Page 1 of My Turn

Prologue

Jayce

Sometimes, two people love each other but remain in a stagnant state that keeps them apart. Maybe stagnant wasn’t the correct term for what I had with Alana. We were always moving forward and we were together all the time, but not in a romantic way.

Why, you might ask? Two reasons.

Reason number one: she was in a relationship for the entirety of our high school years, college, and beyond. They were ‘end game’ in her mind. Alana and Jake started dating freshman year and they went together like peanut butter and jelly. I was partial to peanut butter and Nutella.

The second reason was that they were no longer together. And it wasn’t pretty.

Reason number two point five, I guess: Jake was my brother. My twin brother. This wasn’t one of those situations where I would say that he was the better one, the more attractive one, the jock, etc., etc. No, we were a lot alike. We both played sports and we got the same degree. We were likable, charming, and roguishly handsome with our dark, wavy hair, bright blue eyes, and jawlines that women fawned over for some reason. Weird, but I wouldn’t complain about it. The only thing that made a difference was that he met her first.

I reached over to squeeze her hand. She dipped her chin, unable to look at me. I trailed my eyes over her black dress, then admired her chestnut hair that was thrown into a bun tohide that it hadn’t been washed, probably since she got the news. She’d been staying at my place because their little duplex wasn’t habitable. I wouldn’t complain about her presence, but I wished it was under better circumstances that didn’t result in her crying herself to sleep every night.

Moving my gaze to the front, I tried not to scowl at the portrait of him on a pedestal. Some people were still filing up to the stage to touch his casket and say whatever bullshit words they could conjure on the spot.

It was ridiculous. Words to the dead were for you, not for them. They couldn’t fucking hear you anyway. Even if they could, it didn’t do any good. If I was dead and had to listen to all the things people said, I’d laugh. Half of these people probably hadn’t even thought about him in years and another chunk of them couldn’t care less that he was dead.

Unable to help myself, I moved my arm around Alana’s shoulders as the priest took his place. None of us were even religious, but I didn’t plan the funeral.

I tipped my head forward and inhaled. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t been taking care of herself. Everything about her called out to me. Even in her darkest state, she was like carrion and I was a vulture, circling above her until it was my turn to feed.

It was my fucking turn.

There was actually a third reason I’d never made any moves up to this point. Ever since my brother brought her home when we were all fourteen, something had been festering inside of me. An obsession, perhaps. I was fixated on her. Not just her, but the idea of becoming something she couldn’t escape and, eventually, didn’t want to escape.

There was this image in my head of how it would go down. Did it matter in the long run? Objectively, no, but it was a game I couldn’t stop playing. I wanted her to beg for me, to give herselfto me in a way she didn’t even know she was capable of. After so many years of watching her, a darkness had arisen inside of me. Maybe it existed before, but she caused it to metastasize.

I knew everything there was to know about Alana. I’d seen her when she didn’t know anybody was watching. Those were my favorite moments. Under my gaze, she’d unknowingly undressed for me, she’d cried the sort of tears one only released when they were alone, she’d punched walls and talked to herself when things were bad. She’d touched her sweet pussy, coated her fingers in the arousal I was dying to taste. To own. To be the cause of.

Not yet.

If I made a move now, she’d only seehim. I was patient. I’d been patient for a very long time. Like all of the years before, I’d wait and I’d watch. She didn’t know it, but Alana had never had a free moment since she was fourteen.

I saw everything. She needed me, I needed her. She was never going to escape me.

Alana Monroe was mine. Then, now, and forever.

Chapter 1

Alana

October 2024

Year from hell was a stupid fucking phrase. Hell sounded like a better time than what I’d been through. At least in hell, you could expect that there would be an eternity of torment. Plus, you’d earned your place there. That is if the religious nuts are to be believed.

Life was actually so much worse because it led you on and made you believe things were going to work out for you, then it snatched that shit right out of your hands like a greedy bitch.

My fiancé died suddenly eleven months ago. It was tragic and heartbreaking, obviously, but it was an accident. The neighbors who lived in our duplex forgot that candles were burning when they left the house and it looked like their cat had knocked one of them over. It caught the curtains on fire and, voila, it was a recipe for trauma and the end to my relationship of nearly twelve years.

I’d been on a field trip at the time and Jake, well… He was drunk, according to the tox screen. He hadn’t been badly burned, but by the time the firefighters came, smoke inhalation had claimed his eternal soul or whatever. All because of a candleand a cat. I never asked if it survived. If I found out that it hadn’t, I’d probably go completely off the deep end.

As I erased the words on the whiteboard, I felt eyes on me. Turning, I found Jane, the teacher whose classroom was next door to mine. Her dark hair was in her signature pigtails and she was staring at me in that creepy way I’d come to despise since Jake’s death- rueful smile, hands in an awkward position, sad eyes, and enough intensity to make me wonder if I could manage to jam an expo marker into her eye socket.

Pity. I hated it. One would think it’d disappear after almost a year, but some people held onto it for too long and I had no idea why.

“How are you, Jane?” I asked, returning to my task.

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