Head Over Heels

by Ford, Brenda

  Head Over Heels

  Brenda Ford

  Copyright © 2019 by Brenda Ford

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, including electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  This book is a piece of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people.

  If you are reading this book and book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it to the seller and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  Published: Brenda Ford 2019

  brenda@authorbrendaford.com

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Author’s Note

  Blurb

  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

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Epilogue

  Excerpt

  Author’s Note

  Stay connected with Brenda Ford

  Also by Brenda Ford

  Author’s Note

  Head Over Heels is a full-length standalone novel. At the end, I’ve included an excerpt from my other bestseller, Blind in Love.

  Head Over Heels concludes at around 90% on your device.

  Happy Reading!

  XO, Brenda Ford

  Blurb

  A shattered heart, and a damaged spirit…what do the two have in common?

  An explosive chemistry, secrets, danger…

  Falling in love with the girl next door who’s just turned an adult was never the plan!

  But she’s tempting, alluring, exciting and I can’t stop myself from being drawn in to her dangerous world.

  The deeper I sink, the harder it will be to get out,

  Yet, I can’t stop myself from falling.

  Head over heels in love with her.

  Ellie will create an explosion in my life,

  I just know it.

  But love makes you do some pretty crazy things, right?

  And I’m going to win her back.

  No matter what it takes!

  Chapter One

  Oliver

  “I don’t know what your obsession with independent films is!” Rosie laughs loudly. “I get that sometimes they offer something a bit different to mainstream, but they are mostly just pretentious.”

  “Oh, come on.” I shove her playfully. “It’s better than watching a typical Hollywood script that you have already seen a million times before. You can’t predict the plot of an indie film. I like it.”

  “Well, you’re just lucky that I like you.” She crunches the popcorn loudly. “Otherwise I would kick your ass and put on a chick flick that I can actually enjoy.” She rolls her eyes. “You better hope this gets better.”

  I lean back on the couch and pretend that I’m still watching the film too, but it’s hard for me to focus on the plot when I’m with Rosie. It always has been challenging to focus on anything but her. She’s always a distraction, no matter whatever is going on in my life that I always find myself looking at her, thinking about her…

  The funny thing is we did just started off as friends. She moved in next door and we just started chatting and we clicked. It was cool to have someone around the same age as me who I could connect with. Who I have something in common with. I might have five brothers who I adore and am very close to, especially since our parents were killed in a car accident when we were just kids, but I don’t have too much in common with them. Brad is much older than all of us, thirteen years older than me so he’s in his mid-thirties and I’m just twenty three years old, with very different priorities. He’s great and I can always talk to him, but I don’t know if he always gets me. Then there are the twins – Alex the rock star and Angelo the cheeky chap – who are only a year younger than me, but closer to one another. Then there is Wesley, the hyper intelligent one of us who I secretly think might change the world, and Nelson who has just left high school. I have always felt a bit in the middle, a bit of an outcast because I’m quieter and a lot more serious than the others… at least I am when I’m not around Rosie.

  But Rosie brings out the more fun side of me, she always has done that. I barely even noticed that my feelings for her were shifting from pure friendship to something deeper. I never acted on it because she has been with Tristan forever, but my feelings for her have always been there, haunting me like a torture. It’s that very reason why my friendship has only ever been with Rosie. I don’t know Tristan at all, and I don’t want to. It would kill me to see them together.

  Last year, it all got worse because I thought that she might feel the same way as well. She invited me to an event with her because she and Tristan had broken up again and she wanted me to help make him jealous, and it was wonderful. We danced, we spent time together, it was all very romantic… and then we kissed. I really assumed that it was the moment that she noticed her feelings for me as well. I held on to the fantasy that everything was going to change, and it would finally be the start of the rest of our lives together… until Tristan grabbed her and basically begged her to get back with him, which she did. Clearly, she didn’t feel the same way about the kiss that I did, which was devastating. It whipped the foundation of my life out from underneath me and I wasn’t sure if I could ever recover again. I didn’t think that I would be able to be back here with Rosie again.

  But I am, and it’s okay. I still think that there might be a little bit of tension between us, it isn’t exactly as it was but it’s okay. I don’t even really know how I feel about her anymore. If I examine it too closely, I don’t think I’m still into her in the same way. Over the last twelve months I have accepted that it isn’t ever going to happen. We had our shot and it vanished into nothingness. It didn’t come to anything. I don’t think I want her like that anymore, I just feel strange and a little bit numb. Of course, I still don’t like thinking that much about her and Tristan, but I’m sure that’s more because it’s awkward than anything else.

  “Who is that character now?” Rosie suddenly demands, dragging me from my thoughts. “She hasn’t been in the movie before. I don’t understand. Now she just pops up and is integral? I don’t get it.”

  “Oh, Rosie, you are reading too much into it,” I try to deflect because I don’t want to admit that I haven’t got a clue what’s going on either. If I do, I lose my right to choose the movie again. “It will soon become obvious exactly who she is and what she’s doing. You just need to wait, that’s all.”
>
  She shoots me an untrusting look. “I don’t think you know. You’re lost as well, and you are just trying to torture me by making me watch this. You know, I might just kick your ass, Oliver.”

  “I would like to see you try!” I roll my eyes and snort. “You know that I do karate, right?”

  “You did two classes when you were about seventeen years old. You don’t know a shit about karate.”

  Just as this is about to launch into one of our hilarious arguments that I know I would love but the magic of the moment is interrupted by Rosie’s cell phone blasting out. We both instantly know that it’s going to be Tristan and I’m pretty sure I catch a glimpse of what looks like guilt in her eyes. It’s almost like she knows this is weird.

  “I just have to…” She picks up the phone and furrows her brows. “Oh, who is this?”

  As she picks up, I see her back instantly stiffen which makes my blood run cold. I have known Rosie for long enough now to see when she’s being told something that she doesn’t like, and this is definitely it. All of the color drains from her face and she bolts to her feet causing me to do the same thing.

  “What’s going on?” I whisper to her. “Do you need me to do anything?”

  She turns away from me, the stress flooding her face. As her fingers rake through her hair, a sense of hopelessness overcomes me. All I want to do is hold her, but her body language screams that I should not touch her, that she doesn’t need my support and reassurance. It kills me not to be able to help her.

  “Oh my God,” she gasps out, her words shaky with sadness. “Oh my God, is this for real?”

  She hangs up the phone and turns to look at me for just a second, panic absolutely flooding her face, but before she can even begin to tell me what is going on, her feet take off and she bolts down the stairs, running through the front door and slamming it behind her before I can even think of following her.

  “What the fuck?” I murmur, shocked to the core. “What just happened?”

  Tristan isn’t the most faithful person as far as I am aware, so this could be rumors of him cheating on her again, but there was a real shock in her face which wouldn’t be there if it was just that news. I have the horrible feeling that it’s something else, something more intense, which is why I can’t just leave it. As her best friend, I need to help her as much as I can. Even if she tells me to get lost, I need to give it my best shot.

  “What’s going on?” Brad yells after me as I run. “Is Rosie okay?”

  But all I can do is shrug back. If I had any idea, then my head wouldn’t be all over the place. I buck it through my yard and to the house next door where I really hope she is. I don’t imagine she’s gone anywhere else. Luckily, me and Rosie are so close that her mom won’t mind me running through the house like a loon.

  “Rosie!” I yell once inside. “Rosie, what’s going on? What happened?”

  After running through the house, peering in every single room, I finally find Rosie rolled up like a ball on the bathroom floor with vomit all around her lips. Her cheeks are tear stained and her eyes bright red from all the tears. She’s a mess, bless her. It absolutely breaks my heart to see her like this.

  “What happened?” I bend down beside her and wrap an arm around her. “Oh God, Rosie, what is it?”

  “My auntie,” she sobs. “My aunt. She has been… been in an accident. She got run over on the side walk by a speeding car and… and the doctors couldn’t save her. She died. She passed away this morning.”

  These words affect me probably more than they would to anyone else because I understand what it’s like to lose parents in an accident. It feels needless, like someone has been ripped away for nothing. I might have been a lot younger when I got that news, but I can still remember that horrible emptiness that comes with it.

  “I’m so sorry, Rosie, that’s really awful. You must be so upset.”

  “I haven’t even seen her since we moved here. We… we’ve talked but we haven’t really seen one another. I always just assumed that we had time, but I was wrong. Now, she’s gone. Ellie and Seth are alone.”

  “Who… who are Ellie and Seth?” I ask quietly, only hearing these names for the first time now.

  “My cousins. I used to be close to them as well, but now… well now I keep thinking about them being alone. They are so young; I don’t know what they will do. This is all so…”

  She doesn’t know what to say and I don’t know how I can help her either. All I can really do is to lean her head against my shoulder and comfort her while thinking about these poor kids with no mother now. It will be killing them, I’m sure. Rosie hasn’t said anything about a father in the picture, so he must not be which only makes it worse. Having no parents can be real trouble as I know that better than anyone else.

  “How can I help, Oliver? What can I do?” Rosie whines. “Should I go there and help?”

  I understand the need to help, I feel it myself and I don’t even know Ellie and Seth. But without knowing the full story, it’s hard for us to do anything. This helpless sensation is horrible.

  “You need to speak to your mom,” I say which isn’t the best advice I can give but it’s all that I have right now. “She will know what to do. She will have what’s best for your cousins.”

  “Thank you,” she murmurs quietly against me. “Thank you for being around and supporting me, calming me down and looking after me. I know not many people would do that.”

  She means Tristan, I’m sure of it, but she isn’t saying that. She knows as well as everyone else that he isn’t supportive when he needs to be and that he isn’t right for her, but she has made the decision to be with him and unfortunately that’s a bed she has chosen for herself to lie in until she chooses to do something brave. I’ve commented on her relationship in the past and it never goes well, so instead I just hug her tight.

  Chapter Two

  Ellie

  “Are we ever going to come back here?” Seth asks me sadly as we look up at our house. It’s the building that we have always lived in, the home that we were supposed to have our whole childhoods in, but now it’s gone. It’s just over. With Mom dying, we have to go and now… well now, everything is going to change.

  “We aren’t, Seth,” I reply honestly, while wrapping my arm around him. Maybe I should try and sugarcoat things for him, but I haven’t ever been that person and my younger brother knows that. He’s had nine years to get used to me, so he’s used to it. “The house will be sold now, and we can’t come back. We’re going to live with Auntie Amelia for a while until it’s my eighteenth birthday. Then, it will be just me and you.”

  “We aren’t going to stay with her?” He tilts his head around to look at me. “No adults?”

  “Well, when I’m eighteen, I will be an adult, and I can look after you. It’ll be fine.”

  I am very grateful to Amelia and my cousin Rosie for taking us in during our hour of need, I don’t know what we would do without them, but we don’t really know them anymore. Sure, a long time ago, yes, but not these days. I’m not a kid anymore, I’m seventeen years old, verging on adulthood and I’m growing up quickly. Mom was always working, so I have raised Seth pretty much alone anyway. I can cope for sure.

  Plus, if it’s just me and Seth, I will have a lot to focus on, so I won’t be able to worry about continually missing Mom and wondering why she was snatched from me in the cruel way that she was. I don’t want to think about that anymore. I have spent the last couple of weeks sobbing over her and now I need a fresh start. Tears won’t bring her back, nothing will, so all I can do is try and get my life back in order.

  “I’m going to miss it here, Ellie. All my friends and everything. I don’t know if I want to go.”

  “We can’t stay.” I rub his hair, trying to comfort me. “They won’t let us stay. But there is a nice school where we are going, and you will make some new friends. I promise you that.”

  “Will you find some new friends, Ellie? I would like you to have s
ome nice friends too.”

  I don’t answer that, but his words do get me thinking. The fact that I don’t really have any friends here is exactly why I haven’t promised Seth that we will come back as soon as we can, because I don’t want to. Aside from my childhood home, which will soon be sold, there isn’t anything here for me to come back to. Not since the incident. That’s what my mom used to call it. The ‘incident’. Like it was something to be ashamed of, like it was my fault and not those horrible bitchy girls who decided to ruin my life for no good reason.

  It all started just after my fifteenth birthday when for some reason my breasts decided to make a new appearance. They were growing before, but almost overnight they popped right out, which unfortunately brought with it a lot of attention that I really didn’t want. I didn’t ask for it, nor did I entertain it, but that didn’t matter to Tammy and her gang of nasty friends. She decided to hate me because her idiot boyfriend made a comment about me and my body changes like it was his right to. Not only did she decide to hate me, but she decided to torture me. At first with words, then with pushing and shoving, until finally the day of the ‘incident’.