Honkytonk Hell: A Dark and Twisted Urban Fantasy (The Broken Bard Chronicles Book 1) eden Hudson (best book club books txt) 📖

He would’ve let them lock you up and throw away the key. He would’ve had to choose between you and your mother and—

—and Dad loved Mom more than anything. I didn’t realize I was repeating the words until I felt the shrapnel from the explosion shift. Dad had always saved Mom, but he wouldn’t have saved me.

Mikal understood. She’d been rejected, too. We were just alike—two soldiers whose families had abandoned us because we were screwed-up.

But Mikal wasn’t screwed-up, not to me. She was strong, powerful, and so beautiful. I buried my face in her neck. She smelled incredible, like cinnamon and coffee and hot, sweet peppers. I could make her pain go away for a little while. I could make her feel what I felt when I looked at her—my Mikal, my burning angel.

As if I was standing somewhere outside, I watched myself make love to her. I heard my voice tell her how much I needed her, how bad I wanted her.

My chest hurt, then prickled and burned as if someone was drawing pictures on my skin with dry ice. “Resist or Serve”—the tattoo cut through the haze like razor wire. Bile stung the back of my throat, pushing up farther and farther until I was choking on it.

Don’t fight it, Mikal said. I know that you want this as much as I do. You can’t lie to me, Colt.

I couldn’t hold back. I came, too. When it was over, that empty pit in my stomach ached. My fault. All of this had been my fault. Just say “fuck you.” Disconnect. Don’t engage. It wasn’t rocket science.

Mikal folded her wings and laid down with her head on my shoulder.

I know you can feel the end closing in, she said. That’s why it’s getting so hard to remember what it felt like to hate me.

Fuck you, I said.

She laughed. You just did. And well, I might add.

I think I told her, I do hate you, you sadistic bitch. I hate you. I can’t wait ‘til you’re burning in Hell—but I don’t know for sure. I couldn’t hear myself anymore. The more I tried to yell at her, the louder the echoes in my head got—louder and louder until all I could hear was My Mikal, my burning angel, my Mikal, my burning angel, my Mikal, my burning angel… The words were everywhere, part of everything, and I had to start screaming to drown them out.

Tough

 

It was a dream, so I didn’t freak out that Ryder was alive again. He had a dip of Copenhagen in his lip and he was trying to beat the pussy out of me, like always. But unlike always, Colt wasn’t cleaning the same gun for the hundredth time or recounting ammo while I got my ass handed to me. So I spit out some blood and asked Ryder, “Where’s Colt?”

“Don’t act as dumb as you look, Baby Boy. You know where he is.” And I got a boot in the face for letting my guard down.

When I got back up, Sissy was there. She hugged me and I started crying because she was getting blurry and I couldn’t remember what it sounded like when she talked.

“I hate this town,” I told her.

Sissy wiped some snot and blood off of my face and smeared it across the knee of her jeans. Then she picked up my John Deere hat, dusted it off, and put it back on my head.

“I can’t get Colt back,” I told her.

“Then you better man the hell up,” Ryder said. I ducked the first punch, but the second one caught me in the stomach. He didn’t let up when I doubled over. “You’re on your own for real now, Baby Boy. Sing your way out of this one. Maybe if you play your guitar real pretty, they’ll just let you be.”

I tried to fight back, even though in real life all that ever did was make it worse. Ryder got his arm around my neck and choked off my air. I tried to tell him I gave up, but Jason Gudehaus had my voice again. Sissy would stop Ryder if I asked, but she left because I couldn’t holler for her to come back. She left and Colt was gone and Ryder’s bicep crushed my throat.

***

I fell off the couch.

Jax laughed and looked away from his video game for a second. “Flashbacks?”

I shook my head, then stopped when the motion made me sick. I closed my eyes and rested my forehead on the floor and listened to Jax pause his game while he got off the coffee table and sat on the couch. My brain did a slow spin inside my skull.

I must’ve won PKR. At least I hadn’t pissed the couch—which was kind of a wonder looking at all the empty beer cans by the coffee table. Then there was that bottle of tequila at Rowdy’s.

Oh, shit, Scout. If I thought really hard, I could remember standing in the kitchen of her and Harper’s parents’ old trailer house. She couldn’t find a piece of paper, but she had a pen, so I wrote it on her hand—Get some self-esteem.

Man, I missed being able to groan.

“All right, guys, I’m heading out,” Harper said, bouncing into the living room. She had on her hot pink bikini and her beach bag over her shoulder, ready to go lifeguard the lake. “You look like crap, Tough.”

I rolled onto my back and made the sign of the cross at her with my forearms.

“Excuse me?” she snapped, getting her body all cocked the way her and Scout both do when they’re offended.

Right then, I didn’t have the energy to figure out how to apologize. Thank God for Jax.

“Take it easy on him,” Jax said. “Can’t you see the alckie’s hurting?”

“I