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  HAYDEN’S VERSE

  Devil’s Despair, Book Two

  by A.C. BEXTOR

  Hayden’s Verse, Devil’s Despair Book Two

  Copyright © A.C. Bextor 2015

  Title ID: 5259850

  This book is a work of fiction. Names and characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  All rights reserved. In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher or author constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from this book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting the publisher. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  Due to explicit language and sexual content, this book should not be purchased by readers under the age of 18.

  This book has been written as a standalone novel as have all other books in the Devil’s Despair series.

  Table of Contents

  Other titles by A.C. Bextor

  Description

  Definition

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgements

  Further information regarding books by A.C. Bextor

  Other titles by A.C. Bextor

  Lights of Peril Series

  Holding On

  The Way Home

  Toxic

  Tied To You

  Devil’s Despair Series

  Ace’s Redemption (Stand Alone)

  Hayden’s Verse (Stand Alone)

  Travis’s Stand (Coming Summer 2015)

  DESCRIPTION

  Hayden

  I’m known to my friends as a player; a user of women.

  I don’t believe in relationships. They’re messy and confusing. They don’t last.

  Lacey Wells walked into my life and ruined it. Although not in the traditional sense, we made the decision to be ‘exclusive.’ We used each other to satisfy our bodies’ want of lust and attraction. And we had this . . . for a time.

  When uncontrollable events altered the arrangement and life as we knew it had fallen to circumstance, my reactions weren’t only punishing, they were painful and cruel. I pushed her away, causing her heartache, but in return, she refused to break. Instead, she challenged my will at every turn. She was determined to make me see the person I always was, but had never been. I was desperate and searching for the answer I was so anxious to have . . .

  Was I capable of falling in love?

  Our path together was tumultuous and unforgiving. At times, it was full of anger and resentment. But it was also fun and sometimes downright ridiculous.

  There’s no label to our story; tales of cliché pale in comparison. It just happened. It was us. It was crazy and it was exactly what we made it.

  Note: There are no love triangles or cheating that takes place within this story. It’s a HEA; however, the road to getting there is full of angst, sadness, and regret. If you aren’t a reader who enjoys the element of angst or heartache, this book isn’t one you’d find enjoyment in reading.

  Verse:

  To familiarize by close association, study, or experience

  PROLOGUE

  Hayden

  I DIDN’T BELIEVE in love at first sight.

  I didn’t believe in love at all.

  To me, love was considered an emotion which drove people to the brink of their own sanity on a bullshit cloud of happiness and pleasure only to slam them back down to Earth when the reality of their day-in and day-out relationship revealed its true form. The mundane responsibilities, coupled with the sexless nights and torturous days filled with unbearable nagging, begins to wash away memories of the heated passion and late-night laughs without worry the two of you once shared. By the time you’ve realized what you’ve gotten yourself into, you’re forced to endure a painful breakup or a life spent wishing you’d made better choices before settling on ‘the one.’

  Love is expensive to the heart and damaging to the soul.

  I’ve felt the effects of what love does.

  I never knew my mother. She left me with my dad a few days after I was born. They were never married. To her, it was a summer fling, and I was the result of too much wine and a poor decision right before their passionate affair ended. To my father, though, she was the one who got away. He was left heartbroken and empty, filling the void with alcohol and nameless faces who took their place in his bed night after torturous, lonely night.

  My dad once told me my mother battled depression all of her life and she knew, instinctively, by the time I was born, she couldn’t be the parent she felt I deserved. Dad accepted her decision to leave us and in response to her doing so, he raised me alone the best he could. After she left, he never trusted anyone enough to believe in real and true love again. He’s played the emotionless, unavailable bachelor ever since. Now, it’s all he knows. He’s perfected this persona with no desire in mind to change it.

  While most fathers were teaching their sons how to play baseball, catch fish, or change a tire in an emergency, my dad taught me how to pick up a woman, use her body how I wanted, and then send her back to wherever it was she came from, leaving her left with only the memory of our meaningless encounter.

  “Play them all, Hayden. Don’t ever settle for just one. Women fuck everything up. You can give them your body, but never trust them with your heart. Never share a piece of your soul.” This is what he said to me during one of his drunken tirades. I was eleven at the time and had no idea what he was rambling on about. But I do now.

  Love makes people crazy.

  My friend, Ace, is the perfect example of what the effects of love have on a person. Although I’m elated for him that he’s found what he considers happiness after all the Hell life had designed for him, he’s nowhere close to the same man I once knew him to be.

  Ace is whipped.

  Raegan Simmons has turned his life inside out. He no longer stays out late partying with his friends then heading into work half-drunk or hung over. He pays no attention to women who throw themselves at his feet in blind passion, begging for the chance at a one-night stand. Instead, he works a forty-hour work week, picks up a six-year-old kid after school each day, gets home in time to make dinner and then finishes his evening by sitting in front of the television before turning in at ten o’clock each night.

  Like I said—crazy.

/>   Lust, sometimes confused as love, however, is an emotion I know a fuck of a lot about. To be honest, I do love women. Their soft bodies, sensual dispositions, and often their willingness to share an erotic evening with a stranger after understanding they aren’t promised anything more than a sated goodbye the next day. These are the type of women I’ve spent sharing my time with anyway.

  All of this changed, however, and when I least expected it to. I met a woman who made me doubt all my reasons for being who I had always been. After finally letting myself fall for her, I came face to face with the fact that I was then ruined for all others.

  Looking at myself through her eyes had changed me, and the reflection I saw in them was vivid and in color. After living my life in dark shrouds of isolated sadness, she exhausted her efforts to pull me through and help me find my way.

  She brought a new life into mine and gave me a purpose I had never known; a reason to let go of the man I had always been and a hope for so much more than I ever knew existed.

  It wasn’t an easy path. It was rocky and unstable, exhausting and difficult, but it was also passionate and kind, fun and, at times, absolutely ridiculous.

  It was what we made it, and above all else—it was ours.

  CHAPTER ONE

  Lacey

  EVERYONE’S HEARD THE adage ‘everything happens for a reason.’

  For a while now, I’ve been asking fate to give me some sign, offer me a brief vision as to why things happen as they do. I’ve made life’s tough and raw decisions and I’ve stuck to them; been left alone to suffer the consequences of my actions, especially when it came to men. I’ve never known the true love of a good man, the overriding touch of passion only he could create within me, or the security of having a constant anchor in knowing another person has my back in all ways.

  My friends, those who know me best, understand my need to keep my life clear of drama. I can’t control those around me, but my reactions to a circumstance can alter its outcome. Chaos in the mind creates doubt, and surrounding yourself with uncertainties can ruin you.

  I’m also loyal to a fault. I trust people, some more than others, and in doing so risk the damage those same people can selfishly cause. My mom and I share none of these attributes. If I didn’t look almost exactly like her, I wouldn’t believe we’re related.

  Three months ago, I was sitting at home with my mom watching mind-numbing television. It was one of the rare times we spent together in quiet peace, rather than arguing over who hated who more. She resented me for being alive and I had learned by then not to take it personally; she resented herself and the decisions she’d made more than anything else.

  She was smoking a cigarette, filling up the room with her rancid poison. She smiled at me crudely as though waiting for the perfect moment to drop some horrific bomb she could light on my life while she stepped away and watched it explode. This was a practiced motion of disgust on her part and one I had gotten pretty friggin’ used to. It stopped hurting years ago, and in its place, I felt the same disgust toward her.

  She put her cigarette out, shut the television off, and decided to tell me a story. It was a watered-down version of her own truth, as I now know it to be, but she confessed to me that night that I had an older brother I knew nothing about. She then went into trivial detail about her life she had left behind. When she talked of Travis and his father, she looked distant and lost in a memory of a happier time. It was as though she was transported to another place where she felt both content and safe. I don’t imagine she had felt either of those things in a very long time.

  At first, I didn’t believe her. My life with her was built on a stack of unstable lies or at the very least, vague truth. I thought this was another way she had found to punish me for my existence. After she was done talking through her bedtime lullaby, she passed out from too much scotch and exhaustion, so I immediately went online and googled Travis Nikels, age twenty-four.

  He lived only an hour away!

  First, I cried in relief; I had a big brother. Second, I got angry for all I’d missed in his life. Third, I stopped to realize . . . he didn’t know me and if my mother treated him with the same pride and understanding as she treated me all my life, he wouldn’t want any reminders of her and that included a lonely and needy kid sister.

  So, I left it alone. I didn’t call him, write him, or attempt to get in touch with him in any way. I wrote it off as Karma’s way of making me pay for her mistake—again.

  That is, until I came home one evening thirteen days ago and saw something no daughter, no woman, could ever un-see. Something so vile and sick that even thinking about it now makes me to want to violently retch.

  *****

  “You’re not leavin,’ Lacey.” Alec’s southern drawl and kind demeanor were a mess of emotion in the stir of his guilt.

  “I am.” Actually, I was leaving right at that moment, but I didn’t need to explain the obvious to him. He was slow, but not stupid.

  “Damn it, Lacey. It was a fuckin’ mistake. I said I was sorry.”

  “No, you didn’t. You said you ‘felt bad.’ Not that an apology would’ve mattered anyway.”

  “God, you’re being a bitch. It means the same thing.”

  Punching him in the gut as he stood in front of my closet door, blocking my path, I explained. “Shit, honey. I ‘feel bad.’ There, I’ve apologized. Move now, so I don’t find a reason to feel really bad.”

  “Baby, please let me explain.” Alec’s pleas of sorrow and sadness fell on deaf ears.

  “Oh, for the love of God, please don’t.” The pain and hurt radiating inside me was masked by my anger in the face of his infidelity.

  When he reached his hand out to touch my face, I ducked, lowering to pose, and delivered another blow to his ribs using the fierce right hook my old boss showed me how to use when handling drunk and touchy customers. Unfortunately, he taught his grasshopper well, and in turn, it was used against him when he became the drunk and disorderly. I was fired after that, but it was so worth it.

  Alec folded in front of me right before cursing my name. Oddly, it was delivered in the same breathless voice he used as he called out my mother’s name during his climax inside her, only fifteen minutes before.

  Sick fucking bastard and miserable slutty whore.

  Throwing the last piece of a possible future in my bag—my brother’s phone number and address—I zipped it up, threw it over my shoulder, and headed for the front door. “I’m leaving, Alec. We’re done.”

  “I love you, pie.” I heard the tears in his voice, but they offered me no absolution.

  Stopping at the bedroom door, I turned around and took one last look at the man I thought I loved. Memories of our time together caused me to wince once I realized this mess was our undeniable ending. With a heavy heart full of regret for time I’d lost waiting for him to grow up, I responded, “You’ll never call me that again, Alec.”

  Sighing, he dropped his head as my words penetrated his traitorous brain.

  Walking past my mother, she took another drag from her cigarette; the swell of smoke surrounding her resembled the dark cloak of her deceit. She smiled grimly when her face turned to meet mine. “Sorry, darlin.’ Didn’t expect you home so soon. How’d the job hunt go?”

  Meet my mom.

  “You disgust me,” I sneered as I edged toward the front door, the gateway to my escape.

  “You’ll be back.” She smirked through her words that even she couldn’t truly believe.

  “Like fucking hell I will. Have a nice life, Mom.”

  *****

  And I never looked back.

  That was a snapshot of the meager existence I had called my life.

  I’m twenty-one, unemployed, and as of this moment, I’m newly single. My boyfriend of one year had just finished fucking my mother. No, not ‘fucking with’ or ‘fucking around with’ my mother, he was fucking her when I came home that night. Dogs in heat have nothing on how I would describe what I witnesse
d upon my arrival.

  When I walked in, I found the two of them laid out on the kitchen floor. My mother’s long, pale, and nastily bruised legs were wrapped around his jean-clad ass as he viciously pumped himself into her while she moaned a chorus of sated bliss into his neck with each nauseating thrust. My stomach wanted to revolt, but I kept it together long enough to dump a pitcher of freshly made iced tea onto them, sending them scurrying like animals across the orange tile floor.

  Fancy.

  What I thought was an ordinary Friday night had turned into that. I had just gotten home from applying for a bartending job downtown. It’s what I know how to do; my skills are limited. I know how to make drinks, count cash, and flirt shamelessly for tips. I have no training whatsoever with computers, phones, or office machinery, and I have no desire to ever learn.

  My mother is an unpaid, but highly successful, whore and my father, who I haven’t seen in a year and who I think deep down wants to be a good person, can’t hold down a job. My mother’s current boyfriend is a nasty, beer-bellied creep who likes to pretend he and I are a couple.

  My mom and I lived in a run-down, two-bedroom house in San Francisco’s dirtiest district. It’s the same house we’d lived in for over fifteen years. My car is a piece of shit and until that night, I’d never felt safe enough to take it anywhere out of town.

  Circumstances change and risk becomes less of a factor when you’re pissed off.

  So, I said fuck it and decided it was finally time to find my brother, Travis.

  When I got to his door at one-thirty in the morning, he was less than pleased to say the least. I had woken him up.

  *****

  When the door swung open after my aggressively frustrated knock, the first thing that struck me was our physical similarities. His hair was the same strawberry blond as mine. His green eyes, although a shade lighter, were like a reflection of my own. We’re both tall and fit, but he’s built whereas I’m toned.

  “Can I help you with something?” Apparently, he didn’t see the same resemblance.