Page 1 of Save Me

CHAPTER ONE

July 2011

New Orleans, Louisiana

It was the rain.

It rained a lot in Louisiana at this time of year, but tonight it was nothing short of a deluge—so loud on the roof that it muted the sound of Hunter Gray’s boots as he paced in his room.

He would look back to this evening as the night angels cried, but there was no warning of what was already in motion. For him, it was a night like any other night in his eighteen years of living.

His dad worked on the docks, and always came home from work drunk.

His mother was drawing unemployment, and was already into her third beer of the evening.

Hunt was in his room, thinking about his girl, Lainie Mayes. He lived for the times they were together. They’d had a plan during the entire senior year of high school. All they were waiting for was for her to turn eighteen.

Hunt had a full-ride scholarship to play football at Tulane University, and Lainie would be following in her mother’s footsteps at the same university, pledging her mother’s sorority. As a legacy pledge, she was a shoo-in.

But Hunt and Lainie lived in two different worlds.

Her father didn’t come home drunk. He was a very well-to-do stockbroker. Her mother wore high heels to the supermarket, and had a housekeeper named Millie, who kept order in their world.

Hunt and Lainie were at opposite ends of the socioeconomic scale, but their real burden was the hate their fathers held for each other.

WHEN CHUCK GRAY and Greg Mayes were thirteen years old, Chuck’s mother married Greg’s father. The boys’ dislike for each other happened at first sight, and being forced to live under the same roof only made it worse. It carried through every aspect of their teenage years, until Chuck’s mother died right after he graduated high school.

Chuck wound up on the street, and Greg was on his way to college, with all the trimmings. Chuck was bitter and homeless, which only added to the hate and resentment between them, until years later, when fate dealt them another low blow. Their children fell in love with each other, and the war between them began anew.

THE CRACK OF a dish hitting the wall stopped Hunt in his tracks. He shoved his hands through his hair, and dropped down onto the side of his bed, listening to the beginnings of another fight. Curses were flying. More dishes were breaking.

He waited in silence as sweat ran from his hair, beaded across his upper lip and ran in rivulets down the jut of his jaw. He often wondered how he’d even been born into this family. He didn’t look like them, which had been another bone of contention between his parents, to the point of Chuck claiming in one drunken rage that his wife had been unfaithful.

That’s when Brenda pulled out an old family photo of her Cajun grandfather, Antoine Beaujean, and shoved it in her husband’s face.

“Look! This is Papa ’toine, and it’s like looking at Hunter’s face. Our son is just a throwback, and you’re a jackass,” Brenda said, and helped herself to another beer.

After that, the olive cast of Hunt’s skin, his black brows and high cheekbones, the same piercing gaze as the man from the photo, and the distinctive Roman nose, were no longer an issue for Chuck. But Chuck and Brenda were a big issue for Hunt, and 50 percent of the conflict in which he and Lainie were caught.

Tonight, the windows were shut because of the rain, but since their air-conditioning hadn’t worked for months, his shirt was sticking to his body. Finally, he got up and went out onto the back porch. Rain was blowing in under the overhang, but he didn’t care. His clothes were already wet with sweat, and it felt cool on his skin.

He wanted to call Lainie. He just needed to hear her voice, but it was dinnertime at the Mayes house, and nobody was allowed to take their phones to the table. So, he stood in the rain, while the war inside the house waged on without him.

LAINIE MAYES WAS the epitome of southern charm. Well-groomed, well-dressed, always polite, born blessed with a beautiful oval-shaped face, long auburn hair that lay in waves, eyes as green as her daddy’s money and what Hunt referred to as kissable lips. The top of her head fit exactly beneath the curve of his chin. He was the last piece of her puzzle. That one missing bit that made her whole.

Tonight, she was sitting at the dinner table, quietly and politely awaiting the first course, and listening to her parents, Greg and Tina’s “oh so proper” conversation, but she could tell they didn’t love each other anymore.

She often wondered if they ever had. Mama had just been a sorority girl at Tulane University who scored a rich man’s son. A classic match straight out of the Old South.

But Lainie’s defiant stance regarding Hunter Gray infuriated them. No matter what, she refused to knuckle under to their demands. She and Hunt saw each other and dated each other, and tried to let their fathers’ war roll over their heads. The fact that she and Hunt were now going to be attending the same university made Greg angry, and Tina fret.

On a good day, they offered her bribes to quit him.

On a bad day, they threatened to disinherit her.

But Lainie held a hand they didn’t know about, and one they couldn’t beat. She was three months pregnant with Hunter Gray’s baby, and less than a month away from college.

In two days, she would turn eighteen, the legal age for marriage without parental consent in Louisiana, and they would already be at college before she began to show. It would afford them the distance they needed to escape the lifelong hate of their fathers’ feud.

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