Chapter 6

Aurora

I had an uncanny knack for attracting karmic retribution, that much was clear.

Sleep with a celebrity? Check. Discover he’d once been engaged to a Moondance high popular kid and bully? Check. Consequently run into both of the aforementioned parties on an innocent shopping trip? Check.

Triple threat. Or was it a strike out?

I hurtled out of the store’s glass front door and into the sunlight. The warmth on the back of my neck didn’t bring any comfort. Seeing her, here, had only confirmed that I’d made an epic mistake.

She’d brought up Mom, for god’s sake. What gave her the right to bring it up? What gave her the right to act like she knew anything about my life? We’d exchanged all of three words in high school, and that’d been seven years ago.

What a freak. Those had been the words, spoken from Felicity, and laughed at by my boyfriend at the time. Shit, I hadn’t even picked up a bag on the way out of the store. I hadn’t paid.

“Add stealing to the list of bad decisions today,” I muttered and turned right to walk back to the RV park—it was just around the corner, at least. My safe haven.

When in doubt, get the hell out. My mother’s mantras had pretty much become my guide in life, and this situation was no different. The locals already whispered about me or stared, and a run-in with Felicity would only make things worse.

I high-tailed it down the road toward the distant entrance to the park.

“Aurora!” a man called out behind me. The voice sent a shiver down my spine, and not the gooseflesh, take-me-now kind. It was the ‘get me the hell outta here’ type. “Aurora, wait up!”

I quickened my pace, but the pursuer jogged around me and blocked my path.

James Goodman—the prodigal son of one of Moondance’s founder families—halted in front of me, wearing that shit-eating grin that had first drawn me to him when I’d been young, and dumb, and buoyed up at the prospect of someone accepting me, the fortune-teller freak girl.

“There you are,” he said. “I hoped I’d run into you again.”

We’d run in to each other almost every time I visited the general store or the local Moondance Bar and Grill. It’d occurred to me that the asshole might be stalking me.

“I saw you two days ago, James,” I replied, evenly.

“Yeah, two days apart is too long, don’t you think?”

“No,” I said. “It doesn’t make a difference to me.”

“Well, it makes a difference to me. Believe it or not, I can’t get you off my mind.” He sauntered forward a step. “You can’t tell me you haven’t missed me once, all these years.” His voice dropped low, a caress instead of a whisper. “You came back to Moondance, I’m here…” The implication was clear.

The arrogance of this creep, god damn. How can one person be this delusional? Or maybe it’s because he can’t have me. James Goodman always got his way. It was part of his rich, white-boy M.O.

“Pick up where we left off?” I asked. “Where we left off was you pretending I didn’t exist, secretly dating me behind your friends’ backs then mocking me in front of them.”

James shifted his feet, and the grin shrank incrementally. A flicker of, what was that, rage? “I know,” he said and broke eye contact. “I was young and an idiot, Aurora. I shouldn’t have made you feel that way.”

Mocking wasn’t even the word for it. “What was it you said to me, James? In front of all your buddies that day? I came up to you and slung my arm around your waist, and you pushed me back. I fell down, and everyone laughed. What was it you said?”

“Aw, come on, hon, you’re not still mad about that, are you? We were kids.”

“Seven years ago,” I snapped, “not seventy. And I’m not dumb enough to make the same mistake twice.”

“We weren’t a mistake.”

God, he just didn’t give up. He couldn’t have me, and that had to eat at him. If I knew James at all, this was a grave insult to his manhood. “Fuck off, gypsy whore,” I said.

He flinched.

“That was what you said.” And because I’d spent the next year working in the Moondance Bar and Grill to collect enough money for a service on the RV, and for fuel to get the hell out of town.

James cleared his throat. “I shouldn’t have said that.”

“No, you shouldn’t have. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I need to get back home. I have an appointment.” I side-stepped him.

“You don’t.” James moved into my path again. “Look, Aurora, you can deny our attraction as much as you want, but the truth is, you know it’ll come back to bite you in the ass.”

“Is that a threat?”

His hazel eyes clouded. “No, of course not. I’m saying that what we had was special, and I wouldn’t want us to miss an opportunity to better our lives because of the past.”

“Get out of my way.” I stepped and, once again, he matched me. “James!”

“You were always too stubborn for your own good.”

“And you were always a dick.”

“Ha, see? That’s the banter I missed. We’re so good together, baby.” James was the lovechild of an Abercrombie and Fitch model and that college guy, Chad, whose dad has a cabin out by the lake, and who calls everyone “bruh.”

“Don’t call me baby.”

He caught my shoulder before I could move this time and put pressure on it, keeping me in place. “Aurora, please. I’m tired of you dodging me. Don’t think I haven’t noticed. We speak for two seconds and you dart off before I can get –”

“Just quit it, James.”

“Hey!” another man yelled from the front of the general store.

James snaked his arm back and raised an eyebrow. “What’s this?”

I didn’t want to look. Oh, god, if I looked it would be him and my insides would curl into a ball all over again—shame and desire in equal parts. Ugh, I didn’t need this in my life. I had money to make, a house to buy.

“There a problem here?” And there he was. The actor stopped next to me, eyes narrowed at James.

“A problem? Why would there be a problem?” James smirked. “I’m having a chat with my friend here.”

“We’re not friends,” I replied.

“That’s right. We used to be a lot more than friends.” James winked and sucked his teeth.

“Are you OK?” Jarryd asked. He didn’t touch me. but he didn’t have to. Every cell in my body zinged at the close proximity, at his mere presence.

“Fine,” I said.

“Of course, she’s fine. She’s with me.” James chuckled. “You’re that actor, right? The, uh, one who recently broke up with his chick?”

My stomach dropped. God, I had to extricate myself from this situation. It was too much to bear: going over this again and again in my mind was enough torture.

“Jarryd Tombs.”

“Right,” James said. “Well, on behalf of the citizens of Moondance, let me welcome you to the town.”

“You’re a little young to be the mayor.”

“The mayor?” James rubbed his hands together. “No, no, the mayor is a total ass. I’m James Goodman. I’m a son of a founder.”

“That some kind of cult?”

“A founder of the town, wise ass.” James’s shit-eating grin slipped. Uh oh, Jarryd had besmirched his beloved claim to fame, and faced with an actual talent, a person who’d earned their name instead of being born with it, that had to sting.

Jarryd turned his back on the founder. “I’m sorry about what happened inside the store. Felicity’s a little overenthusiastic at times. Just ignore her.”

James wouldn’t take that lying down. He tapped Jarryd on the back.

The taller man swiveled again and bore down on him. “Back off,” the actor said, through gritted teeth. “You’re bothering Aurora.”

“You don’t even know her. You back off.”

Oh, good god. Now, I had to deal with macho posturing on top of everything else. He’s jealous. Jarryd is jealous. He likes you. I cut off that train of thought right quick.

“What the hell is your problem, kid?” Jarryd asked. “You desperate to get your ass kicked?”

“You offering, bud?”

The opportunity to make my escape presented itself. Though it wasn’t cowardice, it was impatience that drove me.

They were chest to chest, fury painted on James’ss face—his blond surfer ‘do flapped in the wind and made the snarled lips, pulled back over teeth so straight they had to be fake, almost comical. Almost.

Jarryd didn’t sneer. He was the picture of cool rage—expression entirely blank, his lips parted but jaw tensed—and a muscle twitched beneath his eye. Night and day.

Jarryd was at least two inches taller than James, who had to look up and kinda squint at the other man.

A school kid railing against the principal. If the principal had biceps big enough to split his suit sleeves.

I slipped past them and scurried down the sidewalk, still clutching my sugar and a now-squished loaf of bread. Nothing in my life had been normal thus far, so I should’ve expected something crazy to happen when I’d left the RV this morning.

“Typical,” I muttered and didn’t look back.

Wanting Jarryd didn’t make sense—our lifestyles didn’t suit, and I’d never pictured myself as the type of woman who settled for a fling. It was all or nothing, and this time it would have to be nothing. Jarryd scared me because he had everything I could ever want and never would have, and being with me would only bring him down.

I strode under the wooden sign: Moondance Camp. My flats scraped on the gravel and I winced. I’d have to get myself a pair of proper walking shoes. Moondance was a small town, and I always walked instead of drove—uprooting the tent and the RV would be way too much trouble, but my pumps couldn’t handle much more of this.

“Girl.” A hoarse whisper, just above the wind.

I stumbled to a halt, almost dropping the sugar. What the hell? The trees nearest the dirt road stared on silent, their branches prickling with needles. A bird hopped along a branch, and a soft breeze rustled the grass beneath the gnarled trunks.

“Must’ve been the wind,” I muttered but the tiny hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. I paced forward.

“Girl.”

OK, that’d definitely been a person, a woman speaking from the depths of the forest.

“Over here, my sweet.” A figure shuffled into view on my left, an elderly lady, wearing a long, purple dress. Her hair was tied back in a scarf, and her ears were decorated by rings that matched those piercing her nose. Wisps of white hair escaped the head scarf and curled down on either side of her leathery face.

“Mama Kate?” I recognized her. She’d been a friend to my mother before it had happened.

“Come with me, sweetness,” she said. “This way.”

I didn’t hesitate. I trusted Mama Kate implicitly. She’d shown me nothing but kindness in the aftermath of my mother’s death. I followed her between the trees, twigs cracking beneath my feet, and into a clearing.

Mama Kate had set up camp here—a series of tents rose around a central fire, and another woman, who wore so many beads she rattled when she moved, sat beside the flames, whittling with a knife.

“You remember me?” Mama Kate asked and took a seat on a camping chair. She gestured for me to do the same.

I took the chair beside hers and propped my sugar and bread on a porta-table next to it then clasped my hands together in my lap. “Of course, Mama Kate. You were good to me. I remember you.”

“It’s good to have you back in Moondance. I knew you would be back.”

Mama Katewas one of those old-school, intuitive types. She classed herself a psychic. I couldn’t comment as to whether that bit was true or not, but she’d always provided me with wise advice. If she wanted to talk, I’d listen.

“You came back because of Libby,” she said.

My gut wrenched. Libby. It’d been a while since I’d spoken my mother’s name out loud.

“I wanted the time back,” I replied.

“You can’t have it the same way, girl. None of us can travel back and change things. You know that better than anyone else.” The old woman tapped the tip of her hooked nose. “This isn’t what I wanted to talk to you about.”

“Oh?” I frowned. We didn’t have anything else in common.

“Think long about your actions in Moondance, dear. There are toxic people in this town,” Mama Kate said.

“Ain’t that the truth,” said the other women by the fire, who didn’t even look up from her whittling to say it.

“But there are good people, too.” Mama Kate waggled her finger at her friend.

“OK?” What was I supposed to glean from this?

“Some of them come from out of town.”

I jerked straight in the chair. “What? What do you mean?”

“She means she knows that you were with that actor guy last night,” the other woman said, still without breaking focus from her hunk of wood. “In her own mystical way.”

“That’s—it was a mistake,” I said. Why are you defending it? “It doesn’t matter what happened. It’s not part of my life or my plan.”

“Life doesn’t care about your plans,” Mama Kate said, with unusual clarity. “Destiny sneaks toward us, slow or fast, and that’s what’s coming for you. I feel it in my bones.”

“Not creepy at all,” the other woman put in.

“Girl, you’re some kind of fool,” Mama Kate replied, evenly. “Never mind Evangeline. She likes to talk like she knows what’s going on. She doesn’t know her face hole from her asshole.”

“Must be how I lost that cupcake the other day,” Evangeline said and looked up from her project at last.

I held in a gasp. She only had one eye, but it twinkled with mirth. A long scar ran down the side of her face, vicious and puckered white, disappearing beneath a patch over her other socket.

“Ignore the child,” Mama Kate said. “Listen close. Jarryd Tombs is a good man. I see auras, girl, and he’s good to the core. You could do far worse than him.” Even Mama Kate was clued up on celebrities. Then again, news of his arrival had spread through Moondance like butter on bread.

“I’m not interested in doing anything,” I said and rose from the camping chair. “It’s getting late.” It was noon and nowhere near late. “I’d better get back.”

Mama Kate caught my hand and squeezed it. “I want what’s best for you, child. Remember that. Men are easy to work out. They’re all bluster and bullhorns until you get them between the sheets.”

“Oh god,” I replied.

“Between the sheets, they’re malleable. Easy to manipulate—”

“Please stop, Mama Kate.” I wriggled my hand free. “I appreciate the advice but I’m not interested in the between the sheets…?”

“Dance?” Evangeline put in, helpfully.

Mama Kate sniffed. “Everyone’s interested in that. Even eyeless women who can’t whittle to save their lives.”

Evangeline raised the lump of formless wood. “Speaking of assholes, I know where you can shove this.”

I burst out laughing in spite of everything that’d happened. Mama Kate had given me advice without realizing it. I needed to lighten the hell up. Jarryd Tombs wouldn’t be a threat to my plans in Moondance if I didn’t let him close. That should’ve been a comfort to me, rather than a fear.

It wasn’t as if I couldn’t control my baser urges around him. I collected my bread and sugar, waved at Kate and Evangeline then made for the edge of the clearing. My RV wasn’t far from here, at least.

“Remember what I said, girl,” Mama Kate called. “Get him between the sheets.”

Can life get any weirder right now?