by Lyla Payne
She wasn’t well, but she was better. I’d never want her any other way.
My parents fell in love with Kennedy faster than I did, and when Miriam came to discuss the autumn campaign specifics, my dad surprised everyone by saying he wanted to talk about Trent.
Not the lies, the truth. He asked Kennedy privately if she minded him talking about our relationship and how it had made him realize his son’s problems didn’t reflect poorly on him or his fathering abilities, that addiction was something he’d like to bring into the light instead of sweep under the rug.
She’d agreed, but I knew it had been a hard decision for her. Talking with me about her family was devastating—hearing about it in the newspapers and on the news was going to suck. I was proud of her even though I’d told her a million times she didn’t have to. We didn’t have to be a part of my dad’s political campaign, but she insisted. We talked about the kids at Harbor House, and how we both liked the idea of helping more people like them.
Secretly, I was happy. It meant my father wanted to publicly address not only Trent, but my relationship with Kennedy. We didn’t have to hide it, and the way he handled everything made it clear he refused to allow her past to be any kind of negative reflection on any of us.
We decided to spend the last week of summer break skiing, which was a weird thing for her but normal for me, since I’d half grown up in Switzerland. Zermott was gorgeous any time of year, and we’d both agreed it was the kind of wonderfully cheesy thing that would happen in a romantic comedy, returning to the place we’d started.
“I’m starting to think this was a really stupid idea,” I commented, watching her adjust her poles and jacket at the top of the slope.
“What? Why? The snow is fantastic.”
“I know, but why on earth did I choose to stuff you in ski clothes instead of a bikini?”
She laughed—a real laugh. It tinkled like bells, and even though I heard it often now, it still took me by surprise.
“You haven’t had any lack of naked time, Wright.”
“I think we better have more just to make sure.”
Kennedy shook her head and straightened her sunglasses. “We’ll see. Whoever gets down the hill last has to go down first!”
She took off without waiting, which was technically cheating but I didn’t mind going down, anyway. I would have let her beat me, in fact, except she didn’t realize there was a killer set of moguls off to the right. Skiing past while she tried to dislodge a ski reminded me of a Bridget Jones movie, and I almost plowed into a tree laughing.
We headed to the room to get ready for dinner a couple of runs later. The lodge was gorgeous and pricey, but my parents had insisted we enjoy our time before school started. Kennedy would have to actually go to class since she was taking English, history, and philosophy in addition to physics and some language she hadn’t yet mastered. Mandarin, I thought. Something Asian. Sometimes I got distracted by her mouth and missed the words.
The door closed behind us and she reached down, tugging on the zipper to her jacket. I batted her hands out of the way and pulled it down, then pushed the light coat off her shoulders. Her lips found mine and her fingers returned the favor, relieving me of my coat, T-shirt, and undershirt by the time I peeled my way down to her bra. Once my skin pressed against hers I lost track of everything except the way she felt—smooth, except for where my hands raised goosebumps across her silky flesh.
Her hands scraped over my chest, moved up to tug on my hair, then down again, raking her fingernails over my abs at an agonizingly slow pace. I got rid of her bra and ran my palms over her bare chest, teasing her nipples until she moaned against my lips.
We laughed at the struggle of getting out of our pants, both tripping at the material bunched around our ankles as we moved toward the giant bed.
“Fuck it,” I growled, dropping to my knees on the plush carpet and hooking my thumbs under the elastic of her underwear.
She stepped out of the pink silk and I nudged her legs apart, then gripped her thighs to hold her still. My tongue paid the debt from earlier even though I’d beaten her down the mountain. I had laughed at her, after all.
“Toby.” Her voice gasping my name rushed blood south from my head. “I thought…I’m supposed to go down. You won.”
There was no way to answer her without moving my face and removing my tongue, which I guessed by the way her hands fisted in my hair would be a mistake. Her thighs trembled and she rested more and more weight on me, until her legs buckled and she shuddered and moaned. Kennedy came against my lips, gasping for breath as I let her slide to her knees.
I held her while she stopped shaking, then kissed her onto her back. Her eyes were glazed over in a way that made me drunk with power—I had done that.
“I love you, strawberry.”
“That’s good. Because now that you’ve made it okay to feel good, I’m going to need you to perform on a regular basis.”
“You got it, doll.”
“And in return…” She seemed to recover a bit, wrapping a firm hand around me and stroking as she guided me between her legs.
I didn’t have to be asked twice.
She kissed me as I pushed inside her, groaning at the heat and tightness of her body. We worked together lazily for several minutes, kissing and touching, easing into a rhythm. It felt so good I wanted to make it last, wanted to watch every sensation play on her face and in her eyes.
Kennedy had other ideas. She rolled us over, sat down hard, thrusting me so deep inside her that I couldn’t tell where our flesh met, until my eyes rolled back in my head. I held her still with my hands on her thighs, getting control of myself and reveling in the way it felt to be part of her.
When I eased my grip she moved with purpose, sliding up and down on top of me. Her hands pulled mine to her tits and I obliged, twisting and pinching the way she liked it—firm but not rough. The carpet burned the small of my back and my ass, but the idea of stopping long enough to get into the bed didn’t seem like a good one at all.
We forgot about going slow, but not about watching. She slid down and I thrust up, our movements getting faster, harder, and impossibly deeper as sweat slicked the skin between us and the sound of our joint breath filled the air. I lost myself in the way it felt to connect with her this way. To plunge inside her and feel her body respond, to watch the ecstasy on her face as she threw her head back and came, spasming around me so hard it sucked me dry too. To hold her against my chest until we could both breathe again.
“God, strawberry. You’re going to kill me.”
“I doubt it. You have excellent stamina, Wright.”
“We didn’t even make it to the bed.”
“Beds aren’t strictly necessary. My grandmother taught me that when she locked me in the broom closet for days when I got into trouble. Which, as you might imagine, was often.”
I couldn’t see her face because her head was tucked under my chin, but the tone of her voice said she wasn’t kidding. I kneaded the muscles in her back, tense from either the crazy amount of sex we’d been having or the conversation, it was hard to tell.
“What a crazy bitch.”
All of the factoids I’d gathered about the grandmother who had abused my twelve-year-old strawberry made me glad she was dead. If not, I’d be tempted to kill her.
“She was terrible, but she was grieving too. I reminded her of my dad and she wasn’t handling it any better than I was. I still hate her old Christian guts.”
“I’d say that’s fair.”
She brought up her past in little fits and starts. It wasn’t accidental, the way she shared memories with me. It had been when we’d been together at school. The deliberate way she handled her healing process made me love her, and root for her, and know deep down that she was going to make it to the other side.
“Anyway, I slept on the floor all the time when I lived with her. My parents always let me sleep in their bed if I wanted to.” She was quiet for a while, her
body loosening and melting into mine as I kept up the massage. “I bet I killed their sex life.”
I chuckled and she did too, the vibration between our naked bodies turning me on again. She felt me jerk and laughed, sitting up on top of me. Putting herself on display did nothing to calm my recharged batteries.
“I think we should get an apartment together when we get back to Whitman,” I said, surprising us both, if the look on her face was any indication.
“Are you sure?”
“How on earth are we going to have this much sex and study and hang out with our friends and generally enjoy college if we’re living separately?”
She planted a kiss on my forehead, then my nose, then moved on to my ear and my neck, causing my fingers to tighten on her hips and sending shivers down my spine.
“You’re so practical,” she murmured into my skin.
“You’re so beautiful. And dynamite in the sack.”
She stopped and looked into my eyes, smiling a little bit like she couldn’t believe any of this was real. “I love you, Wright. Thank you for not giving up.”
“I’ll never give up on you.”
“How about you never give up on us?”
I sat up, too, until she landed in my lap and her legs wrapped around my back. My lips captured hers, parting them with my tongue and drinking her in. She tasted like strawberries and sex, like Kennedy.
We came up for air before we had sex on the floor for a second time, but only because her stomach growled and made me feel guilty about not feeding her since breakfast. I got up and pulled her to her feet. “You know, I’ve been meaning to ask you something.”
“What?”
I loved the way that question didn’t throw a wall up between us or cloak her in wariness. She wasn’t an untamed filly anymore, skittish and easily spooked. Kennedy might still be wild, and breaking her was the last thing I wanted. But she belonged with me and we both knew it.
“What box do you have me in now?”
Her eyebrows went up and she stepped back into me, her hands locking behind my back. “You don’t know?”
“Honestly, I never knew what the fuck you were on about with all the box talk, anyway.”
She grinned. “I like to keep you on your toes. Don’t want you getting bored.”
“No chance.” It was true. It still surprised me, but I always felt like seeing her. Always wanted to talk to her and hold her and laugh with her and have sex with her.
The smile dropped from her lips, her ocean eyes turning serious. “You’re in a box labeled ‘Toby Pain-In-My-Ass Wright,’ because you refused to stay in any of the others.”
“Others you have now thrown into the recycling?”
She kissed me slowly, stroking my tongue and pressing her naked body into mine in a way that made me forget the question.
“Others I have already forgotten I ever owned,” she purred, running her hand up the inside of my thigh.
I decided I would feed her dinner later, probably in bed, and picked her up. She squealed as I dropped her on top of the covers then pounced, tickling her and kissing her, pinning her arms above her head when she tried to struggle loose. We were laughing, happiness bubbling between us like the deep wells in both of us had merged somewhere, and now flowed into a single stream.
It was like the ending of every stupid chick flick ever, when things magically worked out and people ended up happy, except this was better than any movie I’d ever seen. Because we’d earned it. Because it was real life.
And because this wasn’t the end of anything.
Acknowledgments
If it takes a village to raise a child, then it takes the contents of a mental institution to produce a quality book. As I am very proud of this particular book and feel that it is, indeed, quality, it means I have a whole host of awesome, possibly insane people to thank.
To Denise Grover Swank and Leigh Ann Kopans, who have the immense responsibility of reading the things I write first and giving me feedback before anyone else has paved the way – I couldn’t do this without you. If I played any part in the increase of days spent hollering inside four padded walls, I apologize and only hope its worth it.
My agent, Kathleen Rushall, believes in me and the future of my career, which might make her crazy, but also makes her awesome. K.P. Simmon, publicist and hand-holder extraordinaire – I’m sorry about your cell phone bill, and the money you probably had to pay to stop your eyes from rolling around in your head.
Thank you to Eisley Jacobs for a beautiful cover that captures the couple in the book so perfectly, to Sarah Henning, whose copy edits make this manuscript easy to read, and to Cynthia Moyer, whose proofreading makes me look much smarter than I am.
Whitman University has an amazing street team, all of whom read this book early and at least pretended to like it – I appreciate each and every one of you (along with Kari Olsen, whose comments gave me a much needed smile on a day that was headed for restraints and anti-depressants), for reading, for your responses, and for your enthusiasm. I can’t wait to keep having a “hoot” with you all for a long time to come.
To my family, who may have made me crazy (or it could have been the other way around) - I’m happy to be one of you chickens, or eggs, or whatever we are, as long as we continue to laugh and support each other.
Last, but never least, to my readers. Books are not finished until you do your part, which is sitting down and giving your time to read the words and meet the characters, and feel the feelings. Without you, none of this would be possible and I am endlessly grateful.
About the Author
Lyla has long had a love of stories. A few years ago she decided to put them down on the page, and even though Lyla has a degree in film and television, novels were the creative outlet where she found a home. When the idea for Broken at Love (my first New Adult title) arrived, Lyla couldn’t wait to try something new – and she’s hooked. In her spare time, Lyla watches a ton of tennis (no surprise, there), plays a ton of tennis, and dedicates a good portion of brain power to dreaming up the next fictitious bad boy we’d all love to meet in real life.
Thank you for reading my book! Please consider leaving a review. It’s very much appreciated not only by this author, but by authors everywhere. If you’re not comfortable writing your own review, even taking the time to click “helpful” on an existing review that speaks to you is worthwhile.
Thank you for reading, and I hope you’ll be excited to return to Whitman University for a 4th installment, due out in December, 2013.
Table of Contents
Title page
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
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
About the Author
