Kill Devil Hills: A Complete Beach Romance Series (4-Book Box Set) Read online

  THE KILL DEVIL HILLS

  BOX SET

  SARAH DARLINGTON

  THE KILL DEVIL HILLS BOX SET:

  (KILL DEVIL HILLS, CHANGING TIDES, PULLED UNDER, & ADRIFT)

  Copyright © 2019 Sarah Darlington

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or by any information storage and retrieval system without written permission from the author, except for the inclusion of brief quotations in a review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, and events portrayed in this book are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced throughout this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  SYNOPSIS & Reading Order

  One event—the death of Ben Turner—will forever change the lives of a group of young adults. Set in the beach town of Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, this series is an emotional, surprising, sweet, romantic collection of 4 interconnected stand-alone novels.

  Book 1: KILL DEVIL HILLS

  Noah is determined to escape his past and keep his life under control. Then he saves the life of his best friend’s little sister, Georgina Turner — who is battling her own demons. He can’t get her out of his head, even if Georgina tears down the emotional walls he so carefully built.

  Book 2: CHANGING TIDES

  For years Ellie Turner’s had a crush on television actor, Nate West. But it doesn’t matter because Ellie’s always strictly been into women and Nate doesn’t exist in real life. In real life Ellie has her own issues to worry about. So when the pair meets on an airplane, nothing life changing should have come from it.

  Book 3: PULLED UNDER

  When Sydney Michaels’ lifelong crush—Ben Turner—died and she struggled to get through her grief, she decided to give up her virginity to Rhett Morgan, the most promiscuous guy in town, in hopes that he’d be the ultimate distraction. Only problem...Sydney only wanted one night. Rhett wants more.

  Book 4: ADRIFT

  Ben Turner is back! After unsuccessfully faking his own death, he’s back home in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. With no plans for college or the future, and hated by the town that once loved him, Ben feels like he’s drowning. Until he meets the girl next door, and she changes everything.

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  SYNOPSIS & Reading Order

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  KILL DEVIL HILLS

  CHANGING TIDES

  PULLED UNDER

  ADRIFT

  ROCKSTARS in KILL DEVIL HILLS

  KILL DEVIL HILLS

  KILL DEVIL HILLS

  (Kill Devil Hills #1)

  SARAH DARLINGTON

  CHAPTER 1

  NOAH

  I had to take a piss. It had been a hard day—not the hardest of my life, but right up there. Ellie and I had gotten wasted to make up for it. And now both of us had to use the bathroom at the exact same moment.

  “I hhhhhave ta use the pisser, too. Ladies first,” Ellie announced, standing up from the coffee table and leaving our two-person game of Taboo. It was something we often played after a long night of drinking, and tonight we’d especially needed something routine. “You men have it easy. You have bigger bladders.”

  “Don’t kid yourself,” I joked. “You’re just as much of a man as I am.”

  She laughed before feigning seriousness. “Shut up, Noah,” she said, swaying as she moved for the bathroom.

  Ellie was a lightweight, as much as she liked to pretend she wasn’t, and I moved after her in hopes that I’d save her from wobbling into the wall. My attempt was useless, because by the time I stood to my feet, she’d already disappeared into the bathroom. And by this point, all this talk about peeing had me really needing to go now. So I marched up the stairs, heading for one of the other bathrooms.

  The Turner’s house had three levels, and in my drunken stupor I ended up all the way upstairs. How the hell did that happen? Ellie’s parents and two sisters must have gone to bed hours ago, because it was dead quiet upstairs. The kind of dead quiet that made my skin crawl and left an unsettled feeling in the pit of my stomach. Years ago, Memaw—the grandmother who had raised me for a time—told me that after a person passes away their soul lingers for a few days. Who knew if that was true or not? And what sort of woman told an eight-year-old about ‘lingering souls?’ But all I could think about was Ben’s soul lingering in this very hallway as I crept for the bathroom, the floorboards squeaking under my shoes. The bathroom door was closed, thankfully not locked, and I stumbled inside. Light blinded me before my eyes started to adjust.

  “Jesus. Lord. Fuck.”

  Blood everywhere.

  In an instant, I went sober. The sight before me was beyond horrific. Serious slasher movie shit. Was someone fucking murdered in here? Because all I could see was red, contrasting sharply against white tile.

  Then my eyes finished adjusting, and I realized that Ellie’s younger sister Georgina had slit her wrists. Well, not just her wrists. It looked like she’d slit her whole fucking arm. Both of them. There was way too much blood to know for sure. Her body was slumped, propped up against the side of the tub, while her arms were turned up as if she were meditating with her eyes peacefully shut.

  Dropping straight to my knees, I yelled her name and for help. My voice sounded shrill, barely recognizable as my own. Terrified she might already be dead, I brushed her long brown hair away from her neck and felt for a pulse.

  She had one, a faint one, but it was there.

  Thank Christ!

  Common sense told me I needed to slow the blood flow. And by the way she’d dug into her arms with the big-ass kitchen knife on the tile floor beside her, I knew that wasn’t going to be easy. I moved her body flat on the floor and pulled her legs up to rest on my lap. Blood stained everything. Yanking my shirt over my head, I ripped at the fabric and tied the pieces around her arms. It wasn’t enough. I used my hands to put pressure on the cuts.

  By this time, Mr. and Mrs. Turner were awake and in the bathroom, yelling frantic things at me while they called 911. But I pushed out the noise and the ringing in my ears, focusing all my attention on her.

  Amongst the chaos, her blue eyes flickered open for a single, brief moment and hope shook through my body. Her eyes were glazed-over and distant but managed to connect with mine.

  “Noah, I’m cold,” she whispered, before her lids fluttered closed once more.

  “You will not die on me,” I told her with absolute certainty. “I won’t let you.” I leaned over to press my chest against her body, hoping that might keep her warmer. Then I did the one thing I never thought I’d do again—I prayed to God. He’d let me down a few too many times, and we weren’t on speaking terms these days, but I’d never needed anything more. I begged. I pleaded. And then the next thing I knew, the paramedics were there, taking her away from me. I asked them frantic questions, needing to know if she would live, but my questions went unanswered, time and everyone moving faster than my foggy brain could keep up with.

  I blinked.

  Georgie was gone.

  Ellie stood in the bathroom with me now. I hadn’t moved from my spot on the ground, and Ellie yanked on my arm, trying unsuccessfully to pull me to my feet.

  “Go with them to the hospital,”
I insisted. “I’m fine.”

  “Noah, you’re covered in blood. Get up.”

  “No.”

  “Well, I can’t go to the hospital. Mom went in the ambulance, and Dad already left. I’m too drunk to drive, and someone had to stay here with Rose. I think you’re in shock. You need to get up.”

  Glancing up, I took in the sight of my best friend. She had black stuff streaked down her cheeks and some of Georgie’s blood smeared in her spikey brown hair. Ellie was tough. She never cried. It hurt my already churning stomach to see her so upset—especially seeing it for the second time today. “I’m not in shock,” I assured her. “I’m fine. Go take care of Rose. Don’t let her near this bathroom. She’s too little to see something this fucked up. Let me know when you know anything new about Georgie. In the meantime, I’m going to try to clean some of this.”

  “You don’t have to do that.” She wiped her nose on her sleeve, shaking noticeably.

  “Yes, I do. You know how I get.”

  She nodded, reluctant but agreeing. “Okay. I’ll go get you some towels and bleach. Thanks, Noah.” She went for the door.

  “For cleaning? I have nothing better to do right now.”

  “No, for saving her life. The paramedic said if you’d found her even a few minutes later or hadn’t done all you did…she’d be—” She sighed a big huff of air and continued, “She’d be dead now, too. You saved her.”

  I’d never saved anyone or anything in my whole life. I didn’t like the idea of it. I was nobody’s hero. But the alternative option would have been to let Georgie die, so I guess just this once an exception had to be made.

  Ellie left and returned a few minutes later with towels, bleach, and cleaning supplies. I might have known I needed to get Georgie flat on the floor and elevate her legs when that had mattered, but I didn’t have the first clue on how to clean up a giant bloody mess. Once I started, I realized the smell of blood and bleach didn’t mix well, and all I’d done was spread the red further over the tile floor. My cleaning wasn’t helping jack. Dammit. I sighed, taking a step backward, trying to come up with a better plan to tackle the mess. That was when I noticed a pink cellphone lying rather ominously on the bathroom sink. Georgie’s cellphone.

  Being nosy as hell and not caring, I grabbed it and slid the unlock button to turn on the screen. The notes app on the phone opened. She’d left a goodbye letter. It read:

  I’m sorry. I know my timing is horrible, but I couldn’t let Ben go into the dark alone. He’s my other half. Please understand. I love you all, but I love him, too. And now I’m with him. Love, tons and tons of love, Georgina

  It was the sweetest and the stupidest fucking note I’d ever read. She’d lost her brother. Watching his casket being lowered into the ground was hard for all of us to watch today. I understood she was in pain. I understood she wanted to ease that pain. She wanted to follow him into the dark… I even understood that. What I didn’t understand was why it was cutting me up inside. Because it was. Finding her on that floor, holding her cold body, watching as the paramedics took her away, and staring at the evidence of it all still staining the bathroom floor—it was ripping me to fucking shreds. And it had been years since I’d let something affect me like this.

  “Noah—” Ellie came rushing back into the bathroom. “Dad just called.”

  “Tell me she’ll live,” I demanded.

  “She’s gonna live.”

  I let out a breath of air I hadn’t realized I’d been holding in.

  CHAPTER 2

  Four months later…

  GEORGINA

  There comes a time in every person’s life when they hit rock bottom. And it is how you handle yourself when that time comes that defines you. It was safe to say, when my rock bottom came screaming in my face, I’d failed. Miserably. I had tried to commit suicide—tried being the operative word in that statement. If it hadn’t been for my sister’s friend, Noah Clark, then I’d be dead. The most depressing part of all, I still wasn’t one hundred percent sure if Noah saving me was a good thing.

  But, nevertheless, he had saved me. Maybe I was still trying to figure out how to be okay. Maybe I was still missing my brother every single moment of the day. And maybe I was still nothing close to the person I wanted to be. But I had a smidgeon of hope now, where before I’d thought I had none, and I had Noah to thank for that.

  I sighed, staring out the window at the rows and rows of beach houses ticking by. The Cove—the recovery facility I’d been sent to and had spent the last four months ‘recovering’ at—was a three-hour drive from our seaside home in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina. Four months and three hours had flown by, and we were minutes away from the house. It had been an uncomfortable drive, given that my parents had forgotten how to act normal around me, and I feared being home and facing reality again.

  I guess I feared it all because I’d loved The Cove so much. It was a residential treatment center for young women suffering from anything from drug addiction to eating disorders, which focused on building skills for the future. Pure ‘let’s-hold-hands-and-sing-Kumbaya’ bullcrap, but surprisingly I’d fit in rather well there. Before Ben’s death, I’d been so caught up in my own little world of friends, parties, and my boyfriend, that I hadn’t even noticed how wildly unhappy I was until it was too late. Take me out of that world and I’d done shockingly well. But put me back into my old world—what if everything just came crashing down on me all over again? What if I wasn’t strong enough to exist in my old world?

  “Ellie’s making dinner,” Mom announced. She’d run out of random things to chat about two hours ago.

  “Oh,” I answered.

  Mom continued, talking to me in a sweet, soft, careful voice. “I wanted to have a nice family dinner tonight. I wanted it waiting for you when we arrived home. Ellie volunteered.”

  Ellie’s cooking would probably be disastrous, but that sounded better than whatever overly-healthy, latest-diet-trend dinner my mom might have fixed instead.

  “I’m sure it will be great,” I replied politely, but my heart was now pounding just a little harder than it should have been. Because if Ellie was at home, then Noah Clark would surely be there with her.

  Noah was my sister’s best friend. They went to high school together, graduated together, decided to forego college together to start their own business, and currently lived together. The two were pretty damn inseparable. And if my sister wasn’t a lesbian, I’d have assumed the next step in their undying friendship would be marriage and babies. But my older sister liked girls, and Noah was just her really good friend. Her really good-looking good friend. Her really good-looking good friend who saved my life and now kept creeping into my thoughts at random moments like now…

  A second later, Dad pulled into the driveway of our house. A.k.a. ‘The Shore Thing.’ It was standard around here to name your house and to post that name like a name-tag over the front door on a wooden placard. The neighbor’s house to the right was called ‘Beachy Keen.’ And to the left sat a vacation rental by the name of ‘Sol Mate.’ Kind of cheesy, but the tourists seemed to like the different names. Or at least that was what Dad was always saying. He was a realtor, so I guess he would know.

  Dad grabbed my luggage, Mom grabbed her purse, and I fidgeted with the hem of my long-sleeved shirt. It was early June, already hot as balls in North Carolina, but I had on jeans and a long-sleeved shirt because razors at The Cove had been banned, and I desperately needed to shave…everywhere. Not to mention, I liked long sleeves since they were good at hiding my scars.

  I pushed open the front door, entering the house through the lower level. Basements were impossible this close to the ocean, but in all practicality, the lower level was our basement. It had Ellie’s old room, a guest room, a bathroom, and a game room. I took the stairs two at a time, leaving my parents behind—no sense in delaying the awkward-ass meet-and-greet coming my way—and headed for the main level. That was where the kitchen, living room, and all my other fami
ly members would be. It was also where Noah would be. Might as well get that nerve-racking, thanks-for-saving-my-life-even-though-I-didn’t-want-to-be-saved, did-I-mention-I-can’t-stop-thinking-about-you-lately weird moment over with as well.

  But the only person I found was my little sister, Rose. She was sitting on the couch, watching some pointless reality TV show. She gave me a menacing glare from across the room when I entered, and then resumed watching whatever she was watching. Okay? What was her problem? She was nine for crying out loud but acting like a moody teenager.

  “Hi, Rose.”

  She flipped her long, chocolate-colored hair over one shoulder. “Hi, yourself.”

  “Aren’t you going to give me a hug? I haven’t seen you for almost four months.”

  “Nope.”

  BEEEEEP! BEEEEEP! BEEEEEEEEEP!

  Just then the smoke alarm went off in the kitchen. Oh God, Mom never should have left the cooking up to Ellie. The smell of burning hit my nose just as I heard my older sister shout, “Shit! Noah, get the fire extinguisher!”

  Jeez! I plopped down on the couch by Rose rather than dealing with that. Mom, surely hearing the commotion from all the way downstairs with her mom-hearing, hurried through the living room a second later and dropped her purse on the floor as she rushed to help out in the kitchen. The next thing I knew, Ellie—with Noah following close behind her—came laughing out into the living room like they’d both just been banished by Mom. She and Noah had little specks of white stuff all over them.

  “That was hella awesome!” Ellie was saying. “Who knew macaroni and cheese could catch on fire like that?” She grabbed Noah’s shirt dramatically. “Noah Clark, you’re my hero.”