CHAPTER ONE
Leah
Ten Years Later
It was Lana’s idea to come here. Well, of course it was. Who else would want to do something like this the night before their wedding?
Not Laura. That’s for sure. The night before she married Todd, her high school sweetheart, she insisted she, Laura, and I give each other facials, then made us don wedding-themed, one-piece bathing suits (hers was white with gold sparkles; ours pink) and climb into Mom and Dad’s hot tub together so we could talk about our favorite girlhood memories. Yeah. That’ Laura.
This is Lana.
Me? I don’t want to get married at all, so I certainly don’t need this kind of… What is it? An escape? Or a diversion from impending monotony? I’m not sure. All I know is, we’re in a sex club.
It’s called The Enchanted Forest, and right now we’re standing in a closed-off space just inside a warehouse-style building near The Strip, waiting to give the tickets Lana bought online to a hot, tatted up guy dressed in all black.
“Come on, Leah.” Laura bumps me from behind, and I realize Lana has already stepped forward and handed hot tattoo guy her ticket.
I do the same, and Laura behind me, and another guy in black ushers us over to the other side of the crowded space, where we wait in front of two massive, worn-looking wooden doors with rustic, iron knobs.
The two dozen or so people behind us move past the ticket counter relatively quickly. When the last person has rejoined the line, hot tat guy pushes one of the heavy doors open and holds it as Lana struts through. She’s wearing all black, just like he is. Black jeans, black low-top boots, black tee. It contrasts with her pale skin and her short, blonde spikes. She gets a few strides into the room ahead—it seems to be torch-lit, I notice with a shot of apprehension—and turns sideways to check on Laura and me. Her red lips curve into naughty-looking grin.
Laura, beside me, is lagging as we step into the foyer—which is definitely lit by torches. She’s peeking into her small, square, canvas purse, the one she’s got slung across her chest so Vegas bad guys don’t steal it. As she looks down, her layered, shoulder-length hair falls around her face like a curtain.
I wrap my fingers around her purse strap and tug. “Beep beep. You’re backing up the line.”
“I need my lip gloss,” she says as she moves into the vast foyer, muttering about how dry it is here. Laura is attending Episcopalian seminary in a beautiful, quaint Tennessee mountain town where I’m pretty sure it rains all the time. All her pictures there look foggy.
Lana and I exchange a look as Laura steps over to the side of the yawning room, letting some of the crowd spill past us. It’s not a catty look, just one that acknowledges that Laura is slow and likes to do things her way.
I cast my eyes around the room we’re in and feel my breath get stuck in my throat. Heat moves across my chest and back around my shoulders as my pulse quickens. My gaze darts over the stone floors and up the stone walls, taking note of many small, iron balconies hanging at various heights. My stomach sours as I see they’re all draped with ivy. I tilt my head up, hoping to hide my face from Miss Perceptive, Lana, and feel like I’ve been sucker-punched. The domed ceiling is dark, but I can see white stars strewn over it. And—oh, fuck—that’s a half-moon, clearly painted white over the darker paint.
Deep breaths, Leah.
I pull my gaze down quickly, checking Lana’s face to see if she noticed my reaction to this place, but she’s too busy doing her own once-over of the room. I see her brows pull together and wonder if she’s noticing the same thing I am, but I quickly decide that it’s unlikely. She’s only ever seen pictures, and she doesn’t have my freakish visual memory.
I clamp my teeth down on my lower lip, clearing my head to make room for a memory that could confirm or deny the déjà vu I’m feeling. Nothing comes, and I lose my focus when Laura rubs some gloss over her lips.
After she slides it back into her bag, the three McKenzie sisters link arms like middle school girls and walk toward the shadowed hall out ahead of us.
It’s lined with torches like the foyer, but as the ceiling is lower and space narrower, it seems fractionally brighter.
Good.
I’m sure once we get down it, there will be something sexy and wild and freakish in a totally different way than the place that I’m remembering.
This isn’t Mother’s House.
After just a minute hearing Lana, a psychoanalyst, babble about how healthy it will be for our egos to experience a “carnal demonstration,” and another minute listening while Laura, gonna-get-her-PhD.-in-Divinity politely tells Lana that her ideas about what the psyche needs are full of shit, we’re in the hallway.