Slice (The Elledge Family #1)

  SLICE

  lrJohnson

  Copyright © 2015 by LR Johnson

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Printed in the United States of America

  ISBN: 978-0692589403

  Cover Art from canstockphotos.com

  Photo by: IgorKovalchuk

  Foreword by: Lavette Williams

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  MATURE AUDIENCE ONLY

  This book is dedicated to my mother. I love you so much. You have always motivated me to push for what I want in life and never settle. You believe in me when I can’t believe in myself and for that I am eternally grateful.

  -LR Johnson

  Table of Contents

  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

  Epilogue

  Author’s Notes:

  Music to Read By Playlist:

  Pasty, white skin

  Flaking lips

  Stale body

  Stilled fingertips

  She looked well in death

  But liveliness wore her better

  From her ‘90s vintage pumps

  To her button-down sweater

  It broke his little heart

  To see her in such dismay

  But this wouldn’t be his first

  Lethal heartbreak

  His previous lover’s had left a few scars

  But he’d left too many for fingers to count

  His were deeper; skin-deep

  With ridged marks that left him

  Composed and dazed with relief

  His lopsided smile

  His wild eyes

  The rush of their skin

  Subsided by the slice of his knife

  Sanity blossomed throughout his veins

  When she was alive

  Her lullabies, her whispers

  Made it harder to say goodbye

  Farewell wasn’t foreign

  As his father had done it before

  Leather jacket in his arms

  As he trekked out the door

  Everything was unraveling

  Into his trembling clutch

  It was then that he vowed to never

  Forget all the hearts she’d touched

  -Lavette Williams

  Chapter One

  Cypress

  The campus was crowded; my mom and dad had dropped me off at the new apartment reluctantly. Leaving home was something that I had decided to do without their permission. I didn’t need their permission, but parents always wanted to have the last word. The breakup had torn me down in a way that I had never experienced and unfortunately my parents were no help in consoling. They adored my ex and I loathed him for more reasons that can be described. So I packed up and decided that this final year of college would not be spent in Tennessee. It would be spent in Colorado Springs, over 1000 miles from home.

  There was so much to be done. I had to find a car for one. My old car had died on me during the summer break and I had some money saved up working at the local grocery store. It was not much, just 3000, which had almost been drained from this move. Thank God my parents had went ahead and gave me the money for a down payment. Their words, spend it on a reasonable car. So my future BMW was out of the question. My parents always helped me whenever I needed it. I was almost saddened that I had moved but I wasn’t in the least bit. Moving had been a great idea, at least that is what I had convinced myself. I wanted to go somewhere I would not be known. I wanted to be unnoticed and start over. And I did just that, no social media, a new number and new beginning. It was what I needed most, after the break up that I had just been through. Phillip was the worst thing that had happened to me. My mother objected, my father objected and his parents hated me. But it was mainly because they didn’t know the real Phillip. They knew the Phillip that he wanted them to know. They didn’t know the guy that slung me around the room and raped me on two occasions. They knew the quarterback, churchgoing, heartthrob. I ended it.

  The new college, I had enrolled in would make a difference. Colorado Springs was full of life and most importantly, it was beautiful. I felt young, free and alive just from being here one day. Hello, Colorado.

  My first class was in the English department. Creative Writing 406, the teacher was an author and she graded off of your potential, not others. It was written on her door and on her teacher website for orientation, I loved writing. There was something freeing that lingered between me and the words on the page. Once my fingers started clicking to the keys there was no stopping me. All I needed was a good musician and a charged up laptop and life was better than I knew.

  I sat down in the classroom, unlike the biology lab or the English 329 classroom this class was close and personal. There was no stadium of kids with a paperback notebook and a set of headphones on. There were thirty desks and they were in a circle. Then there was a blackboard. I hadn’t seen one in years. I took out my notebook and wrote the date in the corner. This particular class was for the upperclassmen and one had to be accepted. It was well known among the literary world that this woman was the best in the league for crafting good writers. I put my pens on the desk and whipped out my kindle. There was always time to read, no matter where I was.

  I could hear the students as they adjusted in their seats, they must have known each other because they chatted non-stop making it impossible to concentrate on my latest read The Time Keeper. I gave up and started to look at my surroundings. There were some geeky people in here. I couldn’t judge. I was not exactly the most average looking person. My outfit was thrown together. Jeggings with a hole in the thigh and a tattered shirt that had Go Vols written in faded orange. Then it was the mess of curls that tried to burst from the almost broken hair tie I had found in the car.

  The desk beside me went from vacant to full and I turned to meet my new neighbor. I immediately regretted not digging up that damn sundress from the bag of clothes. He was heavenly and I hadn’t even seen his whole body yet. I glanced over him twice. His hair flowed past his cheek bone and draped his shoulders lightly and it was a warm brown with reddish highlights. The sun from the window beside him only accented the hints of blue in green eyes and then he spoke to me. “Hello.” He whispered with a flash of his perfect teeth and dimples. He had dimples.

  I melted in my seat. Say something you dimwitted fool. Speak the words! My hand barely rose from the desk and I could feel the rush of red heat as it flowed to my caramel cheeks. Damn it!

  “Alright class!
Let’s get this started.” Her voice rang over the small talk and chatter. “I want to hear about the summer in a short story.” She turned to the blackboard with the white chalk in her hands and wrote. “I want it to be called A Summer in Paradise. 30 minutes, generate magic!”

  The title was just as cheesy as she was and my summer was not paradise but I could work something. More students continued to pour in the desk beside me was no longer empty and the classroom door was closed and locked. All that was heard in the room was the clicking of pens, while the writer thought and the sound of the pages turning.

  My page was only half way through when her loud hand clap snapped us away from our mental frenzy and back into reality. I closed my notebook while she ranted about her summer and she spun out the gold in her short story like it was so easy to create what she had said. I had created garbage. Pure unadulterated garbage, I had some training to do.

  A Summer in Paradise By Cypress Tucker

  The summer started out like any other. The kids frenzied along the neighbor like they had been freed from some prison, not to simply realize they had it easy. Easy, shit my life had not been easy. I had to let Prince Charming know that I would be resigning as his Princess and the whole kingdom was bound to go into disturbia because the throne would be left unattended. Being born into that life was not what I wanted. I wanted to be free. I wanted to live without the weight of him…

  I let Prince Charming down easily, but things got messy, there were tears… mainly from him. The bitch and pitchmen… King and Queen from each fucking kingdom realized that I had tarnished the name. I was banished from kingdom they saw it as a punishment I saw it as an opportunity. I packed up a few things, leaving behind my horse and carriage and tossing in my Sketchers, Paradise was around the corner and…

  I nodded my head at the grisly sight I should have been more prepared. I tried to tear it out of the notebook and a hand clasped over mine.

  “It’s alright, if it’s tainted…” the accent was thick and beautiful.

  I turned my head and met the eyes of my neighbor, god he was so beautiful and here I was still unable to formulate a decent sentence to him. “I just don’t want it… to be seen.”

  “We’ll work on it.” Fuck! I looked over at my neighbor. He smiled timidly and handed me a piece of graphing paper. “Breathe, these exercises are to let you know that your worst can be a masterpiece to someone else.” He smiled and his accent was overwhelming, English and perfect. He pointed to the board. Apparently I had missed the whole conversation about partnering up with the person to my left. He took my notebook and he handed me his. Lucas Elledge, my heart was about to fall on the ground. I had held onto his book and read three times before I could put it down and then started reading it again. He was published and New York Times best seller. What was he doing here?

  The Last Paradise By: Lucas Elledge

  Was there such a thing as Paradise? I had spent my entire summer dwelling on this issue. It could not possibly be a paradise when she existed no longer. Her locks of hair, gone, her smile that healed was gone. She was gone and there with her, she took paradise.

  The monster had made its grand entrance a year earlier. He attacked her in ways that she had never experienced. He weakens and he takes and never gives anything but a new pain. She suffered, more than I could bear, more than I could watch. Paradise was fucking over. There was no more laughs and giggles about the thrills of paradise and there was no more care. She sat in agonizing breathtaking pain… and paradise left.

  My mother died on a Saturday and even the skies cried for her. The drought ended and there she did too. The monster had won and my paradise was lost.

  Well, damn it, I had been partnered with some literary genius, this was his quick, easy short story and it was only three paragraphs but damn it! I dropped the notebook and my face was white, was I really supposed to be in this classroom? Lucas Elledge was a fucking genius.

  “I like it,” He smiled. “Uhm, we have to critique each other,” Lucas looked at me, his curls falling his face. “I feel like you could do better, are you nervous?”

  I swallowed hard, I was embarrassed. No, it was not my best work. It was complete garbage. “Yeah, I was a little nervous.”

  “Well don’t be, I promise it gets worst. We have to learn how to take it.” Lucas nodded his head understandingly. “The teacher wants us to take criticism and understand that they are always helping not really bludgeoning us like it feels. So lightly I say your story is stuck between two worlds and you should choose one so the reader isn’t lost… you started with children leaving school and then went to a kingdom… stay in the kingdom… tell it differently. My name is Lucas, what’s yours?”

  “Cypress,” I smiled.

  He continued to talk and it was hard to understand anything that he said. My mind still pondered as it tried to accurately comprehend the level of his grief, he said even the skies cried for her… he was amazing. “Okay, I understand…”

  “Okay, well, what about mine?” Lucas waited as he stared at me inquisitively… he turned his head waited almost impatiently.

  I looked over the writing again, it was perfect. I nodded my head, “I actually don’t see anything wrong with it. It’s really good.” I bit my lip and handed the notebook back to him. “I mean the title doesn’t sync well, but other than that it is perfect.”

  “There is always something that can be fixed, no one is perfect.” Lucas nodded his head. “How long have you been writing?”

  “I have been writing for about 12 years. I have better work, but it was unexpected.”

  “She does every morning that class starts. She wants people to use what they can and write, tomorrow she’ll ask us to finish the short story and give it to the person on our right to be edited. Then she’ll pass it to the person in front to be critiqued and then she’ll grade them and send them to creative publishing class. I’m in that class, it’s nice.”

  “So everyone will see my paper.”

  “We’re working on it today, it’s the assignment.” He pointed to the board. “I’m free this afternoon around 5. I have to take my sister to her yoga class, then some other things. Can you come to the library and we can start there?”

  “I can.” I jotted down 5pm library in my planner for the day and then wrote the assignment down. Luckily, there was only one more class after this and I would be done early enough to car shop. I was not fond of the bus system.

  We walked out of the classroom and he stopped me in the hall, “Pardon me,” He said pushing pass some students. “Cypress, you done wonderful in class. I hope that I was not a wee too harsh. Forgive me?”

  “You're fine,” I ran her fingers through my untamed curls and his eyes had me caught in some form of trance. Do not stare, this is just the guy who wrote the book that had made your summer better than it was going. “I really am rusty.”

  “Well, I would love to get together sometime and work to improve. I see real potential and I want to help. And I would like to date you, but I'm sure our love for English will be enough for now?”

  “I actually would love to.” She was a honey color, but her cheeks were on fire red. She crossed her legs standing and nodded her head. If she only knew what the fuck she had just gotten herself into. These American women could not resist a good accent.

  “Perfect, let's just go to the library tonight and then Friday night I can take you to The Summit.”

  “Sounds like a perfect plan to me.”

  Asher

  I had never put much into what the hell I was wearing, but today for some reason I put some thought into it. I grabbed my red polo and tossed it back on the ground. It was the day I finally met Lucas Elledge. There was some excitement here for me. My father had warned me to be careful and to not push him. It could be dangerous, this I knew. This research was like stepping into a lion’s den knowing that there was no lifeline if I was found. But my PHD rested on this interview, or rather yet this observance if he even let me in.
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br />   Lucas Elledge was unlike any other human I had ever seen. He had successful committed almost ten murders this year alone. And no that is nothing to brag about, but there was no evidence tying him to any of the murders and those murders were just the tip of the iceberg for him. Lucas hunted like a lion. He stalked and lurked and then once he knew that they were at their most vulnerable moment he moved in to demolish whatever was in his path. I loved the thrill of it all and to the world he would be known as the one who got away, but to me he was Case Study B.

  I slid on a plain black T-shirt and some black jeans. I looked at my hair in the mirror and scrambled my hands through it making sure that it was perfectly messy. I made my way out of my new apartment to my first class, this university had the worst psychology department but he had not chosen the college for the department. Lucas' had adopted parents who lived three towns over and they were crazy over the Brit. He wooed them as he had done the rest of the world, blending in perfectly even though his real home was across the globe.

  I sat through class jotting down notes, but my mind was fixated on the stalk. How would I get this guy to let me in, Psychopaths were people that were good at not letting people in? He would kill me before he let me see the real him. My father said the only way to get his attention would be to call him out and let him know the cards that I held. I had sufficient enough evidence for there to be a formal investigation on him and he shouldn't kill me. That shit would not work.

  I walked to my next class and ignored all the ogling eyes of the university girls that followed me. I was handsome, I knew that. My looks came from my father, he passed me the charm as well. Sex was not hard to come by, which made it even harder to find someone to marry. My mom wanted grandchildren and I had nothing to offer her. I refused to be tied down to someone that would sleep with me before they knew my last name. I had ten minutes to get to my next class and pretend to listen again.

  This time in class I made strategies as to how to get close to him. He had a step brother named Mark and to be honest, I felt like he was a psychopath as well. He had no empathy. He had made three girls get abortions and then he stepped on people to get where he wanted to be, it was sickening. He had no remorse that one girl had even killed herself over him. He acted as if it never happened. He was a case study C, once I received the grant.