Free Sample
Preview from chapter one
The summer heat settled over the neighborhood like a wet blanket that refused to lift. It was late June in Glendale, a suburb where every house looked the same and nothing interesting ever happened. Until it did.
Karen Mitchell was forty-two years old and looked ten years younger. She stood five-foot-six with auburn hair that fell past her shoulders in loose waves she always kept pulled back in a clip. Her body was the kind that other mothers hated her for. Full breasts she hid under conservative blouses. Wide hips and a round ass she disguised with loose-fitting jeans. She never wore makeup to the grocery store. Never showed cleavage at school functions. She was the PTA mom. The one who brought homemade cookies and volunteered for every bake sale.
Her husband had left three years ago. Traded her in for a twenty-five-year-old paralegal with fake tits and no personality. Karen hadn't been touched since. Hadn't even tried. She buried herself in routine. In cleaning. In making sure the house was spotless and dinner was always on time.
Her son Derek was twenty-one. Home from his junior year at State. He was tall. Six-two with broad shoulders and dark hair he kept buzzed short on the sides. He had his father's jawline but his mother's green eyes. He worked out religiously and it showed. The kind of body that stretched t-shirts in ways that made women look twice.
She needs to loosen up, Derek thought as he watched his mother scrub the kitchen counter for the third time that afternoon. She was wearing those baggy sweatpants again. The oversized shirt that swallowed her frame. Hiding. Always hiding.
He had noticed the change in her over the past three years. The way she flinched when men spoke to her. The way she stayed home every weekend. The light going out behind her eyes slowly, month by month. His father had broken something in her and nobody had bothered to fix it.
His phone buzzed. A text from Max.
Still on for tonight?
Derek typed back. Yeah. Come by around eight. Bring Trev.
Max Cole was twenty-two. Six-three, dark-skinned, built like a linebacker. He played defensive end for the university team and carried himself with the easy confidence of someone who had never been told no. He had a smile that disarmed people and hands the size of dinner plates.
Trevor Park was twenty-one, same as Derek. Korean-American, lean and wiry with sharp cheekbones and a quiet intensity that women found magnetic. He didn't talk much but when he did people listened.