Broken by Love (The Basin Lake Series Book 2)

by Stephanie Vercier

  “Hey! I’m Denny,” the pale, dark haired guy calls out over the music. “I’m Stephen’s friend.”

  “Emma,” I reply, then turn away from him, not wanting to be bothered, not wanting to be the girl pawned off on Stephen’s friend.

  But in the next moment, I notice the other guy, a man that nearly makes me immobile.

  “Hey,” he says with a giant smile. He drags a hand through his short, blond hair—he’s dancing, assuredly so, looking like he’d fit in anywhere… in a place like Rampage or at the symphony or at a dirt bike rally. “I’m John. You’re Emma, right?”

  I bite my lip. I’m about to confirm my name for him, but I just smile. He’s absolutely gorgeous, and I’m usually not intimated by a guy’s looks, but there’s just something about him that is making me heat and blush. He’s tall like Stephen with broad shoulders and wearing a snug gray shirt and trim styled black pants. His sideburns lead into a light beard and mustache, totally sexy and timeless.

  “This place is crazy, right?” he says to fill the void of my non-speech.

  “Totally,” I say, finding words. “I could get lost here… dancing. It’s total freedom.”

  He gives me a quizzical look, like maybe he thinks I’m on acid or something before nodding and saying, “Yeah, absolutely. Freedom. That’s what we’re all looking for, isn’t it?”

  I nod and smile again, unsure of how to proceed with this super hot guy with such a salt of the earth name.

  John.

  Even in the tricky lights of the dance club, I notice how blue his eyes are, not light blue like Ike’s but dark, almost gray. He looks so happy, like he doesn’t have a care in the world, like he doesn’t have any other agenda here tonight except to have fun, which makes him so unlike the other guys I’ve met at places like this.

  The two that I’d slept with since breaking up with Ike remain nameless, and now faceless to me. They were guys I’d only been attracted to in a brief, physical way, guys who wanted only one thing. I’d tried to choreograph and control our encounters—I’d wanted to feel both something and nothing from them. I wanted to recapture what I’d felt when I was in love, when I believed Mr. Thatcher truly loved me back, while at the same time wanting to feel numb, not wanting to hurt the way I did when I found out what he’d done to me. Besides momentary orgasmic bliss, those liaisons ended with a sense of emptiness, the same emptiness I’d felt whenever I’d slept with Ike. I’d begun to feel as though this was how I’d always be, a girl who could never properly feel again.

  But my sudden interest in John makes me wonder.

  I move toward him, and his smile widens at me, but before anything else can happen, a girl pops out of nowhere and grabs at his arm, tugging him away. There’s an immediate flash of annoyance on his face, one that shatters his calm freedom.

  “His girlfriend,” a man’s voice says to me, one that I identify as belonging to Denny whose tall, lanky frame is now in front of me as the mystery girl tugs John further away.

  “His girlfriend?” I repeat. “I didn’t know.”

  Didn’t know he was taken. My heart plummets, and I hate the feeling.

  “On again, off again.” Denny doesn’t dance nearly as well as John does, but he’s got this goofy smile that makes me think he’s happy too, someone without a care in the world. “Her name is Madison,” he says even though I don’t ask. “They’ve been together since high school… just going through a rough patch.”

  Before I can say anything to that, as if I even want to, two more girls appear, one with long, jet-black hair and the other’s equally long but with blonde highlights. Like Stephen, Denny and John, they’re well dressed, look like they probably have money and work at some corporate campus in Bellevue or Redmond. They’re laughing, maybe a little drunk, and the one with the black hair nudges Denny on the hip.

  “Who’s your friend?” She’s holding a drink while eyeing me.

  I stop dancing, craning my neck to see where John and that girl went off to but have no luck in seeing them.

  “This is Emma, and that’s Angela.” He points toward Angela and Stephen who have moved away from us, practically melding into one another.

  “Damn, look at that,” the blonde-highlights girl says of the couple’s very public displays of affection.

  “I’m Meg,” the girl with jet-black hair says, offering a big smile and her outstretched, free hand.

  “Meg?” I take her hand and shake it, even if it feels kind of weird and businesslike in a nightclub.

  She nods. “And this is Court… short for Courtney.” She laughs.

  “So now you know the whole crew,” Denny says, having stopped dancing as well, his body blocking me from seeing John, even if he hadn’t already disappeared from my sight.

  “You want to take a breather?” he asks me while Meg and Court’s eyes go back and forth between one another, as if they’re in on something that I’m totally not.

  I’d really rather just be left alone, but I say, “Sure,” if for no other reason than perhaps a chance to see John again and maybe grab another drink.

  “We didn’t know she’d show up here,” Court tells me once we’re sitting in the VIP section, once I’ve downed another vodka on the rocks.

  “Who?” I ask, wondering why these girls are being so free with me, a girl they don’t even know.

  “Madison,” Court says and shakes her head. “John just wants to be free, but Madison is Madison, and she can’t deal with a guy not wanting her with every fiber of his being.”

  “Oh,” I say.

  “So, Denny’s cute, right?” Meg says to me, nudging my arm.

  “Totally cute,” Court adds dreamily. “And such a sweet guy.”

  Just then, I turn, and Denny is pretty much staring at me.

  “I should go check on my friend,” I say, feeling like I’m an antelope being stalked by three lions.

  “You’ll come back though, right?” Court asks.

  “Yeah… sure,” I say, though it’s doubtful.

  I head back to one of the bars, order another drink. I count that as six, and I’m really starting to feel the effects. For good measure, I slug down one more… seven. It will make me forget about John and the brief moment of hope I’d felt in meeting him. It will make me forget about Ike who is probably trolling for someone at this very moment. Most important, it will make me forget about Mr. Thatcher and everything that came of our affair. He still takes up a ridiculous amount of room in my head even though it’s been almost two and a half years since I’d seen him, the last time being at his sentencing that I didn’t even want to go to.

  Dizziness comes after I try to dance again, followed up by the familiar feeling of sickness in my stomach, the sense that whatever little I’d eaten in the past day was about to work its way back up. That last drink had been a mistake, especially on an empty stomach. I head toward the bathrooms, but the lines are ridiculous, so I find my way back through the twists and turns of the hallway we’d come in through. All I want is fresh air and the opportunity to throw up in peace.

  JOHN

  “Did you follow me here?” I demand of Madison once she’s done tugging me to one of the few unoccupied corners of the club, away from my friends and the beautiful girl, Emma.

  “So what if I did? I’m your girlfriend, aren’t I?” she says with raised eyebrows and an indignant look on her face.

  I sigh and shake my head. “No, we broke up, Madison. I thought we agreed.”

  “No, you gave the edict. I never agreed to anything.” She’s pretty much shouting over the music, tugging at me again. “Can we talk outside, where we don’t have to yell?”

  I start to shake my head. I don’t want to be having another argument with Madison when I could be out on the floor, having fun and watching Emma dance. I’d noticed her even before Stephen dragged that girl, Angela, back to the balcony section we were in, before she pointed her out to Denny and I. Somehow, amongst the crush of people, I’d looked down and seen this girl w
ith long chestnut hair and a little black dress that accentuated her curves perfectly. She danced like there was nobody else in the world, completely free, mesmerizing. I hadn’t been the only one watching. When I turned to Denny, my best friend since the first grade, his eyes were glued to her, and I’d immediately felt this pang of possessiveness that seemed strange considering I hadn’t even met the girl we were both looking at.

  “Earth to John!” Madison shouts, pulling me from my replay of Emma in my head, just before the part where I’d seen her up close and she’d been even more beautiful than from far away.

  “Fine. Let’s go.”

  There are a lot of people milling around the entrance to Rampage, so I lead Madison down to the next block, which is pretty much devoid of anyone. When I stop, Madison huffs and leans against the brick façade of the building looming above us, then tugs at the waist of my pants.

  “Madison…” I warn, stepping back from her. “It’s not going to happen.”

  “What’s not going to happen?” She’s incredulous as always, thinking that she just has to bat her eyelashes to negate anything I say to her that she doesn’t like.

  “I’m not going to make that mistake again,” I say, remembering how I’d broken up with her at the start of the summer, only to be lured back to her two weeks later by my sense of obligation to the girl I’d spent the last seven years with.

  “You’re saying I’m a mistake?” She looks doubtful because Madison Gaines-Monroe would never consider that anything about herself is a mistake. She’s tall, blonde, gorgeous, comes from the same kind of old money I do, and is smart, too smart for her own good I think.

  “I’m saying we’re a mistake,” I counter, reminding myself how freeing tonight had been, to be able to look at a beautiful girl like Emma without the guilt I’d have if I was still with Madison. “You don’t support what I want from my life, and I can’t get behind your perfect version of our future, so—”

  Madison doesn’t wait for me to continue. She’s on me in a flash, laying her palms against my chest and pressing her lips to mine, managing to get her tongue into my mouth before I can take a step back and disengage.

  “You can’t fix us with that,” I say, livid that she keeps trying to use sex to keep us in the same orbit when all I want is a permanent break from her. In the past month, I’ve finally found some time to contemplate my own future and not be smothered by her insistence that I’m going to be a corporate lawyer like my dad, that we’ll marry after I finish law school, that we’ll have precisely three children and buy a home on Lake Washington—on the Bellevue side of course—because she can’t handle Seattle’s grittiness.

  “I don’t understand you!” She’s fuming. “I’m willing to give you everything, and you’d throw us away so easily… and for what, John? For a career in legal aid or a chance to pick up skanky girls at nightclubs?”

  Every word that comes out of her mouth is layered in pure resentment, and I’d have understood this fighting tone back in June when we were still hanging on by a thread. But after I’d broken up with her again in July, it had been after going around in circles about how incompatible we’d become. I’d repeated to her time and again that I was tired of being pulled to the countless functions, parties and events she always wanted to attend and how she kept talking me up to anyone that would listen as John Mercer who would eventually take over the reigns of my dad’s corporate law office. She was always trying to craft a future for us that was a fit only for her. And she wouldn’t hear a word about any possible divergence.

  “What more can I tell you?” My goal has never been to hurt her, only to make her understand that I’m at the end of my rope, having realized quite a while ago that what I actually want doesn’t matter to her.

  “You can tell me that you had a momentary loss of sanity.” She inches closer to me again, her voice more relaxed now. “You can tell me that you’re coming with me right this very minute.” She taps her finger to my chest with every syllable of those last few words and tries to tempt me again with a luring look of her emerald green eyes that had lassoed me in when we first got together in our private high school. But that won’t work, not now.

  “I’ll walk you to your car,” I say resolutely. “And then I’m going back to the club… alone.”

  The slap comes first, and then the, “Fuck you, John,” as she turns and scampers off into the warm night. I follow her, not because I’ve changed my mind about going with her after the fuck you and the slap, but because I’d feel like an ass if I didn’t make sure she got to her car safely. When she does, she flips me off and then speeds away in her black BMW coupe.

  EMMA

  I push through the back door that is unmanned now, hit by air that is still thick but less so than a few hours before. I take in a deep breath and steady myself against the brick exterior of the warehouse, thinking I might just avert blowing any chunks.

  “There’s my girl,” Ike says right as I hear the back door open and close again.

  “What do you want?” I slur, leaning on the wall, thinking I’d successfully evaded him for the night.

  “Isn’t it obvious?” He steps forward, not a trace of alcohol on his breath, and holds my hips. “We were good together, Emma. Really good.”

  I swat him away, but I’m more inebriated than I like to be, and he doesn’t even flinch.

  “What makes you think I’d want you back? Just leave me alone.”

  He laughs and brings his lips forward.

  I edge against the wall and try to squirm away from him. “Are you seriously trying to rape me?” I choke out, pushing at him while he kisses my neck.

  “You can’t rape the willing,” he whispers.

  “Who said I was willing, you asshole!” I summon all the strength I can and push his chest with my gathered might.

  “Damn, Emma… you’re really going to make me work for this!”

  “Is there a problem?” The voice seems to come out of nowhere, cutting through the darkness. But even though it sounds different than it did inside, I know it—it’s the guy I’d briefly met earlier. It’s John.

  “Dude, just mind your own business,” Ike says, taking a step back toward me.

  “It’s kind of my business if you’re forcing yourself on a girl,” John says, coming closer to us, looking unafraid of anything.

  “He’s not…” I start, so used to making excuses for men, first for Mr. Thatcher and then for Ike.

  “She’s my girlfriend,” Ike says. “Move along, ass-wipe.”

  John is undeterred. He pushes past Ike and steps right in front of me, looking me in the eyes, so close that I can practically feel electricity bouncing off of him. “Are you okay?”

  “I said, she’s—”

  John turns and pushes Ike back, ten times harder than I had. Ike stumbles and falls to the ground.

  “That was a mistake, fucker.” Ike quickly jumps up from the cement, his eyes filled with a frightening rage.

  “Just leave,” John says forcefully. “Just leave and I won’t have to drive my fist into your skull.”

  “You?” Ike laughs while I watch, sort of in awe of what’s transpiring while still feeling the need to throw up.

  “Don’t test me.” John steps toward Ike again. He’s taller than Ike by a few inches at least, and I’m pretty sure that’s fear I see in Ike’s eyes.

  “Jesus… so not worth it,” Ike says, trying to recover from his embarrassment about getting knocked to the ground. “See you around, Emma… you fucking slut.”

  John makes a move toward him, like he wants to punish him for that last thing he said, but he stops when I bend forward and blow vomit halfway across the alley.

  JOHN

  I really want to beat the shit out of this guy. I don’t even want to think what might have happened if I hadn’t been walking past the alley, having looped a few blocks, still pissed off at Madison and wanting to cool down before I went back into the club. When I’d seen two figures in the darkness, it was
easy to see one of them hadn’t wanted the other there. I’d have intervened no matter what girl it was being pushed up against the back of the building, but when I got closer and saw that it was Emma, I felt an extreme resolve to protect her, followed by a need to put my fist into that asshole’s face and make him pay for what he’d done or was about to do to her.

  I’ve got so much anger brewing inside of me, but just as I begin to go after the guy who quickly disappears around a corner, Emma throws up all over the alley. Instinctively, I jump back to keep from getting splashed by the projectile vomit, but then I push back toward her. She’s hunched over, and I rest my hand on her back.

  “Hey, it’s okay,” I say, not sure if she’s heaving or crying. She’s definitely not the carefree girl I’d seen inside. Beyond the drunkenness, there is something about her that is tortured and sad, and at this moment all I want to do is take that pain away from her.

  “I’m okay—” she cries out in the exact opposite way that someone who was truly okay would and then proceeds to throw up again.

  “Emma, I’m here,” I say, hoping she can take some comfort in that, even though she doesn’t really even know me.

  She nods her head, looking down at the pavement. “I’m so sorry…” she says between heavy intakes of breath. “I’m so embarrassed…”

  I don’t even know her, but I’m hurting for her, and I pull her into a gentle hug, one that she escapes from moments later so she can hurl across the alley again.

  We stand together in silence for another few minutes. Emma composes herself, but I keep my distance, not because I’m afraid of her throwing up on me, but because I don’t want her to feel like I’m some creep who has a problem keeping his hands to himself.

  She sniffles, wipes her mouth almost daintily with her hand, then traces under each eye with a finger to dispel any pooled moisture there. She clears her throat and takes a step toward me.

  “Thank you,” she says, covering her mouth. “I know I’m a mess, and I’m really, really sorry. If you wouldn’t mind just walking with me to the front?”