The Broken One (The One Series Book 1)

by Selene Maxley

  “What did he call you? Caspy?” He’s putting it together in his mind, and I can see the second it all snaps into place. “Your father.” It isn’t a question.

  I start walking toward the conference room and make it a few feet before he plants himself in front of me. “You need a minute to process this. It’ll be okay if we’re late.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve never been late to a meeting in my life, I’m not going to start with this one,” I say, walking around him.

  He sighs and falls in step beside me. “You promise you’re okay?”

  “I’ll be shaking glass from my hair for a couple of days, but yes, I’m fine.”

  “You shouldn’t be. I want to talk about this tonight,” he says, then turns to business. “Listen, it’s going to be a little off kilter in there as it is. Keisler got some kind of food poisoning or something and can’t make it, so we’re all going to have to pick up some slack.”

  I stifle my smirk as we enter the conference room.

  Booker sits beside me and holds my hand under the table. When it’s time to begin, I squeeze his hand tightly, then flash him my best smile as I release it. I’m up first, and as I make my presentation, part of my brain is dedicated to memorizing Booker’s face. His full lips pull up into a reassuring smile every time I look at him, his beautiful skin stretching across his high cheekbones. I know I’ll never see anyone so lovely again. He winks at me when I wrap up my portion, and I squeeze his hand as he takes over.

  I register the confusion on his face when he sees me walk toward the exit. I walk out of the conference room without looking back. I’m on a flight back to Tucson before the meeting is even over.

  Chapter 26

  I can feel things around me shifting now that I’m at my apartment. Booker has been texting and calling nonstop, and I haven’t quite worked out what to say. I emailed my completed work files to John, and he’s already told Booker, because the last text I got was an hour ago saying that he’s boarding the flight home and wants to come over to talk. I’ve been trying to think of how I can get out of this without hurting him, but I’m not sure it’s possible.

  I called Dave when I landed in Tucson and let him know that I’ve finished early and am happy to stay on to work out my contracted timeframe if they need, but I’d prefer to do it in a sister location. He’s currently looking into which would be the best fit, and I’m packing my apartment in the meantime.

  I hear the loud pounding on the door and debate pretending I’m not home. The coward in me wants to turn off all of my lights and never face him. Instead, I pull myself up and reach for Veronica, as she’s my best shot at remaining emotionless when I answer the door.

  “What the hell is going on?” he asks, walking past me into my living room.

  “Things changed. I have to leave.”

  “This can’t just be about your father, though. John said you sent him all of your work. That you’re completely finished. And he seemed to imply there was something else going on, but was reluctant to share,” he spits.

  “Yes, that’s what I just said,” I say patiently, ignoring the bit that I know is about Keisler.

  “No. What you just said is that things changed.”

  “Yes,” I say again, but I’m not following him.

  “Something didn’t just change, you’ve been planning on leaving after the Vegas trip. You had everything ready for that to be the end for you. I bet your office is even empty, isn’t it?”

  “It is,” I admit.

  “So this doesn’t have to do with your father, but it somehow does. There’s no way you were still planning to leave after the last three days we’ve had.”

  I don’t say anything, I only look at his hands. His beautiful hands that I can never feel again.

  “You’re back to walls, and calculated personalities. I knew you weren’t fine this morning,” he says, grabbing my hands. “Talk to me, Caspian. Whatever he said, whatever he did, we can work through it together.”

  I pull my hands back and turn to walk to my bedroom. I have to take slow, deep breaths to keep the tears away. Booker follows me, and it sounds like something punches the air out of him. I turn to see what happened and see anguish on his face as he looks at the boxes.

  “You’re leaving now?” he asks in disbelief.

  “I have to,” I tell him.

  He moves toward me, wrapping me in his arms, and his approach changes to a sort of pleading. I go ice cold as his words fall around us. “I know this is as real for you as it is for me. It’s scary to care for someone, but I promise it’s worth it. Please don’t run.”

  The ache in my chest is all-consuming, and his arms around me make it worse. I know I’m at the edge of the precipice. If it hurts like this now, it will hurt so much worse the next time. There’s always an ending.

  I feel a new mask forming and push his arms off of me. My stomach twists with everything I know I’ll do. Everything I know I’ll say. Everything I know I’ll become. Cancerous Caspian has made her appearance, and she’ll destroy everything in her wake. I feel the danger of her existence, one I’ve always known lurked in the shadows, and my skin begins to crawl as I embrace her wholly.

  “This isn’t what I want,” I say. I’m stone faced on the outside, but inside, I’m writhing.

  “What?” he asks, sounding deflated.

  “I don’t want you,” I tell him.

  “This week was real.”

  “No. It was an experiment.”

  “This is about your dad. Not me, not us.”

  “You think you’re different?” I ask him.

  “I’ve never hit a woman. I would never hit you.” His voice is outraged.

  “Not physically. But you married one you didn’t love, knowing that her commitment was greater. Then you left her when it wasn’t enough for you. If you think that wasn’t worse than a fist, then you know nothing.” I’m sad that these words aren’t the mask. They’re the ones I’ve been trying not to think. They don’t feel right in the air between us, and they don’t take the ache from my chest. As soon as I’ve said them aloud, I realize how unfair they are.

  “That was different,” he says, and his voice is hollow. “I was too young to understand the commitment I was making ...”

  I wave my hand, and he says the words for me. “It doesn’t matter?”

  I can’t bring myself to say the lie, so instead I go with, “It changes nothing.” I can’t look at his face anymore, and my eyes fall to my feet.

  I can see him backing away. When I hear the door close behind him, I run to the bathroom and throw up. It’s better this way, I tell myself over and over, even though it doesn’t feel better this way. I’m not sure I’ve saved either of us from anything.

  I don’t know how much time goes by, but the sun is getting lower in the sky when I decide that some fresh air will help the situation. I put on shorts and sneakers, grab my phone and keys, and step outside to walk around the block.

  My phone is ringing against my ear before I realize that I’ve called my mom.

  “Hey!” she sings happily into the phone.

  “Hi Mom. How’s it going?”

  “It’s good! We’re busy with the business, but it’s nice. How is it going for you?” she asks.

  “Good, I just finished with the big Vegas project.”

  “Are you okay? You sound strange.”

  “I don’t know,” I tell her, struggling to keep my voice steady.

  “Josh said you mentioned coming home for a visit, maybe that will help? Dad can get on the computer and buy a ticket right now,” she says, and the hope in her voice is palpable. I didn’t think any more pain could fit in my chest right now, but I was wrong.

  So much has changed since that text a couple of days ago. “I was planning to, but it just gets harder to leave each time.”

  “For us, too,” she says sadly.

  “Hey Mom, I have to go. I’ll call you back,” I say as I struggle to control my emotions.


  “Just think about it, honey. I can call you in the morning. I think a visit will be good.”

  “Okay, I’ll talk to you in the morning,” I tell her.

  “We love you,” she says.

  “I love you, too,” I say, and something catches my eye off to the right as I hang up.

  I’m walking past a cemetery and can see a funeral has just happened. There is a group of people clad in black standing around something, the gravesite abandoned 20 feet away. Cars fill the rows of the cemetery, and a singular ambulance is at the center, lights ablaze.

  Maybe someone is dying of a broken heart.

  I’m struck by how quickly my brain rewinds to the last day of my Before.

  When the police officer told me about the accident, I heard the screams long before I realized they were my own. But my heart refused to stop beating, and the pain continued to shred me. That is, until I found my masks and learned there was a switch that I could flip to make it all go away.

  The worst thing about losing a parent as a child isn’t losing a parent as a child. It’s getting a new family. It’s loving a new family. It’s knowing, with every year, with every laugh, with every cry, with every hug, with every precious moment: I will feel this again. It’s knowing that it hurt worse than dying the first time, and I only had six years of loving her. It’s knowing that after 20 years, allowing my mind to go down this path rips me open like it’s new. Loving people and being loved by people hurts so much more knowing that it will end, and even more so still, knowing that it will not kill me.

  As I walk back into my living room, I know there is a perfect storm brewing within me. I feel too much, and I can’t seem to find the switch. I’m barely holding it together when my phone chimes, indicating I have a new text message:

  Mom: How lucky I am to have something that makes saying goodbye so hard.–Winnie the Pooh

  And I shatter.

  Preview of Hard Limits

  Monday Morning

  Winter Whitley watches in amusement as her friend scurries around the loft-style apartment, checking for any last-minute items she may have overlooked. She shuffles through the open floor plan of the kitchen, scanning the dark granite countertops as she goes; past Winter, who is seated at the small island, observing her. She scoots into the great/living room (which, being in Hell’s Kitchen, isn’t so large as one might think) placing her hand on the back of the navy recliner as she dances around it, checking the matching couch and the antique white coffee table. For reasons Winter will never know, Temperance even checks the entertainment center before moving down the hall and into her bedroom to do the final sweep for missing and forgotten things.

  Winter laughs to herself, knowing there won’t be any. If it were her that was flying out on business today, she’d still be packing her bag, leave an hour from now, arriving at her gate just in the nick of time. She’d realize at the hotel that she’d forgotten her phone charger, dental floss, and enough underwear for the two-week trip. Winter would go without flossing and underwear, like the disgusting mess she was, but she would immediately replace the phone charger. Everyone has their hard limits, she thinks to herself, knowing this isn’t hers. Not really.

  Winter loves to find people’s limits. Pushing, probing, provoking until she understands them at their core. That is, the people she cares to know. Winter doesn’t invest a lot of time into outsiders; her time is valuable, it is limited. She understands that it’s fleeting, and she’s careful to whom she gives her time. Her energy and emotion, she invests even less often. The last investment Winter made backfired horribly, but she doesn’t want to think about that tangled web right now.

  She pushes the thoughts aside and rises, walking the three steps it takes to reach the black refrigerator and scans the contents for a suitable traveling snack. After three passes, Winter lands on a bottle of alkaline water and one of the fig and date health bars she knows her friend is fond of. She places both on the edge of the island and stands next to it while she waits the last couple of minutes.

  Temperance Bishop finally emerges from her bedroom with the designer luggage Winter bought her as a congratulations gift wheeling behind her, and the matching tote she already owned slung over her arm. She’s the picture of elegance and sophistication, dressed in a tweed pencil skirt and matching emerald blazer, with a mint blouse barely visible beneath. She’s tall and slender with a body that years of Pilates sessions have sculpted to perfection, and her long, icy-blonde hair is fastened in a low bun at the base of her skull, not a fly-away to be found. It’s one of the things Winter has admired and envied about her best friend for many years, the fact that she is always prepared and well put-together.

  In contrast, Winter is wearing gray sweatpants that have gotten looser in the last few weeks of her neglecting proper nutrition. Her long black sports bra also serves as a top that’s moderately socially acceptable, though not quite seasonable this time of year, with Halloween just under two weeks away. Temperance keeps the apartment at 72 degrees, though, which is much too warm for Winter’s liking. Her shoulder-length hair is pulled into a high ponytail that is made almost entirely of fly-aways and looks like a fountain Pebbles Flinstone would sport. She rakes her fingers through the brunette bumps that her waves create against her head when it’s pulled up.

  “Isn’t it exhausting?” Winter asks her friend, not for the first time.

  “If you put forth even an ounce of effort, you’d realize it’s far more exhausting always to be flying by the seat of your pants, wondering what you’ve forgotten,” Temperance jabs playfully, grabbing the health bar and water with a quick, “you know me so well, thank you.”

  “One of these days, I’m going to sit down and do the math on how much of your life you’ve wasted by always planning, organizing, and arriving early.”

  “You’d need me to set up the spreadsheet for you, and even then, you won’t sit still long enough to finish the task,” Temperance quips, her classic red lips pulling at the corners to reveal that megawatt smile for which she is known. This is the way they play, and Winter loves it. An important part of learning people’s limits is the games you play to find them. This game has become part of their friendship, as it often happens, so they continue to play, despite knowing each other as well as they do. Temperance is the brains, the systems, the finisher; Winter is the intuitive, the artist, the wanderer.

  Snagging her keys, Temperance turns to her friend. “Olivia gets out of school at exactly three,” she begins for the third time this morning.

  Winter throws her arms around Temperance, reminding her, “You’ve written it all down, and I know Oli’s schedule. It’s not the first time I’ve picked her up.”

  “I know, I know. I’m just nervous. Thank you for doing this Winnie, I owe you big time!”

  She’s on her way to corporate training on the other side of the country for the recent promotion she’s received. Another admirable trait about Temperance for Winter is how driven and motivated she is. Temperance has shattered every stereotype and preconceived notion people pretend not to have attached to the label, Single Mother.

  She should be the poster child for women everywhere: Career or Family? You can have both! Winter laughs to herself at the thought, knowing it isn’t true for everyone. Temperance is a goddamn Rockstar.

  When Temperance steps back, Winter catches the concerned look on her face and attempts to reassure her, “I’ll send you a picture every morning when I drop her off and every afternoon when I pick her up. You don’t have to worry about a thing.”

  Temperance’s face falls a little, and she begins to open the door as she says the next words, “Actually, Riggs has agreed to come stay as well. He’ll handle mornings, and then you won’t have to get a sitter or cancel any of your late-night stuff.”

  Winter ignores the first emotion that floods in, choosing to focus on the second. “You don’t trust me?” She asks, her voice thick with emotion.

  “No! I’m so sorry, that isn’t it,” Temperance
says, throwing her arms around Winter again. She knew she should have brought it up yesterday. “Riggs called for a chat the other day, and I told him about the trip. He offered to come. I thought it’d be nice for you to have backup.”

  Winter pulls back, nodding slightly, though not entirely convinced. “Look, I talked to your agent last week and she told me you’ve got a deadline approaching. She said you missed the last one and that it’s imperative that you make this one to keep your schedule. We all know that you do your best work at night and I don’t want to be the reason you’re distracted or unable to work. I’ve already made up my bedroom for him, so there isn’t anything extra for you to do.”

  “Lydia must be really concerned,” Winter says thoughtfully. “She’s not supposed to call you unless it’s serious.”

  The tone in Temperance’s voice suggests she’s nervous when she elaborates, “we were catching up and she mentioned it, she didn’t call to specifically discuss your work.”

  Again, Winter nods. This time she chooses to let go of her hurt, ignoring he fact that Temperance and Lydia keep in touch outside of her, and the first emotion crashes through as Temperance kisses her cheek and steps out the door, saying, “I love you, I trust you, it wasn’t about that. He offered, and I thought it would be good. I’ve got to go, or I’ll be late, but I’ll text you when I get in.”

  Winter feels the dangerous flutter inside her chest and attempts to squash it out. It’s a flutter she’s ignored and tried to hide for ten years. It’s a flutter that threatens the only positive friendship she has. It’s one of Temperance’s only hard limits: Do not, under any circumstances, become involved with her older brother.

  Acknowledgments

  Special thanks to my editor, Angel Butts A.K.A The Word Angel, without whom this book may never have come together. You are so right, the devil is in the details.