Pretty Nightmare (Creeping Beautiful Book 2)
Contents
Pretty Nightmare
DESCRIPTION
PART ONE - FUEL ON THE FIRE
CHAPTER ONE - INDIE
CHAPTER TWO - McKAY
CHAPTER THREE - ADAM
CHAPTER FOUR - INDIE
CHAPTER FIVE - DONOVAN
CHAPTER SIX - ADAM
CHAPTER SEVEN - McKAY
PART TWO - BLESSING IN DISGUISE
CHAPTER EIGHT - McKAY
CHAPTER NINE - ADAM
CHAPTER TEN - INDIE
CHAPTER ELEVEN - DONOVAN
CHAPTER TWLEVE - McKAY
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - ADAM
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - McKAY
CHAPTER FIFTEEN - INDIE
CHAPTER SIXTEEN - DONOVAN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - McKAY
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - INDIE
CHAPTER NINETEEN - DONOVAN
CHAPTER TWENTY - ADAM
PART THREE - IN THE SAME BOAT
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - NATHAN
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - DONOVAN
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - NATHAN
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - McKAY
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - ADAM
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX - NATHAN
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN - DONOVAN
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT - INDIE
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE - NATHAN
CHAPTER THIRTY - McKAY
CHAPTER THIRTY ONE - INDIE
CHAPTER THIRTY - TWO - DONOVAN
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE - ADAM
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR - DONOVAN
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE - McKAY
EPILOGUE - ADAM
END OF BOOK SHIT
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
PRETTY NIGHTMARE - BOOK TWO
Edited by RJ Locksley
Cover Design by JA Huss
Cover Photo: Wander Aguiar
Cover Model: Kaz
Copyright © 2020 by JA Huss
All rights reserved.
ISBN-978-1-950232-28-4
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
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www.JAHuss.com
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DESCRIPTION
INDIE
I have them all now. Just the way I want them.
McKay, the one who loves me deepest.
Adam, the one who protects me fiercely.
Donovan, the one who tells the truth.
They are my friends, they are my lovers, they are my world.
And Maggie belongs to all of us
—no matter who her father is.
This is the family I’ve always wanted.
This is the family I deserve.
And I will do whatever it takes to keep them.
McKAY
I have a secret that could ruin everything.
But I’m not keeping that secret to hurt her.
Nathan St. James needed to go.
ADAM
I made plan that could ruin everything.
But I did it to save us in the end.
The Company needed to come back.
DONOVAN
I told a lie that could ruin everything.
But I didn’t tell the lie to them—I told it to myself.
Carter is closer than we think.
There is something truly wrong at Boucher House on the Old Pearl River. Some hidden evil lurking deep inside the woods. Nothing about their blissful life is what it seems. Because just when they think they have it all—he shows up to take it back.
PART ONE - FUEL ON THE FIRE
This is where you talk about rabbit holes, and falling down into things, and finding tiny bottles of drinks that are not poison, but might as well be.
And then you make a big speech about secrets, and lies, and how the cure for pretty much everything is answers and truth.
Blah.
…
Blah.
…
Blah.
…
Consider all that shit said.
CHAPTER ONE - INDIE
I have them all. Just the way I want them.
Donovan is tall and lean. His dark hair is a nice contrast when he stands next to McKay or Adam because they are both blond. Not the same shade—Adam’s hair is a little bit lighter. They both have blue eyes, but Donovan’s are darker, more hazel than brown. And when I gaze into them it’s easy to get lost in the swirls of color. He’s tall. All three of them are tall, over six feet. But Donovan has the body of a born athlete. A swimmer, maybe, or a runner. He’s filled out a lot since I first met him back when he was fifteen and I was ten. But that’s expected. He was still a child even though he didn’t act like one. I don’t care how high your IQ is, fifteen is still fifteen.
Knowing what I do now, I would not call Donovan a quiet man. But he is quiet compared to McKay. When Donovan is talking his tone is flat and to the point. He’s blunt when he has something to say. But he’s not inconsiderate. Not at all. Donovan chooses words very carefully before he says them. I think that’s left over from his psychiatrist training. But Donovan is the nicest of the three of them. Obviously, Adam is the mean one. He likes it that way. Donovan takes care not to hurt people’s feelings. He’s not the type of person to yell or insult others. Not that he doesn’t get angry, but I get the feeling that Donovan refuses to argue with people because it’s not worth his time. He’s an opinionated asshole like the rest of the world, he just keeps things to himself.
I think that’s because he’s been trained to listen to others. But it does make him a hard nut to crack.
McKay’s skin tone is slightly more on the brown side than Adam’s. McKay tans dark in the summer, like me. His hair gets a shade or two lighter, if he’s outside a lot, and he almost always is. McKay is a builder. He can make anything with his hands. He has proved this to me dozens of times over the years.
When Donovan gives me a present it comes wrapped in a fine box with a silky ribbon. I always know that whatever is inside the box, it’s going to be sparkly. And it’s going to be pricey and come from a store that I’ve never heard of. But when McKay gives me a gift it’s probably not going to be wrapped at all. It’s probably too big. Something like a dollhouse, or a swing that hangs from the pavilion ceiling, or a piece of furniture he rescued from the attic and then put his own touches on to make it special. It will have a big bow, but that’s about it.
McKay’s body is more muscular than Donovan’s and if he played a sport it would be something rough. Like football or hockey. Something with a lot of contact and brute force behind the points being earned. And when he talks, even though he doesn’t yell very often, his voice carries. It’s just loud that way. He’s not one to insult people either, but he keeps it in for different reasons than Donovan. McKay doesn’t like to be the center of attention. He prefers to have someone’s back. Be second in command. He’s good at it too. Doesn’t need to be given orders to get things done. Just does them naturally.
Adam is as different from them as he is from me. He’s hard. Everything about Adam is hard. His blue eyes remind me of cobalt and they don’t glint, like McKay’s often will. They have a glare in them, a fire inside. A warning too. Don’t piss him off, that’s what his eyes say.
He’s got more tattoos than McKay, who only has a few here and there. But I would not call either of them tattoo enthusiasts. I
don’t know the stories behind their tats, but I imagine they were things not planned. Heat-of-the-moment artwork. I could be wrong, but they don’t talk about them. And I can’t even remember the last time either of them came home with a new one. They were mostly all there from the beginning. At least the beginning that started with me.
Adam is the leader. Even during his recovery time, back after his brain injury, he was still in charge. Some people just take command that way and he’s one of them. His words are short and clipped. They bark orders. And he will raise his voice in an instant if he thinks you’re not paying attention. Adam is a yeller. Sometimes he’s a screamer too. If he screams at you, he’s pissed off.
But it’s when he’s quiet that you really gotta look out for Adam. Quiet is a signal that something has gone wrong and his mind doesn’t have time for words because he’s plotting his actions.
When Adam goes quiet, he’s probably thinking about killing people.
His body is hard too—muscular—and he likes to work out. He has a lot of gym equipment in the shed. He likes the bags. Heavy bag. Speed bag. He wraps his hands and kicks things. And he likes to spar with McKay. McKay works out too. It’s just part of him. He’s always training, but not for the same reasons Adam does. Adam wants to stay hard. Never wants to go soft. McKay just wants to stay sharp. He doesn’t like to be caught off guard.
But even though they are so different, they are all the same in some ways.
Mostly when it comes to Maggie. I’m not gonna lie, I’m a little bit jealous that she has captured their love in the same way.
Their love for me was always unequal. Adam loved me when I was in danger. He was a fierce protector. You hurt me, he’ll kill you. That was the bottom line. And that’s a nice way to be loved. I’m not complaining. McKay loved me like a child. He loved me with his whole heart the way you love something weak and innocent. It’s not the same as Adam’s protective love, even though it might look that way on the surface. McKay’s love was all about preparing me for things. Fights, jobs, danger. That kind of thing. It was a little bit parental. And he is a natural teacher. But Adam’s protectiveness was all about ownership. You don’t fuck with something that is his. And I am his.
Donovan’s love for Maggie is more detached. He was that way with me too. He learns from her. Every time she talks he listens, trying to find hidden meaning underneath.
He does that to me too. But Donovan and I are friends. Real friends. He never saw me as a child, and I don’t think he sees Maggie as a child, either. He saw me as a mind, a collection of unique thoughts and perspectives, and he wanted to know what they were.
So we talked a lot. And not just in the therapy sessions, either. Donovan and I talked about life. I liked to hear about what he was doing when he was away and he liked to talk about it.
When you’re Company you can’t talk about your life much. But he could tell me anything. He knew I was a vault in that way. That I was never gonna go tell someone what he said. Not even Nathan.
Nathan—even though he’s dead—was something quite different than these three men.
Nathan was just… well, the boy next door. That’s who he was. He was everything Adam, McKay, and Donovan were, and more. Because he was always there—loving me, and listening to me, and protecting me—and he never asked for anything in return. He never expected me to protect him, and he never expected me to tell him my secrets, and he never asked me to love him.
I just did all those things because that’s what you do.
Nathan was… well. It doesn’t matter anymore. He’s gone.
But Adam, and McKay, and Donovan are still here.
Just the way I want them.
Maggie is here too. And I love her to death. I would do anything for that little girl. But sometimes… I hate to even think this, but sometimes Maggie feels like a secret. Something I should hide away from the world.
I don’t understand this feeling very well. I tried to tell myself I’m a mother and that’s a mother’s job. But that’s not it. I did give birth to her, but am I her mother?
No. I don’t feel like a mother. She feels more like a friend too. It’s almost like I’m her… Donovan. Except she has Donovan too, so I can’t be her Donovan.
I feel like her Adam and McKay as well. I want to protect her fiercely and I want to teach her things and make her strong. But again, she already has an Adam and a McKay.
I’m sitting on her bed—my old bed, actually—listening to her brush her teeth in the bathroom down the hall. It’s bedtime. She goes to sleep at nine o’clock on the freaking dot every single night.
Just like I did.
McKay cooks her food, and teaches her lessons, and he even bought her a set of throwing knives and has her in martial arts training three times a week because both of those are things you can start young.
This also parallels my training somewhat.
She’s very good at both. And we all know that Adam took advantage of the last four years and started training her, even though we don’t talk about it.
In fact, almost everything about her life here is just Indie 2.0.
Minus Nathan, of course. I hate that she has no Nathan. It feels like she’s missing out on something.
But that can’t be helped.
I don’t know if I was just too young when I had her. Too immature. Or if it’s that I’ve missed out on so much of her life—more than half of it, to be exact. But I don’t feel like she’s my daughter. I think mothers spend their pregnancies dreaming of the lives their children will live. What they can give them. How they want to shape them and things like that. And I just didn’t do that.
I try to tell myself that it’s not my fault—not her fault, for sure, but not my fault either. Because I spent the first trimester of my pregnancy trying to deny it was happening. And I spent the second trying to figure out what was happening with Nathan, trying to keep Adam from killing him, and trying to maintain my relationship with McKay.
The last trimester I fell into a little funk because it was clear that Nathan was not ready for this. Neither was I. And now, looking back, it didn’t even matter. He wasn’t her father. Or so that card from Carter said a couple weeks ago on Maggie’s sixth birthday.
We don’t know if Carter is telling the truth. I guess, since he’s Donovan’s twin brother, we could just do a DNA test using Donovan’s blood and see. But Adam says that’s risky because, obviously, we have to send that test out somewhere. And his people—which is a whole other topic of conversation—aren’t set up to do science like that. So we’d have to send it to a private lab that he has no association with.
Donovan was a hard no on that. So. End of story there.
And it’s not like Nathan’s even here to push the issue. We’re in limbo as far as her father goes.
My point was that I didn’t spend my last trimester planning Maggie’s life out the way I should’ve. And even after she was born, I was barely equipped to deal with a baby.
I was good with her. I think. And I do love her. My heart gets tight when I think about her, and I’m pretty sure that’s love. But McKay took over because that’s what McKay does. And I was… postpartum. I guess that’s what we’re calling it. That was Donovan’s professional opinion.
I’m not sure I completely buy the idea that postpartum depression lasts for two years, but… OK.
It’s just… if I were to plan a life for her, I’m not sure I would plan this one.
I love these men. And they love us. But should a six-year-old girl be throwing knives? Even if she’s really good at it?
I’m not convinced. I’m just not. I don’t know what another life looks like—I just have the one to compare things to—but not all people are like us. I do know that.
“Hell-looow!”
I look up and see Maggie standing in front of me with her hands on her hips. Her long, blonde hair is still damp from the bubble bath she took in my old tub just a little while earlier. She’s wearing pink bed shorts and a m
atching tank top. She smells like bubble gum. Kinda looks like it too.
“What?” I ask.
“I was calling your name, Indie. I said it like six times.”
“Sorry, I was thinking. Are you ready for bed? Do you want a story tonight?”
She bounces on the mattress past me and then slips under the covers, pulling them up to her chin. It’s summer, and it’s hot out tonight, but the AC in this room always did work too well. And we keep this house a nice cool sixty-eight degrees almost year-round. “No story tonight. I have things to think about and I don’t want to be distracted.”
I scrunch up my nose at her. She’s forever saying weird shit like this, like she has secret plans going on inside that head of hers. “What things?”
“What I’m gonna do tomorrow, of course.”
“What are you gonna do tomorrow? I can’t imagine it’s any different than what you did today.”
She tsks her tongue at me, not liking my statement. “It’s Saturday. It’s the weekend.”
“Hmm.” I want to say, So? Because again, it’s not that she’s gonna do anything different. She has no Nathan to make her days special. That really bothers me. “So what are your plans?”
“I’m gonna learn something new. That’s always the plan.”
“Wouldn’t a book help you with that?”
“Your books are stories, Indie. I like the factual books. But before you offer to read me a factual book, just… no thanks. I can do it myself.”
She can do it herself. Yes. She can.
I smile at her, kiss her on the head, and then get up and walk over to the door. “Good night, Mags. I love you.”
“Night, Mama. I love you too.”
I flick the light off and close her door, then stand there in the hallway as I listen to the sounds of Old Home.
I’m sleeping with Adam tonight. They won’t let me sleep alone because Carter might try to steal me away. We put bars up on Maggie’s window the day after that card came. It’s got a fire latch or whatever they call it so Maggie can climb out in an emergency. But if she uses it, an alarm will sound on the new security system we now have.