Castin' all the Stones

By Lola Beverly Hills

Persia Oakes is the kind of daughter that every preacher prays for—a young lady who is firm in her faith and diligent in her work. To her, the grass has got to be greener on the other side. She dreads the thought of following in her mother’s footsteps, marrying one of the young deacons in the church who will one day become a minister himself...until a social butterfly flutters into her life and changes everything.

Sapphira Trowe becomes her biggest influence, persuading her to trade her knit cardigans for lamé skirts and her studying sessions for dorm parties. Reverend Oakes will not hear of Persia’s new social life until a shocking family secret leaves her questioning all she has known to be true. The skirts get shorter, the parties get longer, and the good book gets shelved. Another good girl has gone bad, and she may be gone forever.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lola Beverly Hills
• Release date: Mar 23, 2016
• ISBN: 9781311994561

Book preview

© 2016 Lola Beverly Hills

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Prologue

THREE. That was how many drinks Persia had downed since sauntering up into the crowded nightclub with her girls. It was a number that she knew all too well because it was the number of times that the deacons passed the collection plate around at her father’s church. The first collection was for tithes, the second was for offerings, and the third went toward the construction of a bigger church being built across the street. Little did they know that their offerings were going to go toward a new set of golf clubs for their beloved pastor to show off at the country club.

She didn’t know exactly when the House of God had become a modern-day minstrel show, but the cooning, shucking, and jiving for coins had their members nearly hurling their hard-earned cash before the pulpit. Persia had witnessed it all her life and more now than ever, she vowed not to be a part of it. While the old Persia Oakes would have been wrapping her head with a silk scarf and flipping through her closet full of modest linens on a Saturday night, the new Persia Oakes was feeling the holy spirit in the form of a ratchet beat, showing off her temple in a barely there blue tube top and denim skirt.

Sunday school would carry on as normal, followed by fifteen minutes of tired selections from the choir, half an hour of crying shouts of praise mixed with speaking in tongues, followed by a fire-breathing delivery from the false prophet himself. Persia would not be there for any of it. As the hours ticked by from midnight to one to two, she and her new girlfriends moved in rhythm, casting curvaceous shadows on the floor from the gleam of the strobe lights overhead. She felt and smelt the alcohol-stained breath of a random guy closing in from behind her. She smiled and kept on grinding freely to the music. Her parents had warned her that this would be her third and final strike if she didn’t do away with her incessant bad behavior. Well, three was a number that she knew all too well.

Chapter One

TREVOR SAMUELS entered the room, returning the ever gleaming smiles of the young college women who occupied the library but had yet to highlight one line of text in the books in front of them.

With his neatly lined medium-sized fro, mocha brown skin, and mesmerizing dimples, he sent a grin that oozed in all directions. The girls were turning into puddles on the floor, their thirst spreading fast enough to be contagious.

Hey, Trevor, said one of them. Her head had been lifted from the book in her hand far before he had even stepped foot into the library, waiting for his arrival. She had to have been one of his loyal fans and knew that he would soon be arriving as he did every day around noon. He had a long and hard workout ahead of him, as the basketball recruiters would be watching him closely with his plans to enter the NBA draft next summer. Noon was his prime relaxing hour. He casually nodded to her, winked at a few other girls, and then sauntered right past Persia's table as though she didn’t even exist.

Not that she had been expecting him to acknowledge her. When you're the daughter of a fire-breathing preacher, you are basically labeled a Bride of God. A precious sculpture that a cautious pair of eyes would never even think to look at, let alone signal for his hands to touch. If you’re the daughter of Reverend Rowell Oakes of New Light Missionary Baptist Church, nobody will come within the parameters marked within the virtual restraining order that your father has given to all men outside of the congregation. Persia Oakes was off limits. Touch his daughter and get hands laid upon you with the strength of the almighty.

She was used to it. Even in high school, none of the boys wanted anything to do with her, a fact her father found gratifying. She dressed like a pilgrim, exposing only her neck, hands, and ankles on even the hottest summer day. Not only did the guys refuse to come near her for fear of not getting the panties until after their walk down the aisle, but the girls refused to be friends with her for fear that she would pull out her bible and condemn them for sleeping with half the football team. Little did they know that they were who she had wanted to be. Since her days in middle school, she had long wished to be that girl that stopped the boys dead in their tracks with her beauty queen face and video vixen body, but she couldn’t because she had to be the sweet little girl who stood at the doors of the foyer and handed out bulletins and blue ribbon pins to first-time visitors. She had never anticipated college being any different. So Trevor in all of his dimpled glory walked right on by her.

Persia was so used to being overlooked that she didn’t even know what part her looks played in her attractiveness. All her life, the deacons had expressed to her parents what a lovely daughter they had, and their sons would bashfully look away whenever she caught them staring. That was just fellowship talk. Every girl that attended church was supposed to be lovely, but lovely wasn’t what the guys were checking for at UCLA. She knew what they wanted. BAD! BANGIN’! SEXY! Persia knew that her clothes certainly weren’t showing that. As she sat perched at her laptop with perfect posture and snuck a peek at Trevor above the coffee cup that she held close to her lips, she took note of the lustful stare in his eyes as he looked away from the computer screen in front of him to the girl beside him in the denim cutoffs. Persia's teal cardigan not only kept her warm in the midst of the cold air-conditioned room, it kept her father happy, as it covered every goose bump that her skin could produce. She had soft amber eyes, auburn hair, and a decent smile that she seldom flashed outside of New Light. It didn’t matter. Trevor wasn’t checking for her.

He only had eyes for girls like Sapphira Trowe. As much as the girl with the Levi’s had his full attention, it came nothing close to the pool of drool that he produced that the swim team could have practiced in whenever Sapphira walked past him on the court in her blue and gold Cheer Squad uniform. He was a pompom in her hand, ready to be whipped and tossed all about with no apology on behalf of his gender. She knew from the moment that she had seen her, that she was the it girl on campus that every guy wanted a chance with. She was the type of girl that turned heads from the moment that she walked into a room. The type whose hair and clothes were always perfect. She even had the name of a superstar. Persia