by Anna Howard
Shatter
Me
Anna Howard
Text Copy © 2012 Anna Henson
All Rights Reserved
Prologue
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
Prologue
The gut churning burn of humiliation was nowhere near as bad as the pain that was in my heart. I couldn’t breathe as I stood there on the crowded balcony overlooking the ballroom below. It was hot inside but I felt as cold as the frigid December night outside. As if I could protect myself from any more pain I wrapped my arms around myself and tried to rub some semblance of warmth back into my iced over arms.
How could he do this to me?
That same question kept repeating itself over and over inside my mind until I thought I was going to scream.
How could she do this to me..?
That was the question that always followed the former one. That two of the people that I loved the most in the world were ripping me into a million pieces and they seemed to not even notice. Or care.
Bianca Carrington was my best friend in the world. We have gone through hell and back together. I had held her close and cried with her when she had lost her unborn child two months ago. Spent countless hours on the phone with her in the middle of the night when she had broken things off with her boy-friend not long afterwards.
And now she was making out with my boyfriend at a stupid society Christmas Gala that everyone who was anyone in Manhattan was attending. The spectacle that Bianca was making of herself would be all over the tabloids come morning and would stay there until well after the New Year. And I…I would have to sit and watch it all.
The sparkling diamond on my ex-best friend’s left hand glimmered in the excellent lighting as she thrust her fingers through Keith’s hair. Hair that I had felt tinkle my own fingers just a week before. The sight of that ring made my stomach roll and I turned away so that I wouldn’t have to see the family heirloom that I had hoped would one day grace my hand.
“Kari?”
Slowly I raised my head and briefly met the gaze of Hunter Winthrop. To look at him one would never realize that he was Keith’s brother. The two looked nothing alike. Acted completely opposite. His dark blond hair was cut shorter than Keith’s own jet black that always seemed to be in need of a trim. His blue eyes where warm and friendly more often than not, as compared to his older brother’s cool green eyes that were always assessing every situation. Hunter was an inch or so shorter than Keith’s six foot four, but when compared to my five feet six inches both seemed like giants to me. Both brothers were devastatingly good looking and disgustingly rich to the point of being indecent with it.
But when it came down to it, I felt nothing for Hunter. Whereas Keith could make me ache with just a raise of his sardonic eyebrow.
“Kari?” Hunter grasped my elbow when I began to sway on my feet. “What is it? What’s wrong?” He murmured, concern darkening his kind eyes.
Tears burnt my eyes and stung my nose as I tried to keep them at bay. “I…” I took a deep breath and swallowed hard to dislodge the emotional knot that seemed to be suffocating me. “I just want to go home.” I whispered, lowering my eyes to stare sightlessly at my silver Jimmy Choos. The shoes went well with my sparling silver dress and I had thought that I looked like a shimmering snow flake.
Hunter grunted as he glanced over my shoulder and saw the reason for my distress. “Bastard!” He bit out under his breath as he no doubt saw his brother with his tongue down Bianca’s throat.
“Hey you two!” Came a new voice.
Slowly I raised my head once more and then quickly looked away. It hurt to look at Christian nearly as much as it did to look at the couple downstairs. And within moments of his arriving and finding me he was boiling with rage of his own rage.
“What the hell is going on?” He demanded.
My chin trembled. “They say they are getting married.” I whisper.
“I…” He raked a hand through his hair. “But…”
Hunter shook his handsome head and wrapped his tux jacket around my trembling shoulders. It did nothing to alleviate the chill that had seeped into my very bones. “I don’t know what to tell you, Chris.”
For the last few weeks I have been secretly meeting with Christian. Helping him plan tonight just right. After his heartbreaking breakup with Bianca he had realized all of the mistakes he had made. We had searched all over New York for the right ring, and he had been so excited about proposing to Bianca tonight.
But now none of the romantic things I had helped to put in motion for my once best friend would ever take place.
I pulled Hunter’s jacket closer. “Will you take me home?” I asked, not sure which one I was talking to. Not caring as long as I got to go home and wash the night off my skin.
“Of course.” Hunter assured me, his deep voice gentle as if I were a hurt child that needed taking care of…And maybe I was just then.
“No.” Christian grasped my elbow. “Let me.” He sounded hurt and angry and distracted. But he was still concerned for me. And if I hadn’t been so distraught I might have been touched.
I mumble a good night to Hunter as he kisses my cheek. Christian guides me downstairs, and through the ballroom. I can feel eyes on me from every direction. Could hear the whispers and gasps and snickers from my so called other friends as we make our way through the crowded ballroom toward the exit and my salvation. I know as soon as Keith turns his attention from his new fiancé to me. My skin begins to heat for the first time all evening and I raise my devastated gold eyes to meet his hostile emerald ones.
Underneath all my pain and the remains of my shattered heart anger begins to boil. I have loved this man with my whole heart, have given him everything that I am and asked for nothing in return except that he cherish me. But he hasn’t, and now I am broken. And for what?
My gaze went to my ex-BFF. Her wraith like figure with just a hint of curve to suggest that she had a woman’s body. Her pixie cut dark hair and those ice blue eyes that were currently shooting daggers at me. She was gorgeous and she knew it. Whereas I was nowhere close to her in the looks department.
Why are they glaring at me? I can’t understand it. They have told me that they have realized all their hate and disdain for one another was really love. That they have been secretly meeting for a while now and that they just couldn’t help themselves. So why am I getting the evil eye from them when they are the ones destroying me like this?
Beside of me Christian is simmering with rage and hurt. And when we pass the couple I put a hand on his arm, silently pleading for him to not make a scene. I just couldn’t handle that on top of the humiliation that these two have already put me through this evening. “I want to go home.” I whisper.
He gazes down at me. Taking in my no doubt deathly pale complexion, tear glazed golden eyes and trembling body. Some of his pent up rage eases and he drops a kiss on my forehead before gently tugged me toward the exit.
I breathe a sigh of relief once we are outside and Christian has given the valet his ticket. “Thanks for getting me out of there.” I murmur.
His shoulders, still tense with suppressed anger, lift slightly in a shrug. “Anything for you, Kari.”
It is snowing. I pull Hunter’s tux jacket closer around me and gaze up at the snowflakes falling. I have forgotten my own coat but that seems trivial compared to
all the things running through my mind at the moment. “This use to be my favorite time of the year.” I smile grimly. “Now I think I hate it. And I hate them for making me hate it.” I surprise even myself as I begin to weep.
“Kari!” Christian pulls me close and I bury my face into his tux. “Hush, Kari. Don’t do this to yourself. He isn’t worth it. Neither is she.” His deep voice sounds choked and it only makes me cry harder. Great gulping sobs that make my cold body hurt.
Thankfully the valet returns quickly with Christian’s Jag and he helps me into the front passenger side before getting in himself. I lean my head back against the headrest and close my eyes, not even bothering with the seatbelt. He drives slow and carefully and the snow falls harder. It’s going to take at least an hour to get to my father’s house in this weather.
New York is surprisingly quiet tonight. Most of the city dwellers have left to visit family for Christmas which is only a few days away. It is close to midnight and there are only a few cabs and other vehicles on the roads in what looks like the beginnings of a crazy blizzard. Christian turns on the radio so that we aren’t sitting in complete silence with our shared pain.
He stops at a red light several blocks from the hotel where the Christmas Gala is and I place my hand on his over the gear shifter. His big warm hand turns over and clasps my much colder one. “We will get over this.” He promises fiercely and I smile ever so slightly, wanting to believe him, but knowing that I will never recover.
There is the sudden blinding light from the head lights of a big SUV from behind us and I crane my head ever so slightly. The driver isn’t slowing down for the red light! I gasp in dismay half a second before the tank like vehicle hits us going well over the speed limit on snow covered roads.
I am jolted forward, realizing a split second before we are pushed into oncoming traffic that I should have put on my seatbelt. But there is no time as we are hit again from the passenger side and I feel the tearing pain of glass as I get thrown through the windshield.
I lay there broken, bleeding and cold, frowning up into the snow filled night. And as unconsciousness descends on me all I can thinks is…Now maybe this pain in my heart will go away.
I hurt all over.
My head feels as if someone is beating it with a hammer. My chest feels hurts to the point that I can’t be sure if I am actually breathing. Tiny pains across my entire body makes me feel as if I am being stung repeatedly.
There is a constant Beep…Beep...Beeping that is annoying me and I want it to stop. It is only making the pain in my head worse. I can’t open my eyes to see where the noise is coming from and I can’t speak to ask someone to turn it off.
Please, someone turn it off! I plead in my mind.
Someone is weeping. I feel the wetness of their tears on my skin.
Someone is sobbing. Warm, trembling hands touch my cold ones. My heart aches from the terrible sounds—such gut wrenching sounds!—coming from the person crying. I can’t be sure if it is male or female, because it sounds as if I am in a tunnel. All sounds are distorted. I know it is someone I love. Someone who loves me. I want to hold them. I can’t move…
Someone is shouting. There is hate in the voice. I shudder, wanting the loud voice to stop. Please! Please don’t be angry! I silently beg.
The Beep…Beep…Beeping is getting louder, faster; more insistent. Someone screams. More loud voices, but at least the shouting has stopped. My chest hurts. And then the Beep…Beep…Beeping is no more…
Chapter 1
I glare over at my mother. “I don’t want to spend the summer with you and your new husband. Why can’t I stay with Daddy?”
“Because your father is going to be in Dubai all summer and it isn’t a place for you.” Mindy Brandon Winthrop tells me as she pushes me into the back of the limo.
I roll my golden eyes at the still beautiful woman that is my mother but say nothing as the driver shuts the door behind her and soon pulls away from the private loading area of JFK. I have been away at boarding school in Paris for the last nine months and while glad to see the gorgeous creature that brought me into this world I would have much rather have been in the desert with my father.
Mindy, with her perfectly colored and highlighted blond hair pulled back into a perfect ponytail, turns to face me in the seat as we make the long trip out of the city toward my newest step-father’s estate. My mother, as much as I love and adore her, is a serial trophy wife. She loves to get married and just as quickly divorce the poor sap that has been sucker enough to have put his expensive ring on her dainty finger.
But I also know that her new husband was not the run of the mill rich sucker. Charles Winthrop had more money than the Nation had debt. He had his Midas touch in every business venture with shipping, timber, aviation, and banking just to name a few. At fifty eight he was still incredibly good looking, or so I have noticed from the gossip magazines that I had seen with his and my mother’s pictures in them over the last few weeks. Silver laced dark hair with a strong jaw and eyes as blue as a summer sky. He had appeared in incredible shape from the picture that had been on one of the more refutable magazines of Charles and Mindy on their honeymoon. Damn, not many men hitting close to sixty still had hard abs and well toned biceps.
Sure my father was still in great shape, but my father was only thirty seven and a freak when it came to his daily trips to the gym.
“So how was school?” Mindy raises a brow when I just shrug my shoulders. “What? You and Bianca didn’t do anything interesting since I last saw you in March?” She snorted when I just grin. “Thought so. How is the pixie princess?”
“Mother! Stop calling her that. She’s my best friend. And you know how she hates to be reminded of her Tinker Bell likeness.” But I grin nonetheless. “Bee is spending the first part of the summer with her parents in Greece. But she will be back in plenty of time for us to go apartment hunting. I want something close to NYU.”
Mindy rolls her own golden eyes. “You could go to Harvard or Yale. Even Princeton if you wanted to. But because Bianca only got into NYU that is where you want to go too.”
“Mother.” I sigh. “We have discussed this already. I refuse to get into yet another argument with you over it.”
“Fine.” She pouts like a fifteen year old when she is well into her thirties. “But don’t say I didn’t try. You won’t always want Bianca Carrington around.”
“Well for now I do. So change the subject or stop talking to me.”
Mindy makes a humph noise and turns to glare out of her window. I grin and pull out my cell phone. There is a message from my father wanting to know if I have arrived yet. I quickly text him back, because I know that he is busy and worried about me. Almost immediately he sends me a return text. Have a good summer. Love you!
“Charles is really excited to meet you.” My mother has recovered from her pout and is ready to talk to me once more. “And his sons are so dreamy. If I were a few years younger I might have been tempted to go after the oldest one. But you know how I favor older men.”
Yes, I do know. In fact her last husband had been several years older than Charles Winthrop. And if this husband was anything like the last one then I was going to hop on the first flight out to Dubai and tell my mother what she could do with her dirty older men!
But I don’t tell her any of that as we continue our trip. We keep up an easy flow of conversation. Most of which is about school, my new step-brothers and the party that Mindy is going to be having in a few weeks. My mother loves to throw a good party.
Finally we arrive at the Winthrop estate and I get my first real look at the place. The drive up to the house is two miles and the house is as big as a hotel, all grey stoned and old money elegance. It is so incredibly beautiful that I don’t take in anything else at first. But after a few moments I notice the stables in the distance, and the small man-made lake further off.
The chauffeur pulls to a
stop in front of the house and rushes to open my door. I offer him a small smile as I let him help me out. “Thank you.” He inclines his head but is otherwise stiffly formal.
My mother is already out on the other side and in the arms of her new husband. I take my time moving around the side of the car. When Mindy pulls back from Charles at last they are both wearing ‘take me now’ expressions and I have to force myself not to make a gaging noise.
Charles is giving me a once over, but in more of a father like way rather than the way Mindy’s last husband use to do. I let out a small relieved sigh. Thank goodness she didn’t marry another dirty old man!
“So this is Kari!” Charles grins and offers me his hand. He has big, long fingered hands I notice as I put mine in his. “It is wonderful to finally meet my lovely step-daughter.”
I smile, because it is hard not smile at Charles. He might be a shark in the business world but he appeared to be quite charming and good natured in private. “So you must be Charlie.”
His brow wrinkles for half a second before he throws his head back and roars with laughter. “Sunshine, no one has called me Charlie since I was in grade school…But you…Yeah, I’ll let you.”
I shrug my shoulders. “Wouldn’t have mattered if you did or not.” I wink at him as I follow my mother up the steps and into the house while he and the driver work on getting my many bags inside.
“I see it is going to be a fun filled summer already.” He chuckles.
“Fun’s my middle name, Charlie.” I call over my shoulder. “Didn’t my mother explain that?”
He was still chuckling as I step into the foyer and catch my breath. The place was just…WOW! I take in the long winding staircase that leads up to the vast landing of the second floor, dark cherry wood that is gleaming. Black and white tile is under my feet, and in a checker board pattern that I favor immediately. The tiles lead down a hallway that has several doors on either side.
I follow my mother and we end up in a huge entertainment room. A sixty inch flat screen is hanging on the far wall where several sofas and loves seats are placed before it facing each other. A large coffee table sits between them. I drop down onto a sofa opposite my mother and toss my long, naturally blond hair over my shoulder.
