Just South of Biloxi

By Lauren Hammond

Just south of Biloxi there was a girl with spunk, a girl with spirit.
A girl with fire.
A girl with a heart full of rebellion.
Just south of Biloxi there was a boy, with a dazzling smile and a kind demeanor.
A boy with morals.
A boy in love.
Just south of Biloxi there were a boy and a girl who realized too quickly, too swiftly, that there is such a thing as shattered hearts and cracked dreams.
Just south of Biloxi there were a boy and a girl who would never truly understand the meaning of some hearts and some worlds are better left broken.

Aurora O'Reilly always prided herself in the fact that she was different. She was a rebel, never really fitting into the ideals that society had set up for her. But Aurora O'Reilly was also full of secrets and deep, dark thoughts. Dark thoughts that weren't normal. Dark thoughts that plagued her and tormented her on most nights.

After deciding to trust her best friend and the love of her life by divulging her deepest darkest secrets, Aurora is faced with the fact that she might have found someone that she can really and truly trust or she just might have made the biggest mistake of her life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lauren Hammond
• Release date: Jul 21, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310416361

Lauren Hammond

S.B. Addison Books is a small traditional publisher with an independent edge. Our main focus is quality not quantity. We love books and we love the people who read them.

Book preview

Just South of Biloxi

Lauren Hammond

Just South of Biloxi (c) Lauren Hammond 2015

No part of this novel may be reproduced, copied, recorded or used by any means without written permission from the author or publisher.

This book is a work of fiction. Any names, places, characters, and incidents are a product of the author's imagination and are used fictitiously.

They are not to be misconstrued as real. Any resemblances to any person either living or dead are completely coincidental.

Cover design - Stephanie Mooney

Editor - Natalie McCollum

Acknowledgements

I'd like to thank all of the fans who have been patient with me while I got my life back together. I assure you, you can expect many more books from me in the future.

Thank you a million times over to Natalie McCollum and Stephanie Mooney, my talented cover designer and my editor. This book would not have been possible without you.

Just south of Biloxi there was a girl with spunk, a girl with spirit.

A girl with fire.

A girl with a heart full of rebellion.

Just south of Biloxi there was a boy, with a dazzling smile and a kind demeanor.

A boy with morals.

A boy in love.

Just south of Biloxi there were a boy and a girl who realized too quickly, too swiftly, that there is such a thing as shattered hearts and cracked dreams.

Just south of Biloxi there were a boy and a girl who would never truly understand the meaning of some hearts and some worlds are better left broken.

Prologue

Oak Hill Insane Asylum

1951

When I came in, I came in quietly.

There was no hooting.

No hollering.

No ruckus.

No fuss.

When I came in I was in a wheelchair, my limbs limp at my sides, my left cheek touching my shoulder. When I came to Oak Hill, I was lost, I was empty inside, and I wasn't sure if I had a soul left.

I guess that's what having a ruptured heart and a warped mind does to a person.

One orderly dressed in white took me directly to my room, lifting me from my wheel chair and depositing me on what the staff members like to call a bed. I wouldn't call it a bed. I like to call it a cheap, flimsy sleeping board.

Then he closed the door.

He left me alone.

He left me alone so that I could suffocate in silence.

Drown in my own twisted, morbid thoughts.

They left me alone so that I could think of him.

My mind was covered in images of him. Mental images of what he looked like when he smiled. How the sun always seemed to kiss his skin and toast it in all the right spots. How his skin always managed to overheat mine whenever our fingertips collided with one another's.

They left me alone to never stop thinking about the last look he ever gave me.

How it was long and thoughtful yet sullen.

The last words he spoke.

How I never got to say goodbye.

How for years and years and years I swore that love was worse than death and I told myself over and over again that I'd never let myself fall.

But I did.

Fall, that is.

I fell hard, smacking my head on the concrete, left with a goose egg the size of a golf ball a remnant of my adoration and devotion.

I fell fast through the air, plummeting in a downward spiral, faster than the speed of light.

And I fell freely, convincing myself that my thoughts and ways of the past were that of an old spinster. I told myself that it wasn't the falling that hurt so much, it was who wasn't there to catch me when I reached the bottom of the deep, dark pit I was falling into in the first place.

Who was there to catch me?

He wasn't.

He wasn't there to catch me, no, no.

My beau.

My love.

My forever.

My Edward.

It was almost as if magically he evaporated into thin air at the exact moment that I needed him the most.

So who was there to catch me when I fell?

Not Edward.

Not him.

Not ever.

Instead, he let me plummet to my death.

Then he left me to die.

Chapter One

The deep South.

The twangy accents.

Confederate flags sailing through the air.

Sometimes it's like another world.

Or another planet entirely.

I was born in Biloxi, Mississippi in 1934 to Mabel and James O'Reilly. I'm their only daughter and sometimes, according to my mother, her only saving grace. You see, I'm what she's always hoped for: a dainty, graceful southern belle in the making who'll marry well, act like a lady, and never bring shame to the family name.

Except that I'm not any of those things.

And I've never been like my mother.

I've never wanted to be.

I don't want to live someone else's dreams.

I want to live my own.

The year is 1950 and I've just turned sixteen.

Do you know what that means?

That means that this glorious year, I'll be introduced to society as a debutante. This is something that I've been dreading since my mother brought it up six months ago during a luncheon with her women's league friends. I, of course had tagged along just out of boredom and was picking at my salad when she patted my forearm and announced to her friends, This is my Rory's year. Yes indeedy. This year my girl is gonna be a debutante.

Then there was some smiling.

Some congratulations that were in order.

Then there was some hushed chatter and at that point, I was excluded from the conversation. Not that I really wanted to take part in it, but still.

At first, I smiled politely, but then I turned my head, scowling. I didn't want to be a debutante. Hell, sometimes I didn't even want to be southern. Whether it was proper for a southern belle or not, there was no way I was going to let my mother parade me around in front of society like a poodle in a dog show.

Besides, I don't want to be a purebred anyway.

I'd rather be a mutt.

Ever since that day, Mabel O'Reilly has had a hankering to get me into a, frou frou, ruffled cupcake dress and when she attempts to get me into one, I have a hankering to rip it off my body.

She has a