass trailer park.”

  I closed my eyes and tilted my head back, breathing in the warm night air. I was getting nowhere, fast. My eyes opened and drifted across the front of my trailer, studying the faded aluminum siding and the rusty metal steps that led up to the front door. It wasn’t much, but it was home.

  I focused my gaze back on him, saying, “We don’t know anything about this guy, Neal. He could be some sicko preying on the weak. What if he has terrible things planned for us?”

  Neal stepped forward, wrapping his thin, bony fingers around mine.

  “You can take care of yourself,” he said, his tongue flicking out to wet his lips as his eyes roamed down to my chest.

  His words might’ve given me some sort of comfort if I didn’t see the lust brimming in his eyes. He was obviously imagining me “taking care of myself” sexually, and it was getting him all worked up again.

  Disgust filled me, not because of his desire for me but because he couldn’t put it aside for two minutes to support me emotionally.

  What a dick.

  “I’ve got to go back inside,” I said, pulling my hand from his grip.

  “Already?” he asked, and the whine in his voice grated against my nerves.

  “Yep. Gotta pack. We leave tomorrow.”

  2

  Holy shit.

  My eyes burned with the need to blink as we pulled into the circular drive, but I kept them wide open. The Kincaid home was a mansion by any man’s standards and a fucking palace compared to our single-wide trailer. Three stories of golden stone sparkled in the sunlight, increasing the burning sensation in my eyes. I allowed myself to blink, and when I looked again, it was still there.

  And still humongous.

  A tall man in a burgundy suit rushed down the steps toward mom’s beat up sedan as we rolled to a stop. Panic seared through me for a second as he reached for my door handle. Atticus Kincaid, himself, had come to pull me from the car to declare me unfit, not good enough to step foot on his glorious property.

  “Hello, Miss,” the old man said, stretching a hand out to assist me from my mom’s old beater.

  I placed my hand in his and stepped out, then tried not to fidget as his wizened blue eyes assessed me. My eyes flicked over him and I tried to keep a neutral expression. This dude was older than mom by at least twenty-five years.

  But he had a kind face, and hope sparked in my chest that maybe, just maybe, life at the Kincaid estate wasn’t going to be so bad.

  “It’s nice to meet you, sir,” I mumbled.

  “And you as well, Miss. I am Gerald Higgins, butler here at the Kincaid home.”

  My eyes widened and jumped up to meet his once more. His blue orbs held a warm humor as he leaned in and whispered, “You’ll be fine, Miss. Just breathe.”

  Then he straightened and turned to greet my mother. I watched him shake her hand and give her a slight bow. Gerald Higgins seemed cool, and I realized I may have just met my first ally.

  A deep voice bellowing my mother’s name had us all jerking toward the front door, where a large, burly man was stomping down the steps. He spread his arms as his eyes seemed to devour her.

  “Atticus,” my mom gushed, shoving her purse into Gerald’s hands before rushing past him and into the man’s arms.

  He picked her up and swung her around, her legs flailing out behind her, before pressing his lips against hers. My skin felt itchy and hot as I watched, not used to seeing my mom show anyone affection—particularly of the romantic kind.

  It was weird and uncomfortable.

  When her feet were once again firmly planted beneath her, she seemed to remember my existence. Taking the big man’s hand, she led him toward me.

  “Atticus,” she said, her voice still a little breathless, “I’d like you to meet my daughter, Chastity.”

  “Chaz,” I corrected as I held out a hand to him.

  I’d always hated my stupid name. It made me sound like a nun from the middle-ages.

  Or a stripper from a trailer park, which was way too on the nose.

  “Chastity,” Atticus said, ignoring my preference as his honey-colored eyes met mine. “Nice to make your acquaintance.”

  He took my hand in his firm grip and shook it, tightening his fingers slightly before releasing me. He turned back to Mom, and I was forgotten as he led her up the front steps to the massive entrance. My eyes skimmed the exterior of the home as I followed slowly behind them, and I barely kept my mouth from dropping open. It was even bigger close up.

  “Miss,” Gerald huffed, holding out an arm for me to precede him.

  I looked to find the doorway empty, my mom already having disappeared into the lion’s den. I picked up the pace, managing to make it up the steps without tripping. I turned back to smile at Gerald, but his blue eyes were wide with alarm as he stared at something behind me.

  I whipped around just in time to smash my nose into a brick wall before bouncing back a few steps.

  “Ow. Fuck,” I grumbled, rubbing a palm down my face.

  An impatient huff pulled my attention from my injured nose. I hadn’t face-planted into a brick wall. I’d crashed into a solid, living chest.

  “Sorry,” I mumbled, taking a small step back so it didn’t hurt my neck to look at his face.

  My heart pounded out a little double-tap as I studied the newcomer. He was young, probably my age, but built
like a brick shithouse. Wide face, wide chest, wide…everything gave him an intimidating appearance that was only reinforced by his narrowed eyes and twisted scowl.

  Good thing I was not one to be easily intimidated.

  “Chaz Miller,” I said, pushing a hand toward him. “I guess I’m moving in.”

  He arched a dark brow at my hand before meeting my eyes. His were a light brown, just a few shades darker than Atticus Kincaid’s. My head tilted to one side as I studied the rest of him—nose, chin, build—and realized he greatly resembled someone I’d already met…my mother’s new fiancé.

  Without a word, he spun on a heel and stalked away, disappearing into the bowels of the huge home. I turned back to Gerald, who looked at me with concern etched on his face.

  “Is everyone here so pleasant?” I asked, not even attempting to keep the snark from my voice.

  “You shall adapt, Miss,” he replied, his kind smile accentuating his hopeful eyes.

  He motioned for me to precede him through the entrance, nodding with encouragement when my feet refused to move. Taking a deep breath, I spun and stalked forward, only to skid to a halt as soon as my eyes adjusted to the dim light inside.

  “Holy shit,” I breathed.

  White marble floors. Dark hardwood walls. Fancy, modern accents and furniture that looked like it might break if one of the huge men who lived here even propped a hip on it.

  “Is that a tapestry?” I asked in an incredulous voice as Gerald moved up beside me.

  I’d never seen a tapestry outside of movies set in medieval times.