The Way We Break

  I grab her hip as I slide my knee between her legs and lean down to kiss her neck. “Anything.”

  She curls her arms around my neck, pulling me on top of her so she can whisper something dirty in my ear. I let out a hoarse chuckle at the vulgarity of her suggestion.

  “Holy shit, Rory. I didn’t realize you were so filthy.”

  She tries to push me off. “Don’t be mean.”

  I laugh as I resist her attempts to push me away. “I’m kidding, baby,” I say, looking her in the eye. “I’ll do that with you any day.”

  She narrows her eyes at me like she’s angry, but the way she bites her lip tells me otherwise. She’s thinking dirty, dirty thoughts.

  I kiss the corner of her mouth. “You’re my dirty bird,” I whisper, sliding my hand between her legs. “Are you ready to sing again?”

  She whimpers when my finger finds her clit. “Yes,” she gasps.

  No more than ten seconds pass before Rory’s phone begins to chime with a weird robotic buzzing noise. “Let it ring,” I insist, but she grabs my hand and this time I let her push me away.

  She slides off the bed to grab the phone off the nightstand. “Hello?” Her nostrils flare as her eyes widen with shock. “Where is it? What did you do with it?”

  In a flash, I’m out of bed and standing right beside her. I want to grab the phone out of her hand. I know it’s that fucking piece of shit. But I have to trust her to handle this.

  “Is it him?” I whisper, but she doesn’t nod or respond.

  “I can’t believe you would do something like this,” she says, shaking her head. “This is lower than low, Liam. If you have a shred of decency you will leave it at the front desk and go home.”

  “What the fuck? Give me the phone,” I say, reaching for the phone.

  Rory pushes my hand away and shakes her head. “I already told you, I don’t want to talk to you.” In an instant, her face goes from pure anger to sheer terror. “Wait! Okay! Okay, I’ll talk to you. Just… Just give me a minute to get Skippy ready.”

  “No, Rory! No fucking way!”

  But she’s already ended the call.

  She shakes her head. “He has my book on a flash drive. He’s in the lobby right now.”

  “How the fuck did he find us?” My heart thumps crazy fast when her eyes widen. “You don’t even know, do you? He could have a tracking app on your phone for all you know. He’s fucking psycho! I’m not letting you go down there. Not even with me and Skippy. Fuck that.”

  The tears begin streaming down her face as she sinks down onto the edge of the bed. “I don’t know what to do. I just want it back. I worked so hard on it. And it’s not just the book. It’s the emails.” She looks up at me and the pleading look in her eyes is like a knife in my chest. “Please. Just let me try. I don’t think he’ll hurt me. He just wants to talk.”

  I kneel before her, resting my hands on her knees. “That’s what he says, baby, but that’s not what he means. Please trust me, just this once.”

  She covers her face with her hands, and I know there’ll be no talking her out of this. That fucker knows the one thing she cares about more than anything is that book. She’s going down there no matter what I say to try to convince her otherwise.

  Fucking coward.

  “Okay,” I continue. “I’ll go down with you. If he won’t give it to you with me there, then we’re coming back up, okay?”

  She pulls her hands away from her face and the glint of hope in her eyes makes my stomach twist. She really thinks this asshole is going to give her the book just like that. At least I’ll be there if he tries anything. If he so much as breathes on her, I’ll annihilate him.

  My skin is buzzing, my blood pressure rising to the point that I’m seeing spots as Houston and I get dressed in the clothes we came in. Houston clips Skippy’s leash to his collar and I try to focus on my breathing as we walk down the hotel corridor. Once Houston hits the call button, each second ticks by excruciatingly slowly. The ding of the elevator makes me jump.

  Houston grabs my hand to stop me from going in. “Are you sure you want to do this? I can go down there and try to get it without you.”

  “No, he won’t give it to you. I don’t even know if he’ll give it to me, but I have to try.” I sigh as Houston uses his foot to stop the elevator doors from closing again. “If he doesn’t give it to me within two minutes, we’ll come back up.”

  Houston doesn’t look appeased by this promise, but we head into the elevator without further discussion. I’m so anxious I could cry. I feel as if my heart is going to explode out of my eyeballs. But I manage to keep from unraveling as the elevator descends to the lobby.

  As soon as the elevator doors slide open, I tighten my hold on Houston’s hand. “Don’t let go of me, please.”

  He kisses the top of my head and gives my hand a gentle squeeze. “Never.”

  Suddenly, everything gets fuzzy. Time and space seem to blend until reality feels hollow, dreamlike. I can’t remember how many steps it takes to reach Liam, or how many seconds it takes for him to throw the first punch, or when Houston lets go of my hand, or how long it takes him to wrestle Liam onto the marble floor, or which direction the security guards come from, or why Liam refuses to stop fighting.

  Four times.

  The security guards Tase him with the stun gun four times.

  Time passes in clips. The security guard performing CPR. Red lights flashing everywhere, bouncing off every reflective surface in the glitzy lobby. People shouting numbers that make no sense. The paramedics lifting his limp body onto the gurney.

  Then, it’s as if time stops and in one solitary instance, my mind is cleared of all the chaos. All I feel is stillness. And as the paramedics wheel him away, it finally hits me: If Liam dies, it will be my fault.

  All because I wanted my stupid book back.

  I hate that book.

  Houston takes me in his arms, crushing me to him as I sob into his chest. But the small respite of comfort lasts only a few seconds before he lets me go. The first thought that hits me is that Houston is just as disgusted by me as I am. But when I look up at him, he nods at something behind me.

  I look over my shoulder and find an attractive blonde woman in a black leather jacket and close-fitting jeans, her hair pulled into a low messy ponytail like she just yanked off a motorcycle helmet.

  “Good evening. I’m Detective Dana Locke. I just need to ask you two a few questions about what went down here tonight.” She nods toward the cluster of armchairs in the middle of the lobby. “Want to have a seat?”

  When we explain to her the reason for Liam’s visit, she excuses herself for a moment so she can step aside to get the lead detective in the Cybercrimes Division on the phone. As she steps away to make the call, my stomach goes sour.

  “I don’t want to press charges against him,” I whisper urgently to Houston. “I can’t be responsible for almost killing him and putting him in jail.”

  “You didn’t do any of this,” he replies in a hoarse whisper. “This is not on your head. He did this to himself. You didn’t make him spy on you and steal your files and you sure as fuck didn’t make him fight those guards.”

  “But if I hadn’t come down, he would have just left.”

  “You don’t know that. He probably would have tried to climb up the eighteen stories to our floor and the security guards would have headed him off in the stairwell. This is not your fault. Do you understand me?” I stare back at him, unable to respond. “Say it, Rory. Say the words: It’s not my fault.” His blue eyes shine with a fiery determination to make me understand, but I can’t bring myself to say the words aloud, so I just nod. “Rory, say the words.”

  I turn away from his intense glare and mutter, “It’s not my fault.”

  * * *

  Riding in the back of a cop car feels ominous, even if they’re just giving us a ride to the hospital. Even with Skippy sitting next to me, slobbering on the window, and Houston’s fingers laced thr
ough mine, I still feel as if we’re being driven to our doom. I don’t know what we’ll find when we get to the hospital. All I know is that I can’t go to sleep tonight wondering if Liam is okay.

  Maybe I’ve come down with a case of Stockholm syndrome, where the person held captive begins to sympathize with her captor. I can’t just suddenly stop caring about Liam. My heart doesn’t have an on-off switch. It’s just a mess of tangled wires, and I haven’t figured out which one needs to be snipped to get Liam out of my system.

  Houston squeezes my hand and it takes me a moment to realize the car has stopped. We’re parked in a space just a few dozen feet from the curb in front of the emergency room. The cold Northern California air seeps into my skin as we step out into the black night. Houston coils Skippy’s leash around his hand to keep him close as we set off toward the hospital entrance.

  The emergency room is relatively quiet for a Friday night. I haven’t been to the emergency room since the time I took my mom when she accidentally stabbed her hand while opening a package of bacon with a chef’s knife. It was a horrific experience. There were so many people coming into the ER that night, they mixed up my mom’s chart and tried to make her put on a gown just to get stitches in her palm. But this emergency room is eerily quiet. Except for an elderly couple slumped over and snoring in the corner of the waiting room, the place is empty.

  We turn into the corridor on the right, just inside the sliding doors, and quickly find a chest-high desk labeled “Emergency Room Check-In.”

  “Sir, you’re not allowed to bring pets in here. Service animals only,” says a woman with frizzy auburn curls behind the desk.

  “We’re just trying to find out the status of a patient,” Houston replies gently, but not gently enough for the woman’s taste.

  “Sir, take the dog outside or I’ll have you both physically removed.”

  Houston turns to me and I nod. “I’ll be right outside,” he says, kissing my forehead before he heads back out through the sliding doors.

  I get a weird feeling as he disappears into the blackness, as if that’s the last time I’m going to see him; not ever, just that way. Like the next time I see him, he won’t look the same. Not because he’ll have changed, but because I will have changed.

  I turn back to the lady behind the desk, taking a moment to gather my fortitude. “I’m here for Liam Murray. He was brought in tonight. Um… He was in cardiac arrest.”

  The woman’s harsh features soften a bit. “Let me check.”

  She types on her keyboard for a couple of minutes before she picks up her phone to make a call. “You have Murray, Liam?” she asks the person on the other end. “Yeah, I have someone here to see him… All right, thanks.”

  “He’s in ICU. Immediate family, spouses, and domestic partners only.”

  “We live together,” I blurt out the lie easily. Technically, it only became a lie a few hours ago. It hasn’t had time to ripen yet.

  “Honey, unless both of you are over 62 or the same sex, you’re not even eligible for domestic partnership. So… are you married?”

  Her gaze is locked on mine and I don’t know if she’s willing me to lie or if that’s just my way of justifying it, but the words tumble from my lips faster than I can catch them and stuff them back inside.

  “Yes. We’re married. In Oregon. We just moved here.”

  She raises her eyebrows, probably noting how I’m not crying. “All the way down the hall, hang a left. Turn right into the second corridor, then right again. You’ll see the ICU at the end of the hall. He’s in room 153.”

  “Thank you.”

  I’m only a few yards down the first corridor when I hear hurried footsteps tapping the floor behind me. I turn around to find Houston slowing down as he catches up.

  “Where’s Skippy?”

  “One of the officers offered to let him sleep in the backseat of his car for at least twenty minutes. I wanted to be with you.”

  My heart melts at these words, but the feeling doesn’t last. Houston reaches for my hand and I feel sick to my stomach when I yank my hand away, holding it protectively against my belly.

  I glance over my shoulder to make sure no one noticed, then I look up at him. “We can’t do that. I have to pretend I’m married to Liam so they’ll let us see him.”

  As we turn the corner at the end of the corridor, his face screws up like he just smelled something bad. “You can’t pretend to be married to him. That’s sick.”

  I continue walking fast, right past the first corridor. “You have no right to judge me for this lie when you lied to me for five years.”

  From the corner of my eye, I can see him shaking his head. But it’s not a ridiculous argument.

  “I’m not trying to imply that I deserve to lie,” I continue. “I just can’t believe that you wouldn’t understand why I feel responsible here.”

  “Hallie’s death was nothing like this,” he says in a deadly whisper as we turn right into the second corridor. “Don’t even attempt to compare her to him.”

  The tears I needed earlier appear, lush and plentiful, an unstoppable torrent. I stop at the first corridor, where the lady told me I’d find the ICU at the end of the hall. When I look up at Houston, there’s a small hint of regret in his eyes, but his mouth is set in a hard line, unwilling to back down.

  “I just want to know he’s going to live. I just…” I take a moment to catch my breath and wipe the tears from my face. “I just want to be able to sleep tonight.”

  Houston’s face softens as he shakes his head. “Rory, it doesn’t work that way. You can’t justify lying. ’Cause if you can justify a lie, you can justify anything. Trust me on this.”

  My mind flashes to the words Houston said to me while we were in the hotel room earlier, when he was trying to convince me not to go downstairs to meet Liam: Please trust me, just this once.

  I should have listened to him then. I should probably listen to him now. I look up and our eyes meet and we both know it’s time to go. There’s nothing more we can do here. Houston is right. I can’t tell such a hideous lie, even if it’s with the intent of easing my mind. That’s exactly how Houston and I got here in the first place. The cycle of lies has to end somewhere. It might as well end here, in the middle of an ICU corridor, with the man I love asking me to trust him.

  I step forward, wrapping my arms around his waist, pressing my face to his solid chest. He kisses the top of my head and we stand there for a while, lost in the warmth of our bodies, the comfort of knowing we can get through anything as long as we have each other. It takes a moment for me to snap out of this trance when a woman’s voice comes over the hospital paging system.

  “Code Blue. Code Blue. First Floor. Room I-1-5-3. Repeat. Code Blue. First Floor. Room I-1-5-3.”

  Thank you!

  Thank you for reading the The Way We Break! The final installment in The Story of Us series, The Way We Rise, is expected to be released August 2015. Come discuss the books with other fans on Facebook.

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  Acknowledgments

  This book would not exist if not for the amazing people who helped me bring it to life. With a three-month timeline, in which some of that time would be spent moving out of state, I knew this was going to be a tough book to finish. In the end, I was able to pull this one out with a lot of help from some very dedicated individuals.

  First and foremost, I have to thank my beta readers: Paula Jackman, Cathy Archer, Sarah Arndt, Kristin Shaw, Carrie
Raasch, and the new betas who joined the team in the middle of this book, Erin Fisher, Heather Carver, and Beverly Cindy. I don’t know how other authors work with their betas. I imagine they keep their process confidential. But I ask a lot of my beta readers. They read the book as it’s written, chapter by chapter. And they don’t just provide feedback on what has already been written, they brainstorm with me whenever I get stuck, providing guidance for where the story should go. They are a rare and special group of ladies whom I am deeply privileged to work with and to call my friends. I can’t wait to do it all over again on the next one.

  Sarah Hansen. Thank you for always fitting me into your schedule, especially when I decided to change The Way We Break cover about one week before the cover reveal date. Whenever a new writer asks me for advice on how to be a successful author, I always tell them one of the most important ingredients in a successful book is a good cover. And then I refer them to you. Only the smart ones take my advice. Thank goodness or you’d never have time for me.

  Big thanks to my editor, Jessica Anderegg of Red Adept Edits. Thank you for seeing what I couldn’t see and for calling me out on the things I’d prefer to ignore. I’ve worked with many editors and I’m so glad I’ve found one who not only knows what to look for but who also knows how to communicate a solution. Look forward to working with you on The Way We Rise!

  More huge thanks to my proofreader, Marianne Tatom. I am eternally grateful that you were able to fit me in early this time, so my ARC readers could get a headstart.

  Thank you to Tamara Paulin and Deanna Roy for being there with positive words and the occasional reality check when needed. So glad I finally got to meet you in Austin, Deanna.

  Thank you to all the bloggers who shared The Way We Break cover reveal and preorder links and those who participated in the blog tour and release activities. And a big thank you to Holly Malgieri of Holly’s Red Hot Reviews for handling this launch. And to all the bloggers and readers who took the time to read the book and post their reviews during release week. You are such a huge part of what makes this indie book community thrive. Keep supporting the indie authors you love and we’ll keep writing the uncensored versions of the romance books you love to read.