Killing The Sun Part 3

By K Larsen and Mara White

KILLING THE SUN is a collaborative novel by K. Larsen and Mara White.

Aimee Olsen has secrets. Secrets she's desperate to escape.

She flees a one horse town in Oklahoma to New York City at the age of nineteen where she meets Daniel Montclair, a business magnate, thirty years her senior. Danny introduces his ingenue to a life of luxury, hedonism and the procurement of desire. But Danny's elite world is a tangled web of lies. As Aimee tries to navigate his playground, her past and present collide and she's faced with a choice.
If she wants it all, Aimee will have to accept the kind of woman she really is.

Everyone lies. Everyone loves. But does everyone win?
KTS is a serial novel that will come in three novellas released in rapid succession.
If you choose to take this ride, please do so at your own risk.

• Language: English
• Publisher: K Larsen
• Release date: Jul 19, 2016
• ISBN: 9780989670715

K Larsen

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Book preview

Dedication

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

Epilogue

Acknowledgements

About Mara White

More K. Larsen

Preview – Jezebel by K. Larsen

When Danny took me home to Oklahoma for Christmas, we’d been together for two years already. We were madly in love. Or maybe we weren’t, but that’s the way I like to remember it. He flew us first class and rented a fancy Lincoln Town Car at the airport. A car like that alone would turn heads in Sulphur, not to mention its driver.

He held my hand across the armrest in the car and blasted the air conditioning, even though it wasn’t hot out. He’d insisted on buying earrings for my mother at Barney’s. I told him it would go over her head—that she wouldn’t be able to appreciate it. Danny said, Sometimes diamonds make the woman and not the other way around. My mother, I’m sure, had only ever bought jewelry at the flea market. But of course, despite the rather raw and chafed family situation, I loved my mother—and if Danny wanted to spoil her, then who was I to stand in the way of it?

Driving down Main Street, I blushed at the all-you-can-eat buffets and the pathetic strip-malls. For all I knew Danny had never seen such a place in his life. The lumbering, obese couple in the parking lot ambling to their junker car did nothing to boost my confidence that this trip would be an experience that he’d in any way understand. I thought he’d leave me for my utter lack of culture, for the sorry, dirty, humble beginnings I could never unstick.

I know what you’re thinking, Sunshine, and this town doesn’t reflect on you.

I rubbed my face in my hands and groaned. It’s so trashy. And you’re from the city and you’re rich. I’m like the trash of the trashy place, too. People here look down on me and my family. I pulled a strand of my hair loose and stuck it in my mouth.  Danny did a double take, then reached over to pull it back out.  He squeezed my hand reassuringly.

"Shit was so bad that social services tried to take me away from my mom twice. You’re not going to want to have anything to do with me after you see the shitty backstage of my life."

Sunshine, I grew up in fucking Bay Ridge, and not in the good part. My parents didn’t speak English. We struggled! I stole out of the collection plate at St. Frances Cabrini so I’d have milk money at school and the little shits wouldn’t make fun of me.

Well, now you’re all rich and powerful and you could buy the stupid church.

That ain’t the point, Sunshine. You’re in charge of who you become. You create your own destiny—not social services, not the assholes who judged you when you were a kid and couldn’t help it, not even your brothers and what they did defines you. You’re walking back in here with a man who can piss money. You got your degree, you got a good job. You live in the city. Look at how much fun we have—at how much you’ve grown since I met you.

Turn left up here at the gas station. Grab route seven. If you keep going down here past the trailer park you run into the field where Storm and Farren ditched my dad.

Danny swung the car in a sharp left and I massaged my brow. Deep breath, here goes. There will now be nothing he doesn’t know about you. You’ve shown him your worst.

If you think Aimee is pretty, you should have seen me in my day. I’ve got some photos in an album around here somewhere. She gets that chest from me, my mother drawled in her exaggerated twang. She gestured at my chest with her long cigarette, which she’d forgotten to light since Danny walked in the house. She was laying it on thick. My mother —a victim or an actress?

My eyes couldn’t possibly have rolled back any farther. She was smitten with my boyfriend and I was sure Danny found her abhorrent. She hadn’t once asked me about my job, the city or anything that I’d written in my letters. I ate the crap on my plate, some sort of Hamburger Helper with less than enthusiastic noodles. It reminded me of the shit I grew up on. Garbage. Everything came out of a box. The depression and shame hit me so hard I could barely raise my face up, look Danny in the eyes. My mother meant the world to me, but I hated this trailer, this town, the whole veil of poverty. And she hated it too, but had resigned herself to mediocrity, to failure and to the verdict of guilty which this town had handed her.

Are you making the trip to the penitentiary while you’re here? My mother asked the question more toward Danny than me. I’m sure Storm and Farren would be glad to see you and they’re at the same place now.

Doubt it, Mom. I don’t keep in touch with them at all. I’ve kind of moved on from that place and I don’t want to be reminded of that time.

I’m sure the appeals court would lend an ear to your friend Danny.

Boyfriend, I said sternly, setting my fork on my plate. I directed my gaze toward Danny to see how much he hated me. But instead of disdain, I saw pride in his eyes. He gave me a half grin and reached over to affectionately knock my chin with his fist.

Those two boys loved you. They made sacrifices.

I know, Mama. You want to make me cry? ’Cause I’m about to.

She shook her head almost imperceptibly. Her eyes said it all.

I haven’t forgotten what they did for me.

Cheer up, Sunshine. You ready to get out of here?

I studied my mom in profile as she looked at Danny. She was wearing a loose-fitting house dress and her limbs were bloated, they were so swollen. There was a fold at her wrist and somehow it made me even sadder—reminded me that she was once a toddler and my grandparents doted on her. She looked like she never got out. But that was just it, wasn’t it? Her world was even smaller than this dumb town, it was this trailer and her television. I needed to get her out of here. Life may be unfair, but my mother deserved so much more than this.

She got up and walked over to the refrigerator. I stared at her slippers, the heel all but smashed flat under her weight, and studied the rivers of varicose veins that ran viciously up her tree trunk legs. Mom pulled a carton of milk out of the fridge, opened it and sniffed it before dumping the lumpy contents down the drain. She left it in the sink and shuffled back to the table. I wished I could take her home with me, set her up in my apartment in New York. But there could be nothing less sexy than always having your girlfriend’s mother wandering aimlessly around your bedroom looking for her misplaced reading glasses.

How do you get groceries, Mama? Maybe we could go to the store for you? I didn’t want her to be here alone. It hurt me to see her that way.

Old man Dobson brings me stuff from the food pantry. I get my milk and eggs at the gas station out at the junction. The answer rolled right off her tongue.

Well, we’ll get you stuff while we’re here. Stock you up on non-perishables to see you through the rest of the winter at least.

She finally lit her smoke with a yellow Bic lighter she dug out of the pocket of her housecoat.

Could just leave me the money instead, she enunciated through clenched lips without removing her cigarette.

I went from pity to anger in a heartbeat. She tapped the ashes on the floor while she studied me. She was once beautiful; I’ve seen the photos. Aura was once a young woman with bouncing yellow curls and an ample smile to go along with the chest.

But she needed more money. I thought I could do that.

We’d be happy to do that, Danny answered for me. I ground my teeth, gripped my thighs, pressed my feet into the floor. I didn’t want him to be responsible for her. I could take care of my own. My whole life I’d longed for nothing more than to give my family the benefit of the doubt, but no matter what they always came up a little short.

I can set up a delivery online that will come once a week, I said. She exhaled smoke to the ceiling by tipping her chin up. The walls were long jaundiced from the smoke. Nicotine stains clung to her calcified teeth and in between her two fingers. A white ghost of a rectangle remained on the wall in the kitchen from when she gave up on calendars.

She snuffed out her cigarette in the remaining food on her plate. Couch pulls out, she remarked flatly.

Danny and I both directed our focus to the sunken floral couch in the living room. It was covered with newspapers and what looked like plastic bags full of magazines and junk mail. There was a cross-eyed old tabby perched on top of a crocheted pillow. I imagined touching it would produce a cloud of dust and cat dander and then it would disintegrate under your fingertips.

We’ll get a room, Danny and I said at the same time.

There’s a Super 8 out on route seven, I told him; just making eye-contact with him sent shivers skittering all over me. His eye contact was sincere, concerned, but most of all penetrative. He was intense. He was powerful. And I thought he was in love with me.

I already booked a room at the Echo Canyon, he said.

Must be nice for you, Mama said. You finally got yourself someone to take care of you.

You’re supposed to be in jail, I say through the door.

Let me in, Sunshine.

My neighbor Wade is coming. He left the city two hours ago. He’ll be here any minute.

I can hear the stupid tremor in my own voice. He must know I’m scared. At least I sound more scared than drunk. Danny can read me better than anyone, which I hate.

Open the door, Sunshine. A door won’t keep you away from me and you know it.

The nervous energy that flies through me is both excited and terrified. I hate that he does this to me, that he can make me feel both.

I’ll call the police. This is private property.

I own this whole town. They can’t touch me.

I’m not opening the door, Danny, we’re over.

"All right, Sunshine, if you say so. Don’t I deserve