Repentance
The Story of Kace Haywood
Meghan Quinn
Published by Hot-Lanta Publishing
Copyright 2015
Editted by LS King and Murphy Rae with Indie Solutions,www.murphyrae.net
Cover by Murphy Rae with Indie Solutions,www.murphyrae.net
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All characters in this book are fiction and figments of the author’s imagination.
www.authormeghanquinn.com
A note from Kace
I’m a man of few words. I don’t feel, and I don’t make friends with anyone outside my circle. I don’t talk about my past, and I don’t care to hear about anyone’s future. I like to seclude myself from the outside world, observe others and live my life in a self-induced solitary confinement.
I spend my days working for my best friend as a thank you for what he’s done for me, for what he’s covered up. At night, I think about my wrongdoings. I let it eat me alive until I end up at the bottom of a bottle, temporarily forgetting my past sins.
I’ve succeeded at keeping a safe distance between myself and the outside world. I’m proud that I’ve kept people at arm’s length. At least I was…until the day I Met Lyla.
I thought I knew what love was. It was a far-off concept I’d experienced before, but fuck was I wrong. I thought I knew what it was like to be touched by a woman, to be idolized by a woman, to be lost in a woman’s scent, but I had no clue until Lyla came along.
She ruined me, wrecked me, gutted me from the inside out, and not because she wouldn’t love me back. No, I knew she loved me. I could see it in her eyes. She ruined me because she was a dream, an illusion of happiness I couldn’t hold on to. I’m not allowed to love. I’m not privy to such a fundamental notion in life. I don’t deserve love, not after what I’ve done, not after what I’ve taken away from someone else.
During the lowest point of my life, I lost control, and I’ve been paying the price for that three-second lapse of judgement ever since. There isn’t a day that goes by I don’t think about what I’ve done, that I don’t recognize the kind of monster I’ve become.
Sorrow, regret, and remorse are the only emotions I allow myself to feel. Anything else is a secondary musing that is quickly washed away.
There is one moment in my life I wish I could take back, but every choice you make comes with a consequence; I’m a fucking living example of that.
Some people celebrate the day they were born. I celebrate the day my soul died. This is the story of my repentance.
Chapter One
My present
Summer.
My least favorite part of the year. Not because of the hot and humid weather of Louisiana; no, it was the nightmares that grew heavier with each passing day during that season.
I could take the humidity.
I could deal with the heat.
I could even manage dodging the tourists visiting the French Quarter.
But the nightmares, the flashbacks, the reminders of what the beginning of summer represented to me—they were unbearable.
My days at the Lafayette Club, managing the Jett Girls, were over, and now I was in charge of the new community center my best friend, Jett Colby, was funding. When I worked at the club, helping the Jett Girls perform their dances for the city elites, I was able to hide in a hole, do my job, and then bounce.
But with the new venture, I was faced with the fact that a sinner like myself was forced to put on a jolly fucking face and act like I was an upstanding citizen.
I was the furthest thing from an upstanding citizen.
Jett Colby, now he was an upstanding citizen. He created the Lafayette Club to help save women from a life on the streets. He named them Jett Girls and created a system where they earned not only an education but a living as well. Now, he was rotating the employees of the Lafayette Club over to the community center, which included myself and the Jett Girls. We were going to serve our community in the best way possible; offer them a free education through wellness and a second chance in life.
But the way I saw it, me serving the community was a fucking joke.
Even though I had my reservations about the idea, it was my duty to suffer; therefore, I did.
Goldie, Jett’s fiancée, had made it her mission to get on my nerves whenever she could, and her newest mission was to continually shove her best friend, Lyla, into my life after I’d made it a goal to expunge her from my memory.
Lyla.
She was a unique brand of woman, a once-in-a-lifetime kind of woman who affected you the minute she walked into a room. She ingrained herself into your marrow and rested there, never leaving.
The minute I met her, I knew there was no way I was going to be rid of her, and the fact that she was linked so closely to my inner circle didn’t help either.
But just like everything else in my life, I couldn’t have her.
I couldn’t wear this cloak of guilt and fully give myself to her, and there was not a chance in hell I would be sharing my past sins with Lyla. I couldn’t take the judgment from her, not from her. I needed Lyla to idolize me, to look at me with those green eyes and cherish me.
I was a selfish bastard, but it was the one thing I held on to in this bleak fucking world.
I brought the slowly emptying glass of whiskey I was clutching to my lips. The amber burn of the liquid glided down my throat, reminding me that even though I lived in a numb state, I was still alive.
Fuck, I shouldn’t be. I would be rotting in jail right now if it weren’t for Jett and his money.
I pressed a hand hard into my forehead, trying to rid of the pounding headache taking over my body while music played behind me. Goldie was celebrating her first showing in an art gallery. The Jett Girls, her friends, were dancing, drunk off their asses, and Jett was sitting next to me, trying to get me to enjoy myself.
“You’re bringing down the morale, Kace,” Goldie shouted from across the room.
“Tell me something I don’t know,” I mumbled as I took another sip of my drink.
“At least Diego isn’t talking to Lyla anymore,” Jett whispered to me.
Yeah, thank fuck for that.
Diego, our good friend, had spent a good half of the night talking to Lyla, making her laugh, and giving her the kind of attention she deserved. It wasn’t until I physically pulled him away and talked to him privately that he finally took off, feeling cock-blocked.
I’d straight up built a fortress around Lyla and let everyone at the party recognize my caveman-like gesture. She wasn’t very happy about it, given the ripe mood she was in and the death glares she was sending my way. I didn’t have to face her to know she was shooting daggers at me. I could feel them sticking in my back.
It was a dick move, especially since I wasn’t allowing Lyla to be a part of my life. But being the dick I was, I couldn’t allow anyone else near her, not until I was able to get her out of my system, which I knew deep down was going to be never.
“Good thing he left,” I muttered.
“Are you going to drink your night away again?” Jett asked, always concerned about me.