Broken Fairytales Series Box Set (Broken Fairytales, Buried Castles, Shattered Crowns)

by Monica Alexander

  “Oh, sorry,” I said and automatically loosened my death grip.

  “Thanks,” he said, as he kick-started the bike.

  As we started to slowly move out of the driveway, I couldn’t help but wonder what my parents would think of me riding on a motorcycle with a guy I hardly knew. I knew they wouldn’t be pleased, which sort of pleased me to no end. Ben would be even less thrilled with me. I did everything I could to push his clouded face from my mind, which it surely would be if he saw me holding onto another guy that tight, as we zoomed away to an unknown location.

  Once we got moving, I found the initial fear I’d felt ebbing more toward exhilaration as the wind whipped around Zack and me. We couldn’t have been going more than thirty miles an hour, but it felt like we were flying. I instantly loved the feeling of the wind, the freedom, and Zack’s body so close to mine. I felt the sudden urge to press my lips to his neck, which both scared and excited me.

  “You okay?” he asked when we stopped at a light.

  “I’m good,” I said, hugging him tighter.

  When we finally reached our destination, I saw that we were at the top of a small cliff of some sort. Zack parked the bike at the top and helped me off.

  “You did good,” he said, as we walked toward some stairs that I hadn’t seen when we’d first pulled up. They led us down to a stretch of the beach that was uninhabited. There were no houses nearby and no lifeguard chairs. It didn’t look like the stretches of beach that were on the end of the island where we were staying.

  We walked over to a large outcropping of rocks that blocked our path. The water was coming dangerously close to the rocks as the tide came in. Zack stepped on top of the lowest rocks and put his hand out for me to grab.

  My eyes fixed on a pink rubber bracelet that he was wearing. I hadn’t noticed it before, but now it fell to the end of his arm as his shirt sleeve pulled up from his wrist. I looked from it to his eyes to his outstretched fingers, and then I reached out and took his hand. For some reason, I took that gesture as a sign that there was no turning back. I was crossing a line, and once I crossed it, that was it. But I didn’t stop. I didn’t even slow down.

  Zack helped me up onto the rocks and held my hand as we walked the ten feet across, being careful not to slip, as the rocks were already getting wet from the spray of the ocean. On the other side, he hopped down onto hard-packed sand and helped me down so I was standing next to him. We found ourselves on a secluded part of the beach where day trippers most likely didn’t set up their chairs and beach blankets. There was only about twenty feet of beach from the rocks to the ocean, and the expanse was only thirty feet wide. On the other side were more large rocks that were too tall to traverse easily.

  “Come on,” Zack said, taking my hand again.

  We walked up to the back of the beach where there was a small entrance to a cave. He stopped just outside of it but didn’t enter. Instead he sat down on the sand, so I sat next to him.

  “What is this?”

  “This is my other place,” he said. “I used to come down here as a kid – actually all of us did. We would camp in there a few times each summer.” He indicated to the cave opening behind us. “I used to love how we could pretend it was our own private island. When I was older, and my parents would fight, I would come here a lot just to get away from it all.”

  “Did you feel like you needed to get away tonight?” I asked him, wondering what was bothering him so much.

  He nodded. “Yeah, I did. I’ve been coming here a lot over the past few months to think or write or just be alone.”

  “You write?”

  He nodded. “Music.”

  “Really. How come you never play your own stuff at the beach?”

  He shrugged. “Everyone likes covers. They’re crowd-pleasers. Besides, some of my stuff’s been pretty dark lately, so I figure it’s better not to bum everyone else out.”

  “You haven’t exactly been playing bright and cheery tunes,” I said, recalling that a lot of his cover choices had a definite melancholy air.

  He shrugged. “I play what I feel, so I guess that’s sort of rubbed off. Sorry if I’ve been bumming you out.”

  I laughed non-humorously. “I’ve actually been pretty bummed out this summer myself, so I kind of like your music.”

  “Misery loves company,” he deadpanned.

  “I’m sorry about whatever’s bothering you. I wish I could help,” I said, genuinely meaning it.

  I knew his issues were so much greater than mine, and I suddenly felt guilty for even thinking I had it rough. I just knew Zack was dealing with something big, and it had been affecting him for a while.

  He shrugged. “I’ll be okay.”

  “I wish I believed you,” I said, hoping I wasn’t over-stepping my bounds.

  “Yeah, me too,” he said, getting that far-off look in his eyes again.

  I wished he would open up and tell me what was going on. I wasn’t sure I’d ever seen someone in so much pain before. I absently took his hand, not thinking about it, just acting on instinct.

  He looked down at my hand in his and then back up at me. “Are you sure that’s something you want to do? I mean, you have a boyfriend and all.”

  I nodded, realizing that it was definitely something I wanted to do. For some unknown reason, I wanted nothing more than to sit there on that secluded beach with a guy I hardly knew who seemed to be barely holding himself together and give him my hand to hold, as if it might help him to have something solid to grip while he was falling apart.

  Right when I looked back up at him, Zack leaned over and kissed me, taking me by surprise. I hesitated for half a second before I leaned into it, becoming a full-on participant, knowing there was nothing that could have kept me from kissing him in that moment. I’d been wanting to do it for days.

  “I’m sorry,” he said, laughing lightly when he pulled back. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

  He didn’t seem sorry, and his lack of remorse and boundaries should have been a red flag to me, but it sort of made me want to see how far I would let myself go with him. He was a bad boy, and I’d always dated good guys. Maybe it was time I take a ride on the dark side and see what happened. Of course, I knew Zack wasn’t all bad. He was like bad boy lite.

  With his dark hair, piercing eyes and serious looks, he had a way about him that screamed danger, but then he would smile and say something sweet, and I’d totally change my mind about him. Then there was the way he touched me that set my body on fire that just told me he could get me in a lot of trouble. He knew I had a boyfriend, but he didn’t care, and frankly, in that moment, neither did I.

  I shook my head. “Don’t be sorry,” I said, and leaned in to kiss him again. “Just go with your gut.”

  “Touché,” he said against my lips.

  His tongue worked its way into my mouth as I leaned further into him, getting completely lost in the kiss. I couldn’t remember the last time that had happened. There was just something about the way Zack took command that made me feel like I could fully surrender myself to the moment.

  When I finally pulled away, he leaned his head back against the rocks and closed his eyes. I watched him closely, noticing how broken he looked again. It amazed me how he could go from flirty and happy to sad and remorseful in the blink of an eye. His moods were up and down, and I couldn’t tell when that switch would flip and he would suddenly change before my eyes.

  “You’re going to regret that tomorrow,” he said.

  I shook my head. “I don’t think I will.”

  “Oh, princess, you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into with me,” he said, not opening his eyes.

  “I know enough,” I said, leaning over to kiss his cheek, my lips lingering for a few beats before I kissed the spot right below his ear, making him shiver. “Tell me what’s wrong?”

  He hesitated for a moment, and then to my surprise, he opened up to me.

  “My mom’s sick,” he finally said, rushin
g the words, as if he didn’t want to say them but couldn’t stop them from coming out of his mouth.

  “I’m sorry,” I said, knowing he was talking about more than a cold or the flu. I was half-holding my breath, knowing how hard it must be for him to talk about it.

  He opened his eyes and looked at me. “She has cancer, and she’s dying.”

  He said it so flatly, like he didn’t have any emotion left to expel on the topic. I watched as he fingered the rubber bracelet on the wrist attached to the hand I was still holding. I realized it was a breast cancer awareness bracelet. He looked at me, almost as if to gauge my reaction, but I didn’t say anything. I honestly wasn’t sure what to say.

  In my silence, Zack continued talking. “She was diagnosed with breast cancer a little over three years ago. She had a lumpectomy and they did radiation. She did everything she should have, and she went into remission for a year. Then she found out about a year and a half ago that it was back and had spread to her lymph nodes and her lungs. She fought it for a while, but it didn’t work. When she found out a few weeks ago that it had spread to her pancreas, she decided to stop the chemo. She doesn’t have much time left – maybe a month or two. She’s basically giving up.”

  His voice cracked on the last few syllables, and he looked over at me as I watched the tears pool in his eyes. I suddenly realized why he’d seemed like a different guy when I’d met him at the coffeehouse. Back then he’d been light-hearted and free of the dark shadows that now haunted his eyes, because he still thought his mom had a fighting chance. She’d beaten cancer once before, so he was hopeful and optimistic that she could do it again. But now that she’d stopped fighting, there wasn’t another outcome, and he knew she would die.

  “I’m so sorry, Zack,” I told him, even though I knew it would never be enough.

  He nodded. “Yeah, me too.” He wiped his free hand across his face, pushing the tears away. “I’m a fucking mess,” he said, all traces of the bad boy from a few minutes earlier gone. “I’m crying in front of a girl that I actually like, and I’m probably succeeding in scaring her off.”

  I tightened my grip on his hand. “No,” I said firmly. “You’re not.”

  “You don’t understand. I’m pretty much a train wreck. I’d walk away if I were you.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  For some reason that I couldn’t explain, I was drawn to him like no one else. The thought of walking away wasn’t even an option. He breathed in deeply and leaned his head back against the rocks again. I remained silent, letting him take his time.

  “It’s why I was upset the other night,” he said finally.

  “Your mom,” I said, understanding completely why he’d been so angry.

  “It was these assholes at the party. Some story came on the TV about some celebrity having a mastectomy, and they were laughing about it,” he said, shaking his head.

  “That sucks. That’s not funny at all.”

  “You know, I get it. Hell, a few years ago, I might have laughed about it with them, but things are different now. My mom didn’t have one of those, but she considered it. It just got to me, you know, that they could be so callous about something they know nothing about.”

  I nodded. I could see how that would have made him upset.

  He leaned his head back against the rocks, looking up at the nearly full moon overhead. He put his arm around me and pulled me close to him. I leaned my head on his chest and listened to the sound of his heart beating steadily and his breath going in and out. It was like it was a struggle for him just to breathe. I desperately wanted to take his pain, ball it up and throw it into the ocean. He was too young to be dealing with so much.

  It hit me then that I’d been incredibly near-sighted. I’d been consumed in rebelling and fighting my parents and proving to everyone that I was a different person. I was happy that I was doing something that would disappoint them, and here was a guy who wanted nothing more than to do everything he could to help his mother, and he couldn’t. It hit me then how precarious life was, and the last thing I should have been doing was trying to piss off the people who cared about me. I should be embracing the fact that they were in my life, especially since you never knew when they no longer would be.

  Zack was barely an adult and was facing losing his mother. I thought about what that would feel like if it was my mom and my chest tightened. I suddenly wanted to run home and apologize for all the hateful things I’d thought about her and the nasty things I’d said to her in the past few weeks, as I tried to distance myself from who I’d been. I couldn’t believe I’d stooped so low to do that to my mother who’d always been there to support me. Sure, she buried her head in the sand and refused to see certain things, and she had elevated expectations of me, but when it came down to it, I knew that she loved me and would do anything for me.

  Maybe if I’d just talked to her about what I was going through, instead of shutting her out and making her feel like it was her fault, then I wouldn’t have had so much guilt coursing through me in that moment. I made the decision to talk to her the next day, to explain everything and above all else, apologize.

  “You know what I really want?” Zack asked after a few minutes of silence, pulling me back to reality.

  “What?” I asked, thinking he’d say something deep about his mother or their relationship or at least something enlightening.

  “Ice cream,” he said, as he smiled a small smile and surprised me again. He didn’t want to go get drunk to forget his pain like a normal person, most likely because he knew it wouldn’t help. He’d been there before he’d said, and I wondered if that was how he’d initially dealt with her diagnosis.

  I fell for him a little more in that moment as I saw how alight his eyes were. Zack wanted to get ice cream. He wanted to do something so PG that it was ironic but incredibly adorable at the same time.

  “I love ice cream,” I said, feeling somewhat relieved that we were onto a lighter subject and that I wasn’t going to have to flex my bad girl muscles anymore that night. I wasn’t great at it to begin with, so it was a relief to not have to pretend I was. “Let’s go get ice cream.”

  We left the beach, walking back to where his bike was parked. That time I knew what to expect, so my apprehension wasn’t as prominent as I climbed on and wrapped my arms around his waist. I pressed my lips to his bare neck, letting them linger there for a few beats, before I pulled my helmet back on. Zack smiled back at me before he kick-started the bike and took off faster than he had before, causing me to tighten my grip around his waist.

  He drove us back to a more populated area in the main part of town, parking his bike in the one of the spaces outside Sprinkles, one of the many ice cream parlors on the island. As we climbed off, he took the helmet from my hands and set it on the back of the bike. I realized I was shaking slightly. Zack noticed too when he took my hand in his.

  “Sorry,” he said, realizing that his excessive speed had freaked me out just a little. He took my other hand and looked down at me. “The speed helps me calm down. I didn’t realize how fast I was going.”

  “It’s okay,” I said, shaking my head as I started to relax. His proximity was serving as a calming agent.

  “Good,” he said quietly, a sheepish look crossing his face. “I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that I liked how close you got when I started to speed up. I might have done it a little for that too.”

  He let go of my hand and raised his to my face, tracing my jawline with his index finger. I shivered involuntarily at the ultra-seductive movement, taking a step closer, looking deep into his light brown eyes. I brought my hand to rest on his lower back, underneath his t-shirt.

  “If you want me to get closer, there are other ways to do it,” I said, leaving my statement open-ended. I gave him a pointed look, dropped my hand and turned away, leaving him staring after me. I started to walk toward the ice cream parlor, smiling to myself.

  Zack caught up with me, his
arms catching me around the waist as he pulled me back against his chest. His lips met the hollow of my neck, just above my collarbone.

  “I’d be careful about saying things like that, princess,” he said, his voice rough and urgent. “I don’t think you know what you’re insinuating.”

  I spun in his arms, partly annoyed at his insinuation. “For the record, I know exactly what it means. Just because I look naïve, doesn’t mean I am.”

  With that, I pulled out of his grasp and walked away from him, yanking on the door to the ice cream parlor. Zack followed behind me, his hand slipping into mine as he leaned down to whisper in my ear. Families were all around us, and I was sure he didn’t want them to hear what he was saying.

  “I apologize for assuming,” he whispered, his warm breath tickling my cheek. “Please forgive me.”

  When I looked up at him, he was giving me puppy dog eyes, and I couldn’t hold onto my resolve any longer. I laughed out loud, shaking my head at him.

  “You are extremely conniving, mister,” I said, poking him in the chest, “especially when you apologize in that sexy voice of yours.”

  He just smirked at me and gripped my hand tighter. “You think my voice is sexy?”

  I rolled my eyes dramatically. “Please, you know how girls feel about southern charm. Tell me you don’t use it to your advantage.”

  “I have no idea what you’re referring too, ma’am,” he said, turning his accent up a few notches so he sounded really country.

  He pulled me close and leaned down to kiss me, letting his lips linger on mine for just long enough that it affected me in a way that was highly inappropriate for our surroundings. When he pulled back and smiled at me, I had to take a few calming breaths to find my center again. Zack could tell and chuckled lightly as he pulled me back against his chest once again.

  Once we got our ice cream, we sat at an outside table that wasn’t crowded with kids eating drippy cones who seemed to be everywhere. I methodically licked my two scoops of cookies and cream while Zack concentrated on tackling his three scoops of coffee, chocolate peanut butter, and vanilla, which I thought was an incredibly boring flavor to add into the mix, but he said you had to have vanilla to balance out the other flavors, so I guess it sort of made sense.