by C. R. Ellis
Why Stars Chase the Sun
C.R. Ellis
Copyright © 2018 by C.R. Ellis
This story is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and other elements are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, is entirely coincidental.
No part of this book may be reproduced or used in any manner without permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Editor: Jennifer Archer @ Archer Editing & Writing Services
Cover designer: Hang Le, ByHangLe
HarLex Publishing
eBook ISBN: 978-1-7323131-0-1
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-7323131-1-8
For Cullen
Contents
Prologue
1. Jade
2. Jade
3. Emmett
4. Jade
5. Emmett
6. Jade
7. Emmett
8. Jade
9. Emmett
10. Jade
11. Jade
12. Emmett
13. Jade
14. Emmett
15. Jade
16. Jade
17. Emmett
18. Emmett
19. Jade
20. Emmett
21. Jade
22. Jade
23. Emmett
24. Jade
25. Jade
26. Jade
27. Emmett
28. Jade
Epilogue
Author’s Note
When Light Leads to You
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Prologue
Jade
Three Years Ago
I stepped into the condo I shared with my soon-to-be husband, set my briefcase and overflowing Kate Spade purse on the sleek marble countertop, and called out, “Andrew? You home?”
Triton, my massive German Shepherd puppy, trotted over to greet me. He tilted his head, seeking my hand to scratch the sweet spot behind his ears, his tail thumping against my leg.
Aside from the clicking of Triton’s nails against the hardwood floors, stillness prevailed. I frowned, wondering if I’d forgotten about a late work-related function Andrew had tonight. I walked over to our built-in wine rack and decided on a bottle of pinot noir Andrew had received as a gift from a client and poured a generous amount into a monogrammed glass engraved with, “Future Mrs. Johnson.”
As usual, seeing the words brought a smile to my lips and an all-encompassing warmth to my heart. Our wedding was three months away, and my excitement grew exponentially as each day brought us closer to December.
I connected my phone to the surround-sound system and pushed play on my Ray LaMontagne playlist. Wine in hand, I walked through the living room, my gaze wandering to the stunning view of downtown Austin outside the window. Looking out over the city where I was born and raised would never grow old. My absolute favorite part of the view was Lady Bird Lake—a stark contradiction to the bustling, vibrant city. Serene and calming, the lake served as the perfect medium to separate downtown Austin from the rest of the city. In contrast, the running trail around the lake was always bursting with people crazy enough to run in the humid Austin air.
My best friend Jasmine and I had worked tirelessly to build our own wedding planning company from the ground up. After we graduated with business degrees a year and a half ago, we took a chance on fulfilling our childhood dream, and we knew better than to take the opportunity for granted. The hours I put in meant I’d spent my fair share of evenings and weekends away from Andrew, but he had started his own business while we were in college and understood the necessity.
Outside the window, the sun was setting, layering the sky with streaks of faded orange bleeding into purple and blue, making tonight’s view exceptionally striking. I spun around and twirled my way to the bedroom, singing along with Ray as I went. I tried not to be insulted when Triton whined and covered his face with his paws. Yeah, I know. Stick to my day job.
I emerged from the closet a few seconds later and caught sight of a face in the bathroom mirror. Something between a gasp and a yelp escaped my lips, and my grip slipped, sending my treasured glass to shatter against the tile floor.
“Andrew! You scared the hell out of me,” I cried, looking at his reflection while my hand flew to my chest. He was standing in the doorway, leaning against the doorframe with his hands in his pockets.
Andrew’s eyes fell to the floor where a thousand tiny shards of glass waited for my bare feet to step on them. “Shit. I’m sorry, Jade.” Keeping his eyes fixed on the ground, his face twisted in regret.
“It’s okay, it’s just a glass.” Resisting the urge to mention it was my favorite glass, I sighed. “I’ll go get the broom.”
He walked across to the far side of the bed. “Wait. Just come here,” he called before I could get more than a few steps away.
I turned just in time to see him pick up a small suitcase from behind the bed and took a tentative step in Andrew’s direction. His tone was too strained, too clipped—devoid of the light and love that normally shone through when he spoke to me. His steely gaze darted toward the ground, then toward the ceiling, looking anywhere but at me. Something wasn’t right, and I immediately felt a surge of anxiety race down my spine and through my limbs.
“Andrew, what’s going on?”
He wore a faded pair of jeans and an old Dallas Cowboys t-shirt; clearly, he’d been home for a while. Had he been hiding from me in the bedroom? Why? Questions flooded through me fast enough to make my head spin.
When Andrew gestured for me to come sit next to him, my feet obeyed, carrying me to the mattress we’d shared for the last year.
“I can’t…I can’t do this,” he said, speaking so softly I barely heard the four words that shattered my world.
I froze. Although my heart clung to the notion I’d misunderstood, my head knew logically this meant us. Panic slowly crept into my veins and gripped my heart.
“Jade, I can’t do this,” he repeated, his voice infinitely stronger and more resilient than it had been only seconds ago. “I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry, Jade. I thought I wanted everything we’d planned. But I don’t. I’m not ready. I need an opportunity to be single and unattached before settling down.” He sighed, and I forced myself to keep my gaze on him, even though I felt slivers of my heart chipping away with each movement of his lips. “I know this seems like it’s coming out of nowhere, but I’ve had a lot of time to think about our relationship lately since you’ve been so busy.”
Crack.
“It’s given me time to realize I’m not ready for a permanent attachment like marriage.”
Not. Pop. Ready. Pop. For. Pop. Marriage. Crack, pop, crack. Each word he spoke became more devastating than the last, each syllable chipping away at my ribcage.
He sucked in a deep breath and diverted his eyes. “Look, Jade, you can stay in the condo as long as you want. I’ll stay at a hotel until you’re ready to move on.”
Move on?
Panic wasn’t just creeping in anymore; it ripped through me like a tsunami. How could he so casually reduce our future marriage to something as impersonal as a ‘permanent attachment?’
Andrew stood and took a step away from the bed, away from me. He was so calm, as if he’d rehearsed this exact scene time and time again in his head. He turned toward me and eyed me with what I determined to be calculated indifference. When I brought my eyes to his, all traces of the Andrew I knew were gone. The gray eyes that once raked over my body with unmasked desire were now as cold and distant as a glacier.
To my shock, a surge of laughter escaped my lips. It was comp
letely illogical and rooted in denial, a desperate coping mechanism of my brain and heart so they didn’t implode on the spot.
Andrew looked at me like I’d grown a second head. “This is…funny?”
His words snapped me back to earth, ending my laughter abruptly. “No, it’s not funny. This is a total fucking nightmare, Andrew. This is the man I thought I’d spend forever with casually and callously ripping my heart into shreds in the same way he makes business deals, and treating our relationship like it means nothing. Like I mean nothing.”
The strength of my voice surprised me. It was steady and forceful when those were the last things I felt. Tears burned my eyes, but I willed them not to fall. Tears would crumble my façade of strength faster than a sand castle in the rolling tide.
Andrew flinched at my words. “Of course you mean something to me, Jade. But in twenty years, when I look back on my life, I don’t want to have regrets. Right now, my gut tells me getting married would be a mistake when this is the only serious relationship either of us has had.”
Suspicion came knocking on my door, screaming there was more to his statement.
“Tell me the truth. Is there another woman?” Even as the words left my mouth, I would’ve sworn they were coming from someone else. Nothing about this situation felt real.
Andrew’s words crashed down on me in an angry wave of indignation. “How can you question my fidelity? Four years, Jade. Have I ever given you reason to doubt me?” The venom in his voice seemed designed to invoke guilt and reduce me to tears.
I wanted to say no, to apologize for asking. But he hadn’t actually answered the question.
He sighed and shifted uncomfortably. “I know this is hard for you. It’s not exactly a walk in the park for me, either. I just don’t want to wake up one day and resent you because we committed to each other when we were too young to know what we wanted for the rest of our lives.”
“So now we’re too young to know what we want for the rest of our lives, but we weren’t too young when you proposed?”
“I’m just trying to be honest, Jade.”
I found it ironic Andrew thought “honesty” would make things easier for me when all it did was push me further over the edge. I threw my hands in the air. “Oh! You’re just trying to be honest. That makes me feel so much better.”
“Jade, I’m sorry,” Andrew said, his expression devoid of emotion. “This wasn’t an easy decision. I’m not trying to hurt you. Please try to understand.”
“I understand perfectly. If you think this relationship is a mistake I should be thanking you for doing this now rather than later.”
His cold, indifferent mask cracked momentarily as guilt flashed across his face. “I never said we were a mistake. I just can’t ignore the part of me craving independence and freedom. I’m sorry.”
Independence? Freedom? What is this, his secession from the Union? If I heard the words “I’m sorry” one more time, I was going to lose my shit completely. I brushed past him without meeting his eyes, calling out to Triton as I walked into the kitchen to grab my purse and briefcase.
“Don’t bother finding another place to stay. I’ll come get my stuff this weekend and you’ll have all the freedom and independence you so desperately crave.” I tossed my engagement ring on the counter like it was nothing more than a spare coin.
Shock was a virus, eating through my entire body, effectively stifling the barrage of emotions fighting their way to the forefront of my mind. The drive to Jasmine’s apartment wasn’t enough time for the hazy fog of confusion to clear from my brain. I stayed in my car long after parking out front, waiting for some kind of clarity to wash over me.
But clarity never came. Instead, the fog grew thick and dark, threatening to consume me. I was frozen in place, wondering how my life had suddenly and irrevocably spiraled out of control.
Chapter 1
Jade
Present day
Looking down at my phone, I walked into the office late in the afternoon. My head jerked up when I heard Ray LaMontagne’s husky voice crooning from the overhead radio. I forced air back into my lungs, determined to keep the memories at bay. Just because Andrewgeddon took place three years ago to the day, and the same song was playing now that had played then, didn’t mean the universe hated me. I’d listened to his music plenty of times in the last three years without a problem.
It was Friday, and today had been a weird day. I wanted to get home and work through this residual funk I was in. Andrew had been on my mind all day, despite my vow to forget his existence. A run, followed by a night in with my main squeeze (Triton, obviously) was exactly the remedy I needed.
I breezed past Jasmine and our assistant Elliot, knowing they’d be able to tell something was off just by seeing my face. Luckily, they were both caught up discussing their plans for the weekend, so they didn’t stop me to chat as I practically ran to my office.
A few minutes later, I was organizing my paperwork from this morning’s vendor meeting when Jas strolled in and scanned my desk. “Honestly, Jade, it wouldn’t kill you to relinquish some of your neat-freak tendencies. You do realize it’s okay to leave this place without making it spotless, right?”
“Just because your office looks like a category four hurricane tore through doesn’t mean mine should look the same. Besides, without my OCD tendencies, how would your kitchen ever rid itself of the pizza boxes and dishes you seem oblivious to?”
“Oh, come on. I know where everything is, and if I rearrange my office I’d never find contracts and client information.” Jasmine flashed me one of her signature bright smiles and I knew my argument was pointless.
Changing the subject, I said, “I’ve got a pint of ice cream and my gorgeous guy waiting for me, so I’m going to wrap things up and get out of here.”
Her lips tugged into a smile and her soft brown eyes widened. “See, I told you Bradley would be good for you.”
I balked at her assumption. “What?! No! Not even a little. I don’t even want to see him again. I was talking about Triton.”
Jas, who I was pretty sure was the real-life version of Samantha Jones from Sex and the City, had decided that the best way for me to get over Andrew was to get under someone else. She had been introducing me to men non-stop ever since I agreed to reenter the dating scene. The latest – Bradley – presented a predicament I wasn’t sure how to handle. He’d been texting me all day, wanting to get together tonight. I wasn’t avoiding him, per se, I just had zero interest in having a repeat of last week’s sloppy, drunken mistake of a night. I shouldn’t have let it happen in the first place, but I could tell by his texts that he did want a repeat performance.
Humor filled Jasmine’s face, and her smile broadened. “Relax, JP, I knew you were talking about Triton. Seriously, though, was the sex that bad?”
The truth was, I’d begun to wonder if I even knew what decent sex felt like. Things in the bedroom with Andrew had never been a problem, or at least that’s what I’d thought at the time. He was my first, so I had nothing to compare him to. Since Andrew, I’d only been with three others, and they’d all been pretty lackluster.
I pursed my lips and looked up to meet my best friend’s questioning gaze. “Hmm. I wouldn’t say he was terrible, but you’re the one who taught me mediocre sex is worse than no sex.”
She nodded slowly, flipping her blonde mane over with one hand while stepping toward my desk. “Ah, ha! So you do listen to my sex-ed lessons!”
“Ugh. You have this weird way of wording it,” I replied, shaking my head and hoping my eyes weren’t going to get stuck in a permanent half-roll position.
She dismissed my discomfort with the wave of her hand. “Whatever. I’m Rafiki and you’re Simba, finally realizing my sage wisdom is valuable and worth following.”
“Uh, Jas, I think we should talk about what version of The Lion King you’ve been watching.”
“It’s a metaphor, genius.” She tilted her head, studying me. “Are you sure it
wasn’t just because you were both wasted? Maybe you should give Bradley another chance when you’re sober. You seemed into each other that night.”
“I don’t know, Jas. I mean…I wouldn’t say Bradley is unattractive. More like average.” Everything from his plain brown hair to his predictable black suits was painfully ordinary. Which explained why there were exactly zero sparks in the bedroom. “I know there’s nothing wrong with average, but—”
“I get it. You’ll never be completely satisfied with anything less than extraordinary. And that’s the way it should be, Jade.”
She was right; the whole no-strings lifestyle I was trying to embrace for Jasmine’s sake was all wrong for me; I needed fireworks and magic and passion. It’s the reason I fell in love with planning weddings—the idea that true love is an everlasting, all-consuming phenomenon surpassing every other feeling. The idea that love takes two independent people and clicks them together like puzzle pieces made to fit perfectly.
My phone dinged, alerting me to the third text in the past hour from Bradley. “Speak of the devil.”
Jasmine’s brows lifted. “Bradley?”
“Yeah. He wants to know if I’d be ‘down’ for drinks after work, then we could ‘chill’ at his house.” I groaned. “Last time I checked, we are not in college, and adult dating entails more than a text invitation with little to no thought given about what we’ll be doing.”
