The Wanderers

Copyright © 2023 Nicole Tuttle All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by the copyright law. For permission requests, write to the author at [email protected]. ISBN: Paperback: 9798374824759 ISBN: Hardcover: 9798374824902 This novel is a work of fiction, any similarities to real people and events are entirely coincidental. Cover Design by Riley of Moonrise Creative Co. Interior Design and Formatting by Rachel McEwan Printed and Distributed by Kindle Direct Publishing First Printing Edition To those of you who wanted Bella to get down and dirty with ALL of the Cullens. Content Warnings This novel includes and alludes to things that may be concerning such as murder, vampires, blood drinking, graphic sex, sexual assault, rape, cancer, death of a parent and family member, non-consensual sexual encounters, victim-blaming, panic attacks, PTSD, discrimination, hate crimes, parental neglect, and disowning. Please consider these before continuing. table of contents Title Page Copyright Dedication Content warning Prologue Chapter one Chapter two Chapter three Chapter four Chapter five Chapter six Chapter seven Chapter eight Chapter nine Chapter ten Chapter eleven Chapter twelve Chapter thirteen Chapter fourteen Chapter fifteen Chapter sixteen Chapter seventeen Chapter eighteen Chapter nineteen Chapter twenty prologue You’ve read the stories and heard the tales about the things that go bump in the night, the monsters under your bed and in your closet. It’s all pretty terrifying stuff to hear as you’re growing up, never really feeling safe. You probably spent most of your childhood constantly checking every nook and cranny in your house, looking around every corner for what vicious and violent creature might be lurking there, poised to attack. Growing up, and especially growing up as a woman, you learn two unsettling things pretty quickly in life. One, the monsters from those stories aren’t real. Two, the monsters in the real world are even more terrifying. Men don’t need claws to claim a woman’s unwilling flesh. Men don’t need inhuman strength to pin a woman down. Men don’t need fangs to drain a woman’s life. Men don’t have to be invisible, they don’t have to hide in order to lure us to their traps. No, sometimes, men are vile monsters all on their own. That’s the unfortunate truth though, isn’t it? The lesson we were taught by Scooby Doo every week on TV. The unsettling fact that we all had to come to terms with as we grew and saw the truth of the world for the first time. The real monsters are human. Living in the middle of Nowhere, Maine sucks. For three months of the year, our little town of Shockgrove becomes a tourist playground, with crab shacks on every corner, and live music every night. For those few months, all the ridiculously expensive beach houses that stand empty every other month of the year are packed with housewives who are joined by their husbands on the weekends, college kids with big bank accounts and reckless attitudes, and those families who are rich enough to afford three months away from their jobs, duties, and lives to spend an entire summer drinking, swimming, and sunbathing. During those three months, business is great, the economy booms, and my family’s bookstore cafe becomes a hotspot that tourists just can’t get enough of. We’re right there on the pier, a perfect sanctuary on rainy days, or days when the sun’s warmth is just too powerful for some of the newer visitors. They’d stop inside for tea, an iced coffee, and a good book. My family has owned this little shop for three generations. My Grandma and her husband started it back in the 50s when they would sell a cup of coffee for 75 cents. Then my mother took it on after Grandpa passed and Grandma just couldn’t do it alone anymore, although she still spent most of her time in the shop. Citing that ‘nobody can do it the right way anymore.’ It was only Mom and me for as long as I could remember. She never told me much about my dad, as far as I’m concerned he was a sperm donor who didn’t deserve another moment of my time. Mom remarried once, but I tried not to think about that anymore. My stepfather was now in prison, where he belonged. Despite the many changes that occurred throughout our lives, this coffee shop-slash-bookstore was the one constant. The Maine Plotline was a Landry family business, and for three months of the year, business was good. Great even. For the other nine months of the year, however, it was a ghost town, with a measly population of just over five-thousand people, and business frankly suffered. Not many people call little coastal towns like this home. It’s always the stop along the way, the blip in the timeline of family memories, not the destination. But to me, Shockgrove was my beginning, middle, and likely my end. It’s like a vacuum, this town, and its people. I’ve tried to leave, trust me. Dozens of times. During sophomore year, my world turned on its axis. Sending me into a spiral I’ve fought tooth and nail every day since to climb out of. Trying to get out of this town at any and every opportunity. I applied to some stupid all-girls boarding school. Not that I would have minded being without men. I wanted nothing to do with men and their depraved desires for a long time. An all-girls school seemed like a dream I would never be allowed to have. Plus, it was obvious that I was bisexual at age fourteen when I first saw The Mummy and I wasn’t sure if I wanted Brendan, Rachel or to be between them. I would have been fine with all women.