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  Craving Lucy

  The Lucy & Harris Novella Series Book 2

  Terri Anne Browning

  Copyrights

  Craving Lucy

  The Lucy & Harris Novella Series Book 2

  By Terri Anne Browning

  Edited by Lorelei Logsdon

  Cover Picture and Book Cover Design by Sara Eirew

  Model: Josse L

  All Rights Reserved © Anna Henson 2015

  All rights reserved by the author. This is a work of fiction. Any characters, names, places or incidents are used solely in a fictitious nature based on the author's imagination. Any resemblance to or mention of persons, places, organizations, or other incidents are completely coincidental and subjects of the author’s imagination. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any other means without written permission from the Publisher. No individual/group has resale rights, sharing rights, or any other kind of rights to sell or give away this book. Piracy is not a victimless crime.

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Playlist

  Dedication

  For everyone, but especially teens, living with mental illness on a daily basis. Sometimes it feels like it is easier to live in the dark than face the light—which can feel even darker.

  Chapter 1

  Lucy

  Ring. Come on, you stupid phone. Ring. Or chime with a text. Do something other than just sitting there. Ugh! I hate you, you stupid piece of technological crap.

  I sucked in a deep breath and tried to keep my eyes from straying to the still silent phone sitting on my desk. Shit, I was becoming that girl. The one who did nothing but looked at her phone in hopes that the boy she liked would call, text, email—for the love of all that was holy, something.

  Why did I suddenly feel like a stalker? Like an obsessed stalker that had to get her daily fix of her victim? After spending the last three months talking to Harris at least twice a day in some shape or form, not hearing from him was painful and was messing with my damn mind.

  I hated that this was what I was resorting to. Spacing out all day long in anticipation that Harris Cutter would reach out to me and let me know that he was thinking about me as much as I was thinking about him. I’d been like this since he’d kissed me almost two weeks ago.

  He’d kissed the breath out of me and told me that he wanted to be my boyfriend. It was something I’d secretly wanted for months. I’d left his office and returned to my family and friend for our girls’ night feeling like I was walking on a cloud. My mom, sister and aunt had given me odd looks throughout the rest of that night. I knew I’d probably been overly flushed and had had a stupid grin on my face, but at least they hadn’t called me out on it. Lana had even refrained from teasing me about it.

  That night it had taken forever for me to get to sleep. I had felt like I could have flown to the moon and back and still had energy to burn. When I’d gotten up the next morning, the first thing I’d wanted to do was text him, but I’d contained myself—just barely. Hoping that he was thinking of me just as much as I was thinking of him, I’d waited for him to call or text first.

  He hadn’t.

  That night I’d finally given in and texted him. He didn’t have to work since First Bass was closed on Sundays so I knew I wouldn’t be interrupting anything overly important. The text had been a simple ‘Miss you’ message. After I’d hit send, I’d covered my head with my comforter and buried my face in one of my pillows so that my embarrassed scream wouldn’t send my dad or brothers running into my room to see what was wrong with me.

  Before that amazing kiss, I wouldn’t have thought twice about sending him a message telling him I was missing him. Hell, the Sunday before, we’d texted at least fifty times and called each other at least once. This Sunday? He didn’t respond to my one little text at all.

  I’d fallen asleep disappointed, but still giddy from the memory of our kiss. He might have had something come up, or he’d misplaced his phone. Something. Anything. It wasn’t like Harris to just ignore me like that.

  Unless he regretted it and was trying to let me down…

  Monday he hadn’t texted me back and I hadn’t tried to send another message. By Tuesday my heart had been heavy and Kin had started demanding to know why I was moping around. I hadn’t planned on telling anyone about what had gone on in Harris’s office Saturday night. The less people who knew, the less of a chance my dad would find out about me and Harris before we were ready. But I’d needed to talk to someone.

  My friend hadn’t been surprised that Harris had kissed me and even less surprised that he hadn’t contacted me yet. “That’s how guys are, Lucy. They get nervous sometimes. He’ll call you when he’s ready.”

  I’d felt better after that and hadn’t looked at my phone again until Wednesday night. That Harris hadn’t shown up to take me to dinner Tuesday evening like he always did didn’t sting nearly as badly after her prediction. Since Kin wanted to go to the open mike night, I dressed up and Marcus took us to First Bass. I doubted I’d ever been more nervous in my life than I had been that night as I’d sat with Kin waiting for the open mike to begin.

  Jace had stopped by to say hi and to let his eyes run over Kin a few times while she’d sat there sipping her soda and going over her music sheets, completely ignoring him as usual. After a few minutes of tense silence between the two of them I’d finally gotten fed up with it and broken it.

  “Is Harris busy?” I’d asked. If anyone would know if Harris Cutter was busy it would be Jace. He was here more often than I was and more often than not with Harris.

  The sexy rocker’s face had tightened for a moment before he’d given me a smile that was more than a little forced. “Harris isn’t here tonight, Lucy. Didn’t he call you?”

  My heart had dropped and I’d had to swallow hard a few times before shaking my head. “I haven’t spoken to him in a few days. Is he okay?” It wasn’t like Harris to not be at First Bass. He took Mondays off because they were his slow days and he left his assistant manager in charge. Sometimes he even took Tuesdays off. But Wednesday through Saturday he was always in the club.

  Jace shrugged his massive shoulders, his blue eyes hooded so I couldn’t read what he was thinking. “No idea. His manager is going to be filling in for the rest of the week.”

  What the hell was going on? I couldn’t figure out why he wouldn’t be at First Bass and not letting me know if something was wrong. I knew it couldn’t have been something wrong with his dad, stepmother, or even his sister. My parents would have been one of the first people to know if there was something wrong with one of them and they would have told me.

  I sucked my bottom lip between my teeth as I pulled up his name in my text messages and sent him another text. Everything okay?

  The ‘delivered’ notification under my message appeared, letting me know that he had gotten it, quickly followed by ‘read’. I held my breath for a moment as I waited for him to text me back.

  He didn’t.

  My heart turned to lead and I sat there in silence for the rest of the night. What the hell was going on? Before that stupid kiss, Harris had told me everything, no matter what it was. Even the things that I knew he would never tell another living soul he confided in me. Had that one kiss changed everything?

  My heart ached the rest of the night and I couldn’t have told you what song Kin sang, barely remembered anything else except for the heaviness in my chest as I’
d sat there staring at my phone that night.

  And every night since.

  I hadn’t tried to text him again. Didn’t attempt to call him. My bruised heart was starting to harden and I was getting pissed at him. Kin and I didn’t go back to First Bass that week and now that it was Wednesday again, I was trying to find any excuse not to go back for another open mike night. I didn’t want to go in and Harris not be there, or worse, have him completely ignore me like he had been doing for the last eleven days. I knew what was going on, after all.

  Harris regretted kissing me. Regretted saying he wanted us to be together. He didn’t really want us to start dating. A small, humorless laugh escaped me. He wasn’t exactly boyfriend material after all.

  “What do you want me to do with this?”

  I slowly lifted my eyes from my phone lying silently on my desk and met the bright blue eyes of my friend. We were in our last period of the day and honestly it was the only class that I actually cared about. I’d been writing for the school paper since I was ten years old. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind which senior was going to be the editor this year. This job had had my name on it from the time I’d turned my first article in to my English teacher.

  Kin was in the same class since it was the only creative writing class that had been open. She’d originally wanted poetry but, like always, that one had filled up the last day of school the year before. I loved writing but I wasn’t a fan of poetry. It drove me mad looking for all the hidden meanings behind the words. There were too many things that one poem could mean and I would rather deal with the straightforwardness of a newspaper or a book.

  At the moment, Kin was holding what looked like a rough draft of the article she was writing on the Christmas carnival that the cheerleaders had hosted over the weekend. Since she and I hadn’t gone to First Bass she’d had to go with her step-monster and stepsisters to the carnival and I’d asked her to do a piece on it for the school’s paper. Her stepsister Georgia was the captain of the cheerleaders so she was able to get a better idea of the carnival than anyone else could have.

  Or so I’d thought.

  Georgia hated Kin and vice versa. Kin had tried to be nice in the beginning but Georgia had made that pretty impossible from day one. I couldn’t blame Kin for her animosity against the other girl. She didn’t even want to be in California, and if she hadn’t promised her dying mother that she would try to get to know her father and his family she would still be in Virginia with her stepdad and twin stepsiblings.

  Pushing my phone as far away as possible, I took the rough draft from Kin and started to read over it. I edited it with my favorite red pen and then handed it back to her without another word, hoping that she wouldn’t bring up going to First Bass tonight.

  “You can’t hide from me you know,” she said with a smirk. “I want to go to open mike tonight. Don’t make me go alone, Lucy. Tiny won’t let me past the front door without you. I’ll have to stand in line for hours and probably still won’t get in. And if I do I’ll have to deal with Jace all by myself. If Marcus isn’t there to save him, I might be tempted to kick him in the balls if I see him with his tongue down some skank’s throat again.”

  Muttering a curse, I rubbed my hands over my eyes and leaned my head back, glaring up at the ceiling as if it held all the answers to my aching heart but refused to share them with me. “I’ll pick you up at seven thirty.”

  Her smile was bright but her eyes told me she knew what going with her would cost me. “Thanks, babe.”

  “As soon as you do your thing, we’re leaving, though.” I didn’t want to be there any longer than I had to be. If Harris was there I didn’t want to have to face him.

  Marcus would have to step in and save him instead of Jace if I saw his face. I’d moved on from feeling disappointed and hurt—mostly. Now I was angry. Okay, that wasn’t exactly true. I was beyond angry.

  I. Was. Pissed. The. Fuck. Off.

  How dare he kiss me, tell me he wanted to be with me, and then completely ignore me for almost two weeks? If he thought that I was going to go out with him now, he was out of his mind. I wasn’t emotionally equipped to handle this, damn it.

  “Of course. I don’t want to be there any longer than we have to be, either. I can only stomach so much of Jace St. Charles at a time.”

  I looked at her and saw the pain that dimmed her normally bright blue eyes. I didn’t know all of what had happened between my friend and the rocker, but I knew enough. Kin and Jace had met at the club where Jace and the rest of Tainted Knights had performed every weekend until Harris had discovered them. They had begun dating and things had started to get serious between them. Then Kin’s mom was told her cancer was becoming more aggressive and there was nothing more the doctors could do for her. Two weeks later Jace had left and hadn’t looked back.

  There had been no calls, texts, emails, or even a Dear John letter. He’d packed up and moved away without telling her goodbye and Kin had to face her mother’s death without the guy who had said he loved her while holding her hand.

  Douchebag.

  --

  I di

  dn’t have homework so I jumped in the shower as soon as I got home and then got to work on my hair. I was not going to show up at First Bass with my usual crazy curls. It always took at least an hour to straighten my hair—if I was lucky. So by the time I was satisfied with my hair, it was dinnertime and I had to rush downstairs to help my mom.

  Dad was just coming through the door after a day spent with Aunt Emmie and the rest of the Demons doing who knew what at Aunt Emmie’s offices downtown. She used to work out of her guesthouse but a few years ago she found a place that suited her and bought an entire floor of offices downtown. Back then she’d only had a secretary and Natalie Cutter to help her. Now she had thirty people on her staff that helped out since she had so many people she represented these days.

  “You look beautiful, Lu,” my dad told me after he’d wrapped his arms around my mom and kissed her. “You going out with Harris tonight since he didn’t show up last night?”

  I shook my head and continued to set the table. “Kin wants to go to open mike at First Bass.”

  His oddly ever-changing eyes brightened at the mention of my friend. “I like that girl. Blew Drake’s mind with the way she can play the guitar. Can she sing?”

  “She’s good—not great, but good. Better than some of the pop stars out there at the moment if you ask me. But it’s not her talent as a singer that gets her so much attention. She’s got some serious talent writing songs.” I set the last plate down and turned to face him. “I think Nik should check out an open mike and listen to one of her originals. He’s written some amazing songs over the years and I know he would be interested in what she’s got.”

  Jesse Thornton scratched his fingers over his smoothly shaven head, thinking seriously, and I stood there grinning at him. “Yeah, okay. I’ll mention it to him. We might stop by next week and check it out. I’ll talk to Emmie and have her come with us.” He wrapped his arms around my mom’s waist and nuzzled her ear with his nose. “Why don’t we get a sitter for the boys and make it a double date, baby?”

  Layla’s face brightened with her smile. “Sounds good to me.” She turned and kissed him quick but deeply. I had to glance away. I loved the way my parents were with each other, but I just couldn’t handle seeing them be all loving and touchy right then. Not when I’d basically lost my best friend because I’d let him kiss me…

  “Go make the boys wash up for dinner,” she told him after a moment and my dad left the kitchen yelling for Luca and Lyric.

  After dinner I finished getting ready and was just putting on the platinum hoops that my sister had gotten me for Christmas the year before when I heard Marcus and my dad talking outside my room. My bodyguard didn’t live with us, even though I was sure that my dad would have preferred that. He stayed in the guesthouse at Aunt Emmie’s, who lived two houses down from us, with another bodyguard named Rodger.

&
nbsp; Rodger was my cousin Mia’s bodyguard. It was crazy to think that my honorary little cousin needed as much protection as I did, but her mom was even more overprotective than my dad was. Aunt Emmie hadn’t been the same ever since a fan had nearly taken Mia, and now Mia didn’t even get to go outside without Rodger shadowing her. She had just turned eleven and she told me she felt like her mom was smothering her. I could relate, but we both knew that having a bodyguard that watched our every step was something that wasn’t going to change anytime soon.

  After a moment, Dad’s voice faded away and then Marcus knocked on my bedroom door. I glanced at my reflection in the long mirror attached to the inside of my closet door. I hadn’t gone crazy on my makeup, but I had put on a little more than I normally would have. My lips looked plumper and glossy, my eyes highlighted just a little more to make them stand out. I was wearing my favorite jeans that had rips in the knees and hugged my ass. I was glad it was winter and I got to wear my favorite boots with the three-inch heels. The top I’d picked was a favorite and something I’d worn a few times to First Bass, but adding a scarf changed up the look a little. Grabbing my leather jacket, I slipped it on and then opened the door.

  Marcus stood in the hallway with his usual stoic expression. I thought I was getting to know him a little better and was able to decipher his expressions. While his face might have looked unemotional, his eyes always gave away the slightest hint to his mood. Earlier in the day, when he’d been following me around school, I’d thought he was bored—typical for a big, scary man following around a senior in an over-priced private school. I’d been bored so I was sure he had been, too.

  Now he looked like he was slightly amused. Slightly. His eyes crinkled at the edges just a little and his gray eyes were lighter than they normally would have been if he were in a grumpy mood. I smiled up at him and stepped out of my room. “Ready when you are,” I told him.