Forever Ours: A Young Adult Coming of Age Romance (Shattered Hearts Series (YA) Book 1)

by Trisha Leigh

  “I get it,” Senia says as she deactivates her car alarm and we slide into our seats. “You don’t want to be a shallow, vacuous piece of shit like Joanie Tipton. But that doesn’t mean that you have to dress for a party like you’re going to work on a fucking construction site.”

  “Hey, I resent that. I left my tool belt at home this time,” I tease her and she rolls her eyes as she turns on the stereo to her favorite EDM station.

  An Ellie Goulding dance mix blasts through the speakers and Senia immediately begins bobbing her head as she pulls the car out of the parking space. She maneuvers her car around the moving truck that’s half-blocking the exit out of the complex. Cora, our eighty-six-year-old landlord, must have finally found a tenant for the upstairs apartment.

  “Claire!” Senia shouts as she pulls onto Lumina. “You need to renew your driver’s license!”

  “Senia! I live four hundred feet from where I work and I don’t have a car. I don’t need a driver’s license just so I can be your designated driver.”

  I sold my car when I moved to Wrightsville Beach two and a half months ago to pay for the first and last month’s rent on my apartment. Senia moved in three weeks later, once the semester ended. She claimed she did it so we could spend the summer together on the hottest surf beach on the East Coast, but I know it’s so she can help me with the rent for a few months. The summer is halfway over now and she’ll be moving back in with her parents in a month to go back to UNC. If I don’t find another roommate or convince Linda to give me more hours at the café, I may be homeless in six months – for the third time in my life.

  As soon as Senia pulls up in front of Annabelle’s parents’ beach house, I smell the beer and hear the laughter. My chest tightens. I focus my eyes on the water bottle in my hand, forcing myself to think of nothing else as I breathe deeply and slowly. Senia is quiet as she waits for me. She’s used to my coping mechanisms.

  The edges of my vision blur and everything but the bottle disappears. I think about how water is the essential element for life to flourish. I think of how it soothes and carries us, cleanses and quenches us. I imagine the water washing away every worry, every doubt about tonight and carrying it away to a clear, tranquil sea. I close my eyes and take one final deep breath as my muscles go slack and I’m completely relaxed.

  I nod once and reach for the door handle. “Okay. Let’s do this.”

  “I don’t know how you do that, but it’s kind of creepy and inspiring all at once.”

  Senia and I stroll up the walkway arm-in-arm past the lush summer garden toward the blue, two-story clapboard beach house. I spot a group of five guys standing on the porch with red Solo cups and cigarettes clutched in their hands. From his profile, I recognize the short Indian guy leaning against the porch railing. He was in the sophomore Comp Lit class I dropped out of last October. I turn my head slightly as Senia and I climb the steps to the front door, hoping none of them will recognize me.

  Senia pulls open the squeaky screen door and I choke on the sweet smell of alcohol and perfume. We step further inside and the first thing I see is a gathering of a dozen or so people huddled around the sofa where a guy with a guitar is playing and singing a Jason Mraz song.

  This memory is too strong to fight.

  I walk through the tall door into my ninth and final foster home. As luck would have it, the woman I called Grandma Patty eight years ago was actually just our closest neighbor. I had no family to take me in after my mother died. I’m only fifteen, but I’m already more jaded and cynical than my forty-something caseworker. She flat out told me that this would be my last placement. If I screw this one up, I’ll be sent to a halfway house until I turn sixteen in four months. The moment I step into the living room, I know I’ll be seeing the inside of that halfway house soon.

  Three guys sit around a coffee table, two of them on the sofa and one cross-legged on the floor with a guitar in his lap. The one with the guitar wears a gray beanie and his dark hair falls around his face in jagged wisps. He’s humming a tune I recognize as a Beatles song my mom used to play whenever she cleaned the house: “I Want You.”

  The thud of my backpack hitting the floor gets his attention and he looks straight into my eyes. “Are you Claire?” he asks. His voice is smooth with just a touch of a rasp.

  I nod and he immediately sets his guitar down on the floor in front of him. My body tenses as he walks toward me – as my “training” kicks in. The reason I’ve been in and out of foster homes for the past eight years since my mom OD’d is because of everything she taught me.

  From as far back as I can remember, my mother taught me never to trust men or boys. She was so honest and candid with me about the things her uncle did to her from the time she was nine until she was fourteen. She told me all the things to look out for, all the promises these predators would make. The most important thing to remember, she told me, was to never let them think you were a victim because that was when they pounced.

  I followed my mom’s advice for eight years and I hadn’t been so much as hugged the wrong way. I’d kept myself safe, but only by getting myself kicked out of every foster home at the slightest hint that someone might see me as prey. This guy in the beanie doesn’t look like a predator, but looks can be deceiving.

  He grabs the handle of my backpack and nods toward the stairs. “I’m Chris. I’ll take you to your room.”

  Senia shakes my arm and the living room comes back into focus. “Are you okay?”

  I nod quickly and she gives me a tight smile. She knows what just happened, but she’s willing to shrug it off because she knows that’s exactly what I need tonight. No long talks about getting over the past or seeing a shrink. People have endured far worse than I have. There’s devastating famine and wars being waged across the globe. I have nothing to complain about – except the fact that I really don’t want to be here tonight.

  I spend the entire night hiding my face every time someone I recognize enters the room or explaining how I dropped out because I couldn’t pay my student loans. No one here knows the truth. The one smart thing I did last year was drop out before word could spread around campus.

  At twenty minutes past midnight, Joanie Tipton finally enters the living room and casts a lazy smile in my direction, and now it’s time to leave. Joanie is the only person here, besides Senia, who knows why I dropped out. I had to beg Joanie, on my knees, not to tell anybody. It was the second most humiliating moment of my life.

  I grab Senia’s arm and whisper into her ear, “Don’t look now. Mr. Jones just arrived. I have to get out of here.”

  Mr. Jones is the nickname Senia gave Joanie after she got a chin implant the summer before our sophomore year and we decided she now looks like a transvestite version of Bridget Jones. She even has Renee Zellweger’s scrunched eyes. It would be funnier if she didn’t hold my secret in her French-manicured hands.

  “I’ll take you home,” she whispers back and I shake my head adamantly.

  “No! I’m just going to sleep. You don’t need to come home for that. I’ll walk.”

  Her eyebrows furrow and she nods. “Breaking all the rules tonight, huh?” She’s referring to the fact that I never walk the streets alone at night. “I know you’re sleeping in so I guess I’ll see you when I get back on Monday. Love you.”

  I kiss the top of her head as I rise from the sofa and scoot past her. I glare at Joanie from across the room as I leave, though she isn’t looking at me. She’s already engaged in a flirtation with a guy who’s at least ten years older than us. God, I wish I had a secret on her.

  I duck out of the house and pretend to adjust my bangs as I pass a couple making out next to a car in the driveway. The last thing I need is to be recognized as I’m leaving. As soon as I’m out of the couple’s line of sight, I pick up my pace. Our apartment is only two and a half blocks away. The only reason Senia drove here is because of her monstrous heels.

  I rush out into the crosswalk, eager to get away from the party – and
the memories. I don’t see the headlights until it’s too late.

  Thank you for reading Forever Ours and this preview of Relentless! Click here to continue reading Chris and Claire’s story.

  Forever Ours Lyrics

  Sun in your hair, ignites my insides,

  Glow of your skin, lights me up right,

  Touch of your hand, I’m on my knees here,

  Begging please, baby just stay near,

  Yeah, right here.

  ‘Cause we don’t have to go nowhere,

  This place is ours, it’s everywhere,

  Yeah, we can stay,

  Stay forever.

  Ours.

  It’ll stay forever ours.

  I don’t mind, if we stumble and fall,

  Just the way we get through it all,

  No, I don’t care, if you break us down,

  ‘Cause I’ll get up, dust you off again,

  All over again.

  ‘Cause we don’t have to sleep in darkness,

  Blast the lights, it’s ours, there’s no one else,

  It’s only me and you,

  This is forever.

  Ours.

  It’ll stay forever ours.

  Sleepyhead Lyrics

  Feels so wrong to want this

  You look so broken there

  A flicker in the mist

  As tired as the air

  Your head upon the pillow

  It’s time to bury bones

  Outside a whispering willow

  The limbs fall like stones

  So frightened of the dark

  You’re my sleepyhead

  Hiding with the stars

  Put your dreams to bed

  My sleepyhead.

  You’re my sleepyhead.

  With eyes full of shadow

  And a mouth full of glass

  Gasps come so hollow

  Your lips taste like ash

  Don’t waste your hours

  Your time don’t come cheap

  Don’t fall apart, baby

  Just fall asleep

  And I don’t know why I can’t kill this doubt

  But I promise I’ll put your pain to rest

  If it means I never sleep again.

  Also by Trisha Leigh

  Relentless (Shattered Hearts #2)

  Pieces of You (Shattered Hearts #3)

  Bring Me Home (Shattered Hearts #4)

  Chasing Abby (Shattered Hearts #5)

  For more information, please visit

  cassialeo.com/trishaleigh

  About the Author

  Trisha Leigh (a pseudonym of New York Times bestselling author Cassia Leo) loves reading and writing coming of age love stories. When she’s not writing, she spends way too much time watching old reruns of Friends and SpongeBob Squarepants. When she’s not watching reruns, she’s usually playing with her two German shepherds, Pippa and Bentley, or reading.

  Connect with Trisha:

  @trishaleighYA

  trishaleighbooks

  cassialeo.com/trishaleigh

  trishaleighbooks@gmail.com