Scarlett's Will

by Nicole Marie Jardine

  “I can’t,” I whispered. I had to stay in school if I ever planned on graduating and I would only interfere with his life there.

  “I wish I could say yes, but you know it's impossible, we went through this, you’re torturing me. You’re breaking my heart again Willem,” I shouted at him, angry now that he would make me say no to him when he knew there was no other choice.

  “Scarlett, we are not over. We will never be over,” he said. I could hear the pain in his voice. I couldn't breathe. My pain resurfaced and I needed him so much.

  “Please Willem, stop hurting me,” I cried.

  “I don't want to hurt you angel, I want to love you and one day I will take you home with me again and you will stay with me. One day I will come back for you,” he repeated. I wanted to believe him but I knew he never would. I just had this empty, hollow feeling in my chest that I was going to have to live without him.

  A few days after the call I received a huge bouquet of flowers. I had never received flowers before. I think my mother was even impressed. I didn’t lie when she asked me who they were from. She had made it perfectly clear that she didn’t want me to have any contact with Buddy again. I smiled and danced around the kitchen and the living room, holding my flowers. “He still loves me, he really loves me,” I sang. I saw my mother grin, trying to hold back her smile as she watched me, the happiest I’d been in a long time.

  In my bedroom that night, she came in to talk to me. I had my flowers beside my bed, with Buddy’s picture and the rope.

  “Can we talk Scarlett?” she asked. I sat up.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “You’re not planning on going back to the states anytime soon are you? Because first, I couldn’t bear it again and second, well I have a whole list of seconds,” she said. I was about to say something when she held up her hand to me.

  “Let me talk. I know you love him and it’s obvious he loves you too , which makes me think that maybe he is really a sweet boy and not the monster I’ve made him out to be. I know that this is a decision that will haunt you for the rest of your life, either way you’ll lose something important. I don’t even know if you can work or go to school there, you’re so young. I think you should wait to make any decisions until you’ve at least graduated from high school. If at that time you still want to move, I have decided to support you,” she told me. I cried as I hugged my mother. She was right. I had to wait just another year.

  “I have something else to tell you. I received a message yesterday from your father's employer. Apparently he's been missing from work for three days. His apartment turned up empty. They called me to see if he showed up here. I haven't heard from him in months but I wouldn't be surprised if he came back. I just thought I should warn you,” she said shakily. I could tell she was scared of his return too.

  I never heard Willem's voice again after the flowers arrived. I tried calling him but his number was no longer in service and I never received another letter from him. He just vanished from my life, even though he promised we would never be over. He said that we would never end, but we did. It hurt but I accepted it.

  At least now I didn't have to decide if I should tell him or not that I was having his baby. I poured myself into finishing my high school credits through correspondence. My son was born the following April.

  I hadn’t realized I was pregnant at first, I thought I was sick from missing Will and from withdrawal, as I had made the decision to quit all my vices at once. It wasn’t until I was four months along that I noticed my stomach was bulging. My period still hadn’t returned, but I hadn’t had it in over a year so that wasn’t a signal for me. My mother took me to the doctor’s when I fainted at school. I kept it a secret until I finished my first term. I knew I would have to get the rest of my credits through distance learning. A pregnant student in a catholic high school was frowned upon. I mean I could be contagious.

  I was grateful for my mother’s support. She knew life was not going to be easy for me anymore and there was an innocent little boy that needed us both. We never heard from my father again either. I think my mother kept expecting him to show up but I had a feeling he was gone from our lives just like Will.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to tell him Scarlett, he has a right to know?” my mother asked once.

  “No, he doesn’t need to know. He has a new life now. He’s escaped his darkness. Life has not been kind to him but he’s been given a way out. If I tell him now he’ll quit school and want to support me. I don’t want to live to see him resent me one day, I just want to live with the memory that once I was loved,” I cried as I told her, talking about him always hurt. I would never see him again and I had to accept it.

  “Besides, I don't want a baby to be the only reason we are together. I know now that I was never meant to stay with him,” I said, hoping to end the discussion. I didn't want to talk about my baby's father again.

  I buried my past. I buried Buddy’s picture, his rope, his dried flowers and I tried desperately to bury his memory. I wouldn’t allow him in my new life. We were both out of the darkness now. That time has gone and those people are gone. I still believed that we needed each other then and I wouldn't have changed a thing. We needed to be together at that time and in that place and in that pain, but it’s gone now.

  When I finally graduated high school I went to college and then married Flynn. I can't help but wonder now if I had been rushing through life to avoid the pain or possibly the realization that I may have made the wrong decision. Maybe I shouldn’t have buried Willem so quickly, because now he has risen from that pit, deep down in my stomach and I can’t get to him. I can’t call him. I can’t go home with him again.

  ~~~

  I put the rest of my son’s eighteenth birthday cake back into the box. I picked up my phone and flipped through the photos from his party, stopping on the one where he’s grinning and staring into the camera. He has his father’s eyes, steel blue and serious.

  I wipe my tears as I stand up. Reaching for my glass of red wine, I open the back door and walk out into the night, looking up at the dark sky. The stars are shining bright tonight, a million of them, like scattered diamonds.

  “I hope you can see the stars from wherever you are baby, they are beautiful tonight?” I said aloud as I tried to let him go, again.

  To my readers:

  Thank You!

  I would like to thank each and every one of you out there for reading the first book in the

  Magic In The Smoke Series.

  Please visit my website, nicolemariejardine.com for more details and a listing of all my books.

  An immense Thank You to those of you that have taken the time to leave a Review and Rating. As an Indie writer, your support is greatly appreciated.

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  NicoleMarieJardine.com

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  Other Titles Available:

  JUDE’S SALVATION (This Love Book One)

  Eden always believed she lived a perfectly ordinary life. She lives in a beautiful home with a mother, a father and a sister she loves. She's been given an Ivy league education, trips around the world and a closet full of designer clothes. She wants for nothing, until cracks begin to form in her perfect little world.

  Cold sweat and tears become a nightly ritual. Faces she doesn’t remember haunt her.

  A fateful trip to London begins the unraveling of her so-called perfect life.

  When a voice rings out in a crowded pub, it slams her with images of a boy that once held her; a boy that gave her comfort when she was going through hell. His voice cuts through the walls she built up in her mind to block out the pain.

  The voice belongs to a man she still needs, a man that hasn't given up his oath to keep her from her fate.

  Jude's obsessed with the
girl he couldn't save. He was only nineteen when he held her cold, shaking body against his. He stared into haunting green eyes and knew she was meant to be his, but she slipped through his fingers.

  Disappeared.

  Now that he has her, no one will take her from him again.

  She is his.

  Owned.

  Until her master comes calling.

  EDEN’S WEAKNESS (This Love Book Two)

  Jude and Eden have met twice. The first time she fell in love with him she was trapped in a warehouse, cold and alone. Paying for her mother’s sins. He was the light in the darkness. He shouldn’t have been there, he shouldn’t have gotten into her cage, but she felt like his and he needed her. She was his salvation.

  The second time they met she was trapped in her mind. Eden’s memory was lost to her, his memory gone but not his voice. That is all it took for everything to come crashing down around them. The cracks in her perfect life begin to shatter and he becomes Eden’s weakness.

  To keep him I had to fight, but first I had to fall.

  In just three nights, all was lost.

  Lex took everything away from me. Keeping Jude was no longer an option.

  He was my weakness and I had to let him go.

  The woman he loved no longer existed.

  Hope was all I had that maybe, someday when Lex was dead, I could have Jude back but until that day love would remain out of reach.

  Book Two of Two

  ONE MORE LIE

  Kathleen Rosen-Wade

  I wasn’t looking for love, I was seeking one man and for one reason only. I needed an investor and everything in me believed Justin Dimon was the one to ask. I was willing to beg, to offer all I could to keep the family business out of the hands of my father’s oldest rival. He had been through so much pain, I couldn’t sit back and do nothing. I fled to the enemy, working under his watchful eye as I built up my courage to offer Dimon a deal.

  Meeting Jagger Davis wasn’t part of the plan. He was a distraction. He consumed my thoughts and my time, which I didn’t have much of. Over and over, I told myself to let this delicious, beautiful man go so I could get what I came here for, but I couldn’t. Even when doubts began to swim in my head, when things about him just didn’t add up, I still couldn’t walk away. I was addicted to him, to his touch, his sexy as sin grin and his lies.

  Justin Dimon

  I always get what I want and I wanted Kathleen Rosen-Wade. Once I captured my prey I always let them go, but not her. She was mine and I wasn’t about to share, regardless of the club members expectations. She had been brought to me for a reason and I intended to find out why. Becoming her protector, her benefactor, her lover was never planned, but when I’m with her all my carefully laid out plans fly out the window. When I’m with her the life I have carefully built to keep myself protected and unavailable doesn’t seem to matter anymore. She smiles and all I want is to let her in. She releases me from a life I was thrown into, a life I thought I was destined to live alone.

  But one more lie will shatter the illusion, one more lie will break the spell we’ve been under.

  One more lie before the truth is revealed, before the masks are removed, before her heart breaks.

  COME FIND ME

  The night Charlotte Bellamy witnessed a brutal crime, she lost everything. Referring to the killer only as a 'monster'; she vowed to one day kill him.

  Jay Carter has always been able to keep his work separate from his personal life, that is until Charlotte is put under his watch. From the moment her deeply saddened, lonely eyes meet his he makes her his first priority. It isn't until she entwines her hand with his that he begins to doubt his professional distance.

  Charlotte's past leads her into a life of solitude, unable to live freely. Jay's touch is the only one she craves, a forbidden reliance she eventually has to live without. With Jay growing more distant, her loneliness reaches a depth she can no longer sustain.

  Arriving in New York, she lets go of all she knows about hiding. She rebels against everything she's been taught to keep herself safe and protected.

  She lets her hair down.

  She becomes vulnerable.

  She lets her pursuer find her.

  For love she sacrifices her life

  WICKED CURSE (Entangled Series #1)

  DARK. SEDUCTIVE. DANGEROUS.

  INANNA

  My body shivers, the feel of his breath on my neck chills me. Strong hands gripped my hips, the pull almost stopped me till I remember he isn’t really touching me, he hasn’t reached me yet. I don’t dare turn around. Just a glimpse of those cold blue eyes will freeze me in mid-step, he’ll take my breath and my life. His power over me is too strong, he is overwhelming and he draws me to him when I have to run.

  I can't stay.

  If he knew how troubled I was he wouldn't be tempting me like this. Although something led me to believe he understood, he knew every dark and dirty secret I had, yet he still craved me. I shake the thought that we are meant to be from my head, but the feeling that I am his regardless of this curse still haunts me. I should know by now that happy endings are not in my future.

  VICTOR

  I could see what she was planning. I could see it in her eyes. Her confusion and fear evident but there was something else, a feeling she tried to deny. She wanted to hide it from me but I captured a glimpse of it.

  Love.

  She has loved me before and she still does. She knows it but she thinks she can protect me from her curse by leaving. She said she was mine, only mine, the only words I needed to hear.

  I’ll let her go for now.

  It is a curse, a horrible spell that has been cast to keep us wanting and never satisfied that keeps us finding each other. The old crone is getting a fight this time though. I’ll go down in flames bringing her with me before I let her take Inanna from my side again.

  Coming Soon:

  WICKED DESIRE (Entangled Series Book Two)

  Victor Moretti has always been very professional in his personal as well as his business life. He wants only the best and avoids entanglements.

  He has never fallen in love and planned to keep it that way until he finds himself involved with the captivating Inanna Taluti. The one he’s been warned about.

  A curse is set upon him and his three brothers to seek out the youngest Taluti witch consumes them all. Their constant need for her possesses their thoughts, haunting their nights and controlling their days.

  Inanna Taluti refuses to allow the curse to continue. She will never pass it on and she will do everything in her power to end it with her. Victor is her only love and regardless of the flames burning inside her for his brothers, she is determined to remain loyal.

  *Mature Content** Recommended for ages 17+ due to sexual situations

  LIES OF AN ANGEL (MIRROR SOULS SERIES #1)

  Halfway around the world there is a group of hunters that share a secret. They have been hiding this secret for hundreds of years. Venturing out to protect the unenlightened at night, searching abandoned homes, dark alleys and anywhere else a soul may have been trapped.

  But these trapped souls are getting stronger.

  Surviving in an abusive and poor family, one young girl may be the strongest of all the Seekers. Seeing ghosts is the least of her worries in her struggle to stay sane in a world determined to bring her down.

  Natalie Black’s free time is spent with friends from another life, some hundreds of years dead and some only recently. She has a tendency to roam away with them, talking as though they are real and to her surprise she begins to feel them.

  Touch them.

  Hold them.

  When she meets Adam she finally questions if she’s in danger.

  *Mature Content** Recommended for ages 16+ due to adult themes and sexual situation

  LIES OF A SHADOW (MIRROR SOULS SERIES #2)

  His leather gloves brushed off the snow from her grave, revealing her name below, Natalie Elizabeth Black and the years
she lived, 1877-1895. He shuddered, falling down on his knees, praying he wouldn't lose her again. He has waited for her to return to him, always searching for her name until finally it appeared.

  Now as a Seeker and student in her last year of high school Natalie believes she has the answers to the questions that haunted her in the past. She wants to believe she can be the Seeker she was trained to be but Hayden is holding her back.

  Her stubbornness leads her into a world she had no idea existed and getting out will be her toughest battle yet. With pain and abandonment still filling her heart she must overcome these emotions to make it back to Hayden before he travels too far in search of her. The chances of them finding each other in the cobwebs of the elaborate realm she’s fallen into only brings them further apart. In the end they may not be the same nor want to be.

  *Mature Content** Recommended for ages 16+ due to adult themes and sexual situations

  If you’ve enjoyed the series so far please consider leaving a

  Review or Rating on

  Amazon and GoodReads

  Thank You so much!

  SCARLETT’S WILL

  PLAYLIST

  Listen to the Playlist ‘Scarlett’s Will’ on Spotify

  Scarlett’s Will Playlist

  Music was an essential part of writing this book and I would like to thank

  these artists for their inspiration.

  Depeche Mode

  Sex Pistols

  Guns N' Roses

  Bad Religion