Wrath of an Exile: An Enemies to Lovers Romance (The River Styx Heathens Book 1)

Jude

August 21

“How much?”

It’s the first thing I hear when I roll my window down. I casually turn my head, deadpanning at the dude wearing a Springs High letterman’s jacket. Tex Matthews is a grade A douchebag who loves flaunting just how rich his investment banking father is, and I have the lucky job of dealing with him every time he needs pot.

When I lean across the passenger seat to my duffle bag, I hear my back pop and crack like bubble wrap.

Crashing on Oakley’s spare bed is not for the weak. Or for anyone looking to get some rest. Last night, one of the springs broke through the mattress and tried to kill me. I know they say beggars can’t be choosers, but is not wanting my spleen punctured in my sleep too much to ask for?

I pull one of the plastic baggies from the side pocket, pinching it between two fingers and shaking it in the air.

“You think if you keep asking, the price will change?” I arch an eyebrow, eyes flat and lacking amusement. “Five G’s. Eighty bucks.”

Weed’s been legal in Oregon for years, but not if you’re under twenty-one and can’t afford to be busted with a fake ID. This glitch in the system is where Oakley earns his living and I earn cash to survive.Upstodatee from Novel(D)ra/m/a.O(r)g

Going from broke to really fucking broke in a matter of forty-eight hours makes a guy do desperate shit. Like sell pot to idiots so I can live in a trap house.

“Come on, bro. Kya is selling it for way cheaper in the Springs.”

“Then go get it from her.” I lift my gaze to his face, eyes flat and lacking amusement. “And I’m not your bro.”

He runs a meaty hand down his face, clearly annoyed. I’m sure it’s not often he gets told no. Why would he? Everything he’s ever wanted has been served hot and ready to eat on a silver platter.

Tex lays his hand on the roof of my car, leaning down and drowning me with the shitty smell of his cologne. The muscle in my jaw twitches, nostrils flaring as I take a deep breath, trying to calm the anger bubbling in my gut.

“I could make your life hell, Sin. I have power, even here in shithole West Trinity Falls. So, take fifty and don’t piss me off, yeah?”

I fucking hate that nickname.

My hand grips the handle before I shove. Tex loses his balance, not expecting to be hit by a car door. A huff of air expels from his throat as his ass hits the ground. I slam my door shut, resting my arm on the window seal.

“What the fuck!” he shouts, brows furrowed and face turning an alarming shade of red.

Guy should really ease up on all those roids before his head pops off.

A few people at the gas pumps look over at us before turning away. West Trinity Falls might be filled with degenerates and criminals, but people here mind their fucking business.

“Unless you wanna spend the night picking up your teeth, don’t touch my fucking car again.”

Tex scoffs, finding his feet with ease. Resembling a toddler who just got put in time-out, he huffs and puffs as he pulls his wallet out, fingering through the bills with a pout on his ugly mug.

After he begrudgingly gives me the cash, I shove the cellophane-covered weed into his hand. One of these days, I’m gonna get real lucky. He’s gonna give me the perfect reason to bash his skull in, and I can’t wait for that day to come.

“Dumbass Waster,” he grumbles, shoving his hands in his pockets.

I lift my middle finger with a grin. “Same time next week, Heathen?”

Those who grew up in gilded mansions in Ponderosa Springs were affectionately known as Heathens by those of us on the opposite side of the tracks. Wasn’t sure when it started, didn’t really care that much; all I knew was since I moved to West Trinity Falls, we were always Wasters.

He doesn’t respond, just turns his back and heads toward his lifted Jeep Wrangler. His goon squad hangs out of the windows, hooting and celebrating their captain scoring pot.

I scoff, rolling my window back up. Yeah, it makes sense why Phi dated him.

Not only are they both self-centered, pampered snobs, but Tex is shallow enough that her games were easy to play. The perfect victim for her to spin up in her web and ruin before he had the chance to say Black Widow.

A smirk tugs at my lips. No wonder she soaked my cock so quickly. Tex couldn’t find the clit with a map and compass—dude hardly has two brain cells to rub together. Maybe that’s why she’s so fucking irritable. It must be frustrating screwing dudes who can’t get her off. Poor, pathetic, lonely Seraphina, all pent up.

I should’ve tossed her over the edge and called it a night. It was the perfect opportunity to give Rook Van Doren a small taste of the suffering I’d experienced my entire life.

I could’ve let her fall back and disappeared. No one would’ve found her body until a forest ranger came to patrol the area, and it would’ve looked like a suicide.

Flawless revenge.

Phi better have gone home that night and kneeled at the edge of her bed. Prayed to whatever god she believes in that the only thing that kept me from being a goddamn psychopath was knowing I would’ve proved her right.

I’d have proved them all right.

I’d be no better than the man who raised me to believe cruelty was a strength, a weapon to be wielded freely and often. I didn’t do it because I gave a shit about what happened to Phi. I just didn’t want to validate everyone who told me I was just like my father before I even knew it was a bad thing.

That night, I could see myself killing her. How easy it would’ve been for that switch in me to flip.

In that moment, I was fucking terrified they might all be right.

“Here Comes The Rain Again” by Hypnogaja drifts from my car speakers, and I lean forward, turning up the volume.

The gas station’s neon lights flicker as I reach into my bag again. This time not for drugs but for a beaten-up spiral-bound notebook. Pulling the pen from behind my ear, I rest the open notebook on my knee.

I quickly cross out the words I’d written earlier, the inky black pen scratching the paper as I write another line. I repeat this process at least five times until I find a sequence of words that don’t suck ass, deciding to read it from the top.

I am not angry at God.

I don’t respect him.

His toughest battle was bestowed upon a child.

Gifted a father with weaponized hands.

I was demanded to honor.

Blessed with a patriarch who stoked violence in my throat.

Heaven’s gates rattled as he shouted, “Don’t choke.”

I am not angry at God.

I don’t understand him.

Fire and brimstone blister my blasphemous feet.

Are his words not a salve for disbelief?

I am threatened with hellfire for a fury that is not mine.

Is it not a gift from the divine?

I am not angry at God.

I am wrathful with him.

The eternal kingdom worships the sacrilegious deity who made me.

Who gave me. Who tested me. Who saved me.

All-knowing turned sacred ignorance when innocent lips try his line.

Call has been forwarded. You have reached. God is unavailable at this time.

I do not believe in God.

My voicemails were hymns that lulled him to sleep.

While I held my breath and prayed the Lord my soul to keep.

I changed my number in the night, with hopes of peace by daybreak.

Amen on my tongue, I woke with no soul for him to take.

God left me to die at the hands of his gift.

Now calls me to ask, “Why don’t you believe I exist?”

“Yeah, that’s shit,” I mutter, tossing the notebook onto the passenger seat, tired of staring at my dumb-ass word vomit.

I sag into the leather seat, hands instinctively following my brain’s demand for nicotine. I grab a cigarette from the pack in the cup holder, holding it between my teeth as I light it.

Menthol smoke cools my lungs, empties my head, as I let the tobacco take over. Artificial light gleams as I spin the ring on my pointer finger with my thumb, the moonlight glinting against the words engraved in the metal.

Riddle of Strider.

I was never a fantasy guy, but Dad always really loved Lord of the Rings. Which seems so fucking stupid in the grand scheme of things, ya know? His stepfather was a vile bastard who groomed him to be the same, yet he was still a secret Tolkien fan despite it all?

I think that’s what happens when only one version of a story is told. When the narrator is untrustworthy or the narrative is controlled so strictly, no other point of view gets an ounce of consideration.

We forget that even the worst of humanity still partakes in the mundane. For example: A serial killer needs food to live, so they go grocery shopping. A ruthless hit man will abide by traffic laws by stopping at red lights, and in my case, an abusive father reads to his kid every night before bed.

My father was a good dad when he wasn’t high. He was a man who let me take his love of books and make them my own. Until I was eleven, he’d read until I fell asleep, which was quickly if it was a longer story.

Even when I got older, when he crashed from the high, we’d talk about what book I was reading. And when I started writing my own words, we’d sit in the kitchen late at night, and we’d share things we had written the past few days.

I can accept that he wasn’t a good man, that he did terrible things, because even when he was sober? He was honest about who he was. Never tried to be something different.

The Van Dorens and the rest of their fucked-up crew controlled the narrative in Ponderosa Springs, dominated it so that no other point of view got an ounce of consideration. Not mine and especially not my father’s.

Which makes them the worst kind of monster.

The kind who pretends not to be.

There is a knock at my window, and I know without looking it’s someone else in search of drugs. I quickly sign a singular E at the bottom of the page before closing the notebook and telling myself the same thing I’ve said since the first time my dad hit me.

This is not forever. This is for one more year.

My future is California. Where no one knows my name. Where there is no past, only a new beginning.

This is my “for the time being.”

I won’t rot here.

I expel a heavy breath as I step out of my car, making sure to lock it twice. This is a sketchy part of West Trinity Falls, and I don’t need some crackhead jacking my car for dope money.

Oakley’s driveway is filled with cars, and I know exactly what I’m going to find inside there. It’ll be packed with bodies, all too high to see straight, and it’s the last thing I want to deal with right now.

The trailer park is a maze of old homes, some missing windows and with rusted siding. I’m not sure how half of them are livable. Smelling the pot from outside, I climb the cracked wooden steps to the front porch.

Libby, the local stray cat, winds between my feet, her orange stripes illuminated by the twitching porch light. I bend down, running my palm across her head before the sound of the next-door neighbors starting their nightly arguing sends her scampering away to hide.

Knowing it’s already unlocked, I turn the metal knob and press the door open, hit immediately with the smell of booze and weed.

The cramped living room is hazy with smoke, packed with bodies. A couple of faces look up at me through bloodshot eyes as I step inside, but most are too wasted to notice my arrival.

Music plays from the speakers, shaking the yellowing walls as I glance toward the kitchen. I forgo the idea of grabbing something to eat when I see some guy snort a line off the chipped island.

Kicking a few beer cans as I pass the entry to the kitchen, I step past a group of ten playing some card game on the brown carpet littered with cigarette burns. I spot a couple practically fucking on the wall near the TV, just before the door to Oakley’s bedroom opens and the last person I expected to see walks out.

Well, well. What do we have here?

Ezra Caldwell tosses his hood over his black hair, eyes darting around the room to make sure no one notices him. Can’t blame him—if my father owned most of Ponderosa Springs and I was leaving a known drug dealer’s house across the tracks, I’d hide my face too.

I wonder if my doting half uncle knows what one of his coveted twins is up to when he isn’t paying attention?

I watch Ezra turn on his heel, heading toward the back door and disappearing as if he’d never been here at all.

I’m starting to think it’s not all sunshine and rainbows in Heathen territory. Ezra’s a druggie, and Phi’s a lonely fucking bitch. Makes me think there are a lot more secrets in those glass houses than they lead people to believe.

“Hey, Sin.”

I flick my gaze to the left, back toward the living room, finding a blonde chick I think I graduated with peering up at me from her spot on the frayed plaid love seat.

She gives me a soft smile, pointing at her chest. “Jessie. We had a few classes together.”

Jessie’s pretty, beautiful in a threadbare American sweetheart kinda way. The tits spilling out of her low-cut top tell me she might even be a good lay, but she’s not my type, and I don’t need to fuck bad enough that I could pretend she is.

Until I find the one who feels like silence, all of this is just noise.

“I’m—”

“Jessie girl, come hold the cooker.”

My blood runs cold as I’m interrupted by an older woman on the couch. She crooks a finger at the girl in front of me before tossing a plastic baggie of white powder onto the glass coffee table.

I’d maybe sweep it under the rug as cocaine if she didn’t reach into her purse to pull out a bent silver spoon and a fresh needle.

Pain echoes in the cracks of my chest, thinking of the last time I saw a needle like that. Thinking of the first time I saw this exact setup.

I was eight when I first caught Dad shooting up. It was mid-January, and the ground was covered in a blanket of snow. The smell of white vinegar that’s sat too long in the sun drew me to his bedroom.

When I’d asked what he was doing, with a blue band tethered around his forearm and a filled needle pointed toward his vein, he’d exploded. Pissed I’d interrupted him, he tossed me outside and locked the door.

I stood in the freezing winter for hours, no shoes or coat. Just me and the snow until my grandmother showed up. I stayed two days in the hospital while they treated me for hypothermia.

Dad didn’t even notice I was missing. Didn’t even remember locking me outside.

I stopped interrupting him after that.

“You okay?” Jessie asks.

It pulls me back to the present. My present, not my past that I couldn’t control, but my current life. I made the choice to be here, to surround myself with this, not my dad this time.

I flick my gaze to Jessie, who’s still watching me. My eyes move down her body; I’m sure she thinks I’m checking her out. I follow the lines of her, and in the ditch of her arm, I find what I’m looking for.

Small reddish-purple bruises decorate the spaces around her veins. My jaw tenses. The effects of heroin haven’t stolen her beauty yet. I’m sure she is still telling herself that she won’t develop a problem.

It’s only for fun, she probably thinks.

“You get that from Oakes?” I ask, numbly motioning to the baggie of heroin.

“Yeah, do you want to shoot⁠—”

“You’ve got a month tops before the first tooth falls out. Maybe a week before the vein in your arm collapses and you start looking between your toes,” I spit, eyes meeting her wide ones. “You won’t die pretty, but you’ll die young.”

I leave her sitting there, mouth slightly parted at my words, shouldering through more people down the narrow hallway before tearing the hinges off my door. I’d like to think what I said is enough to shock her into sobriety, but I don’t have that much faith in humanity.

When heroin wraps her cold, slithering arms around you, she whispers. Fills your ear with sweet words and promises of no pain. She makes you believe all you need is her before she takes away everything you once knew, and she’s all that is left. You follow her, believe her, until she carries you to a cemetery and drops you face down in a grave you dug all by yourself.

You die weak, sick, and alone.

With heroin nowhere to be found.

With shaky hands, I jerk the duffle bags from underneath the aged bed, tossing them onto the crumpled sheets and stuffing my entire life into them.

Two bags.

Everything that defines me will fit into these.

“J! My man, where you been?” Oakley’s hazy voice floats in from the open door, his booted steps heavy against the floor. “Didn’t even see you come in.”

I snatch a pair of black jeans from the ground, shoving them into the bag. I roll my lips together, wanting to keep my mouth shut but knowing I won’t be able to.

“Going somewhere in a hurry?”

Glancing to my side, I give him a once-over.

Brown hair sticking up in different directions, as if he’d just rolled out of bed. His eyes are glassy, the whites turned a harsh red. Based on the circles underneath his eyes, I’d say he hasn’t slept in at least twenty-four hours. Too busy drunk, getting high, or selling.

This isn’t the Oakley I met years ago.

I was in eighth grade, and he was a sophomore when his dad got locked up. We’d already been friends for a while before that, but I noticed a shift in him after his father’s incarceration.

Sometimes, children with shitty parents become great people, and others? They do what Oakes is currently doing, becoming everything that nearly ruined him as a kid.

“I’m out,” I mutter, my shoulder hitting his before I grab T-shirts from the dresser.

“You’re out? What the fuck are you talking about?” he asks as I stuff more clothes into the bags.

The confusion on his face, forcing a deep V to form between his brows, makes me scoff, and I shake my head with bitterness crawling up my throat.

Digging into my front pocket, I grab the wad of cash and shove it against his chest with a thud.

“I told you. I fucking told you. No goddamn heroin.” My harsh voice scratches my raw throat to shreds.

Anger and disappointment burn in me as our eyes clash.

He knows why I don’t fuck with that shit, and he did it anyway. I shouldn’t be surprised or pissed off—we aren’t really friends, haven’t been in a long time.

I hung around, even though I hated the drugs, ’cause he didn’t give a damn about my last name. Selfishly, I think I’ve made excuses for Oakley’s shitty behavior ’cause it was nice to just be me around someone. Not Jude Sinclair.

Just Jude.

But now, I’m starting to see that this version of myself? It isn’t me either.

Oakley’s jaw twitches as he takes his time counting the money I gave him. “Didn’t know I had to check with you about how I run my goddamn business.”

“You’re a shitty townie drug dealer who’ll wind up dead or in prison before you’re twenty-five. Wouldn’t call that a business.”

“Your daddy issues are showing, J.”

My fists clench, knuckles cracking from the force.

“Go fuck yourself,” I snap through gritted teeth.

“I give you a place to sleep, some easy routes so you can make some cash ’cause no one else would hire you, and that’s how it is?” He steps closer, the smell of alcohol strong on his breath. “I’m all you’ve fucking got.”

“Whatever helps you sleep at night, Oakes.” I try to keep my hands busy by zipping the bags so I don’t wrap them around his throat. “You wanna throw your life away? Fine, but I’m not going down with you.”

“That’s what this is about, huh? You’re afraid dealing is gonna have you shoving a needle in your arm like Daddy dearest?” His cruel laughter echoes through the room. “He died—cry about it and get the fuck over it.”

The concrete dam I’d built inside my mind, designed to keep the world out and myself locked in, explodes. Shards of cement rip through my insides, and a crimson river of unbridled fury pours out of me.

My fist connects with his jaw, a satisfying crack rippling to my ears. Oakley stumbles backward and falls to the ground with a thud, blood oozing from his mouth.

Every fucking day, I keep my mouth shut. Holding this rage in. Locked behind clenched teeth and tense muscles. ’Cause the moment I react, I’ll just be feeding into what everyone believes. That I’m just another bad apple that’s fallen from the Sinclair family tree.

My chest heaves as I grab the front of his stained white shirt. “Say something about my dad again, Oakley. Give me a fucking reason to leave you choking on your own blood.”

“Fuck you, Jude!” he spits, blood spilling from his lips, “Fuck you, your moral high road, and that chip on your shoulder. Always walking around like you’re too good for this place. Cast out but still had Daddy’s money in your pocket.”

Knowing if I stay here any longer I’ll end up killing him, I sling his lanky body to the floor. Tossing both duffle bags over my shoulders, I catch a glimpse of my split knuckles in the dim light.

“You sell coke and pot to teenagers. You think ’cause you draw the line at heroin, it makes you better than me? You’re still a drug dealer. You’re not better than me. We’re the fucking same!” he shouts from the floor, trying to use the bed to help himself to his feet.

Setting heroin as the boundary I wouldn’t cross for myself didn’t make me better than Oakley. In this moment, I’m man enough to admit he’s right.

I look down at the guy I once called a friend when I was young stumbling to his feet, weak and pumped full of pills. Just one last look is enough to know I may not be better than him, but I’m not the same either.

Leaving him there, I walk through the doorframe, his words hitting my back as he shouts.

“Don’t come running back when you have nowhere to go! You have nothing!”

I have a choice.

I didn’t when I was a kid. I had no way to escape the drugs, booze, and abuse. But I’m not a kid anymore. I made the decision to live in a trap house, to run petty drugs, telling myself the alternative was far worse.

I’d been lying to myself.

There is no fate worse than becoming my father.