Bittersweet Wreckage Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Newsletter & Book Description

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  About DRAGONFLY NIGHTMARE

  Books by Erin Richards

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Newsletter

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  BITTERSWEET WRECKAGE

  Her dad wasn't supposed to die.

  He wasn't supposed to have a second family, and her mom wasn't supposed to slip into a prescription drug haze.

  And she definitely wasn't supposed to kiss her new “half-brother.”

  Ivy Lynwood has spent her life under the oppressive thumb of her abusive father. When the impossible happens, and he's found dead in a boat fire, Ivy thinks her life may finally be turning around. But her newfound freedom is short-lived; just as she and her mother start to move on, they learn that Ivy’s father had a second family—whose mother also died in the boat fire.

  Child Services asks Ivy’s mother to take in the orphaned teenagers, and her life spirals even further out of control. Her mother disappears into a drugged la-la land, leaving Ivy to clean up the pieces… while clues of her mother’s guilt in the fire stack up. And for the first time, Ivy falls in love… with the son of her father’s dead mistress. Even though Ivy and Jesse are unrelated, he’s off limits when he moves in with the Lynwoods. Ivy knows she’ll never have the normal family she dreamed of—but can she manage to turn the wreck of her life into any family at all?

  Chapter 1

  I spat into the cocktail shaker, poured in exactly four ounces of ice-cold vodka, and measured out a quarter ounce of dry vermouth. The scent of the bitter, herby alcohol caused my nose to scrunch up. The stench reminded me of the compost heap in the backyard. Using tongs, I tossed in six ice cubes, capped the shaker, and shook it three times from top to bottom. Heaven forbid my skin touch the ice. Dad may not recognize the taste of my spit, but he sure as heck could taste lotion or soap residue from my fingers in his drink. Lesson learned the one time I’d used my fingers. The red imprint of his hand had lingered on my face for hours. I’d remember that nosebleed forever. That day marked the second coming of Ivy Lynwood, child of steel.

  “Hurry up, Ivy.” Mom breezed past the fully stocked bar in the family room, arms flailing wildly in my direction. “He’s having a freakout because the printer’s on the fritz,” she whispered, a shaky edge of fear in her voice.

  And it’s my butt he’ll boot if I don’t appease the Master of Worldwide Jerks. I gave the martini another spritz of spit. My throat tickled. Maybe I had a cold brewing, or the plague. One could only wish.

  I strained the drink into a frosted martini glass, dropped in the two-olive toothpick, and finagled a twist of lemon peel onto the rim, dipping it an inch into the liquid. Four inches of peel, no more and no less. The perfect martini coming up. I’d named it the Ivy Spitini.

  Mom handed me the special serving tray. An indentation on the bottom held the glass base steady. After the second time I’d knocked a glass onto the hallway floor two years ago and suffered my father’s drunken wrath, she’d bought the tray to spare me. Not only had he made me fork over my allowance for the alcohol and glass I’d wasted, he’d forced me to adopt a Cinderella complex and clean the entire downstairs floor on hands and knees with a handful of microfiber cloths. The Ivy Spitini had been born the next day.

  I expertly balanced the drink as I glided through the house to Dad’s office overlooking the Almaden Hills above San Jose. I’d done the job a million times since I’d learned to make his favorite drink at twelve years old. My flip-flops slapped the spotless travertine stone floor, announcing my arrival in his palatial office.

  Dad slammed the lid on the printer, the clatter echoing up to the twelve-foot ceiling. “Fix this piece of garbage before I throw it through the window.” He pinned a glare on me, steam practically billowing out his ears, then he pinned the martini with a look of lust, his forked tongue slithering over his bottom lip. He held more love for the Spitini than anything in the world.

  “Sure, Dad. Will this be a two-martini night?” I braved the words, white-knuckling the tray.

  He snorted, his bright blue eyes darkening and narrowing. “I’m so glad you inherited my smarts over your mother’s dumb blonde genes.”

  I’m so glad I inherited Mom’s fine blonde hair over your ugly salt-and-pepper straw head. I bit my tongue, held the tray out. Dad lifted the drink and I held my breath. As always, he slurped a small sip, tasting and weighing the liquid on his tongue, verifying the perfectly measured recipe. Would my second glob of spit heave it over the edge? Something sharp twisted in my stomach.

  Dad pulled his lucky corporate-deal tie loose. I pictured the silk worms weaving and spitting to create the flawless tie. “Perfect. Now fix the printer.”

  “Then may I do my homework?”

  “As long as you fix me another double in exactly twenty minutes.”

  I swished my tongue inside my mouth, prepping for another dose of Ivy’s Special Ingredient.

  So began our typical evening at the Lynwood funny farm when Dad graced us with the presence of his magnificent assholeness. After the second Spitini, Mom would be on the receiving end of his attentions in one way or another instead of me. Help was beyond her at that point. She’d made her bed and had wasted plenty of opportunities to set fire to it and vanish into the night. Something—Dad’s money, our big houses, the latest luxury cars, I had no clue what—kept my mother on his right arm like a trophy wife. She was and always would be a doormat to him. I hated him for whatever bound her to him, for whatever kept us living our dysfunctional life. Maybe someday I’d understand. Until then, I counted the days to graduation next year when I could follow my twenty-year-old sister’s footsteps to college. Kristen had split for UCLA and thrown away the map and key to the Lynwood house.

  Bending over the printer, I mentally counted the days to my own escape. I didn’t plan on playing bartender or being my dad’s personal slave for the rest of my life. Nor a doormat. I punched buttons on the printer to verify the malfunction, probably caused by his screw-up. How lame was it that MBA Dad hadn’t learned the skills to pull out the empty blue toner cartridge and stick in a new one? Easy enough a dumb blonde… cat could do it.

  The leafy branches in the hydrangea garden fluttered outside the floor-to-ceiling window. I spied the long tail of our neighbor’s tabby peeking above the poufy blue blooms.

  “Oh, crap city,” I muttered. Rex, my bud when my father wasn’t home, was poised to jump onto the birdbath and to uncertain death if Dad spied him and the empty birdbath I’d forgotten to fill. Rex left turds in the planters and it pissed my father off. I waved at the cat, trying to shoo him away as if he understood human gestures. Go, go, I mentally shouted to the
cat heading for the guitar string factory. I tossed the small empty printer cartridge at the window. It clinked against the glass, scaring Rex away in a mad dart toward his own yard to the left of our driveway.

  “Damn it, dial it down, Ivy.”

  “Sorry.” I retrieved the ink cartridge. “It slipped.”

  “Hurry up and fix my other drink. Tell your mother I’m not hungry. I have too much work.”

  Indignation for Mom jerked my movements. She’d spent two hours creating a gourmet meal. Two tasks she did well: cooking and decorating. No doubt, an antianxiety pill was the dessert du jour later. Just the way he preferred her best: pliable, quiet, and flat on her back, a pretty, ill-used and abused rug.

  “Anything else you need me to do?” I hung in the double doorway. Ya know, like spoon-feed you, kiss your feet, spit shine your car? I clutched my pendants, clinking the dragon against the silver disc hanging on the chain. I never took my token dragon necklace off. Dragons were protectors and purveyors of good luck. Yeah, I know, I wasn’t super lucky or well-protected. Yet I kept wishing, kept holding onto my dream. Every day I woke up alive, it had served me well.

  Without lifting his head, his nose practically attached to his laptop screen, he said, “Finish your homework, then I need you to print, collate, and bind fifty copies of my morning’s presentation. I’ll leave it in your folder on the network marked with today’s date. Melody packed the supplies in the car. Don’t leave fingerprints on the trunk lid either.”

  Anger painfully tightened my fingers on the door molding. Don’t they pay your admin enough money? Because you certainly don’t pay me enough to do her job and mine. And isn’t your badass tech company supposed to go green? Shoot, I won’t be able to finish the last book in my favorite fantasy series, I internally wailed. What would The Hollows witch Rachel Morgan do? Load a sleepy-time charm in her splat gun and bang one down on Dad? Or concoct a charm to turn him into a toad for Rex to bat around?

  “When you wash my car Saturday, use the new microfiber towels and that spray polish. This time use the new tire black too. You didn’t use it last week.”

  “I did use the new stuff.” I risked his outrage to quell my own, locking my knees in place. “Do you want me to try a different brand?” I offered, trying to simmer him down.

  “Use your head, Ivy. Now get out.”

  Another night of cordial bliss serving the needs of the CEO of Worldwide Jerks ’R’ Us.

  Briefly, I thought about calling Mariana, my one real friend, to talk me off the ledge. That idea lasted all of one second. Bad idea to introduce her to my screwed-up home life. I had no one else to call, no one to hear my ranting. Friends had passed me by as we relocated from town to town following Dad’s meteoric rise to the top of the corporate food chain. Why make friends, when I’d just have to leave them in a year or two?

  Life in San Jose was no different from any other town we’d lived in, except we’d lived here for three years with no plans to leave anytime soon. Dad bragged that his position as Chief Marketing Officer/Senior Vice-President was good enough for him and his type A-for-asshole personality. I’d tentatively befriended Mariana, but I wasn’t convinced we’d remain in San Jose much longer. Sigh.

  By the time I finished everyone’s homework and crashed, it was two in the morning. Sleep came fast. Morning arrived faster when my door burst open and admitted my raving father at five o’clock. Screw. Me. Now.

  “You screwed up the page order in my presentation.”

  I bolted off my bed, nearly braining myself against the headboard. “What?” I knuckled the sleep from my eyes, combed my long mussed hair behind my ears. “I triple-checked them.” My agitation mushroomed, and I pinched the skin of my hand between thumb and forefinger, misdirecting the burning desire of my fingers to stimulate his brain through his eye sockets.

  “Try again.” He yanked my tangled hair in his hands, hauling me out of my bedroom. Silent, I sucked down the pain. My scalp burned, tears gathered in my eyes. He hadn’t touched me in that way in a year. How bad did I mess it up?

  He released my hair in the hallway and prodded me down the stairs and into his office. I straightened my twisted nightshirt, noticing he’d ripped the corner of my dragon applique on my short sleeve.

  Mom sat at the small conference table, pulling apart the bindings, rearranging the pages. “Leo, Ivy did it right. I checked your presentation. This is the exact order of your slides.” Her lower lip quivered and her body caved in, bracing for his backlash.

  Dad dug his hand through his short hair and rubbed his ruddy face, the first signs of the apocalypse. “You know how important this multibillion-dollar deal is. I land it and we’re set in San Jose. Just get the pages sorted.” He strutted out of the room, leaving Mom and me gawking at each other. Normally, he’d smack her for mouthing off. Whatever. The mystical eggshells hurt the soles of my metaphorical raw and tortured feet. Despite the momentary blip of sanity, I wouldn’t count on anyone sweeping them away in the near future.

  “Sorry.” I pulled a stack of the meticulously bound presentations closer.

  “Not your fault, honey.”

  “I know it’s not my fault. I’m sorry he roped you into cleaning up his screw-up.” I nailed her with The Look. At least she had my back. This time. Her defense didn’t always happen. She wasn’t a bad mother. I just tried to keep my business with him separate from her business with him. I handled it better. Mom… not so much. The makers of antianxiety meds would go belly up if not for her. I refused to damage the economy any further by reducing big pharma’s sales.

  “Last day of school?” Mom tried the chitchat routine while I redid the bindings on the stack of presentations she’d already fixed.

  “Yeah.”

  “You ready for finals?”

  I froze, The Look exploding across my face. “Seriously? You know we finished finals yesterday. Today’s goof-off day at the beach.”

  She mimicked my stillness and her lips formed a big O. “Then what homework did you have last night?”

  “My law teacher granted me the chance to rewrite a paper. I needed to finalize it. You know, the one I jacked up because Dad made me lug trays of drinks around until all hours of the morning for his big promotion party two weeks ago?” I’d barely finished the paper last night due to one printer jam after another.

  We fell silent, the frantic sound of shuffling papers eclipsing the soothing morning song of birds in the garden. Before long, Mom laid her cheek on the table and soft snores emanated out of her, gently ruffling a stack of loose pages.

  My life sucked like a vacuum. God, I so wish I were a dust bunny.

  Chapter 2

  Mariana and I parked our butts on a bench, sandwiched between the clunky, old-fashioned Big Dipper roller coaster and the jam-packed beach. I peered beyond the high school kids encouraging skin cancer, braining each other with Frisbees, and battering volleyballs, to the rippling blue ocean spreading to my forever escape.

  “I can’t believe you’re abandoning me for a summer in Italy,” I teased. I sipped my iced coffee, holding onto my last day with Mariana before I returned to the pleasant company of my books and days alone on the beach, my few escapes from my Crap Villa. Mariana’s family had invited me to the real villa they’d rented for half the summer and I’d begged my parents to let me go. Needless to say, attending to the Master of Worldwide Jerks’ every command in California was deemed far more important than a free cultural education in Italy. My chances of bagging an Italian boyfriend—or any boyfriend for that matter—had evaporated when the opportunity turned to dust under my father’s gavel.

  “Your dad’s… kind of… a jerk.” Spots on Mariana’s sunburned cheeks reddened violently. “I mean, we never get to hang out much outside school.”

  I touched her arm, my fingers wet from my cup and cool against her sun-warmed skin. “He is a jerk. I live with his BS twenty-four seven.” I pushed out a breath. “Let’s not talk about it.” I was going to splatter all over the wo
rld if my life didn’t change that summer.

  “What’ll you do all summer?”

  “Same old, same old.” At least I’d have most of my days free from the King and Queen of the Bates Motel, while Dad worked and Mom counted carpet fibers or whatever. After tackling my daily chores, I anticipated spending time at the beach, watching rock concerts on my tablet, catching up on my reading, and writing poetry. Not love poetry. I didn’t do love well, as a virgin in all things boyfriend. Just plain vanilla poetry. I even held a smidge of anticipation for our annual two-week trip to our cabin at Lake Tahoe, the one place Mom, Dad, Kristen and I experienced normal family time. I might even venture to call it a good time. Dad was always different, relaxed, and I’d go so far as to say fun.

  Mariana grinned and clapped. “I know. Why don’t you and Katie hang out?”

  Katie was the newest recruit beside Mariana to join the über popular crowd at Almaden High School. Mariana still gave me the time of day, but her modus operandi promised to change senior year, as would Katie’s. Though I liked Katie, I hated the choices Mariana and Katie made to align with the princess squad. They’d both shun me next year. But I didn’t want to ruin our friendship now. “Maybe,” I replied. “I’m supposed to intern at Jerkface’s company two days a week.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Will you never escape him?”

  “I’m interning in the finance department, far from him and more up my alley.” I’d won a school competition earlier in the year for best fantasy stock portfolio. Since I possessed a knack for saving and investing, I planned to study financial planning in college, and looked forward to the non-paid internship, even if they dubbed me a glorified gopher. The gig was supposed to enhance my college application. No way did I plan to end up impersonating my mother, with no career and no money of my own, no grasp of money whatsoever. No way out. I held no plans to follow in her footsteps into the Hall of Doormat Fame.

  “That’s perfect for you.” Mariana tossed her empty cup into the trash bin six feet to our right.

  My phone alarm beeped. Mariana groaned. “Let’s go,” I said and slung my tote over my shoulder, securing His Majesty’s one-pound bag of salt-water taffy. Mom had given me extra money to buy his favorite candy. I wanted to unwrap and lick every piece before I filled his exclusive, hands-off-to-everyone-else candy bowl.