Love Me Boldly (Deer Creek #2)

1. Holly

ONE

HOLLY

Then

Freedom.

The glittery blue word was the only bright thing in this run-down trailer. It didn’t matter how often I scrubbed and cleaned, the lingering odors of beer, marijuana, and other scents I not only didn’t recognize, but wouldn’t think about, remained.

“Looks good,” Tracey said. Her stance mirrored mine, with our hands on our hips. A ghost of a smile crinkled her eyes as she surveyed our boards.

Vision boards. Her suggestion. I’d rolled my eyes at her.

Hers boasted of ocean pictures and the University of Tennessee, where she wanted to go to grad school for a masters in software engineering. Hot guys with chiseled abs in swim trunks made a strong, third showing.

Success was her chosen word. In complete contrast—and not surprising because we were one hundred and eighty degrees different—mine was more realistic, less “get me a hunky guy” dreamy.

An apartment building. Graduation cap. Picture of an open highway.

I wanted to get out of this trailer, into my own place, and for the first time in my life, finally find some freedom from the life and family I was born into.

Tracey’s board was hot pink and lavender. Mine was dark blue and silver, and only silver because black clashed with the blue.

Tracey insisted I go for something brighter. I caved because it wasn’t worth arguing about, but now, with the canvas drying and propped on my television stand in front of the broken TV, the blue was harsh.

Happy. Bright. Shiny. Out of place in the dark cesspool of a home I’d lived in for far too long.

Not forever. I had a few memories that reminded me of a time when life was different. A life before.

Thankfully I had Tracey to pull me out of the muck and mire, and she’d done it again.

“Thanks again for coming,” I whispered. I hated the vulnerability in my voice.

I didn’t mind being alone. I was used to it. But being alone for your first holiday break because your drunk of a father was in prison was an entirely new level of loneliness.

When Tracey showed up at my door with a suitcase at her feet, arms laden with plastic bags and hugging two large art canvases to her chest, I’d burst into tears.

“You’re my BFF. Where else would I be?” She took my hand and squeezed.

We were entirely different, practically from two different worlds. She came from happy parents with a happy marriage, was equally happy herself, and had three little brothers she treated like they were her children instead of siblings. Her family took two vacations a year—one to the beach and one somewhere else in the country—and an Instagram feed full of smiling people with affection and joy and all the normal things I could only envision.

I had a mom who took off. A father in prison. At some point, I’d had a chance of having Tracey’s life, or something similar, but that was before Mom’s surgery. Before the addiction. Before she took off to chase her high and Dad crumbled to his knees while hugging a case of Natural Light.

I had an aunt and uncle who did their best to fill in the gaps my parents created, and I had Tracey.

Some days it wasn’t nearly enough.

Today, like others, it was more than I deserved.

“What now?” I asked, looking at the canvases. My dream of freedom. Get my degree, get out of this town. Get a job, a home of my own, and leave Deer Creek and all its horrific memories behind.

Tracey’s wine-deep red fingernail tapped the fireworks on my vision board. They were meant to celebrate graduating college after this last upcoming semester. “We celebrate. You made it through a crummy year, the worst of the worst. Your best is on the horizon. Which means…we have some hotties to find.”

I groaned. “You have hotties to find.”

“Nah.” She shrugged and reached for her purse. While she pulled out her ID, bank card, ChapStick, and car keys, she continued. “You need a hottie in your life, too. Remember what my grandma always said?”

“Marry a rich man. They’re just as easy to love, only harder to find.” I repeated the words in a robotic tone. Tracey’s grandma, Mary, repeated that so often I had dreams about it.

“Exactly.” Tracey flashed me a manic grin, grabbed my hand, and tugged me toward the door of my trailer.

I didn’t bother locking it as we tumbled down the rickety stairs to the BMW SUV her parents bought her for her twenty-first birthday. There was nothing inside worth stealing.

The most valuable thing I now owned was that ridiculous vision board. And that included the cost of supplies.

* * *

“See?” Tracey shouted in my ear with a glass of foamy beer held high above her head. “Fun, right!?”

I tipped my club soda in her direction. “Loads.”

She rolled her eyes at me and grabbed my free hand. Dragging me along behind her, I had to hurry so I didn’t end up face-planting onto the sticky, beer-stained floor.

When Tracey said we were heading out to the bars, I thought she was taking me back to Boone, thirty minutes away where we went to college, but nope. She meant staying close to home. Deer Creek wasn’t any place special. A small mountain town in northern North Carolina, my paw-paw, Dad’s dad, used to say that from the top of Crystal Mountain, we were close enough to the border to spit into Tennessee. Based on the way the man spit his chew, I figured maybe he could do it, but I’d never attempted it.

The Golden Eye was the same as it’d always been. Considering it hadn’t been updated in my twenty-two years of life, it was surprisingly clean, minus the sticky floors. A long brass handle that rimmed the bar shone like it’d been recently polished. The brass coverings on the lights hanging from the ceiling were in equally good condition. Pretty sure the only thing that’d been added to Golden’s was the number of bras tacked to the walls. Why women got drunk and flung their bras around only to have them stapled to a grungy wall was something I never understood, and my dad had been dragging me in there to do my homework since I was old enough to carry my own backpack into it.

Didn’t women know how expensive those things were?

Or maybe tourists didn’t care. Maybe those women had more money than my family.

Not a stretch, considering.

“This really isn’t a good idea,” I called out to Tracey as she weaved around tables. I tried to avoid eye contact with every familiar face, but it was difficult. Several who met my gaze before I could look away sneered.

Tracey didn’t understand, and I was loath to ruin her good mood even at the risk of my own. One night. I could do this for one night. In a week, she’d be back in her apartment, and I’d be spending the weekend working and studying in my drafty trailer.

“It’ll be fine. I swear it! Besides, I ran into some hotties while you were getting our drinks!”

She grinned at me over her shoulder, hazel eyes lit with the promise of a good time.

I’d walk through fire for Tracey, I trusted her beyond reason. She was truly the smartest person I knew, but in this she was wrong. Me? Have a good time at a bar in Deer Creek? Never gonna happen.

She’d have a good time though, especially if guys were involved. She had brains, an incredible body, and a fantastic sense of humor. A triple threat, my best friend was, and men flocked to her like bees to nectar after a starving winter.

She dragged me to the back. At least we were in the corner. Opposite the hall to the bathrooms and far from the thickest crowd near the bar, if I hid by the dartboard all night, I’d probably be okay.

“Holly, this is Tucker and Graham. Our new friends.”

I fought the roll of my eyes. Tracey made new friends everywhere, and those friends usually stuck around until the tab was paid.

I held up my club soda and grenadine instead of a handshake. “Hi there.”

Tracey sure knew how to pick them. Both dark-haired, both a full head taller than me at my five-five stature, they had to hover right around six feet. One had fuller lips and thick brows. The other was…well, wow .

A mop of thick dark hair had a curl to it on the top of his head, slightly falling to the sides that tapered to practically nothing at the base of his neck. His dark eyes were pools of mystery as his gaze lingered on me.

“Graham,” the man said, barely moving his lips as he spoke his name.

I felt that name in hidden places. It was a caress against my skin, and I fought the urge to shake off prickles that were slipping down my spine.

Oh…yeah. He was a hottie all right. Based on the cut of his shirt, he worked out often to become such a hottie based on the build, but it was also the clothes. The fabric. He was wearing a fitted gray Henley and light denim jeans that fell loosely over scuffed and worn black Doc Martens.

He wasn’t from here.

And he had money.

So…great. He wasn’t for me. I wasn’t like Tracey. Her grandma’s advice was entertaining, but there was no point in hoping some guy would come in and sweep me off my feet straight out of my trailer.

Rich men would get one whiff of my life and take me for a gold digger. And if they didn’t, their mothers certainly would.

I gave Tanner a quick scan and found him the same. No wonder Tracey latched on to them in my three-minute wait at the bar. They screamed rich tourists, down for a good time with a local.

Except Tracey wasn’t a local, and this one knew better.

“You guys here for the weekend?” I asked and caught sight of Tracey sliding closer to Tanner.

He was attractive. That couldn’t be argued, but he definitely looked like a guy ready for a good one-night stand than anything else.

“Just the night. Wanted to get out of Boone.”

Boone. And they were our age. That meant… “You’re students?”

Graham smirked, eyes widening. “You don’t sound like you like that.”

He couldn’t be a finance major. I would have seen him in the business classes building. Rather, I should have. I tended to keep my eyes down and my business to myself when I was on campus.

I ignored his statement. “Major?”

He rocked back on his heels, grinning like a fool. “Science education.”

“Seriously?” I scoffed. Couldn’t help it. No way a man who looked like that was an education major.

“Yeah. Wanna coach someday, and I like science.”

“Huh.”

“Wanna tell me why my answer makes you look like you just sucked on a lemon and remembered you despise them?”

There was curiosity there, and interest. It sounded genuine too, but I quickly shook it off.

“Didn’t peg you for the type, I guess.”

“Yeah? What’s my type?”

His eyes scanned my body. Oh yeah…definitely interest there. Too bad for him. I was staying far away from all college guys. The last thing I was going to do was end up like my mom. Knocked up, unmarried, life ruined, and bitterness growing with every breath.

“I wasn’t talking about girls,” I said and rolled my eyes.

He set his drink on the narrow shelf next to him and crossed his arms over my chest. “You don’t like me.”

“Don’t take it personally. I rarely like anyone.”

More than that, I’d learned early not to trust anyone. Tracey wormed her way into my heart against my defenses, but the people who did that were few and far between.

To my utter surprise, the man threw his head back and laughed. “Fair enough, Spitfire.”

I scowled. Nicknames weren’t my thing.

“What’d I do now?”

As he asked, his eyes narrowed on something other than me, and then a sharp, stabby point pushed into my upper arm.

“Ow.” I jerked my shoulder back and turned.

Any amusement I’d had being at Golden’s, which was already slim, vanished.

“Whattareyou doin’ in here?”

“I’m allowed to be here, Mick.” He and my father had a feud. I figured they’d once battled to become the town’s largest drunks. The meanest drunk award always went to Mick. At least I could count one blessing in my life. My dad didn’t smash my face into walls like Mick did to his kids.

“Hey, maybe you should back off.”

How sweet of Graham to jump in to the rescue. I held out my hand and put my body between his and Mick’s. There was a chance Mick wouldn’t hit me, but a stranger taking up for me wouldn’t have the same chance. Snowball’s chance in hell, as it was.

Mick’s face was red and puffy, which wasn’t only from years of drinking and doing who knows what else, but he grew larger and meaner every year. His stomach extended far over his belt buckle, and according to his son Mike, who I hadn’t talked to since high school, the man had a mean right hook.

I felt the pressure of the stranger at my back, trying to get me out of the way.

“Keep your hands off her,” Graham said and tried to tug me backward.

“Stop it,” I hissed at him and dug my heels into the floor.

“We’ll go,” I told Mick, because now that Graham had stood up for me, if I left, the guys would have trouble too. “All of us.”

“Never should have let trash like you in here in the first place.”

“Yeah, well, they can’t keep me out.”

“That’s enough, Mick.”

I almost breathed a sigh of relief at Chanelle’s presence as she sauntered up to us. A quick glance behind Mick made me cringe. He was causing a scene, and it was directing the attention of almost everyone in the place.

No one was going to have my back.

Chanelle wasn’t standing up for me, either. It was her bar. She didn’t want broken tables and shattered glass all over.

“You know I don’t hate you like everyone here, but you should take off,” she warned, sliding in front of Mick.

He huffed and puffed behind her, and spittle might have hit the back of her head.

She’d had worse though, and if she felt it, she didn’t flinch.

“ We weren’t causing problems,” Graham said. He tugged at the back of my shirt again, and this time, I stepped back.

It wasn’t to let him protect me, it was to grab Tracey.

“We’re leaving,” I told her. “Now.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t think…”

“Yeah. Well, we’re gone.”

“Thassss right,” Mick slurred. “Go back to that dumpster with the rest of the trash.” He shoved his pudgy finger at Tracey and the guys.

“That’s enough,” Graham snapped. I was tugged back, and then he was in front of me. “You’re a grown man and know better than to talk to women like that. So far, the only trash I see in this place is you.”

“Graham. Don’t.”

“You disrespectful little sh?—”

“Enough!” Chanelle shouted. She turned and faced Mick. “Back off or you’re banned for a week!”

He scowled at her and grumbled something low enough I couldn’t hear.

I tugged harder on Tracey’s hand. “Now. We’re leaving now.”

“Right,” she muttered. Regret was stamped all over her face, but I wasn’t mad. This was standard operating procedure these days.

The freezing air slammed into my face, making my eyes water as soon as we reached the sidewalk.

“What the hell was that about? That guy puts his hands on you and we get kicked out?”

I shook my head. It hadn’t come from Graham, and Tracey knew better. I left her to figure out what to say, even though it didn’t matter. After tonight, I never had to worry about them returning to Deer Creek.

Lucky guys.

“Bye!” I called out and kept hurrying. Maybe it wasn’t cold air stinging my eyes. Maybe that was pure embarrassment.

By the time I reached the gravel parking lot, booted steps were slapping behind me.

“I’m sorry!” Tracey called out.

“It’s fine!”

“I didn’t think they’d really react like this.” She reached me at the back of her SUV, huffing and puffing. “Southern hospitality and all.”

I snorted. Southern hospitality was real all right…until your dad did what mine did and the entire town turned on you.

“I can’t wait to get out of this damn town.” I moved toward the passenger door.

Once we were buckled, the car was on and the heaters along with the heated seats were blasting at full power, I faced Tracey. “What happened to the guys?”

“Who cares? You’re the only one that matters.”

At least I mattered to someone, and she was right about the boys. Who cared?

After tonight, neither of them would cross a sidewalk to say hi to me ever again.

It wasn’t like I wanted them to.

Freedom. One more semester, and then I’d have it.