Gorgeous Misery (Creeping Beautiful Book 3)
Contents
Gorgeous Misery
DESCRIPTION
PART ONE - THE WILD
CHAPTER ONE - NICK
CHAPTER TWO - MERC
CHAPTER THREE - WENDY
CHAPTER FOUR - NICK
CHAPTER FIVE - WENDY
CHAPTER SIX - NICK
CHAPTER SEVEN - WENDY
PART TWO - THE WICKED
CHAPTER EIGHT - NICK
CHAPTER NINE - WENDY
CHAPTER TEN - MERC
CHAPTER ELEVEN - WENDY
CHAPTER TWLEVE - NICK
CHAPTER THIRTEEN - MERC
CHAPTER FOURTEEN - NICK
CHAPTER FIFTEEN - WENDY
CHAPTER SIXTEEN - NICK
PART THREE - THE WISE
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - MERC
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - NICK
CHAPTER NINETEEN - WENDY
CHAPTER TWENTY - NICK
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - MERC
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - NICK
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - WENDY
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - MERC
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - NICK
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX - MERC
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN - NICK
END OF BOOK SHIT
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
GORGEOUS MISERY - BOOK THREE
Edited by RJ Locksley
Cover Design by JA Huss
Cover Photo: Wander Aguiar
Cover Model: Andrew Biernat
Copyright © 2022 by JA Huss
All rights reserved.
ISBN-978-1-950232-81-9
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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DESCRIPTION
Wendy Gale isn’t the kind of girl you marry. She’s not even the kind of girl you date. She’s not a friend with benefits, she’s not a one-night-stand, and regardless of what she thinks, she has never been a rebound.
Wendy Gale is kind of girl you kidnap and lock in your basement so she can’t ever escape. She’s the kind of girl you tie up. You put a collar on her. A leash. Handcuffs. You chain her to things and gag her mouth. A blindfold isn’t a bad idea, either.
Because Wendy Gale is the kind of girl you grab on to—any way you can—and you never let go.
Wendy. Babe. You only need to know one thing about me, OK?
I will never let go.
Gorgeous Misery is a dark romantic thriller about one man’s desperate desire to save the woman he loves at all costs. It is the third book in the Creeping Beautiful series and must be read in order.
PART ONE - THE WILD
“Whosoever is delighted in solitude is either a wild beast or a god.”
― Aristotle
CHAPTER ONE - NICK
CHRISTMAS #21
2 ½ YEARS AGO
Majestic, lovely, delightful, glorious, powerful, heavenly…
Wendy Gale isn’t the kind of girl you marry. She’s not even the kind of girl you date.
She’s not a friend with benefits, she’s not a one-night stand, and regardless of what she thinks, she has never been a rebound.
Wendy Gale is the kind of girl you kidnap and lock in your basement so she can’t ever escape. She’s the kind of girl you tie up. You put a collar on her. A leash. Handcuffs. You chain her to things and gag her mouth. A blindfold isn’t a bad idea, either.
Because Wendy Gale is the kind of girl you grab on to—any way you can—and you never let go.
She is that special.
Wendy… you only need to know one thing about me, babe. Just one.
No matter what happens, I will never let go.
Today she is pouting in her truck as I watch her through the cabin’s living room window. Her lower lip even sticks out a little bit. Her sky-blue eyes aren’t angry or anything. There are no thunderclouds in there. But they are tired. Even from here, I can see that weariness she carries inside her.
It’s Christmas Eve. We have a thing for Christmas. Birthdays, too. Hers, not mine.
This cabin is home-—hers, for sure. But even though I only started coming here on any kind of regular basis four years ago it’s starting to feel like home for me as well. Before that the open road was my home. My truck rambling along just to the right of that endless dotted-white line in the middle of the pavement was the only constant I could count on. I needed it back then. I needed that lie I was selling pretty bad. The lie that I was free. That I was running from something that could be outrun. That I was protecting them, even though I always knew I wasn’t.
This is my major problem with Wendy these days. Somewhere along the line I failed miserably and she has gotten old enough now—hard to believe she’ll be twenty-two this year—but she has gotten old enough now that ways have been set and everything I’ve been ignoring all these years is starting to become glaringly obvious.
She is who she is and the thing that bugs me most about that is that I missed it. I mean, I was there, ya know? I have been there since she was five years old and if I really want to emphasize my involvement, I could even say that I helped raise her. In the same way that I might claim I raised Lauren.
I was there when they were little, but we all went our separate ways. Wendy first, of course, because I wasn’t her father, or her brother, or anyone, really. And Chek needed her for jobs, so her time with us was always temporary. But if you add it all up over time, Wendy spent about thirty percent of her life with me until she was fifteen.
Then Lauren was gone, I was officially dead, and Wendy was a seasoned professional.
I needed them the same way I needed the road back then. Wendy and Lauren were the only two people I had left to love. But it’s been just Wendy for so long now. This is why she thinks she’s the consolation prize.
Fuckin’ saddens me.
Wendy is at home on the road as well. That’s also my fault. I’m the one who taught her how to ramble through life. I’m the one who was running and I’m the one who took her along for the ride. She settled into the wanderlust way too young to ever have a chance of escaping it later. It’s in her bones now. But… this cabin has always been here. It has been her true home since she was five. This is where Chek brought her for downtime. This place in the woods surrounded by birdsong, rivers that burble, and the kind of stillness at night one only finds in tucked-away places is her one true place of peace.
Even though my time here started with anything but peace.
The first time I came out to this cabin was seventeen days after Chek’s death. That was four years ago.
Of course, that’s not our beginning, Wendy and me. Because I have known her since she was a five-year-old child and I was a filthy drug lord’s eighteen-year-old prisoner. But that first time I showed up for her seventeenth birthday, seventeen days after Chek died, that’s when she stopped being on my side and I started being on her side.
But back to that very first meeting that night of the massacre, after I was taken to the Fenici superyacht just off the coast of Santa Barbara to meet the man who would dictate everything that would happen next. That was just a casual glance at a little blonde girl in the corner with a dirty face and a long scowl.
It would be another four years before she came to stay with me and my new baby girl, Lauren. Wendy was… well… W
endy was supposed to be my babysitter when that happened. My little helper. Someone to keep me sane, on loan from Chek to help me get through those rough early days when all Lauren wanted to do was wail in protest about her early bad luck.
But Wendy was way more than that.
And look, I’m not saying it was the ideal situation or anything—I mean, relying on a nine-year-old to be your best friend is the epitome of selfishness—but it was what it was and I have no regrets.
Wendy Gale has been my best friend for almost thirteen years now.
She has been more than my best friend for two years.
We are a team. We work well together. We get shit done.
And I get that part too. This isn’t your typical love story because Wendy and me, we’re not your typical people.
But make no mistake, this is a love story.
We were just born into something beyond our control and we’ve spent our entire lives trying our best to break it apart.
But here’s the problem with breaking things… in the end, they’re broken.
And yeah, I know. I know what you’re thinking. I’m stating the obvious. This is how shit works, Nick. We all know that when you drop a piece of glass it shatters. And we all intuitively understand that things are very, very messy when it’s over.
Fine. Agreed. I get it.
This is a fucking mess.
And there is no real way to put broken shit back together without lots of cracks.
But I don’t mind the cracks. Wendy doesn’t mind the cracks, either.
That’s why we’re so good together. We kinda love the cracks.
Wendy still hasn’t gotten out of the truck and I haven’t moved from the living room window. There’s a chance she just backs up and drives away, but she’s here now. And it’s been a while, so I think she’s staying. She’s just having the same pointless internal monologue as me.
Wondering if this is… what? Normal? Satisfying? Enough? As good as it gets?
That’s not what I’m wondering, obviously. Every time we see each other after a long absence like this I replay how terrible I am. How she needs anyone else but me. How I don’t deserve her, how I’m going to ruin her, and how it’ll probably be me who gets her killed in the end.
And yet here I am. Every single time.
But that’s not what she’s thinking about. She has no baggage when it comes to these visits. It’s all very in the moment. Temporary. You know, like… a salve. I’m something soothing to her. Tea, or comfort food, or a warm blanket.
She thinks she’s using me. She’s told me this. But that’s not why she hesitates in her truck.
She hesitates because she thinks she is my number two. Or three, maybe. Sasha, in Wendy’s mind, will always be my one true love. And in a different way, Lauren will always be my second.
Wendy hesitates because she thinks she is the only thing I have left.
She hesitates because she thinks that I would walk away from her if I could have Sasha and Lauren back. And the fact that Sasha and Lauren are together—that Sasha has raised my daughter as her own for all these years—that’s just something Wendy can’t get past.
If she invests her heart with me, she could lose it so quick. So fast.
In her mind, I am one easy decision from walking out on her for good.
She really thinks this. And yet here she is.
Because I’m all she has left too.
But unlike her, I don’t take this personally. If I wasn’t all she had left, she wouldn’t be here.
And anyway, we’re not just best friends and occasional lovers. We’re a real fuckin’ team. And when we do a job, we do it right.
I meet her here so we can hang out. We kick back, we cook some food, maybe go out to dinner a couple times, we laugh—or cry—and we sleep together like we’re normal. We lie in bed and talk, and fuck, and sleep. It’s all very normal.
But it’s also all very temporary.
You see, we can’t be together. Not for any length of time.
It’s all so very complicated.
Her truck door opens and she steps out, leaning back into the cab to grab something, which I see is a backpack once she closes the door. She pauses and her eyes find mine in the window. She sucks in a deep breath, then walks towards the porch. I meet her at the open door and I have the same thoughts every time this happens.
I want her to fall into my arms.
I want her to melt into me, and kiss me hard, and admit that she has been miserable since our last meeting.
Sometimes it almost happens that way. The first time we met out here, seventeen days after Chek’s death, she kinda did fall into me. But that’s not how it happens this time. Or any time after that one time, to be honest. Because even though we both show up here and do what we do, it always ends with a fight.
She always hates me when she drives away.
My heart hurts when this happens, but my brain—the rational side of me? That part is always OK. Because even though she walks out, she takes the job I offered with her.
She doesn’t want to do the jobs, but Wendy is a lot of things. She is moody, bitchy, mean, ruthless, deadly. But she’s also a professional. And she always comes through for the jobs I give her.
Hold on, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking—Damn, Nick. That’s harsh. You’re using her for jobs?
And if I was really using her for that kind of job, I’d agree. It would be way more than harsh. It would be… unforgivable. But I am not asking Wendy to kill people when I send her out. It’s busy work. That’s it. She digs info for me. She keeps an eye on shit. And maybe she knows these jobs are fake, or maybe she doesn’t. It doesn’t matter. These jobs are just how we keep in touch between Christmases and birthdays. I hand them over, she does them, sends me back the info I ask for, and we pretend this is all normal.
Wendy and I are very, very good at pretending.
I’m blocking the front door when Wendy approaches—and I do this on purpose. It’s a way to make her choose.
Does she want to hug me? Kiss me? Push me aside?
She pushes me aside. Squeezes past me and keeps walking deeper into the cabin. I turn and I’m just closing the door when she drops her backpack onto the counter. Then the pause.
There is always a pause.
A moment she takes to ask herself things like, Do I want to be here? Do I want to do this? Why, why, why do I even show up?
But it’s Christmas, not her birthday, and that means that if she wants to have a fight when she arrives, it will be a small one.
She turns, a smile on her face, and she says, “Hello.”
It’s always been about ‘hello’ with us.
I nod my head at her, cool like that, and walk into the kitchen. “Hello, yourself. Did you have a nice drive in?”
She shrugs. “It’s the road, ya know?”
Yep. I do know. “Are you hungry?”
She doesn’t answer me right away. Instead she looks around, spots the tell-tale signs and then sighs as she leans against the kitchen island and crosses her arms. “How long have you been here this time?”
I could lie. But I don’t want to lie. I want her to know. “Two weeks.”
She scoffs out her words. “Two weeks?” She blinks at me. “Why?”
“I like it.”
She goes quiet for a moment, then just shakes her head. “Well, I’m not staying. You told me to come, so I came. But I’m not staying.”
“Then where are you staying?”
“Your house.” She says this with a total straight face.
But I can’t stop my smile. “Is that right?”
“Mm-hmm. I figured… fuck it, right? You’re gonna stay at my house while I’m gone, I might as well stay at yours while you’re gone.”
I press my lips together and nod. “Seems fair to me.”
“So what do you want?”
“You.”
Her eyes go lazy. Almost a look of indifference or boredom.
> But it’s not indifference or boredom.
It’s a challenge.
One I am definitely up for.
Making love to an assassin should always come with caution, and making love to Wendy Gale comes with a lot more than that. But I’m careful as I walk towards her and place my hands on her hips. She smiles at me. That’s the best part of every time we reunite. She’s so happy.
I love Happy Wendy.
“Why are you looking at me that way?”
I reach up and drag a stray piece of hair away from her eye and tuck it behind her ear. She shakes her head, removes the carefully placed strand of wayward hair, and cocks her head at me. “Why are you looking at me that way?”
It comes out snappish. But she’s not being mean and she’s not angry. She’s just uncomfortable because we’re at a point now where decisions have to be made.
What are we?
Where is this going?
How in the hell will we ever be able to get there?
“You think way too much,” I say.
She grins and cocks a hip now. “At least I’m careful.”
Both of my hands rise—slowly—so I can cup her face. She stares up into my eyes, black pupils shining, and I see our past in my own reflection. “I’m careful.”
It comes out serious. More serious than I intended, but she gets it and her body relaxes. “So kiss me then. Let’s get on with it.”
I can’t stop the smile, and neither can she, so when our lips touch, this smile exchanges between us. It’s like a happiness transfer. That’s what I give her. But she gives me trust.
When I back away, I take her hand and lead her into her bedroom. I bought a ton of candles for this reunion. Three-foot-tall pillars. Candelabras. Several dozen votives. It’s magical.
Because that’s what Wendy deserves.
If ever there was a girl who needed the happily ever after—deserved the happily ever after—it is this one right here.
“Stop looking at me.”