by Samie Sands
Table of Contents
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
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Epilogue
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Lottie Loves
By Samie Sands
Lottie Loves
Copyright © 2017 by Samie Sands.
All rights reserved.
First Print Edition: October 2017
Limitless Publishing, LLC
Kailua, HI 96734
www.limitlesspublishing.com
Formatting: Limitless Publishing
ISBN-13: 978-1-64034-233-0
ISBN-10: 1-64034-233-8
No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to locales, events, business establishments, or actual persons—living or dead—is entirely coincidental.
Dedication
For Mum and Jassy
Table of Contents
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
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Epilogue
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Chapter One
“Will you marry me?”
They were the words I’d wanted to hear my entire life. Didn’t every girl fantasize over the perfect man buying the perfect ring and getting down on one knee in the most romantic way possible, before telling them they loved them so much they wanted to spend the rest of their life with them?
I knew I certainly had.
Me and my best friend Cici used to talk about it all the time. We used to plan our dresses, the music, the flowers—every part of the ceremony down to the very last detail. Of course, the man didn’t really matter. We were young enough and naïve enough to believe we would magically meet the perfect man without even trying.
And I really thought I had. I really, truly believed my dream had come true.
Me and Danny had begun our love story in a very typical fashion—our eyes had met across a bar, where we’d had long, lingering eye contact, sparking all kinds of emotions within me. The only difference between my story, and that of every other rom-com ever, was that Danny was a genuine up-and-coming rock star, playing on a fairly big stage, and I was a fan who already felt a lot of love for this man. I’d been admiring him from afar ever since I first heard their album a year or so before.
I certainly hadn’t expected it to ever go any further than that moment, so when he came and joined me at the bar later on for a drink, despite being mobbed by other members of the audience, I felt like my entire life had been leading me up to that moment. I felt like everything I’d experienced had drawn me closer to Danny, the love of my life. Here was a gorgeous man who was destined to be famous, and who could have any girl in the world hanging off of his arm, talking to me, asking me questions, and actually showing me interest.
It seemed like a dream—one I was terrified to wake up from.
As he flicked his wavy auburn hair from his warm, chocolaty eyes, and he gave me that smile that had already melted the hearts of the nation, I thought for a dreaded, wonderful second that he was going to kiss me in front of all of those people. But after a few beats of pure terror, he didn’t. Instead he handed me his phone number, and he asked if I would like to go on a date with him.
Me—boring old Charlotte aka Lottie Jones—on a date with Danny Boreom, drummer of the now very famous band Jax. It didn’t seem real.
Yet, it was real, and it did happen.
It was the start of my real life.
After a night out on the town where he well and truly wined and dined me, he walked me home to my tiny flat, which must have looked ridiculous compared to the mansion I now know he lived in with the rest of the band at the time, and he finally kissed me. As his lips met mine, I felt myself flying on top of the world—he was an amazing kisser, and there seemed to be an endless chemistry between us. One I never wanted to end.
Breathless and turned on by the power of his mouth, I invited him inside. Although he coolly and calmly turned me down, it was still the best night of my entire life, made even better by a phone call the next day to say that he only didn’t come inside with me because he wanted to be something real. He didn’t want our love to end with a one-night stand, he actually wanted us to develop, and for him to become my boyfriend.
Fast forward three and a half years and we were blissfully living together, grazing by every day happily and easily. Although he was away for a lot of the year touring, it didn’t seem to bother us. We were so strong and so solid with what we had, nothing would get in our way.
It was perfect, still a dream come true, and that intense chemistry hadn’t burned down one bit.
Which made it even weirder that my reaction to Cici telling me that Baz—another member of the band—had just told her that he’d been engagement ring shopping with Danny, wasn’t one of pure joy.
“What…what do you mean?” I asked, my heart racing frantically in my chest. I could tell that my voice was breathless and kind of terrified, but my mind was spinning too fast for me to be able to do anything about it.
“Aren’t you happy?” She giggled. “I thought you’d be over the moon to finally be Mrs. Boreom.”
“No, no, I am,” I half lied. The idea had always been at the edge of my thoughts. I knew Danny was the one for me, and despite all the car crash relationships around us, we’d even managed to survive the fallout of him becoming mega famous. It helped that I had no interest in the spotlight and I did everything I could to avoid it, but even despite all of that, I felt like it proved we could go the distance, and be together forever. So why wasn’t I excited for us to take the next step? “It’s just a bit of a shock, that’s all.”
But that was normal, right? Everyone freaked out at first when they learned they were going to become someone’s wife…didn’t they?
Of course, I already knew that wasn’t true. I’d already been proposed to once in my life before, an
d that time, I didn’t hesitate one bit. Panic didn’t even come into the equation, I was happy, over the moon at the thought of becoming his wife. This was nothing like that had been. I felt completely different.
For the first time in a very long time, I allowed myself to think about Joe again, and almost the second I allowed that vault to open in my mind, I felt myself fall into a tailspin. As his face filled my brain once more, it was almost as if the last five years hadn’t happened at all, and I was still his proud girlfriend, waiting to be his wife.
As the wound reopened, I could barely hear what Cici was saying. I felt like I was gaping, exposed, and extremely vulnerable all over again, and I did what I’d always done when I was younger when things got too difficult for me. I started to talk to Joe in my mind.
Where are you now?
What became of you?
What happened to your life?
It was so strange to have gone from the closest people in the world, to absolutely nothing, and I struggled to imagine that he’d changed one bit. Of course I had, my life was completely different, but I couldn’t think of Joe without viewing him as the other half of me. The boy that I’d adored, and the one I never thought would leave my side.
“I…I’ve got to go,” I finally announced to my friend. “I’ll speak to you later, okay?” And then I hung up the phone, without even waiting for her to answer. I knew I was being rude, acting more than a little strange, but I needed some time. I needed to be alone with my thoughts to try and process all of this.
So how I found myself sitting at my computer with my fingers running along the keys, I wasn’t quite sure.
Don’t press anything, I willed myself. As soon as you do, everything will change.
Since we had gone our separate ways, I hadn’t contacted Joe once, and with the rising of social media, I hadn’t looked him up either. I just couldn’t face it. He was like an imaginary fantasy in my mind now, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to ruin that with reality. What if he was married now? Or into drugs or something? His life could have gone in any direction, and I wasn’t sure I really wanted to find out which one.
Plus, my life really was amazing now. Why would I want to even consider risking that? I had a gorgeous, passionate man who actually wanted to be with me forever, even though he was about ten leagues above me. I had a teaching job I loved, and friends that would do anything for me. That was a hell of a lot more than most people had!
In the end I forced myself to stand up and to move away from the computer screen before it lured me in. I couldn’t do it; I just wasn’t willing to take that step into the unknown. It terrified me far too much. But as I wandered aimlessly from room to room, I realised I couldn’t just do nothing, either. I needed to calm this beast within me, which meant delving into my past whether I liked it or not.
I stood at the bottom of the attic ladder, wondering what awaited me up there. When me and Danny decided to buy a place together—well, he put the most money in, of course, but we still classed it as ‘ours’—I shoved everything related to my old life away, not wanting to even consider it. But it was always a comfort, knowing it was there, knowing I could access it at any moment if I really wanted to.
And I could feel myself finally taking that step.
I creaked up the ladder, feeling my heart thump and my palms sweat with nerves. This was a mistake, I knew it was, but at the same time I couldn’t stop.
There would be no way for me to get married without taking this step anyway. Right now, things were comfortable, but if I was ever going to have a future with Danny, I needed to confront my past first. At least, that was my excuse and I was sticking to it.
Danny knew about Joe anyway. Well, he’d been told some of it, the very basics, so I supposed I was probably going to have to confess all before we finally took the plunge. With that thought in mind, I tore open the first box I stumbled across, and I ended up looking at the few photographs I had of me and Joe when we were very young, when we first met…
Chapter Two
I could never remember when we moved in the house next door to Joe’s because I was only seven months at the time, and he was only a month and half older than me, but from what we were both told later on, it was a traumatic time for my family.
My dad had walked out on my mum only a few weeks before, leaving her with absolutely nothing. She was heartbroken, and left with the sole responsibility of sorting out a life for me too. It was almost overwhelming for her, and she really struggled to pick herself up. There was another downwards spiral when she found out that Dad had a whole other life, and that his other girlfriend was pregnant with twins. He must have deemed them more important than me because I never saw him again. Admittedly I hadn’t thought about it for many years, but now it was weird to me knowing that I had half-siblings out there, somewhere in the world. It was like some kind of unfinished business that I had no idea how to tackle.
Of course, I’d never gone so far as to look them up, because I was afraid to open that can of worms, but every now and again they would pop up into my mind. I often wondered if he managed to stick around for them, or if he left them high and dry too…
Joe’s parents were saviours, picking Mum up from the bottom of the barrel, helping her turn her life around. They helped her organise her house and get herself a job—who knows what would have happened to us if they hadn’t. According to the legend between our families, Joe’s mum brought us a lasagne round on our first night in our new home, Mum burst into extremely grateful tears, told her what was wrong, and a friendship was born. As simple as that.
The photo I held tightly between my fingers showed a picnic we all went on together only a few weeks later. It must have been taken by Joe’s mum, because it showed my mum, his dad, his older sister Marie—who was then a toddler—and us two as babies. Even in that image, the very first one of us in existence, we were gazing at each other, as if we already knew we couldn’t live without one another. It was as if that unbreakable bond was already forming.
Of course, it wasn’t quite as unbreakable as we’d always assumed, but I didn’t find that out until much later on…
Because of our close living situation, we grew up to be the absolute best of friends. We were inseparable before we were even a year old, and we got lucky in school too because they kept us in the same class, allowing our friendship to continue. To be honest, we were so wrapped up in one another that we didn’t even care about the rest of the world. We didn’t bother to try and make new friends because we just didn’t need to.
We had each other and that was all that mattered.
Of course it meant everyone else thought we were weird, and that they had a lot to say about us behind our backs, but that didn’t bother us either. Even when it became a real issue for me, Joe kyboshed it pretty quickly.
It happened once when we were eight, and all the other girls in the class decided I was a loser and started picking on me. Maybe they were jealous that I was so close to a boy, or maybe they just didn’t like my flame red hair. Who knows, but they started to make my life hell. A week after it began, I ran out of class sobbing when one of them scribbled all over my homework, and without a second thought Joe chased after me to comfort me. Once I calmed down, he took me to the school nurse and told her I was sick so I could go home early, meaning I didn’t have to go back in there and face them all over again.
Nothing ever happened to me again after that. The girls were never my friends, but they left me well alone. However much Joe insisted that he didn’t do anything, I just knew he did. I tried to get it out of him for years, but he never did tell me. I could only assume he may be threatened them or something…although I couldn’t picture that really. Joe was a gentle, caring soul, with a heart of gold. Although he always stood taller than the rest of the class, towering over everyone, so maybe they all saw a different side of him. Maybe he was scary to them.
I guess I’ll never find out the truth for sure…
Anyway, whatever he did,
it made me feel even closer to him, even more pleased that he was in my life. I wasn’t sure what I would do without him. I was dependant on him, probably far more than I should have been, but it didn’t seem to matter to either of us.
Our friendship was perfect; I didn’t think anything would ever get in the way of it.
How naïve I was…
Chapter Three
The phone rang shrilly, completely knocking me out of my nostalgia trip. With my heart still racing from the shock, I rushed down the stairs, amazed at myself for getting sucked in so easily. After avoiding the past for so long, I was a little stunned at how quickly my mind went right back to it, without even considering the implications. I’d unlocked the box inside my brain, and I wasn’t sure if there was any way of shutting back up now.
“Hey babe,” Danny crooned into the phone, in the chocolaty sweet voice I loved so much, although this time, hearing his voice didn’t make me feel safe and special, it sent waves of guilt crashing through my body. I felt like I’d betrayed him by just thinking of Joe. “Our show last night was amazing!” he continued, completely oblivious to my internal turmoil. “I wish you could have been there.”
