Prologue: 1.0

Xoxo Nyx

Alex swears I have a type. Knows it; even if I never admitted it out loud.

Claims that the only thing that ever gets my engine revving are tall, dark, and dangerous types like him. No matter how many lectures I’ve given my vagina, or what I say to the contrary, the proof is in the pudding.

The literal pudding my legs and other parts turn into around the last things I should possibly want. The furthest thing from what I could actually need in my quest to start over again. Find a new life in an old city, that always felt like home to me.

One brother accuses me of only liking what’s bad for me. While the other swears the only reason I don’t know better is because I never had good sex. Well, that or a normal, healthy relationship to know well enough when to walk away from jackasses.

Not my fault the little toad that named me after the catastrophe cat stole the only good boyfriend I had.

Granted you can’t steal something that wasn’t yours in the first place, and obviously, Alex is gay being engaged to Nicky.

Some might say it’s irony at its best. Or simply that my love life is so tragic it’s funny versus so funny it’s tragic; with one exception. The exception that neither of my chosen brothers know about because I never told them.

Why no matter how many times that Nicky swears good sex will break ‘the curse of the catastrophe cat’ I can’t believe him.

I can’t claim that my first love started it. No, my luck was so abysmally negative long before I met Jynx. Still, I truly believe that the reason I have such a hard time finding and maintaining relationships is because there is no comparison.

Who we were, how we met……..

It was the last day of Hallow Fest. After I’d spent the entire week getting to know the most interesting person I’d ever met. Well, other than Nicky, but that’s entirely different.

I think every girl remembers their first. Jinx may have been twice my age, but we’ve already established that I never had a dad to fall into that cliché of a psychosis. Even so, the wounded soldier on leave for the Holiday, showed me everything I never realized I was missing.

Regardless of the majority of my time being spent in a bar, I’d never drank. One sip of the liquid that made everyone else feel better turned me green. I knew it was his last night in Haven. Knew that no one would approve of every waking minute we’d spent together given the age difference.

No one made me feel like him. It was the kind of thing romances were made of. I’d never felt more open, more perfect, more okay with being me. Probably the first time I ever questioned reincarnation with my religious upbringing.

How easy and natural it was….. There was just no way we’d never met before in my mind.

Now Jinx was not a person, anyone could forget. The set of his broad shoulders. His casual uncaring dress. Even the fact that he didn’t choke or sneeze with the plumes of smoke that wafted in his face from his cigarettes.

Everything about him was exotic, forbidden, and seemingly dangerous, but somehow Jinx made me feel utterly safe. Maybe that was just the way he would look at me, talk to me. Those uncanny gold eyes and radiating warmth hit me in every secret place I never knew existed before I met him.

The severe burns and scarring on his face was more to the right, but not completely missing on the left. It felt like the sharper angles of his eyes accentuated the roundness of his full lips. Either way, he didn’t need a mask for pandemonium.

The parade of a hundred demons that always ended the week-long frat party.

Looking back, I know that drinking, was my feeble attempt at pretending to be more mature and experienced than I was. Trying to close that last bit of distance between me and the first man I ever wanted.

I couldn’t help the wiggle as I pushed the burning icky mess through my body, bringing a small chuckle from him before he took the bottle from me. Clouds of cigarette smoke constantly surrounding him, accounted for the grit in Jinx’s voice.

As I choked on the bitter liquid, and Jinx took the bottle with a small chuckle, I don’t know why I couldn’t speak. I mean, I did have selective mutism when I was seven, and I had to stammer to get anything out, but this was different.

Though his eyes were as perfectly fawn as a doe’s, I was the one who felt like a deer in a hungry wolf’s gaze. I know that words were spoken, I just can’t remember them.

Not after I fell into the feeling.

The sensation of his shined lips hitting mine and our tongues tangling. Every thought fell away and nothing existed beyond the beating of my rampant heart. So loud it drowned out the drunk masses wreaking havoc through the streets.

And it was that fateful night, on the side of a corner store, my very own demon unleashed actual pandemonium in my skin. I clung to my scarred soldier, to a plane us mortals should never feel or know, just have faith that exists. A man others viewed as a hell beast for his appearance took me to heaven again and again.

Branding my soul in that darkness.

In his complete control. I signed myself over to the exquisite passion. Where the unknown became elation, fear slid to anticipation, and a moment of pain brought rapture I’d never felt before or since.

Chapter 1:1 A Bad Luck Cat, Xoxo Nyx