Winter (Four Seasons #1)

WINTER

Nikita
Rae

Copyright ©
2013 Nikita Rae

Smashwords
Edition

All rights
reserved.

No part of this
publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any
form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other
electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written
permission of the author, except in the case of brief quotations
embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses
permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the
author, addressed “Attention: Permissions Coordinator,” at
[email protected]

This is a work
of fiction. Any resemblance to peoples either living or deceased is
purely coincidental. Names, places and characters are figments of
the author’s imagination, or, if real, used fictitiously. The
author recognises all trademarks contained within this
work.

Cover design by
Frankie Rose

“
Never regret
thy fall,

O Icarus of
the fearless flight

For the
greatest tragedy of them all

Is never to
feel the burning light.”

-Oscar
Wilde

Contents

One:
Ceilidh

Two:
Rosito’s

Three:
Hangover

Four:
Noah

Five: Smells Like
Sex

Six: Super
Eight

Seven: It’s A
Date

Eight: Surprise,
Surprise

Nine: Hook, Line &
Sinker

Ten:
Icarus

Eleven: Midnight
Run

Twelve:
Addict

Thirteen: Devil’s In The
Details

Fourteen:
Easier

Fifteen: A Little
Early

Sixteen:
Outed

Seventeen: Last
Words

Eighteen:
Need

Nineteen:
Escape

Twenty:
Toxic

Twenty One:
Threats

Twenty Two: The Truth Will
Out

Twenty Three:
Just
Call

Twenty Four:
D.M.F

Twenty Five:
Admissions

Twenty Six:
Breakwater

Twenty Seven:
Laney

Twenty Eight: Sucker
Punch

Twenty Nine:
Home

Thirty: Escape Part
Two

Thirty One:
Unexpected

Thirty Two:
Steel

One

Ceilidh

THE NAMES of
the men my father killed are a mantra, a twisted beat to accompany
the throb of my heart and every single step I take through
life.
Sam O’Brady. Jefferson Kyle. Adam
Bright. Sam O’Brady. Jefferson Kyle. Adam Bright.

When I breathe
in, it’s Sam. When I breathe out, it’s Jefferson, or Jeff depending
on how well you knew him. Adam exists somewhere in the space
between breaths, the stretched out moments when I forget to breathe
at all. I knew Adam. He was Maggie’s father, the basketball coach
at Breakwater High. His brother was the town’s mayor, so everyone
had known his face.

I had this
dream that once I escaped the confines of Breakwater, things would
change for me, things wouldn’t be as hard, but I haven’t taken any
chances. My family name is synonymous with pain and murder no
matter where I seem to go, and that’s why I’ve abandoned it. That’s
why, when I left my past behind in small town Wyoming to come to
college, I became Avery Patterson.

“
Avery! Hey,
Avery! Wait up!” Morgan Kepler jogs after me down the corridor as I
exit my English class. She either recognizes me by my bright blonde
hair, or because I’m clutching my file to my chest, keeping my head
down like always. I give her a smile as I hurry out of the School
of International and Public Affairs, one of the most infamous
landmarks of Columbia University. Morgan, for some reason, has
befriended me. She’s wild and outspoken in a way I never have been.
Maybe I would have turned out like her if my father hadn’t shot
three men dead when I was fourteen years old. But then again, who
knows who I could have been.

Morgan smells
like mint gum and Issey Miyake. She flashes me a bright smile when
she pitches up at my side, nudging me with her shoulder. “Are you
coming to the
ceilidh
tonight?” The word, sounding like ‘kaylee’, is foreign to
me.

“
The
what
now?”

She twists her
dark auburn hair around her index finger and grins. “Tate says it’s
Irish for party. The girls from Upsilon are dressing up as sexy
leprechauns. Didn’t you get the memo?”

I groan,
hiding behind my folder. “No way, Kepler.” Sexy leprechauns my ass.
I’m not spending my evening hanging out with a bunch of Xanax
popping, neurotic bitches. Especially when it’s a Thursday and last
time I checked, classes aren’t done ‘til Friday. “I’m not partying
tonight. I have midterms next week.”

“
So do I,”
Morgan laughs. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t give myself one night
off!” She lets go of her own hair to tug at mine, and I find myself
wishing I’d given in to the insane urge I’d had to chop it all off
a few nights back. If it were an inch long instead of curling
loosely well past my shoulders, she would have nothing to grab hold
of. And guys wouldn’t stare at me whenever I passed them in the
corridor, making assumptions based on my appearance, like I just
know they do. After all, the majority of girls at Columbia with
hair my color get it out of a bottle and are known for being all
party.

I slap
Morgan’s hand away and give her a tight smile. “I’m no good at
cramming. I have to work harder than you to score a good grade. You
don’t want me to crash and burn, do you? I’ll be a massive failure
and no one will hire me. I’d have to come live with you for the
rest of my life. You’ll be forever wishing you’d let me alone so I
could concentrate.”

“
Pssshhh.” She
tips her head back and moans. “Please! We’re going to be living
together after college, anyway. And besides, you’re never gonna be
home. You’re going to be some hotshot journo that gets invited to
all the celeb parties, out all night harassing the A-list elite for
the inside track on their failing marriages and boob
jobs.”

Morgan has
entirely the wrong idea about why I want to become a journalist.
The very last thing I have in mind is reporting on the society and
celebrity columns. “Yeah, real funny.”

“
Avery!”
Morgan hooks her arm through mine and pulls me off my path toward
the Low Memorial Library, instead guiding me off campus, towards
Morningside Heights, where we both live. “You have to start
enjoying yourself.” She gives me the look she reserves only for me,
the one that says I’m losing myself again. I told Morgan about my
dad by mistake; she is the only person at Columbia University who
knows. We got so drunk one night that I threw up into a trashcan on
Broadway and blabbed the whole story—the shock of being told my dad
had committed suicide after he’d killed three other members of the
Breakwater community; that I’d been a social pariah since that day,
and had been kicked and punched and bullied through the last four
years of high school.

I barely knew
Morgan at the time. I was seriously lucky that she was a loyal
friend from the outset, because I almost killed myself creating
this new persona. I don’t know what I would have done if I couldn’t
be someone new here. Avery Patterson is an ordinary girl from
Idaho. Her extended family hadn’t disowned her because of her
father’s transgressions, and her own mother certainly hadn’t dumped
her on her father’s best friend’s doorstep so she could forget all
about her old life and go become a coldblooded defense lawyer in
the city.

Morgan draws
her eyebrows together, arching over piercing grey eyes. “You
know
we have to go,” she
says.

I groan again.
“But why?”

“
Because I
look killer in green. And you need to get laid.”

I thump her
arm as she pulls me through the entrance of our building on
125
^th
Street, guiding me up the first flight of stairs. “That’s the
very last thing I need. I don’t have—”

“
If you say
you don’t have time for sex, I am literally going to scream!” A
group of girls on their way down the stairs stop talking to shoot
us both dirty looks.

“
You’re making
people think I’m a tramp, Morgan!”

“
So what?
You’d find life a whole lot more fun if you were a bit more ‘free’
with your attention.”

“
A bit
more…ugh!” She opens the door to her apartment and I storm passed
her, throwing myself down onto her bed. My shared apartment is
another three floors up, so we usually hang out at her place
between classes because it means less cardio. Unfortunately, we
weren’t lucky enough to score each other as roommates in the
housing lottery, and no one was brave enough to trade off the
books.

“
You haven’t
been on a single date since the start of college. You realize
that’s what your freshman year is for, right? Meeting guys?
Everyone knows this.” Morgan begins hunting for clothes. She’s one
of those people that appears tidy and organized on the surface but
in reality is all over the place. That certainly explains the row
of empty hangars and the towering pile of scrunched up satin and
lace in her closet. And under her bed. I like how carefree Morgan
is, but sometimes her messiness makes me nervous. Everything in my
apartment is spotless, something my roommate Leslie has been good
enough to maintain.

“
I always
thought freshman year was about figuring out what you wanted to
major in and laying the ground work for achieving a solid degree,”
I tell her, ignoring the fact that she’s throwing random items of
green material at me.

“
Yeah, but
you’ve already done both of those things. Oh!” Her head appears
around her closet door. “You know, I can find someone to take you
if you like?”

“
No! Jeez,
Morgan, I’m not even going!”

“
Yes, you are.
Hey, is your mom still paying you a ridiculously huge allowance
each month to make up for the fact that she’s a bitch?”

My shoulders
slump. I turn and look at her. Dear Lord, the girl is so
transparent. “And I am
not
going shopping, either.”

******

As usual,
through diabolical and nefarious means, Morgan gets what she wants
and later that night I find myself pressed up against a horny
leprechaun-ette and a shirtless guy who’s torso is panted green.
Whether that’s an Irish thing or not I don’t know, but he certainly
smells of whiskey. When their make out session develops into heavy
petting, I decide enough is enough. Morgan is talking to Tate by
the kegs, laughing behind her hand the way she does when she’s
flirting. She thinks her smile is bad because her lower teeth are
slightly crooked. She should be thanking her lucky stars she wasn’t
forced through the nightmarish dentistry ordeals I was as a kid,
just to satisfy her mother’s vain pursuit of possessing the
‘perfect’ child. Yeah, that’s right—
possessing
. Like I was an inanimate
object or something.

Morgan and
Tate have had an on-off thing for the past six months, and watching
them skirt around each other, pretending to be only vaguely
interested, is getting really boring.