All The Ugly Things (Love and Lies Duet Book 1) Read online

  All the Ugly Things

  Love & Lies Duet, Book One

  Stacey Lynn

  All The Ugly Things

  Love & Lies Duet, Book One

  Stacey Lynn

  Copyright © 2021 Stacey Lynn

  Developmental Editing: Evident Ink

  Content Editing: My Brother’s Editor

  Proofreading: Virginia Tesi Carey

  Cover Design: Shanoff Designs

  All The Ugly Things is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, trademarks, and incidents are used fictitiously or are the product of the author’s imagination.

  All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reprinted, reproduced, or transmitted in any form without written permission of the author, except by a reviewer who may quote brief passages for review passages only.

  This purchased material is for personal use only and NOT to be shared. Thank you so much for respecting the author’s wishes.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. Lilly

  2. Lilly

  3. Hudson

  4. Lilly

  5. Hudson

  6. Lilly

  7. Lilly

  8. Hudson

  9. Hudson

  10. Lilly

  11. Lilly

  12. Lilly

  13. Hudson

  14. Lilly

  15. Hudson

  16. Lilly

  17. Lilly

  18. Hudson

  19. Lilly

  20. Lilly

  21. Lilly

  22. Lilly

  23. Hudson

  24. Lilly

  25. Lilly

  26. Lilly

  27. Hudson

  28. Lilly

  29. Hudson

  30. Lilly

  31. Hudson

  32. Lilly

  Thank You

  About the Author

  Other Books by Stacey Lynn

  Prologue

  Lilly

  “…For a maximum sentence of ten years.”

  Oh God. This couldn’t be happening. I was told probation. Probably community service. My knees trembled so violently I was in danger of collapsing from my stance behind the table.

  The Honorable Judge S. Sloane leaned forward and clasped his hands together. The S stood for Samuel, and he was a robust man around my father’s age. He’d been to our house for dinners over the years. The first time I’d met him, I was twelve. Thinning hair, wrinkled eyes, and only a hint of tenderness and remorse showed on his features before it vanished.

  “Do you understand the sentence which this court has given?”

  His words rang in my ears. These last months, all day, leading up to this moment, all of it was a haze.

  But… ten years? I would be twenty-eight years old by the time I got out.

  A lifetime.

  My knees buckled. My attorney made no move to catch me. I caught myself from collapsing and turned to glance at my parents.

  My mother had tears running down her cheeks. I willed her to look my way, give me some acknowledgment other than her tears that she loved me.

  My father. I caught his gaze before he looked to the judge behind my shoulder.

  I waited. A moment. Two. Three.

  Hoping he’d do something. That he’d stand and say this was all a mistake. That I wasn’t guilty because I wasn’t the driver.

  He did nothing.

  His silence hurt almost worse than the sentence.

  I shouldn’t have been surprised. He could have done something, anything, to get his only remaining living child out of this mess and he’d washed his hands of me weeks ago.

  “Miss Huntington. Due to your unique situation, you will serve your time at the Iowa Correctional Institution for Women in Mitchellville. Do you understand all that’s been told to you today?”

  Iowa? But I lived in Illinois. I was raised here. Why in the hell would they send me to a different state?

  I spun back to face him. From his perch on the raised bench, he appeared formidable.

  “Iowa?” I croaked. Why was I stuck on the location when I was going to prison? And what did it matter? All my friends abandoned me as soon as word got out about the accident. And it wasn’t like my parents would come see me. I had no one.

  Not anymore. Not now that Josh was dead. I fought back tears. They wouldn’t do any good now.

  “Yes, sir,” my attorney replied and nudged my side. “Yes, Your Honor. We understand.”

  “Yes, Your Honor,” I mumbled.

  I spoke through a fog. The thick haze of fear and disbelief. It evaporated when two officers approached me and the cold steel I was becoming familiar with wrapped around my wrists.

  I was turned around, and once again faced my parents.

  My mom was now stoic. No hint of her silent tears, no smeared mascara, no sadness in her icy blue eyes that matched mine.

  My father, cold as the shackles being placed around my ankles, blinked.

  “I’m sorry.” I’d said it a hundred times. It didn’t matter. It didn’t even matter he wouldn’t listen to the truth.

  “You ruined this family.”

  “I didn’t—”

  “Go. Don’t contact us. We won’t visit.”

  He took my mother’s hand and pulled her to her feet. It might have been a kindness from the officers, or additional torture, but they waited until my parents left the courtroom before turning me around again.

  Reality set in like a Midwest thunderstorm, from cloudless blue skies to storm warnings in the blink of an eye.

  “Can we appeal?” I asked my attorney. My voice had never sounded so small.

  He tapped the files on the tabletop and closed his laptop.

  “You pled guilty.”

  He didn’t look at me. Not once. Sounded like he thought I was stupid, though. Who could blame him?

  “Time to go. Get moving.” A tug at my shackles forced me to stumble forward.

  I went with the officers.

  To prison.

  For a crime I didn’t commit because my dad had always hated me.

  1

  Lilly

  Six Years Later

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Paroled. Out early. Better start getting your things together. Don’t know when you’ll be leaving. Could be any day.”

  As the guard spoke, she pointed to the letter she’d already tossed on my minuscule desk, cluttered with the tiny television set and the even more outdated stereo I’d been able to purchase from working in the automotive garage for the last two years.

  “They already had the hearing?” I stumbled back to the bed right as my legs gave out.

  Six years ago, my life changed in the blink of an eye. And now… I shook my head. I’d never dare dreamed being paroled was a possibility.

  Three weeks ago, I received notice I was eligible for parole. My hands had shaken when I read the notice, explaining I wouldn’t be able to attend, but I could write a letter stating why I should be allowed to reenter society.

  It took me three days to draft the letter and that was only after having my fellow inmate and friend, Candace, help.

  I knew the hearing was coming, but I thought I’d be told when they were meeting. The last few weeks had slipped by like molasses, waiting every day to hear something until the hope of it happening had begun to evaporate.

  The guard looked at me dispassionately. The same stoic expression I’d become used to in this place.

  “I’ve been paroled?” I asked again, seeking clarification. I was still shocked I was even eligible for parole. Six years in prison taught me a lot.
Like, I learned if you pled guilty, your chance of ever getting an appeal was virtually impossible. Plus, there was the money issue. It wasn’t like my job of working in the automotive garage, making $1.10 an hour provided me the means to hire an attorney. I also learned early on that if you ever became eligible for parole, character witnesses were practically required. Victim’s statements were often taken. Members of the community gave references.

  No one would do that for me.

  Unless… had either of them had a change of heart?

  “My mom?” Hope had me jumping from the bed toward the desk. My hands curled around the edge of it and I leaned forward. “Did my mom come? My dad? Are they here?” I hadn’t heard from either of them since the day I was sentenced. The only thing left I had of them were all the letters I’d tried to write the first few years I was inside. Then they started coming back as undeliverable. No forwarding address.

  My parents moved while I was in prison and couldn’t be bothered to let me know. Why would I think my mom would help me now? I clung to the hope that someday she’d come to me, tell me how sorry she was for turning her back on me. The naïve dreams of a foolish girl. That’s what I was.

  “Don’t know. Don’t care. Neither should you. You’re getting out. Isn’t that enough?”

  Was it? I was getting out, heading nowhere with nothing to look forward to. For the first time since I’d stepped through these gates, I didn’t know if I was ready to leave them.

  “Better start packing your things. Can take anywhere between a few days and a couple of weeks. You’ll learn more later,” the guard repeated, leaving my cell door open as she left.

  I was in a medium-security area and we were allowed opened doors during the afternoons as long as they stayed open and we didn’t enter another inmate’s cell. But we could talk to them in the doorways.

  As shocked as I was at the guard’s declaration and quick dismissal, I was much less surprised when Candace appeared in the doorway I was still gawking at, trying to make sense of what happened.

  “You’re getting out.” She smiled. Age lines dug into the corners and edges of her lips and around her eyes. At almost eighty, Candace had been inside longer than anyone. She heralded herself a caretaker of the younger inmates. For the last six years, she’d been my only true friend. The only person I trusted with the truth.

  She’d never see the outside again, and tears pooled in my eyes at the thought of suddenly having to say goodbye to her.

  I shook my head to try to clear it. There was no point in crying. Tears wouldn’t do anything.

  “I guess?” It all seemed to happen so quickly, and yet at the same time, took forever. “I don’t understand how.”

  “Maybe your mom left him.”

  My mom would never leave my father. He’d kill her before she could, even if she gathered the strength to try.

  “Not possible,” I muttered and picked up the envelope the guard set on my desk.

  My chin wobbled and the papers in my hand trembled. I set them down and clasped my hands together to settle myself but none of the techniques I learned in therapy, such as it was, helped.

  I glanced up at Candace, allowed her to see my fear. “What do I do?”

  She pursed her lips, making all those lines dig even deeper. She had a kind soul. A hard shell and cement exterior, but underneath all that, I admired Candace. After years of being raped by her stepfather, she armed herself with a knife and when he tried to have her, she stabbed him in the stomach. When he still came at her, she’d managed to dig out a shotgun she’d stolen from a neighbor’s house and shot him in the chest. She said she could still close her eyes and see pieces of body stuck to her bedroom walls.

  She talked about it with an eerie smile on her face, but hell if I wasn’t proud of her.

  She didn’t deserve to spend a life behind bars for what she’d suffered any more than I did.

  With the fiercest expression on her aged face, she leaned in incrementally and lowered her voice. “You live, Lilly. That’s what you’re going to do. You live for me. For the women in here. You live for your brother. Finish your schooling. Get a job. Get a life you can be proud of and you never, ever look back to this place or to your former life.”

  As she spoke, determination flooded my veins. She had a way about her. A bossiness and fierceness I respected after I stopped being so afraid of her. Without her, I would have gone insane within weeks. Hell, I was halfway there on day two when she plopped her lunch tray down next to me and taught me all I needed to know.

  Candace was more of a mom and parent to me in prison than I’d ever had in my life.

  “I don’t know if I can do it,” I admitted. I went from living at home to behind prison walls when I was eighteen years old. Now I was twenty-four, almost twenty-five. I had no friends. No family. Inside these walls, I’d learned the system, knew my role. Outside? That was a whole new ballgame I hadn’t let myself truly ever consider being my reality.

  “You don’t, you end up back here. That what you want?”

  “No.” Except prison was safe. I knew the rules. Followed them. Kept my head down and socialized enough to be safe without getting close. I’d been in jail for what felt like a lifetime.

  “You better start packing.” She stepped back and glanced down the hallway before facing me again. “You shouldn’t be in here and we both know it. What happened to you was tragic. Now’s your time to make up for that, to prove them all wrong and flip them the finger. Those parents of yours didn’t deserve you and now you get to live free of them. Forever. Make me proud, Lilly. I know you can.”

  She vanished, headed to who knew where to do who knew what. I didn’t ask what Candace did when she wasn’t around me, but I’d long since suspected her of knowing everything that went on inside and everyone’s business.

  Six days later, the two measly garbage bags I was given were packed along with a box that held my radio and television, and I was sitting in the warden’s office.

  Maybe she gave me a character reference. I didn’t get in trouble. I didn’t cause problems. I worked hard. A lifetime of hearing about the ethics of hard work and fortitude too ingrained to dissipate behind cell walls.

  “You’re to report to this halfway house in Des Moines,” Warden Dunham said. Her first name was Patricia. She was stern and unemotional as she handed me my information. She was a tough woman, but she had to be. Still, I kind of liked her. She was fair.

  “A shelter? I’m not going to Illinois?”

  Cold slithered into my soul, chilling what was left of my hope. Of course I wasn’t going back home. What would be the point, anyway?

  She eyed me with her eagle-precision awareness before she handed me another sheet of paper. “Ellen Porter is your parole officer. You’ll have to report to her in twenty-four hours. She’ll help you get a job, get you set up with your studies if you choose to continue working on your two-year degree. She’ll ensure you follow your parole guidelines but she’s also a resource for help. Don’t make her job harder.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” I wouldn’t. I’d be the best paroled prisoner ever.

  “Any questions?”

  Only a thousand. One prominent. Who helped me? It didn’t matter, did it?

  I’d been in chains too long to question this now.

  “Here are the rest of your belongings. Your Illinois driver’s license is expired and out of state, so talk to Ellen about what you need to do to get a new ID. Per conditions of your parole, you won’t be able to get a license until your parole is completed, Follow the rest of the parole guidelines, and I trust I’ll never see you again.”

  “You won’t. I promise. And thank you.”

  For the first time since I’d met her, Warden Dunham gave me a soft smile. One that almost made me cry again. Almost like she believed I could do this. “You did the time. Did the work. Now go do something good.”

  My cheeks burned. It’d been so long since someone believed I could do anything good. Candace, maybe. J
osh, definitely.

  I blinked away the memory of him and grabbed the envelope the warden held out. “Thank you, again. For this.”

  “You earned it. Good luck.”

  Later, after processing and my bags were checked, I was dressed in clothes donated by Goodwill for these exact situations. Long gone were designer clothes and shoes and handbags. I didn’t care. The sweatshirt I wore and the aged denim jeans were the most comfortable things I’d worn in years. Anything was better than the scratchy, ill-fitted, baggy gray uniforms I’d spent six years wearing. I wrapped my arms around my stomach and relished the worn, soft insides of the Iowa sweatshirt.

  “Face the left,” the guard said, once I took the bagged items back from him.

  I stood in front of a set of metal double doors. Beyond that would be a chain-link fence with barbed wire coiled around the top.

  Every second I wait made my blood pump faster and harder until all I heard was a roar in my ears, drowning out the loud buzzer that sounded the alarm.

  The doors slowly opened.

  I didn’t look back.

  I walked out into the bright, but frigid winter sun, clutching my meager belongings to me. The echo of the interstate in front of me, a wall of cornfields beyond.

  A taxi waited, already given my new address to a woman’s halfway house where I would spend at minimum, the first six months.

  I was moving to Des Moines.

  Freed from prison.

  I’d never been more terrified of blue skies and snow and semi-tall buildings in my life.