Tennessee Heat
Tennessee Heat
Cami York
Copyright © 2019 by Cami York
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Created with Vellum
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
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Epilogue
Also by Cami York
1
It’s August in Tennessee, and for anyone who knows, that means the barometer is set somewhere between Hades and hell. It’s not for the faint of heart that’s for sure.
It had been broiling hot all day, with clear blue skies and not even a whiff of a breeze. The sun beat down so hard on the pavement, the bottom of the flip flops worn by the young girls who traipsed up and down the sidewalk were all but melted.
A blackout had sent the residents of the little town of Harpersville outdoors to battle the heat since their homes had become little more than ovens.
Girls dressed in little more than was needed for a day in the pool, a sight that would usually draw its share of raised brows, barely garnered a second look. Except the exceptionally pretty ones at any cause!
Annabelle Scacci was one of the most if not the most beautiful one in the crowd, but unlike the others, she didn’t put on airs. Besides, she always found her beauty a bit outdated. Her long black locks that her mother refused to let her get cut, and her almond shaped brown eyes were no match for the blonde haired blue eyed beauty of her friends as far as she was concerned, and so she ignored all the compliments as nothing more than horny teenage boys just trying to find their way into her pants.
“Well Annabelle, have you decided to come to the party next Saturday or not?” Annabelle heard her friend Kimberly but her focus had gone straight to Lisa, their other friend.
She was dying to go to the party, but the last time they’d visited Kim’s home there was a big stink afterwards because her brother Chase had shown a little too much attention to her and not Lisa who was dying to jump into his bed.
Annabelle liked him well enough, in fact she’d spent many a long day daydreaming about the two of them in some hot and steamy not to mention very compromising positions. Things she thought would only live in her imagination.
Because she knew she didn’t stand a chance against the beautiful and rich Lisa. Lisa and Chase shared the same kind of background. Their families lived a few houses apart on Williams Street, the wealthiest street in the whole damn county, while Annabelle lived on the more seedier side of town.
“I’ll think about it.” She gave a halfhearted answer and her ire rose when she saw the satisfied gleam in Lisa’s eyes. Their animosity have been on the rise more and more of late, could be the heat.
But Annabelle wasn’t so sure. Something had been going on since school ended back in the spring. Instead of seeing her friends on a daily basis she was down to seeing them on the odd afternoon here and there.
She didn’t mind that so much except that she really did like Kim and missed their daily chat fest. Kim, like her brother, was very down to earth and didn’t act all high and mighty, even though of all the families on that ostentatious block theirs was the wealthiest.
Even their mother had been kind to her all the times they’d met. And besides, there was no guarantee that Chase would even be there. At twenty-seven it had been some time since he’d lived at home. But somehow he always managed to show up whenever Annabelle was around.
She ignored Lisa and enjoyed the last of her melting pistachio cone. There was another reason she wasn’t exactly in the mood for a party where she was sure to run into more of her high school friends. While the rest of them would be heading off to college in a few weeks, she had to take a year off. She’d done well enough to earn a scholarship, but it wasn’t a full ride.
The counselor had been kind enough to work with her so she could save enough money to enroll in the spring. Luckily she’d been in a program that allowed her to earn college credit while still in high school so she wouldn’t be too far behind when and if she finally did make it.
It seemed that her hesitance about the party freed Lisa up to act the damn fool. She prattled on and on about the new outfit she’d bought just for the occasion, and how much it cost and blah-blah-blah. Annabelle knew it was all for her benefit. Everyone knew she could never afford anything new.
Her only relative since her dad bounced years ago, was her mom, who could never hold down a job on account of her drinking problem. And whatever money Annabelle made at the grocery store she’d been working at since she was fifteen went into savings for college, when she wasn’t using it to pay bills that her mother had forgotten.
It wasn’t long before she grew tired of listening to the snooty bullshit and when her nerves were frayed to the point of breaking, she said her goodbyes and headed for the trolley to take her back downtown.
Of course the others headed in the opposite direction to their cars that were parked around the corner. It only took five minutes for the loneliness to kick in, but that was nothing new.
All the way home she ignored the licentious looks from leering men and the glares from their women. She couldn’t for the life of her figure out what the hell they found so appealing.
She was hot and sticky and no doubt had ice cream somewhere on her face she was sure. She had no idea that it was her eyes, the shape and even the look in them, that held men enthralled.
She wasn’t a complete dolt, but she really had no idea of her appeal. Other less awe inspiring aspects of her life pretty much overshadowed any pleasure she might’ve found in her natural good looks.
But even if she were unaware of her charms, no one around her ever was. If her eyes didn’t draw them in, then her wide mouth with the beauty mark sitting prettily at the corner of her top lip did. Not to mention her voluptuous figure.
The girl was born with all the right attributes and if given a chance would’ve been belle of the year had her family been of a different sort. This was one of the reasons Lisa hated her so much.
Where she herself had to spend hours in the mirror to hide the marks left from her bout of childhood chickenpox and pay an astronomical fee once a month to hide her dirty brown roots beneath a bottle of honey blonde dye, the poor and inconsequential Annabelle could just run a brush over her hair and look like she stepped off the pages of Vogue.
As if that wasn’t bad enough, Annabelle was smarter and could hold a conversation on just about any topic, which seemed to please Chase immensely.
Something Lisa herself was dying to achieve, but all she seemed ca
pable of doing was annoying him. Or so it seemed every time she struck up a conversation and he made some excuse and disappeared.
Annabelle looked out the window at the passing scenery her young mind wandering to things she knew could never be.
Chase played heavily in her dreams, both asleep and awake, but she knew there was no way anything would ever come of it. Sure he seemed interested, but she knew all too well that if she gave in she might end up like her mom. Alone and pregnant with no real prospects for the future.
She wasn’t a prude, far from it, but she knew she had more than her innocence to lose if she ever gave into her urges and went to bed with him. She wasn’t so sure she could piece her heart back together after he’d broken it in half.
But still, she’d never met anyone as handsome and sophisticated as him. His hair was as dark as hers, but where her eyes were a nondescript brown, his were a piercing grey that reminded her of the sky in a thunderstorm.
How fanciful. Maybe I should stop reading all those old romance novels and get my head out of the clouds. She scolded herself for the one hundredth time.
No matter how much she tells herself to forget about him, to move on, she just never could bring herself to do it. There was a boy her age that she knew was halfway in love with her, but she had no feelings for Timothy beyond genuine friendship. Tim’s problem was that he was from her neighborhood, and as nice a guy as he was, he had no real ambition.
He was more than happy to stay there and watch life go by. As long as he made enough money at his job at the brewery to buy him a new outfit every weekend to go clubbing with his friends he thought he had it made.
No way. She wanted out of there yesterday and made no excuses for it. If she was smart she’d find a way to get what she could out of Chase, after all it was pretty obvious what he wanted from her, so why should he get it for free? Every time she thought like that it made her sick to her stomach. She could never do such a thing. Not to him, and definitely not to herself.
Outside the dirty window of the trolley the sun was going down in the sky. At least the air would start to cool and the damn flies could take a rest. She swatted the last one from buzzing around her face and didn’t have to wonder how the hell it had got on a moving trolley. The stench of sweat on the people around her was answer enough.
2
Annabelle barely came out of her daydream state in time to hop off the trolley. Thank goodness someone else had needed her stop or she’d have had to walk back twenty blocks in this infernal heat.
No use mooning over Chase, and if you do go to that party you stay the hell away from him before you make an ass of yourself.
That little pep talk seemed to do the trick and her spirits were lifted just a little bit. That was before she turned down her street and her situation in life came back full force.
Her spirits took a nosedive and she wished she could turn around and go back, but where? Her shoulders drooped even more as everything that was wrong in the world seemed to land squarely on her shoulders.
She pushed the dawning melancholy aside and searched for the bright side. There had to be one somewhere. Life couldn’t stay this depressing for long, after all she’d barely started to live. She appeased herself with that thought and held onto that glimmer of hope.
Her steps were a cross between a slow crawl and a jog. She didn’t want to bring attention to herself, but she wanted to get out of sight as soon as possible. It’s like that feeling you get when you want to go to the bathroom but you know if you move too fast you’ll wet yourself. Torture!
The street was usually busy with out of workers loitering in doorways and up and coming criminals slinging whatever death drug was the flavor of the week.
She hated it more each time she came out her door. She braced herself for the incessant catcalls and uninspired come-ons that she usually ignored. Unless she was in a bad mood and the wrong person got in her damn face.
This Saturday afternoon the street was busier than usual; no traffic came down this street, unless it was a user looking for a fix. Sensible people knew to stay away from here. Nothing good ever came outta this damn place. That quickly she was back to feeling sorry for herself.
There were a hundred kids playing on the sidewalk and in the street. Someone had opened the hydrant as was usual on a day like this. Some young guys were playing football in the street and another group had the basketball court on the other end of it.
They’d made their own net with an old soda case attached to a pole. There were the usual loud arguments from the men shooting dice, who always seemed ready for a fight. Something that used to scare the shit out of her when she was younger, but that she’d learned to ignore as the years went by.
She was at least grateful that they were too busy to notice her as she made her way down the block to the little rundown house with the leaky roof that she shared with her mother. She slowed her step a little when she reached the group of young girls
The girls were more orderly than their counterparts. Some of them were enjoying a game of hopscotch while others were skipping. They only cussed out one another heatedly when someone got hit with the rope or the skipper didn’t jump high enough and they had to start all over again.
She couldn’t imagine what they were doing playing in this heat, but she well remembered days like this when she was young and didn’t have a care in the world. She didn’t feel the heat then either.
She averted her eyes from the group of babies somebody had left sitting in the dry dirt to play. There were flies and other insects buzzing around and she imagined that it was the smell of their dirty diapers that was attracting them.
Poor kids, she felt bad for them because unless something changed, their lives were gonna begin and end here. She’d lost count of how many neighbors had been shot down in the streets, some right outside her door.
There were a crap load of babies; they were everywhere. On the sidewalk, around the doors, and at their mothers' feet. It seemed like there was one born every week here.
Girls her age were working on baby number two and seemed perfectly content with their lot in life, while all she could think about was getting out.
The grown-ups were sitting around outside and some of them hung out in their open doors. There were two women lounging on the doorstep, and a few more scattered around on lawn chairs.
Almost all of them had a kid in their arms, and most of them were already pregnant again. This is what she had to look forward to. She hated it with every vein in her body.
She avoided looking at the women as hard as she’d done with the men. There was no love lost between her and some of her neighbors, especially the ones in her age bracket.
It seemed the general consensus was that because she refused to get knocked up by the block’s latest drug lord and drop out of school to have his brat while he ran around with the next baby mama, she thought she was better than them.
She’d heard more than enough rumors about plots to jump her to keep her guard up. It was a shame but she never felt safe here. She felt trapped and alone in a sea of people.
Everywhere she looked it seemed she had enemies. Even among those she’d made at school, which was a million miles away from here, both literally and figuratively.
Kim was her only real friend. She knew the situation from second hand knowledge of course, and so she was always inviting her wherever the gang was going, just to get her away from here for a while.
Annabelle knew that more than a few of the others resented that, but they dared not say anything because Kim had the shortest temper known to man and that girl hates to be told what to do.
But pretty soon Kim will be away at Vassar and there will be no more escape for her, except for her job, which was clear across town.
She was already beginning to feel sick to her stomach at the thought of what the future held. Between the stoop of women she’d just passed and home is where her fists started to clench and her guts tied themselves in knots.
She realized as she had the thought, that she didn’t even know any of their names. She knew their faces well enough, they’d all lived here their whole lives, some longer than her.
But she’d never taken the time to learn their names. Some of the girls she’d played with when she was very young, but she barely remembered most of their names either.
The men leaned against the walls, smoking; the smell of marijuana wafting through the air. It was always the same whether it was Monday or Saturday.
Men loitering the streets wearing the latest sneakers and hundred dollar jeans, or souping up their rusted out trucks, while their women and children lived in squalor.
“Hey sweet thing you ready to go for a ride on the Dirk train?” For some reason his cronies found great humor in his pedantic bullshit.
Annabelle didn’t even bother rolling her eyes. Just kept her head straight and put one foot in front of the other as she hurried her step.
She knew it wasn’t good to show fear in front of animals, but these creeps made her skin crawl. Yet another one called out to her and the third went even farther. This walking billboard for the need for good dentistry waltzed right into her path.
“You still holding onto that precious cherry of yours? I wouldna thought you'd keep that shit so long what with that hot ass of yours! Thought for sure some man would’ve busted that shit wide open by now.” He grinned in the general direction of his friends.