Right To My Wrong
By: Lani Lynn Vale
Prologue
It’s said that birthmarks are where you were killed in your previous life. Apparently I was killed by someone stabbing me in my boob. What a bitch way to die!
-Ruthie’s secret thoughts
Ruthie
“So, what’s your story?” The man at my side asked me.
I looked up from peeling the label off my beer and stared at him.
He was so beautiful, but everything I would never go for again.
Muscular.
Military.
An Alpha.
Those three things combined made for a man who always felt he knew the right way.
“What do you mean, what’s my story?” I muttered, looking back towards my label.
“Where’d you grow up?” He was a persistent bastard.
“Typical shit upbringing. My dad left my mom. My mom felt the benefits of having me were outweighed by the negatives of having me, so she gave me up for adoption. I never found anyone to take me in, so I spent twelve years in the foster system. When I turned eighteen, I was kicked out on the street, and I did the only thing I could, found a man that could support me. But he also liked to beat me. After a year of that, I killed him,” I said softly.
If knowing that fact was going to scare him off, I wanted to get it over with before I made a friend out of him. I wasn’t a fan of false niceties. I was a rip the band aid off kind of girl.
“Sawyer said you just got out,” the man continued.
I sighed and finally looked at him.
He was handsome.
So handsome that it was making me tongue tied. I wasn’t hot like most of the other women in the room. I was decent looking, but I wasn’t in his league.
Which was why I was looking at the label of my beer the majority of the time instead of at his face.
He’d been sitting beside me ever since I’d sat down, and I couldn’t figure out why.
In fact, he was downright gorgeous. Everything that made him wrong.
And the beard just made it even worse.
I couldn’t resist a beard.
Never could…and never would.
Tall with muscular arms. Wide shoulders. Deep green eyes and a messy mop of dirty blonde hair tumbling over his eyes, he was every woman’s dream.
His beard was one of those that was grown out of necessity instead of style, the kind where you were out in the desert and not near a razor kind of beard.
Which was conducive with the party we were having in honor of him coming home from his deployment in Afghanistan.
“Do you want me to leave you alone, because I’m sensing that from you,” the man said.
I sighed and looked at him, caught by those beautiful green eyes.
“Sterling, I’m one fucked up mess,” I finally said.
He grinned. “Well that makes two of us. I’m a fucked up mess molded into a ball of denial. Trust me. My fucked up mess could easily compete with your fucked up mess.”
I laughed.
If only that were true.
Chapter 1
Sometimes people are too chatty in the morning. And according to the Coffee Gods, it’s okay to kill those people. Slowly.
-Ruthie’s secret thoughts
Ruthie
“Shit, fuck, shit fucking hell,” I growled as I ran from my car to the convenience store where I worked.
The convenience store was one of three in the city of Benton, Louisiana, and I happened to work at the one in the harsher side of town.
But I liked it.
My boss gave me the hours I wanted.
I could go to school, and I could still work at my other job at Halligans and Handcuffs, seeing as it was the job that made me the most money.
Sterling and his two brothers, foster care brothers not club member brothers, came in every three days before they worked out.
Each would grab an energy drink. A Monster for Sterling, and Nos for his two brothers, and two Gatorade’s a piece. Only ever in the red. No blue, orange, or yellow for those guys.
Then they’d take turns paying.
I’d gathered over the last half a year that the middle brother was a baseball player, and the other two supported him during workouts and practice.
Or, at least, when Sterling was here, he did.
He’d been deployed about five months ago, and had just returned two weeks ago.
And I’d missed my time to see him if I didn’t hurry!
Shit!
I stepped in a puddle of water, saturating my pants leg all the way up to my knee.
“Dammit,” I growled, hitching my bag over my shoulder once more and walking quickly.
I didn’t run, though.
Not once I hit the slick black top near the pumps.
It always seemed to gather oil and the likes, and when it rained, it became like a slip and slide.
I’d seen no less than fifteen people bust their asses over the last six months that I’d worked there.
I’d told my boss that it was a hazard and that one day someone would sue, but all he could say to that was, ‘Let them. Then they can have this place and I wouldn’t have to deal with my mother in law anymore.’
