Egg Hunt (Twisted Holidays)

1. Jace

ONE

JACE

Sin .

The dictionary defines the term as an immoral act that goes against divine law.

There’s so much wrong with that definition, so many incorrect ways it could be taken. It’s staggering how no one’s redefined it—not to mention the potential for religious debate around the concept of divine law being real.

The definition is pointless; sin and immorality are concepts people use to place other’s actions, behaviours, appearances, and preferences into categories, nothing more. Neat little boxes to shelve or open, to store and hide away or unlock and embrace what’s inside.

There is no such thing as sin. It only means someone out there has laid judgement on another. It’s different for everyone. What some find wrong, others embrace. What’s considered sinful for some is fun for others.

Fucked up is what it actually is.

Take the scene around me: packed bar full of rowdy patrons and drunken shrieks, pool balls being smacked across tables, and endless flirting and near-fucking happening on more than one surface is the exact picture that’d have the pearl-clutchers of this town fainting before running off to church and praying for forgiveness for daring to look upon such acts.

Get fucking real.

All this only days before the Easter holidays, when half these people will attend the church down the road, dragged there by their families and predefined notions of what they should be doing, where they’ll celebrate the rebirth of a man who guides them in all sorts of beliefs—sin being one. They’ll pray, seeking forgiveness for the shit they see as immoral—their “sins” and the consequences from them.

Yeah. Whatever.

The next day, they’ll be back to doing whatever they want because what people say, believe, and do are often three different things.

“Hey, you never answered me earlier.” Brad’s voice cuts into my wandering thoughts. “Claire wants to know if you’re coming for Easter dinner this weekend. She’s trying to make it a thing, even though we’ve never celebrated in our lives. Prep for family life and all that.”

I fucking hate the holiday, for many reasons, the true meaning behind Easter—the religious beliefs—aside. It’s boring, and the town goes all out. Thankfully, this bar hasn’t been subjected to the cheap Easter decorations that have thrown up all over every other business.

Normally, I stay home with a beer and pretend none of this exists, making my own judgements from afar and imagining all the things I could be doing that’d have the old ladies in church nicknaming me the devil.

We all have pleasures to embrace, not run from. Although, running is certainly half the fun… My idea of entertainment is hard to come by in this town, where women don’t know how to keep their mouths shut.

Brad, my best friend since high school, stares at me hopefully. It’s enough to make me sigh because, knowing Claire, she put him up to this, and pissing off pregnant women isn’t my forte.

“Sure. Thank her for the invite. Should she be cooking in her condition, though?”

He lifts his hands, palms out, while maintaining his hold on his beer. “Hey, I said the same, and it didn’t go well. She’s determined. Also, ‘only five months along and not an invalid.’ Her words.”

I finish the final swig of my third beer before resting the bottle on the nearest high-top and turning to line up my shot. A wave of dizziness passes over my eyes, forcing me to blink a few times to regain focus as I lower the pool stick onto the table.

“You miss, and the next round’s on you.”

Considering it’s taking some serious focus to separate solids from stripes, missing is very likely to happen. When I finally make out a blue-and-white one positioned by the corner, it should be easy enough to sink, so I maneuver around the table to line up the shot.

As I send the cue forwards, a boisterous laugh from the pool table beside us throws me off-kilter, sending the ball in the wrong direction and missing the pocket, much to Brad’s delight. He immediately flags down the waitress to bring us more beers.

“Fucking asshole.” I eye the group of four setting up at the next table, recognizing them as guys from high school who never grew up and left, hanging around town on their parents’ dime. They’re the kind of people who think they’re hot shit, but get them into the real world, and it’d chew them up and spit them out.

“Man, it’s fuckin’ good to be back. I mean, Payton?—”

Payton. Nah, I must be drunker than believed if I’m hearing her name. Payton fucked off out of town the month after graduation and never looked back, cutting all contact with everyone—me included. Even her social media updates dwindled in the eight years that have passed.

She was the teenage crush I always knew would leave me behind. The friend who was not really a friend, though we ran in the same circles. The girl I grew up down the street from, attending every stage of school right from five-years-old. The one I always wanted to be mine, but knew she had plans I’d never be included in.

Not that she knew any of what I felt.

The voice who mentioned her name continues talking, the grating of it bringing me right to the past, when I wanted to punch him every day he put his hands on her. I peek toward the table, seeing fuckface—I mean, Aaron Bennett—with his old group of friends, looking every bit as smug now as he was back then.

Bennett’s a self-entitled prick who thrives off his mayor daddy’s money, police chief uncle’s leeway, and has zero concept of hard work. In school, he was full of it, and afterwards became insufferable. Thankfully, he moved away days before I did. Where he went, I only learned after one of Payton’s social media updates, in which they announced they were dating again.

They were on and off constantly, being more off than on, and things often ended with Payton crying. Fucking despised him for every tear she shed, but she never let me say anything bad before defending him.

“Hey.” Brad snaps his fingers. “You okay? It’s your turn. You kinda spaced.”

“When did he get back?” I jerk my chin at Aaron. He should be living it up with Payton, not standing in a bar in his hometown. Although, if he’s here, maybe she is as well.

Brad follows my gaze over to the next table before his own eyes roll. “Last week. I told you that the other day, but it’s not like you listen to anything I say. He came back after he and Payton split.” He shrugs, sipping from his fresh beer that must have been delivered when I was zoned out. “I don’t really track town gossip, but he’s claiming they weren’t right for one another.”

I tear my attention from Aaron, who’s losing his game. “What’d he actually say?” Aaron isn’t exactly the type to use big, respectable words like not right for one another .

Brad grimaces, his discomfort obvious. “That she’s frigid. She cheated on him. The sex sucked. It’s the polite version, anyway. Please don’t make me use the exact words.”

How can a person be frigid and seek sex beyond the relationship? Bennett’s a special breed of moron. I could only imagine the exact words he used, but won’t but won’t for my own sanity.

“She’s back, you know.”

“Who is?”

Don’t say Payton. She’s not back. Her dreams took her away—rightfully so. She was attending school for veterinary medicine, and I imagine she’s working in the field by now.

“Payton, obviously. You sure you’re okay?”

I’m not. Not at all. And should drown myself in my freshly delivered beer.

“Why?” If she and Bennett split, why are they both home?

He shrugs. “I don’t exactly talk to her, and from what I’ve heard, she isn’t interested in talking to others either. Heard she came back to town two weeks ago, a bit before Aaron, and is working at Fawn’s. Haven’t seen her around, though. I’m assuming she’s living in her parents’ house. You know, the one they bought on the edge of town after she left but didn’t sell when they retired.”

A diner? She returned to work at a diner and live in her parents’ cabin? That makes no sense.

“You didn’t think to tell me sooner?” I hiss, my bottle thumping on the pool table’s edge. “You told me about fuckface, apparently, but not her?”

“Slipped my mind. You know how stressed I’ve been with Claire’s pregnancy. Your old crush wasn’t my priority.” He runs a hand through his shoulder-length hair. “Plus, you’ve been busy planning for the next few builds, so I figured you shouldn’t be distracted. I knew this is how you’d react.”

“I’m not reacting.”

Bennett and his friends laugh again, almost knocking a pitcher off a table, much to the annoyance of people nearby. They have no concept of space, stumbling around one another. I eye the bouncer beside the door, hoping they’ll be kicked out soon.

“You’re reacting.” Whatever else Brad’s about to say is cut off by the sound of Payton’s name coming from the asshole’s mouth. His speech is more slurred than before, the five empty shot glasses in front of him probably having something to do with that.

“She was wild, guys, fuckin’ wild. Sick, though. Like in the head. Wanted things I couldn’t—wouldn’t… Girl’s fucked up. For her birthday, wanted me to chase her.”

Fuck. Me. I better not have heard what I think I did.

It’s amazing what alcohol can do to a person. How it loosens their lips, revealing their lies. It was never the case of Payton not being enough for him, but of him not giving her what she needs.

Fuckface is a fucking idiot. If I had the chance to call Payton Thorne mine, I’d never let her go. Not now, and not in the past.

Payton has cravings left unsatisfied, and if she’s home… Maybe this Easter I can revive an old game, one only ever played once since returning from my brief stint living in Calgary.

Brad stares at me. “Whatever you’re thinking, it’s probably a bad idea. Not smart to get involved with a girl who recently ended a relationship with a guy who’s also mysteriously returned home. There’s a story there you probably shouldn’t get into.”

“No one said anything about getting involved. Two old friends can’t meet up and chat?” I rack my pool cue even though we’ve yet to finish the round.

He sighs, hanging his cue beside mine before following me toward the exit. “You’ve always lost your mind over this girl, Jace. I just want to make sure you don’t again, especially when you have no idea what’s going on.”

My mind’s already lost from what Bennett was saying, every thought shifting to her.

I break away from him in the parking lot, heading in the opposite direction of my parked truck. “I’m walking home. Too drunk to drive.”

He thumbs toward his SUV, a trade-in from the beat-up truck he used to own before last month, another step in preparing for the birth of his child. “I can drive you.”

“It’s fine.” I wave him away and begin my way to a small, cabin-style home on the very edge of town, fenced by a vast forest with so many possibilities.

I have to see her. To see she’s here , like Brad claims. To know she’s alright, even if from afar.

And come up with a plan to speak with her.