Flawed (Triple Canopy Book 2)

by Riley Edwards

  Flawed

  Riley Edwards

  FLAWED

  TRIPLE CANOPY

  BOOK 2

  RILEY EDWARDS

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2020 by Riley Edwards

  All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover design: Lori Jackson Designs

  Cover Model: Michael Scanlon

  Written by: Riley Edwards

  Published by: Riley Edwards/Rebels Romance

  Edited by: Rebecca Hodgkins

  Proofreader: Julie Deaton, Rebecca Kendall

  FLAWED

  First edition: December 1, 2020

  Copyright © 2020 Riley Edwards

  All rights reserved

  To my family - my team – my tribe.

  This is for you.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Be A Rebel

  Also by Riley Edwards

  Acknowledgments

  1

  “Addy, I am not doing yoga,” Trey griped.

  “Starting next week, we’re adding yoga,” I returned.

  “That’s not happening.”

  I rolled my eyes to the ceiling and counted to five.

  I should’ve counted to twenty and prayed for divine intervention.

  Trey Durum had worked my last nerve and he’d only been on the mat for ten minutes out of his sixty-minute physical therapy session.

  I gave up on the yoga argument and not-so-nicely ordered, “Stop talking and tighten your glutes and straighten your leg.”

  “Woman, I’m clenching my ass so tight I could crack a peanut.”

  “Not good enough. Think walnut and keep your leg straight.”

  I did my best to ignore Trey’s growl of frustration, something that was getting harder and harder to do as the months slid by. A sound that sent shivers down my spine and made me curious if he made that noise while he was doing other things…naughty things. Things that I couldn’t begin to imagine because a man like Trey was so far out of my league it wasn’t even funny. My sexual experience paled in comparison to his and consisted of two partners and two positions—top and bottom.

  “You’re the devil,” he groaned. “You have everyone snowed. They all think Adalynn Walker is a sweet angel.”

  “I am an angel,” I retorted.

  And that was the unfortunate truth. The reason why a man like Trey would never look twice at me. Why I was in my mid-twenties and I’d never had an orgasm, not even self-induced. I was the pathetic, shy twin. I was the little sister to three beautiful, outgoing, loud sisters. It was funny how Hadley and I were identical, yet she turned heads and I never had. When we walked into a room, I received a cursory glance, people did a double-take only because there were two of us, but it was Hadley everyone gravitated to.

  Being the good one in the family had its perks. My dad was hugely protective—over-the-top insane with it. In other words, overbearing in a loving way, but he lorded over my sisters. I flew under his radar, so the few times I had broken the rules I hadn’t been caught. But that also meant my life was boring with a capital B and two exclamation points to punctuate just how boring I was.

  “And I am sweet to people I like,” I added.

  That wasn’t the truth, I was pretty much sweet to everyone, even people who were jerks. There was enough negativity in the world without me adding to it.

  “So what you’re saying is you don’t like me.”

  “Has anyone ever told you, you whine a lot?” I inquired. “Slowly lower your hips back to the mat and keep your—”

  “Ass cheeks tight. I know.”

  “Glutes.”

  “You gotta problem with me saying ass cheeks, Addy?”

  Yes. Yes, I did.

  I had a huge issue keeping my mind where it needed to be. Trey was my patient. I was his physical therapist. I didn’t need to be thinking about his ass cheeks any more than I already did. I needed to be concentrating on rehabbing his leg, not falling in lust with a man who irritated the holy crap out of me. I didn’t need to be fantasizing about what his muscular ass would feel like under my hands.

  Glutes—not ass cheeks.

  Was my face red? It felt red. No, it felt hot. Gah. I needed to stop thinking about his ass cheeks.

  What the heck was wrong with me?

  What exercise were we on? Gluteal. Yes, I needed him to finish the set and get him off the mat before I crawled on top of him like a crazy person in need of a happy ending.

  “Hello? Earth to Addy.”

  “I’m not one of your bimbos,” I snapped.

  “Come again?”

  “I said, I’m not one of your bimbos, Trey. You can drop the flirtatious grins and overdone charm.”

  His eyes narrowed to slits. He settled his butt on the mat and bent both of his legs so his feet were planted on the foam before he rolled up to a sitting position. I was on my knees next to him so the change brought us face-to-face.

  “Tell me, Adalynn, when have I ever treated you like a bimbo?”

  I couldn’t think of a single situation where he had, so I remained silent.

  “That’s what I thought,” he unhappily retorted.

  “I was out of line,” I admitted. “Sorry.”

  “What gives?”

  “Gives?”

  “Yeah, Addy. What the fuck?”

  “What the frick, what?”

  “Known you awhile now. Sweet as sugar to everyone but me. I come around and suddenly you have a stick up your ass and a dirty look on your face. I’ve thought on it and I can’t for the life of me figure out what I could’ve done to make you hate me so much.”

  “I don’t hate you.”

  “Coulda fooled me. Again, you got a smile for everyone but me. I see you with your other patients, you’re smiling. Me, you’re a DI.”

  I absolutely did not hate Trey. He annoyed me. He irritated me. He blew off his PT sessions, which pissed me off, but I didn’t hate him. It was the opposite, I cared too much about him. If anyone else I worked with gave up on themselves the way Trey did, I’d expend half the energy I did trying to get Trey on the right track. I wouldn’t be annoyed, irritated, or pissed. I’d feel bad for them. I’d try to encourage them and help, but I wouldn’t lie in bed at night and worry. I wouldn’t let it bother me to the point of obsession.

  “I don’t hate you. But I do hate that you’re not taking your rehab seriously and that’s the difference between you and my other patients. It’s frustrating
when you allow your impatience to hinder your progress.”

  “Have you ever stopped to think that maybe it’s frustrating to me that my body no longer works the way it used to? That it has nothing to do with patience and everything to do with the fact I will never be what I was.”

  I had thought about that. And as much as I could empathize with him, I still had full range of motion and use of my limbs, therefore I had no idea what it truly felt like not to.

  Was I being too hard on him?

  Heck no. He was a Navy SEAL for crying out loud, he’d been through tougher training than any PT exercises I could give him.

  “Trey,” I whispered. “I know I’ve been hard on you. But I know you’re strong. You’re a SEAL—”

  “No, I’m not. I’m not shit, not anymore.”

  His icy stare chilled me to the bone and his anger flared.

  There was the crux of Trey’s issues. Not the first time I’d seen the signs, not even the first time he’d voiced them, yet I still couldn’t find a way to help him. And that was the root of my problem. I needed to find a way to break through. To show him he had so much to be grateful for.

  “I know you can do better if you stop thinking about what you no longer have and start being grateful for what you do have. You still have both your legs—”

  “Great, I have both my legs,” he snapped sarcastically, rolled to his hip, and started to get up.

  My hand wrapped around his bicep, and the instant it did, Trey’s face blanked. What in the world?

  “I didn’t—”

  “You cannot begin to fathom what it means to lose yourself, so save your bullshit for some idiot that’ll buy it.”

  “There’s your problem. That’s why you fail. You’ve talked yourself into believing you’ve lost something. You’ve made up your mind—”

  “Right,” he huffed out a humorless laugh. His beautiful green eyes glittered with anger and I braced for his ire. And boy, did he give it. “You, perfect Adalynn, don’t know the first goddamn thing about losing. You and your perfect family, your perfect life, your perfect fucking parents.” He jabbed a finger my way. “You don’t get to tell me jackshit about what my problem is when you’ve never known anything but fucking perfect your whole coddled life.”

  He got to his feet and stared down at me and my heart lurched at the blatant, unmasked pain. There was way more going on with Trey than his bum leg. More than no longer being a SEAL. Something dark and ugly had crawled inside of him and I realized I would never break through. Not because I didn’t want to, but because he’d never let me.

  I got to my feet and mustered up all the courage I could find and said, “I think you need to find a new therapist.”

  I instantly regretted saying those words but it was the right thing to do. He needed more, better, someone with more experience.

  “I think you’re right.”

  With his carefully blank stare, he shook his head and turned. Three steps later he stopped, craned his neck, and looked back at me.

  “So much for never giving up.”

  My heart seized and my temper flared.

  “You can lie to yourself but we both know it’s not me giving up, it’s you.”

  “Funny, Adalynn—”

  “There’s not a damn thing funny about you giving up,” I cut him off. “You wanna act like a jerk and turn this around on me, tell me all about my perfect life when you don’t know crap about me, that’s on you. But the truth is, you quit. You gave up. You’re allowing whatever is inside of you, eating at you to win. So don’t blame me, go home and look in the mirror.”

  “I would if I could stand the sight of myself.”

  With that parting shot, Trey walked across the empty gym and left me hollowed out.

  Crap.

  Logically, I knew Trey had to want to help himself, I knew I couldn’t force him, I knew it had to be done on his time. But what my brain knew and what my heart felt were two different things.

  I had totally failed him.

  2

  “Hey there, you want company?” The soft purr coming from the barstool next to me grated on my last nerve.

  The woman was on my good side—never thought that would be something I ever thought about, nor had I ever considered which side of my face a woman saw first. The truth was, whichever side a woman approached from she’d always liked what she saw. But not now, and the woman standing next to me hadn’t seen the shrapnel scars that marked my other cheek, temple, and neck.

  The bitch was in for a rude surprise when I turned to fully face her.

  “Sure, honey, what’d you have in mind?”

  Three…two…one…and there it was—the flinch, followed by the eye flare, and finally the poor attempt of a cover-up.

  Oh, how things had changed. There had been a time when there was no flinch. There’d been blatant interest, the eye flare was open hunger, and women had never attempted to cover up shit. They liked me knowing they were available and up for a good time.

  Now, I still got the lame pick-up lines, followed by this bullshit. I hadn’t figured out which way I hated more. Both were annoying as fuck. There was nothing that turned me off faster than an aggressive woman. I was a man who enjoyed the chase however that chase came to be.

  “Um…”

  I took in the woman next to me—decent-looking, nice eyes, flawless pale skin, huge tits on display, tight jeans, and blonde hair. I didn’t do blondes, they were high drama. I also avoided women who sought attention by showing skin. A man likes to be surprised, he enjoys the journey of uncovering the beauty of a woman’s body.

  The woman next to me left nothing to discover. It was in your face in hopes you’d like what you saw and want to take her for a test drive.

  I’d had enough women in my bed to tell the difference between one I’d buy a drink and one I’d buy breakfast. The two were vastly different. Then there were the ones you did all you could to extradite yourself from their presence because they screamed desperate.

  This woman screamed desperate, but not desperate enough to overlook my scars.

  I should’ve been more grateful than I was that most women now left me to drink away my misery in peace. But it was hard to be grateful when every time a woman stared at my face I was reminded of how shallow people are.

  It was on that thought, I faced forward, snagged my beer off the bar, and took a long pull. What I really wanted was a bottle of whiskey to chase away the bitterness of my argument with Adalynn. Actually, what I needed to do was stop thinking about the woman altogether.

  But guilt churned in my gut.

  God, I was an asshole.

  “Well, do you?”

  I slowly turned my head as the woman next to me stepped closer, so close her cheap pump-bottle perfume assaulted me and I choked back a cough. Christ, was that FDS? It was on the tip of my tongue to ask her when she pressed her tits against my shoulder. And being the asshole I was I tried to find it; I dug down deep and let my imagination run wild, tried my best to picture what those tits would look like bared to me. But blonde hair morphed into dark brown and once again my cock revolted and wouldn’t even twitch.

  Fucking Adalynn Walker had ruined me.

  It had been months since I’d been laid and it had nothing to do with the marks on my face and everything to do with my dick no longer working when there was a real-life woman in front of me. It worked just fine when I was alone in my house and visions of Addy’s pretty face came to mind. It was up and ready when I remembered the way she smiled at me when I first met her. I was beginning to think there was something physiologically wrong with me that the only way I could get an erection was when I thought about a woman who hated me.

  “I’ll pass.”

  “Seriously?” she whined.

  “I’ve got plans,” I lied.

  “Seems to me that your plan’s sitting here alone drinking,” she rightly retorted.

  “Like I said, I’ve got plans.”

  “Suit yourself.”
The woman shrugged and walked off.

  There was something seriously fucking wrong with me and I was beginning to think I’d hit my head harder than the doctors thought. That’s the thing about being in close proximity to a bomb when it detonates—it destroys everything in the blast radius. My buddy Luke was nearly blind in his left eye, less than perfect vision in his right. Both of our careers in the Navy, gone. I was left with scars, almost lost my leg, and with welted, puckered skin across my back. I suppose I got lucky and the burns could’ve disfigured my face. But mostly I was left with disapproval and disappointment. The pride I used to see on my father’s face had turned into censure. He didn’t bother to hide his disgust when he looked at me. My younger brother the same. What used to be a healthy sibling rivalry had turned into something ugly and bitter.

  “Damn, brother, that’s what, the third one this week?” Matt said as he slid onto the stool next to me. “You’re losing your touch.”

  I was losing something, all right, but it wasn’t my touch—it was my goddamned mind.

  “What are you doing here?” I glanced over at my friend.

  “Came in to check on you.”

  “How the hell did you know I was here?”

  “Went by your place, you weren’t there, knew you were here,” Matt informed me, then went on, “Now, what’s up with turning into Carter and going celibate all of a sudden?”

  Carter Lenox was a teammate and close friend. He wasn’t actually celibate, we’d just never seen him with a woman while we served in the Navy together. It wasn’t until he left the teams we all found out he had a woman back home and he’d been in love with her since he was a kid. They were now married with a daughter.