Redemption Lane Read online

  The Electric Tunnel Series

  Electrified

  Smoldered

  Tinged (Coming Spring/Summer 2015)

  Crossroads Series

  Redemption Lane

  Absolution Road (Coming Fall 2015)

  At twenty-three years old, I was a young woman smitten with a somewhat reformed bad boy. Wearing leggings, a tank top, and ankle boots, I danced on tables while he mountain-biked like a wild man through the woods, and watched sporting events. I went to school during the day and worked as a counselor at night; he worked days. But somehow we found the time to fall in love.

  Seventeen years later, we both work days. Our nights, we spend with our kids. I still wear leggings, but with cardigan sweaters and slippers. He still rides his bike, but more cautiously.

  Life never stops, but I’m still smitten with the man sleeping next to me at the end of the day. I love staying in to watch sports, and he chuckles about the clubs I create in my mind—where there is dancing and so much more.

  This is for my husband, who makes sure we don’t run out of coffee—ever—and brings me doughnuts and supports me in all my big, giant, colossal dreams.

  I love you ~ Author Puma

  Alcohol and/or drug addiction is a serious matter. If you or a loved one believe they may have a problem, please contact a local AA for meeting or support information.

  Alcoholics Anonymous is an international fellowship of men and women who have had a drinking problem. It is nonprofessional, self-supporting, multiracial, apolitical, and available almost everywhere. There are no age or education requirements. Membership is open to anyone who wants to do something about his or her drinking problem.

  AA Website

  Bess

  Back then . . .

  “Ugh, shit. God damn,” I mumbled to myself as I stood up, holding my hand to my forehead while I stumbled toward the kitchen.

  I’d woken up curled in a ball on the floor, my cheek resting in a tiny puddle of drool on the rug immediately inside my front door. Nipples peeking through my tiny white crop top, skinny jeans stuck to my body, and knee-high black leather boots completed my look.

  I know, not a very glamorous situation for a twenty-one-year-old coed. But pretty much my daily ritual.

  Standing, I held my palm to my forehead, running it over my cheek as I tugged cobwebs of hair out of my mouth. Memories of the night before flooded my brain as my feet tried to remain steady on the floor.

  “Ouch,” I said to myself.

  If I concentrated hard, I could remember being high last night, dancing on the makeshift bar until a guy lifted me off and took me somewhere else for another hit of something even better. Things were hazy after that.

  Finally reaching my destination, I gently leaned my clammy forehead against the cool vibrations of the fridge/freezer combo, willing its chilled touch to drag the pain and awful thoughts away.

  It didn’t.

  Oh well, I’d come to prefer my current state of pain to the one I’d lived in as a little girl, and later as a misguided teenager left alone to her own devices. Yes, I would take dry mouth, a wicked hangover, and incessant jonesing for my next hit over watching my mom walk out or being left with an emotionally absent father.

  Any day, hands down.

  Speaking of hands, my fingers drifted back to the rat’s nest that was currently in my hair, my thick long waves twisted in a million different clumps only a bottle of conditioner and a tearful comb-out would solve. That was what I got for sleeping on the floor, resting my head on a burlap mat instead of a fluffy down-filled pillow in my bed.

  After taking a small step backward, I opened the fridge door and grabbed the bottle of orange juice, then poured some into the dirty mug sitting next to where my bony hip was resting against the counter. I sipped it slowly, trying to avoid it sloshing in my stomach, and willed it not to come back up, which was no easy feat.

  Take a tiny sip, Bess, then a big breath in through your nose and out.

  I repeated this mantra until my eyes no longer watered. The natural sugar eased only the smallest pinch of pain, but just enough to make it so I could move.

  When I turned a little too fast, the juice became a brutal rolling storm in my belly, threatening to come back up. Slowing my pace, I made my way to the bathroom for some useless ibuprofen and to pee.

  With my butt on the ice-cold toilet seat, I looked at my watch. One o’clock in the afternoon. Okay, so it wasn’t exactly morning, but it was Friday, the one day I didn’t have any classes. Nothing missed, nothing lost.

  I’d wiped and moved on wobbly legs to wash my hands and get the pills when I heard my phone beeping. Geez, that fucker was so loud. Where the hell was it? I leaned down, resting my hands on the vanity and thought hard, then felt it vibrate in my back pocket.

  Bingo. Score one for Bess. I found my phone without running upstairs to use the Find My iPhone app on my neighbor’s phone, which might have happened more times than I cared to admit.

  I cupped some water in my hands and brought them up to my face, although most of it dribbled down my chin before I swallowed the tiny iridescent blue over-the-counter capsules that would bring little to no relief.

  But who really wanted that?

  Actual relief meant covering up the real pain that burned in the pit of my stomach, the empty ache I desperately tried to fill with boys or pills or booze. Or all of the above.

  Turning and resting my butt on the sink to check out my text message, I rolled my eyes.

  CAMPER: Yoga with hot DJ & blacklight. 5:30 p.m.

  With stiff fingers, I typed out a response that turned into a conversation.

  ME: Seriously? Happy hour instead?

  CAMPER: Nope. Yoga, then margs at Texi Mexi in our sweaty yoga gear.

  ME: Say pretty please.

  CAMPER: Pretty please! Be ready at 5.

  I didn’t respond; I knew there was no talking Camper out of it. Besides, she lived one floor up, and she and her long legs and big curly head would show up at five o’clock whether I said yes or no.

  Whipping around sixty-five miles an hour too fast for my current state, I faced the medicine cabinet again and pulled out the tiny first aid kit covered in pink and purple kitty stickers, opening the stupidly concealed container with caution. That box, proof of my stunted childhood, held everything that was precious and sacred to me. Carefully, I took stock of its contents: two extra-lush joints, five tabs of Molly, and a few oxy.

  Shit, I was low on pharmaceuticals. I made a mental note to call my “guy” before plucking a pretty little Molly or two out of the box. I needed to dim the pain slowly seeping from my heart, and while I was at it, enhance the upcoming yoga experience a touch.

  I wasn’t sure how Camper did it; that girl raged as hard as I did. Didn’t she?

  We’d been friends since freshman year, immediately bonding when we’d found ourselves in a nearby tattoo parlor during orientation week. We were both taking the first bold move of our college lives, establishing our independence with a permanent reminder on our fresh and creamy young skin.

  Despite her bubbly nature and peppy white smile that often clashed with my somber demeanor, we’d been inseparable ever since. Living the last two years in the same apartment building, taking identical courses, covering for each other, and most importantly, avoiding Friday classes so we could live it up Thursday through Sunday.

  Setting my magic pills on the dresser, I stripped out of my smelly clothes from the night before. As they fluttered to the floor, I watched their descent, remembering moments of my own extremely real downward spiral.

  Then I crawled naked between my cool sheets, shutting my eyes for a moment or three hours.

  Lane

  God, I was fucking going to ki
ll my brother with just my bare hands. I should have done it years ago, but had never found the balls to actually follow through with it. At the moment, I couldn’t even begin to understand what the fuck was wrong with me. Or him.

  How the hell does he talk me into this shit?

  I was becoming successful in my own right, running my own business, but I might as well have still been the little boy staring out my bedroom window, wondering how I was going to fix Jake’s current mess.

  How was it that I couldn’t take charge of my own identical twin brother?

  Oh, right, I was four and a half minutes older and technically had been in charge of cleaning up his fuck-ups since we were nine when our parents died in a car crash. We’d been sent to our grandparents, and they did their best, but they had zero clue what to do with a wild child like Jake.

  Neither did I.

  Throughout our childhood and adolescence, I was consumed by worry that our last living family members would give up on him. And that would have been worse than the alternative—telling the truth.

  With my shoulders held high, wearing a fake smile and a polite demeanor to hide my broken soul, I spent the majority of my teen years sacrificing anything I might have wanted for the sake of my brother.

  Like college. I was accepted to Vanderbilt; my brother wasn’t. So we stayed close to home and went to the University of Pittsburgh where my brother got to play D-1 baseball. I got an undergrad business degree, an MBA, and an education in sleeping with my brother’s hand-me-downs.

  Except, all I ever wanted was to get the heck out of Dodge. I hated being close to home or anywhere that resembled that gray, colorless, craptastic place. And by home, I meant anywhere in the Northeast; any-fucking-where there was a change of season. Fall, with its leaves dropping casually all over the place, like they didn’t have a care in the world. Those pesky little pieces of life and their flitting to the ground were only followed by an icy chill, snowflakes in the air, and cold wind in my face—a constant reminder of the jagged ache of our loss and my mistakes.

  But I went to Pitt and slogged through the shitty weather like a good and devoted brother, and I even stayed on afterward. Apparently I found some sick satisfaction in handling my brother’s dirty work and prolonging my own suffering.

  Like now. My brother was casually sleeping with the yoga instructor at his gym, Fizzle Fitness. And she was teaching a five-thirty class he couldn’t make, so he sent me, his identical twin, to take his place.

  “Practice in the back row, she’ll never know, Lane,” he insisted over lunch.

  “Seriously?” I asked. “Jake, we’re twenty-five years old and you still want to play the bait-and-switch routine like when we were kids?”

  Brushing aside my objections like he always did, he said, “I’m just in a bad spot, and I gotta do something for the gym. You understand putting work first, right? Still, we all need to get laid, bro, so do me this one favor. Yeah?”

  And like that, I gave in to my asshole brother.

  I did like yoga, but I preferred the quiet kind. The type where I could actually allow my mind to run free from responsibility. I didn’t need the flashing, thumping, party-scene class version.

  But there I was, positioned in downward dog on my thick black mat, stretching out my tendons in the last row just like Jake suggested, trying to keep Lexie, the instructor and his current main squeeze, from coming over. I was flashing my brother’s girl a smirk like he would—should—have been doing, when two college girls walked in right as class was about to start. One chick set up her mat in the front row, and the other one dropped down right beside me.

  I couldn’t be upset; the girl next to me was smoking hot. Intrigued, I took in her long wavy brown hair that she was twisting into a messy bun, small tits in a bright blue halter top, and tight hips and a round ass poured into tight black yoga pants. The disappointing thing was she fucking stank, and my eyes began to water from the stench wafting my way, like booze and stale sweat. This girl smelled like a bar after a long Saturday night.

  Was she drunk? Was she even legal?

  Slightly turning my head the other direction as I concentrated on Lexie’s instructions, I breathed the air coming from the too-skinny, nondescript blonde on my left.

  Some punk, new-age, rap combo blared through the speakers, and I took in the absolute ridiculousness of my surroundings—the DJ with big cans on his ears was jamming to his own tunes completing the picture.

  Welcome to Crazy Town.

  The lights dimmed further and beams of black light swirled around the room as if we were in a dance club, giving everyone some spots of neon glow in the darkness. Which made this the least likely place to unwind, in my opinion. To actually relax, I looked forward to the beer or two I planned to have after class.

  We were jetting through sun As and Bs, hopping back to chatarunga, and jumping up to our hands faster than I could even take one breath. I was pretty sure I was getting whiplash when all of a sudden something landed on my hip, knocking me forward right onto my stomach, and it didn’t move, just lay there heavily on top of me, pinning my hip bone to my mat.

  “What the hell?” I said as I turned over, instantly holding my mouth closed because the foul odor from earlier enveloped me.

  “Bess!” The girl’s friend from the front came running back, a blur of bright pink Spandex with her huge ponytail of curls whipping around her face, paying no mind to Lexie still trying to conduct class. “Bess! What happened?” she screamed at the brown-haired young woman sprawled across my mat.

  We were both met with silence. I was still on the floor where I’d slid over on my knees, so I gently nudged the young girl, but she didn’t respond. Her friend dropped down next to me and violently shook the still body in front of us. As I watched, my gaze fell on the unusual tattoo on the unconscious girl’s arm, a crying eye that looked as if it were begging me to help.

  “Bess, honey, Bess, wake up!” she yelled to her friend before whispering, “Oh my God, she’s dead.”

  I moved my hand to the smelly but beautiful girl I had come to know as “Bess,” and felt her wrist for a pulse. When I felt a thready beat, I said to the woman whose name I didn’t know, “She’s alive.”

  We were causing a scene with the unconscious girl on my mat and her friend slumped to the floor next to her, the friend shaking and quivering, almost turning blue herself, yet Lexie kept right on teaching.

  What the hell is wrong with her? Why isn’t she handling this?

  And then I remembered. I was supposed to be the owner of the club we were in, so naturally, I’d be handling this situation. On my own. As Jake.

  Like I said, I was going to kill my brother.

  Lane

  Four years later

  Fuck, it was cold up in the mountains. The damp air hung all around me, its cold moistness winding its way through my suit jacket and seeping into my bones. Either I was a pussy or my blood had drastically thinned after only a few years of living in Florida. Growing up in this shit up north, I thought I’d be prepared—at least physically—for a quick business trip close to home in the fall weather.

  Mentally, I still despised what the weather represented, but this was going to be an in-and-out straightforward meeting with a medium-sized account.

  I can do it.

  After landing at Pittsburgh International Airport, I rented a car and went straight to the cemetery. Being the responsible grandson, I made a quick visit to my grandparents’ graves before hightailing it out of the city to my destination.

  No, I didn’t bother to see my brother. He was up to his usual shenanigans, sleeping with countless women, searching for something that didn’t exist, fucking up in his business over and over again, and hiding behind being the poor little boy who grew up without a mommy and daddy.

  Unlike me, he wore his mixed emotions proudly, flaunting his highs and lows, and his ambivalence to the meaning of life. I kept mine cloaked in a facade of success and purposefulness.

  As I pu
lled up to my hotel and stepped out of the car, the temperature felt like it dropped twenty degrees since leaving the city. Running my hand through my thick hair, I took in the palatial edifice looming over me, a crown jewel in the middle of cow country with enormous cathedral towers.

  They will make me a pretty penny.

  Pretending not to be affected by the cutting wind, I stood tall, motioning for the valet. Taking my keys, he asked, “Checking in or just here for dinner?”

  My hair blew in the breeze, and I was forced to push it back once again with my cold fingers.

  I wanted to reply to the stupid valet, No, I’m checking out and heading back to my big house in sunny Florida, complete with a revolving door of plastic women, but that would have been out of character for the revered Lane Wrigley—if you believed my reputation in this business.

  Keeping my cynical thoughts to myself, I simply said, “Checking in,” and headed to the front desk.

  At reception, I didn’t have to announce myself. They were waiting with bated breath for me, fully expecting the man who was reportedly changing the hotel industry with an advanced software tracking system for guests, supplies, payroll, and purchase orders. My software package was a “hotel manager’s best friend and a hospitality franchise’s knight in shining armor,” according to the latest review in the hospitality industry rags.

  I wondered why the valet hadn’t been put on alert, but realized he probably expected me to arrive in a limo rather than a rented SUV.

  Once I entered the business world, I kept my personal life to myself and rarely revealed anything about my past to my clients. I never saw a reason to drop clues as to where I grew up—either before or after my parents died. They were almost one and the same, both with their gray, downright depressing climate and nature. And both were in the past.

  I didn’t need anyone’s sympathy or pity. I’d moved on, learned to live with my regret and sins by omission, but not with the changing weather. It was and always would be a trigger for my depression and guilt, and just admitting that stole my man card from me.