The Broken One (The One Series Book 1) Read online

  “You know as well as I do that this industry is a boys club. I’ve worked so hard for this, and I was afraid of becoming the punchline to every sleazy joke,” I offer the only explanation I have for my behavior.

  “I really didn’t think about it that way, but I’m glad I understand.” Booker says, looking over his shoulder at me. He must sense how hard this conversation is for me, because he’s kind enough to offer a change of topic. “You look uncomfortable, do you typically stay in your business attire at home?”

  I shake my head, trying to make sense of the last few minutes.

  He walks down the hall to the first doorway on the left, then turns back to me. “This is the spare room. I’m sorry there isn’t a door on it, I had to take it off when my mother was staying here because she would sometimes lock herself in. It has its own bathroom with a door, though, so you should be set. You can change into comfortable clothes if you want. I’m going to change while the pasta boils and the sauce simmers. Do you need anything?”

  When he mentions comfortable clothes, I realize that I forgot sweats or a T-shirt for lounging. I just planned to run around the hotel in my tank top and underwear, like most nights. I can feel the flush begin as I make my way toward the room. I am calculating my options when he asks, “What is it?”

  “I expected to be alone in a hotel room, so I didn’t pack sweats or a T-shirt.”

  He walks away from the room, and I’m not sure if he heard me. Maybe he’s decided that’s a me problem. But he reappears a minute later with black sweatpants and a Cubs T-shirt. “They might be a little big, but they have a drawstring waist,” he tells me, setting them down on the bed.

  “Such an accommodating host,” I say, and I mean it. “Thank you.”

  “No problem,” he says, watching me look over the room.

  It’s fully furnished, with paintings on the wall, a four-poster bed, and a floral rocking chair that matches a loveseat I remember seeing at the bar. There is a quilt on the mattress that looks as though it’s from another time.

  “That was my mother’s favorite quilt; she made it 20 years ago,” he tells me. His voice is soft, and I hear the ache.

  I don’t want to ask, but I think he might want me to, so I do it anyway. “When did she pass?”

  “It’s been about six weeks.”

  “I recognize the chair; you have a sofa at the bar in the same print.”

  “Yes, when I first bought the bar, she used to come hang out in the office as I was getting it set up. That was her favorite place to sit when she was there, so I brought it back here when things got so that she wasn’t leaving the house as much.”

  “I can sleep out front on the couch if that’s easier. Sometimes you don’t realize that you aren’t ready until you aren’t ready.” When I say the words, a bubble rises in my chest, and I know I’m not just talking to him.

  “No, this will be fine. I’m going to go change and get back to the stove,” he tells me, disappearing down the hall.

  I duck into the bathroom to change, then take a long look into the mirror. I look kind of silly in the oversized T-shirt and sweats. I haven’t seen myself in something like this since college. I had a roommate, so I had to wear pants for lounging. Since then, I’m either dressed to be in public, or I am sans pants. My pants-free home life is particularly well suited to the Tuscon heat, it seems. Maybe this place isn’t all bad.

  It’s nice to think that maybe things could be a little normal between Booker and I. Now that I realize he isn’t interested in me romantically, I can stop falling all over myself. We can be friends, like Ceil and me.

  Except I don’t want to fuck Ceil ...

  Details, details.

  Chapter 18

  Back in the kitchen, Booker, too, is wearing a sports T-shirt and sweats. They look better on him. I try to think of something that friends would talk about and quickly land on our T-shirts. “Are you a big sports fan?”

  “Yeah, I guess you might say that. I like baseball, and anyone who isn’t a fan of the 90s Bulls wasn’t paying attention,” he says appreciatively.

  I note the 33 on his back and can’t help but like him more for it. “Pippen is a frickin’ legend.”

  “So, you follow sports?” he asks, sounding a little surprised.

  “No. I actually don’t follow them at all anymore, but I think everyone watched the Bulls during that time. I watched with my dad. He’d say, ‘You’re watching history, kids. Something like this will never happen again.’ I think I appreciate what he was talking about more now than I did at the time.”

  “Are you close with your dad?”

  “As close as one can be when 2,000 miles separate you,” I say.

  “So not very?”

  “I love my parents very much. I just don’t see them enough. I’m a bad daughter,” I sigh, realizing for the first time how true that statement is.

  “It seems like a pretty easy problem to fix. Where do they live?”

  “A small rural town in the Midwest that no one has ever heard of,” I tell him, adding, “we don’t even have a Walmart.”

  “How tragic,” he says smartly.

  The pasta is almost done, so I rifle through his cupboards for plates, finding them on the second try. I place two on the island and make my way to the drawer Booker is pointing two fingers at. “The silverware is in that drawer. What would you like to drink? I have drinks in the fridge, and I’m sure I have wine if you’d like.”

  After setting the matte black silverware down, I make my way to the fridge and see several options. Reaching for a can of soda, I ask, “I’m going to have a soda, what would you like?”

  “I’ll have the same, thank you.”

  Booker is dishing pasta onto each of the plates, so I take my seat and watch him. “This smells really good, did your mom teach you to cook?”

  “My dad taught me this, actually. He was Italian and preferred to cook with fresh ingredients, so he wouldn’t be too happy that I used canned tomatoes. My mother was a good cook, too, but he was better at pastas.”

  “He passed, too?”

  “Yes, about five years ago. He was quite a bit older than my mom. They met later in life and had me when she was 40 and he was 55. They were hoping for two, but they knew they were lucky just to have me.”

  “That’s a shame, they sure were capable of making beautiful babies,” I say before realizing I’ve spoken aloud. I freeze a little in my chair and focus on my plate, hoping in vain he didn’t hear me.

  “Is that so?”

  I can’t think of any reasonable way to get out of this, so I just make a noise that sounds something like eh.

  He takes his seat to the left of me and picks up his fork, so I do the same.

  We settle into a comfortable silence, eating our spaghetti and sipping our sodas. I’m not sure that I’ve ever sat next to someone and ate a meal without speaking. Dinner when I was growing up was the time we all shared about our day. Our mom cooked dinner almost every night when we were little, and we always sat together to eat. I wonder how many families still do it that way? I’m surprised by how comforting it is to share a meal with someone at a table. Or even a kind-of-table.

  I can feel the warmth of Booker next to me, I hear his soft chewing, the sound of his silverware clinking together. I shift my eyes to him and watch him spiral his last forkful of pasta against his spoon. His brown eyes are focused intently on the pasta, and his face is smooth and peaceful. I watch him bring the lucky forkful of pasta up to his mouth. He blows on it softly, his full lips pursed into a subtle o. He opens them to allow the spaghetti to enter his perfect, hot mouth ... and then freezes in mid-bite.

  I lift my eyes to his and see that he’s caught me staring at him. I whip my head back to my own plate of food, which isn’t even halfway gone, and pull my hair over my shoulder between us to try to hide the rising flush. Then I lean forward a little to hide my face and immediately hear him laugh as my hair-curtain slides right into the spaghetti. I lift the st
rands from my plate, realizing for the first time that I didn’t get us napkins or paper towels when I set the table.

  Booker’s stool slides backward, and he’s laughing harder when he walks to the other side of the island toward the sink. My flush deepens because the embarrassment of a moment ago is being joined by anger at Booker’s insensitivity. A moment later, he’s standing in front of me again, a wet paper towel in one hand and a dry hand towel in the other.

  “It isn’t actually that funny,” I tell him, snatching the wet paper towel from him.

  “It’s pretty funny,” he says, pulling up a stool in front of mine.

  The sauce has gotten on a decent swath of my blond hair, and even after I wipe it off with the wet paper towel, an orange tint is left behind. I set the paper towel on the counter, place my elbows on my knees, and rest my face in my hands. I doubt my purple shampoo will take this out—my hair is so porous, it’s like a sponge, soaking everything up.

  “It isn’t actually that bad,” Booker says, sliding his stool closer. I feel him lifting the damp ends of my hair in his hands and drying them gently with the towel.

  “I think it’s stained. I’m going to have to find a hairdresser now, and I don’t have time for that.”

  “Well, maybe we can find one after your phone gets here tomorrow,” he tells me. His hands have stopped drying my hair, and he sets the towel down. But I can still feel him lifting the strands of hair, and his fingers twirling it.

  When I’m sure my face won’t still be red, I lift it from my hands and see that his face is very close to mine. His eyes are tranquil pools of brown, with little flecks of goldish orange in them, and they’re watching his hands, which are now weaving the strands of my twirled hair together into a small, half-inch-thick braid. I can feel a pressure building in my chest, watching him. When the braid is finished, he glances up at my face for the first time.

  “Do you mind?” he asks, gesturing to my hair. I shake my head and wait to see what he’ll do next.

  Booker repositions himself on his stool, holding the small braid with one hand, and reaches down to my stool with the other. I’m surprised when he pulls me closer to him, and I’m now positioned between his thighs. His eyes meet mine, and I try to empty my mind and wait for whatever is coming. Booker’s hands brush through my hair at my scalp and down the long strands once, twice, three times, releasing them from the braid and letting them fall onto my shoulders while he stares at my face. My eyes, my cheeks, my nose, each part aches under his stare. His hands slide gently into my hair again, and he begins to pull it off of my shoulders and into a high ponytail above my head.

  His fingers combing through and smoothing the bumps of hair feel heavenly on my scalp, and I close my eyes and let my head fall back, enjoying the moment. When his hands slide down my face and neck and rest on my shoulders, I tilt my face back to normal and open my eyes again, wishing it weren’t over. Booker’s expression is strange, and I’m not quite sure what to make of it until I see his eyes drop to my lips. I feel a warmth begin in my thighs, and I’m frozen in place, trying to keep my breathing normal, when his face begins to tip toward mine.

  I close my eyes again. His thumbs are grazing softly over my neck, down between my collar bones, and I feel my lips part expectantly. My hands find the crooks of his elbows and rest there. In the moment before our lips meet, when I feel the heat of his breath on me, an unwelcome thought forms: We do not keep people.

  I jerk backward, nearly falling off of my stool, and stand abruptly. “Are you okay?” Booker asks me, a mix of confusion and concern on his face.

  “I’m so sorry, I think we just got caught up in a strange moment,” I tell him, grabbing our plates from the island and moving to the sink to rinse them.

  “Oh,” he says, and then adds, “yeah, of course. Here let me get those.”

  “It’s okay, it’ll only take me a minute.”

  He grabs a clean hand towel and begins to dry each of the dishes as I finish washing them. When they’re done, I tell him, “I’m kind of tired, I think I’m going to go to bed.”

  “Okay, do you need anything? I can put the door back on the room if you’d like, it’s just in the garage.”

  “No, it’s really fine. I’m sure I’ll be up and out in no time tomorrow. Thanks for dinner, it was wonderful.”

  “I’m glad you enjoyed it. Sorry about earlier,” he begins, but I wave my hand and smile.

  “Not your fault.”

  Chapter 19

  I’m driving. The highway is a tangle of endless curves. The night is dark and silent. I press the radio button, but the silence continues.

  A shadow dances across my rearview, drawing my eyes, but nothing is there. A nagging fear pulls on the hairs at the back of my neck. I am not alone.

  I check the back seat. Again. It’s empty. Again. I might be losing my mind.

  I shake my head, steering the car around another curve, and another.

  The shadows dance. I squeeze my eyes shut, scrunching up my face. The smell of blood fills my nostrils.

  My eyes snap open, but nothing has changed. Dark, silent road. Unending curves. Dancing shadows.

  The vehicle begins to shake. The blood smells stronger. It pours down my face.

  My ears are ringing with the screams that fill the air. My screams. I feel something shaking me gently by the shoulders, but the screams don’t stop until I am pulled up and am clinging to something firm.

  “Caspian, wake up,” a voice I recognize whispers near my ear. “You’re having a nightmare, wake up.”

  I can’t quite tell if I’m dreaming or awake, but I feel like I need to go to the bathroom, and I know there’s one near me.

  I release my arms from the firmness, sliding myself off the bed. I stumble my way to the bathroom in the dark and find the throne. After I’ve finished peeing, I flush the toilet, and run my hands under the water before returning to bed. It’s too hot for the blanket, so I kick it off.

  “Do you have night terrors often?”

  “Just a dream,” I mumble. He isn’t making much sense, and I’m exhausted.

  “Okay, do you have dreams like that often?” the voice is patient, calm, soothing. It lulls and melts reality away.

  I make more of a noise than an answer and can feel him leaving. Real or not, I don’t want this version of him to go, “Stay?”

  The bed shifts against the headboard, and I can feel myself drifting back down into the soft support of the pillow. My body is approaching weightlessness, and I’m vaguely aware of the next question.

  “What was the dream about?”

  I’m in that space somewhere between sleep and consciousness where I can still sort of have conversations. It’s like being drunk in that I can communicate but I don’t have the ability to calculate my responses.

  “Okay, so does that mean you’re going to tell me what the dream was about?” he asks, because this version of him must be able to read minds.

  “Ghosts. Blood in my face holes.”

  “Face holes?” he asks, his voice a mix of amused and horrified.

  “Mmm. Eyes, nose, mouth.”

  “Who were the ghosts?” he asks.

  “My Before,” I whisper.

  There is another shifting, and his next question is even softer and comes from the pillow next to mine. “What’s Before?”

  I reach out, finding his cheek with my fingers, and allow my palm to fall over his lips, my thumb resting on the bridge of his nose. “Please, Book.”

  His sigh is warm against my hand, and the weightlessness gets deeper.

  When I wake again, my face is pressed into something firm, and I’m sprawled across a heater. I open my eyes to see a mahogany chest in front of my face with my hand resting on it, and everything freezes. I stop breathing and wait. The steady rise and fall of Booker’s chest indicates that he is still asleep, so I begin to lift my face from his chest and peek up at him to confirm. His hand falls from my hair, and he shifts slightly but then stills a
gain.

  That slight shift brings to my attention the fact that my leg is sprawled across his body, and I begin to freak out a little bit. His other hand is on my knee, so I pick it up gently and set it down next to him, slowly lift my leg off his torso, and roll to the other side of the bed. When my feet are safely planted on the hardwood floor, I take a moment to look at Booker. He’s still sleeping, and I wonder how we ended up that way.

  The memory of the dream comes back to me. The dream and the screams. I remember his voice next to my ear and having to go to the bathroom.

  Oh my god, I peed with him in the room, and the door open. I am such a heathen.

  I remember asking him to stay and let out an audible groan, causing him to stir. Since I’d rather not be in underwear and a T-shirt when he wakes up, I silently pull my bag from the chest at the end of the bed and move into the bathroom, closing the door softly behind me.

  Deciding the best course of action in this moment is to stop my brain completely, I turn on the shower, pull my shower stuff from my bag, and set them on the shelf inside. I step under the water spray after peeling off my clothes and let the water fall down my face for a moment before I begin shampooing. I notice that Booker has put a lot of really nice features into this bathroom, and I wonder if he did it for his mother.

  The shower is a walk-in, so it’s more of a shower room than the usual stall, and there isn’t a door as much as an entranceway. There is a built-in bench in the corner, and handrails line all of the walls. The new tilework forms a pattern of large rectangles in calming shades of brown on the walls. The river rocks that form the floor are divided by a long, narrow drain that runs along the middle. I’ve never had a shower this nice in any of the apartments I’ve rented, and I’m beginning to see the value in buying.

  When I re-emerge from the bathroom, Booker is no longer in bed, and I hear pans being shuffled around in the kitchen. I’m walking down the hall when the doorbell rings, and a shirtless Booker spots me as he turns toward the entryway.