HOPE TRILOGY: Sacred Sinners- Texas Chapter Read online

  HOPE TRILOGY

  Sacred Sinners- Texas Chapter

  Bink Cummings

  Contents

  HOPELESSLY SHATTERED

  HOPEFUL WHISPERS

  HOPELESSLY DEVOTED

  Bonus Scene

  Playlist

  Note from Bink

  Sample of MC Chronicles: Volume 1

  Bink’s Social Media

  Copyright © 2019 by: Bink Cummings

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

  Cover Designer- Bink Cummings

  Photo provided from: Big Stock

  Ebook Edition, License Notes

  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it to the Author and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  (This is a fictional story.)

  Created with Vellum

  HOPELESSLY SHATTERED

  For all of the strong, independent, single mothers out there

  who are looking for a second chance at love…

  or to enact a sense of revenge on an ex you loathe.

  Note:

  For those who have read MC Chronicles: The Diary of Bink Cummings, this book takes place in the span of time between Vol 1 and Vol 2.

  One

  Driving down a dark road in the middle of Bumfuck Egypt, six months pregnant and starving, wasn’t exactly how I pictured my relaxing Thanksgiving vacation going. I wanted to stay home with my two daughters, celebrate the holiday with stuffing and the carved bird that my mother, Shelly, always cooks to perfection. The thought of missing her green bean casserole and those buttered biscuits, is seriously making me rethink my plan to come down to Texas. Yet, here I am, on my way to meet a man I’ve only spoken to ten, or so times in the past month. No, it’s not some secret sexy rendezvous. I’m hopefully going to get some answers about my past that might fill in some blanks. I’d tried to do it over the phone or Skype. However, Bear… yes, that’s actually his name … refused to disclose anything unless it’s face to face. Generally, I’d consider that creepy, and probably a bit ax-murderish. But, beggars can’t be choosers. And after fourteen years of unanswered questions, I’m willing to take what I can get. Anything is better than nothing. Which is precisely what I know—squat.

  As I travel down this never-ending highway of clouded blackness, grass, and trees, how about I fill you in on the finer details of myself, and my foolish plan to waste a perfectly good vacation with a man named Bear? Does that sound good? Well, I sure hope so because I’m bored out of my damn mind. The radio in this old Malibu doesn’t work, and the AC when it’s running, sounds like a chicken dying. If they’d had anything else I could afford at the rental lot, I would have gotten it. Having two daughters and another one on the way, I’m not exactly rolling in the dough. Not when I work as a librarian, and I’m saving up money for my daughters’—everything. They’re girls—notoriously expensive. Having one who’s nine years old and the other at eight, I know firsthand what the future holds. Just think about it: three periods, a lifetime supply of Midol and chocolate, three prom dresses, three girls with shoe addictions, three different bra and panty sizes. God forbid they’re stacked like me. Then I’ll be really fucked, having to buy fifty dollar bras that are ugly as hell and only used for function. Sheesh, I’m getting a damn headache just thinking about it…

  Anywho…

  Sorry about the tangent. I seem to get a little sidetracked and overwhelmed when dollar signs keep adding up. If you have daughters, I’m sure you can relate… Let’s get back to what I was saying about this trip. I guess I should give you the basics first. My dad died when I was fourteen in an explosive car accident, just like the ones seen in the movies. There wasn’t a body to bury. His headstone is merely that—a piece of marble with his name etched in remembrance. It’s resting between my grandpa and great-grandparents in a cemetery right outside of town. Sure, it serves as a place for my grandma to visit and mourn the tragic loss of her son. On the flipside, it’s a nagging reminder of the lack of evidence surrounding his death. His DNA was recovered at the scene, as was part of his driver’s license, and the car that was obviously his. It was the same Camaro he’d left in that night. It was his party car. Brand new. Sleek lines. The envy of all my friends in school, because I had the cool dad who drove a fast car and spoiled me rotten. I’m not sure what they expected when I’m an only child.

  When I was six, my parents divorced and shared 50/50 custody of me. Except my mother, who wanted the divorce in the first place, didn’t really want to uphold her share. She was more focused on the child support my dad dutifully paid her than caring about me. By the time I turned eight, she up and left. Moved clear across the country to Las Vegas, leaving me to be raised by my dad and grandma. Not that I minded. She wasn’t a good mother anyhow. Sure, I visited her twice a year, two weeks in the summer and a week at either Christmas or Thanksgiving, but the rest of the year we never spoke. She soon became a stranger to me, and the bond my daddy and I shared grew stronger by the day. He became my sole provider. My best friend. The man I looked up to. My hero.

  For years, we’d take our weekly drives along the countryside just to talk about anything and everything. And if we weren’t talking, we were singing to old school rock music as he tapped his fingers on the steering wheel or drank a can of beer. He always had the greatest cassette tape collection, which we’d rewind over and over again to our favorites. They varied all the way from Guns N’ Roses to AC/DC to Ozzy. There was never a dull moment in my life. I learned to cook, thanks to my grandma, since my dad was terrible at it. He taught me how to do the laundry, to shoot pool in our basement game room, and how to perform basic maintenance on cars. We went on daddy-daughter dates weekly to a nearby steakhouse so we could gorge on some juicy porterhouses, and he could get his fill of draught beer. We even took short, out of town hotel vacations once a month. It was the life, and I wouldn’t have changed it for the world…

  Then, one spring morning, everything flipped upside down. To this day, I can vividly replay that memory like it happened just yesterday…

  Beep, Beep, Beep, the alarm clock sounded. Prying my eyes open and rubbing the sleep from them, I turned my head and glared at the noisy abomination that sat on the floor next to my floor length mirror—7:05 AM. It was time to get up and get ready for school. Last night, Daddy had left me home by myself so he could party with his friends. He’d set the number he could be reached at on the table next to the phone. Which meant I had exactly twenty minutes to get dressed before I woke him up from a hangover, so he could drive me to school. It’d take me at least ten minutes to rouse him enough to throw on his shoes and shuffle out of the house with his morning can of pop in hand. I hate mornings like this. Then again, I guess it beat the alternative of him partying at home when I had year-end exams.

  Sliding off my bed, the sunlight cut through the shades, casting lines across my pink carpet. The doorbell rang, and I peeked at my clock one more time—7:07 AM. Who in the heck could be at our house this early in the morning?

  Knowing that my dad wasn’t going to wake up by the mere ringing of the doorbell, I tossed on a pair of p
ajama pants over my underwear and made haste through the living room as it sounded again. Pushing through the final door that separated our living room from our front entry, I stopped dead in my tracks when I saw an officer standing on the porch staring back at me through the window. Sliding back the deadbolt, I opened the door wide, wondering if I should’ve woken Dad up first.

  “Hello, Officer. Can I help you?” My voice was groggy with sleep, and a little shaky as I stood in the doorframe.

  “Are you related to Michael Remington?” he asked.

  Ummm … okay.

  I nodded. “Yes. That’s my dad. Why?”

  “Miss, is anyone else home with you?” he inquired, glancing around me to see if anyone else was on my tail. Unless he had a jackhammer, my dad wouldn’t be walking out here anytime soon. He’s worse to wake up than I am. It was a chore that I hated. But if I didn’t do it, I’d have to walk the five miles to school. At fourteen, I was not going to do that.

  I tucked my arms over my chest. “Just my dad.”

  Keeping firm eye contact, the officer shifted uncomfortably on his feet. “Does a relative live nearby?”

  I shook my head. “No. Sorry.”

  Sighing long and hard, he set his shoulders back. “Miss, I regret to inform you that Michael Remington was killed in a car crash at 2:30 this morning on route six.”

  Whoosh went the air in my lungs as tears pricked my eyes.

  I took a staggered step backward.

  This has to be a joke, right? A sick and twisted one.

  I almost laughed at the lunacy.

  “What?!” I shrieked instead.

  “Miss, why don’t you go inside and sit down? I’ll wait until an adult arrives to be with you. You shouldn’t be alone.” He started walking forward, automatically making me take a step back, then another and another until my shocked frame fell into a lump on our couch. The urge to run into the bedroom and shake my dad awake clawed at my insides.

  Dead? He can’t be dead! He’s supposed to take me to school today. I have tests. I … I … This can’t be happening!

  A phone was thrust into my hand. I stared at it blankly. What am I supposed to do with this?

  “You need to call someone, Miss,” the officer explained.

  Oh … right … I have to… Oh. My. God. My Dad really is dead?! I really have to call my grandma and tell her, and my uncle, and my mom. I haven’t even spoken to my mom in ages. I don’t want to call her. I don’t want to call anyone. I want to go back to bed and forget this day ever happened! This has to be a dream! He has to be sleeping.

  Tossing the phone onto the couch, I moved to stand. In a flash, the officer’s in front of me, blocking the way. “Miss, where are you going?”

  Tilting my head back to look him in the eye, my body froze in place, and everything went numb. “I have to go wake my dad up. This has to be a mistake.” My hand that I could no longer feel somehow pointed toward the hallway.

  A pitiful expression morphed his features as he rubbed the corner of his eye with his knuckle. Gently, he then grabbed hold of my shoulders. “Sweetie, your dad isn’t in there. He was in a car accident this morning. He and one of his friends hit a tree and died. I’m so sorry.” Emotions clogged his throat as he spoke.

  He’s dead!

  Oh. My. God.

  This is real!

  With his gentle guidance, I sat back down and made the first of many horrific phone calls to my family. How do you tell your grandmother that her son was killed? How do you make it easier on them? Do you tell them to sit down? Do you break it easy? Or do you rip it off like a band-aid? I didn’t know what to do. So I did the only thing I could. I picked up the old, clunky cordless phone and dialed her number.

  She picked up on the second ring. “Hello?”

  I clutched the phone firmly, pain radiating through my white-knuckled grasp. “Grandma, it’s me, Kat. Are you sitting down?”

  Over the course of the next hour, I made five phone calls, all of which robbed me of my childhood one chunk at a time. Nobody believed me when I told them that Dad was dead. Plus, each and every one of them demanded to speak to the police officer to make sure what I said was true. Every conversation ended with the same, “Hang in there, we’ll be there soon.” And they were. All day long, my childhood home overflowed with family and friends. Some of which I hadn’t seen in years. They offered their sincere condolences and gave me big hugs. The officer stayed by my side for hours, talking to the family and making sure I was okay. I could tell he felt sorry for me. Everyone did. Abandoned by my mother at eight, only to lose my dad at fourteen.

  Over the next few days, bits and pieces of his death were disclosed. Like how his car exploded when it impacted the tree, because his NOS reserve turned the car into a bomb. How the man who was in the passenger seat with him was incinerated along with my dad. That the only DNA found was small bits of charred bone fragments and very little blood. The explosion basically ruined any chance of either family getting true closure.

  A week later, we had a funeral, which was nothing more than an empty box sent to rest in the ground. Our family had filled it with mementos of our time with him. I honestly don’t remember a whole lot, other than that. I’d went into shock, refusing to cry, as I puked my guts out constantly. It all got worse after my mother showed up to his funeral, claiming she was taking me back to Las Vegas with her a week later. Which was precisely what happened, since she still had 50/50 custody per their agreement.

  In a matter of two weeks, my dad died, we buried a box, I packed up my belongings, and was forced to leave my childhood home, family, friends, and, most importantly, my grandma. It was horrible. All of it. The cutthroat fights to try and get me to stay, which I wanted to. The emotional plane ride to Las Vegas. My mom’s sad attempt to play mother of the year. The little two-bedroom apartment she shared with her unemployed, junkie boyfriend. It was a horrifying nightmare come to life in vivid, breathing color.

  Eventually, after the dust had settled and I started school in Vegas, I couldn’t stop thinking about all of those unanswered questions about the guy in my dad’s car, and the party he’d been at. I was no fool, even at fourteen. I knew my father was involved in some shady business, and that he hung out with a rougher crowd. None of that could’ve changed my views on him, though. To me, he was still my hero, regardless of whatever business he was involved in.

  At sixteen, I went back home to Indiana to visit my grandma over the summer. One day, I overheard my uncle saying that he was worried my dad might have been murdered because he was a drug dealer. My dad and drugs was never on the radar. I never saw him sell anything, and he surely wasn’t a junkie. I’d seen plenty of them. Sure, he smoked cigarettes and drank beer. Albeit, he sometimes drank and drove, even with me in the passenger seat. That was how I was raised and hadn’t thought twice about it.

  Then, when I got older, my mother told me things—like how she divorced him because he’d been growing marijuana in a friend’s garage, and that he’d went on secret trips to distribute the pot they grew. Really, I’m not sure if my mother should have told me that stuff. It helped create a monster in my head. I wanted to know more. I needed to know if my dad was murdered, or if I’m really making something out of nothing.

  On my eighteenth birthday, I inherited my father’s life insurance money and left Vegas to move back home where my grandma needed me. Where I needed to be to finally get some answers. Answers that my mother refused to let me investigate or help me with. Sure, we’d grown somewhat closer over the four years I’d lived with her. She sort of became a friend, but definitely not a mother. Shelly could never be that to me, no matter how hard she’s tried. My grandma has and always will be the mother I never truly had. There’s no changing that. What can I say? I’m a firm believer that if you want to be treated like a mother, then you should act like one. Unfortunately, my mom doesn’t actually possess that ability.

  So, yeah, I got home and did my research. Lots of it. Found some interesting thing
s that didn’t add up. The reports of his death were now missing from the courthouse. It was interesting that guys he used to hang with, some of which were at that party that night, wouldn’t agree to speak to me either. Not even when I desperately showed up at their houses, called them, or drove to their place of employment, would they give me the time of day. The more I checked into things, the less I found. Yet, the more suspicious his death became. Nothing added up. The pieces of the puzzle never quite fit right.

  Fast forward a year … I was living in the cute, three bedroom bungalow I’d purchased with the insurance money when my life began to transform. While researching my father’s death the best I could with limited resources, a sexy man moved in next door to me … and I’m sure you can guess what happened next. I’m not going to go into great details, because the more I think about it, the more painful it becomes. That’s a part of my life I choose to ignore. A stupid time that gave me two of the most precious gifts a woman could ever ask for—my daughters, Roxie and Scarlett.

  His name was Brent, and he was every woman’s wet dream. Trust me, I saw it everywhere we went. The way they ogled him. The way he smiled like he knew just how sexy he was. Then the women’s eyes would shift to me with blatant disgust. Let’s just say I’m not the kind of woman you’d picture with a man like Brent. He was six foot three and built like a brick shit house. His muscles had muscles. Though, they weren’t grossly oversized. They were what first had me asking him to help with this grill I’d stupidly bought, but couldn’t seem to get out of the back of my Suburban without giving myself a hernia. His shirtless body hoisting that grill was a thing of beauty. His bald head and blue eyes didn’t hurt the picture either. Needless to say, that was the day I swooned, and the rest was pretty much history.