Shattered

  Shattered

  By Alicia Renee Kline

  Copyright 2013 Alicia Renee Kline

  Smashwords Edition

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  Betrayal

  Cold words

  Pass between us

  And now you’re gone

  Silence

  Prologue

  “Gone?” Matthew repeated, pronouncing the word like it was said in a foreign language. He had reached the administrative offices of the factory now. He paused for a beat to juggle his cell and remove his access card from his pocket and swipe it against the reader. The door clicked open and he stepped through, hightailing it back to his office. With the door safely shut behind him, he continued. “What do you mean ‘gone’?”

  Blake sighed. Apparently, she wasn’t so distraught that she couldn’t be annoyed. “I mean she’s gone. Not here.”

  He winced. Images of last night flashed in his head. The kiss. Their fight. Her walking out on him, leaving him slumped against the front door as she had fled. The icy roads. He should have gone after her; at least made sure she’d gotten home safely. He’d owed her as much.

  “Did she come home yesterday?” he asked, fearing the worst. “Chris said the roads were bad last night. Lots of accidents and slide offs.”

  “Yes, she came home last night. What kind of question was that? I mean, she’s gone now.”

  A giant weight lifted off of his shoulders at the news. Normal people were at work now. People that didn’t own their own businesses like his sister. Despite everything that had happened within the last thirty-six hours, they were all going about their usual routines. There was hope for the future after all.

  “So she’s just at work now. What’s with the newsflash, sunshine?”

  “Yes, she’s at work right now. I just called her and talked to her. But you’re not understanding it, dork. She’s gone.”

  “I get that.”

  Or did he? Blake was confusing him with the way she was talking in circles. There was more to the story, of that he was sure. Lauren went into work early all of the time; that action wasn’t worthy of a breathless phone call to him during his shift. And his sister obviously hadn’t been filled in as to the chain of events that had unfolded at his house – if she had, she’d be reaming him out right now.

  “No, I don’t think you do. She was beside herself when she came home late last night. I was sitting on the couch, talking on the phone to this guy I met earlier, and she practically flew up the stairs and slammed the door to her room.”

  Matthew’s stomach clenched, the guilt returning.

  “I finished my call and went upstairs after her, but she had locked the door and wouldn’t let me in. She wouldn’t even talk to me. I could hear her crying, though. I figured she’d had an argument with Eric, or a bad day at work.”

  Matthew slumped into the chair behind his desk. Or she’d just told her roommate’s brother that she loved him, only to have him reject her due to an inconvenient appearance of morality. Afraid to open his mouth and have the truth fall out, he bit his tongue and waited for Blake to finish. There was still nothing earth-shattering here.

  “So, this morning I woke up, and she was gone. I really didn’t think anything about it until I noticed the check on the kitchen counter. Her rent isn’t due for another week, but I figured maybe she was just paying it early. Until I looked at how much she had written it for.”

  Unable to stand the suspense any longer, Matthew was about to snap and tell her to get on with it when she did just that.

  “Matthew,” she said, her use of his given name effectively shutting him up, “she bought out the rest of her lease and moved out.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “I’m positive. She must have cleared out her room overnight. It’s empty, just the furniture left. Her keys were on the kitchen counter. Her garage door opener was in my mailbox. She’s not coming back.”

  He sat there, stunned for a moment as his sister’s words sunk in. “You said you talked to her today? What did she say?”

  He was afraid of the answer, but he needed to hear it.

  “She wouldn’t answer her cell. She wouldn’t respond to my texts. So, I waited until the bank opened and I called in, pretending to be an irate customer whose mortgage application she had just turned down. I got right through.”

  Despite himself, he smiled at Blake’s ingenuity. She was used to getting her way, obstacles be damned.

  “She’s going to Indy tonight. I didn’t feel like I needed to ask why.”

  Of course she didn’t need to ask why. Lauren had chosen the path of least resistance. She was going to accept Eric’s proposal, was going to settle for what he was willing to offer her. All in all, she was doing the appropriate thing, making the smart move. Maybe she had sat up all night with her computer and her formulas and made her decision accordingly. She had chosen to listen to her head rather than her heart.

  His grip tightened on his cell as he remembered their kiss, the look in her eyes as she had told him she loved him. At that moment in time, he doubted Eric had even entered into the equation. Stupid him, he had been the one to remind her of her boyfriend, the proposal, the accusations he had already made of her infidelity. He had been the one to push her over the edge and into Eric’s arms.

  Just like that, she had erased herself out of his life. There would be no goodbyes, nothing more than the slamming of the door behind her as she walked out of his world forever. In his attempt not to hurt her he had done not only that, but also hurt himself and his sister in the process.

  The loss of something he had never truly had was astounding.

  It was time to face the music.

  “Blake,” he began softly, “I need to tell you something.”

  Chapter One

  The drive to Indianapolis had never felt longer. Of course, it didn’t help that I had been stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic for the last five miles. Everybody and their brother must have had the same idea as I had, at least in part. But I wasn’t starting the weekend early, heading down to the state capital on Friday night to party.

  I was about to start the rest of my life.

  With nothing better to do while I crept along, I turned the volume up on the radio only to immediately wish I hadn’t. I’d forgotten that I’d had Parabelle playing on my way to Matthew’s last night. After our fight and my hasty exit, I’d muted the volume and it had stayed that way until just now. Sitting here in traffic allowed me to focus on the lyrics; the feelings they evoked weren’t pretty. Tears clouded my vision as I related my own experiences to those in the songs. Perhaps I was reading too much into things, but it was like they had been written about me. I eventually conceded defeat and turned the stereo completely off. No, music wasn’t good for me right now. Maybe never again.

  It shouldn’t have been like this. I shouldn’t have been relating to sorrow and heartbreak and sacrifice. Just two days prior, my boyfriend of ten years had proposed. I should have been all rainbows and unicorns and happiness, not looking in my rearview mirror in hopes to find a black Camry behind me.

  Matthew had let me go. Part of me had wanted to see his car in the parking lot after I came out of work. I had wanted him to stop me; at least try to talk me out of going down to see Eric tonight. I wanted him to apologize even though he hadn’t really been in the wrong. He had a valid point. Kissing h
im, expecting anything more from him when I was a heartbeat away from becoming someone else’s wife was very stupid.

  But he hadn’t shown up. After all those weeks of tension between us, of second guessing every little thing he did and reading way more meaning into it than was necessary, he had thrown in the towel. Maybe he hadn’t even been interested in fighting for me in the first place. Maybe I had just believed the pictures that everyone around me had painted.

  My brief conversation with Blake had told me what I needed to know. Matthew hadn’t mentioned last night to her, and I wasn’t about to bring it up. Her brother could remain on the pedestal she had built for him and she would never be the wiser. I had respected her wishes and not hurt him. I had, however, impaled myself in the process.

  Come to think of it, Blake had given up rather easily as well. Granted I had packed up my entire room and stolen away practically in the middle of the night, but still. I had expected more from her. Sure she had texted, and even pretended to be an irate customer with a subpar credit score to reach me at work, but she had turned around and abruptly exited the arena with her tail between her legs when I mentioned Eric’s name.

  And so here I was, inching along in Indy’s rush hour traffic, momentarily homeless. All my worldly possessions fit in the trunk of my car, much the same as they had when I hauled them away from my studio apartment on the wrong side of town. The only thing that had changed was they were now stowed in a much larger, shinier vehicle.

  My adult life had always been largely transient. Leases could be broken – I had just proven that to be true this morning – and jobs didn’t really, truly, tie you down either. I could insert and remove myself from people’s lives on a whim and they barely noticed. No matter how badly I wanted them to.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a black Toyota change lanes. Instinctively, my breath caught and I turned slightly in its direction to look at the driver without full-on staring. My heart sunk when I realized it was a false alarm. I cursed him for having such a ubiquitous car. I had never really noticed how many people drove Camrys until I had a reason to look for one in particular.

  It was stupid of me to even imagine him rushing down here after me. I had told Blake I was going to Indy for goodness sakes. He didn’t know where Eric lived; he had never been down here with me before to see where my comfort zone was. He had no idea where my favorite local haunts were. It wasn’t as though he would blindly stumble upon me through sheer force of will. It would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

  And in order to be found, someone had to be looking.

  I swallowed down the bile in my throat that came with the realization that he had done just what I had asked. He had left me alone. That’s what I had screamed at him when I’d jerked away from his touch and stormed out his door. Except for a final text message which I’d handily ignored, that had been our final contact.

  Sort of like Blake and Chris and their whole “rot in hell” moment. Whatever good memories that I could take away from our brief friendship/massive crush would be clouded forever by the explosive ending. An ending that I had put into motion all on my own.

  As much as I wanted to blame him for the mess I had made, I knew I alone had created it. I had practically ambushed him last night. I’d conducted my own fishing expedition of sorts trying to gauge his interest in me. I couldn’t be upset that he had given me an answer I didn’t want to hear.

  We couldn’t be anything. The thought of us being together was stupid. It just wouldn’t work.

  Traffic picked up slightly as the Indianapolis skyline came into view. I sighed in resignation or breathed a sigh of relief; I wasn’t sure which. Whatever the case, I was soon cruising through downtown, traveling the streets I knew like the back of my hand. There was a sense of familiarity here that I hadn’t achieved yet in Fort Wayne. A sense of home that would be hard to recreate in a place where you had cut yourself off from the only two people there you really knew.

  A momentary panic struck me as I swung my car into the entrance of Eric’s parking garage. What if he wasn’t here? He wasn’t expecting me until tomorrow; maybe he had gone out with the guys to celebrate his last night of assumed bachelorhood. The butterflies in my stomach subsided when I spied the BMW in its usual spot only to return again as I parked in mine.

  I exited the car, taking only my purse and the black velvet box that had sat shotgun the entire way down. My legs felt wobbly as I strode to the elevator. The engagement ring weighed heavily in my hands as I ascended the nine floors to his condo. Even though the box itself was tiny, there was no mistaking the meaning inside it. In just the few short hours it had been in my possession it had turned my world upside down.

  The elevator came to a stop. As the doors opened to reveal the hallway, I told myself the nausea I felt had everything to do with the enclosed space and nothing to do with my plan.

  It was time to confront the boyfriend.

  Chapter Two

  I fished the key to Eric’s condo out of the bottom of my purse, then clutched it in the same hand as the box with the engagement ring. The sharp edges of the metal dug into my palm as my feet moved me down the hallway. I felt strangely disconnected from the rest of my body; partially from lack of sleep, mostly from general numbness. Before I was mentally ready to arrive, I physically stood outside his door.

  I froze in place as I noticed the realtor lockbox that hung from the doorknob.

  True to his word, Eric had gone about listing the condo for sale. Even though outwardly I had made it clear that this was what I expected should I agree to move in with him, my stomach knotted at the realization that he had actually done it. With everything that hung in the air between us, he had taken a gamble and assumed that I would accept the proposal. I wasn’t sure if I should be flattered or appalled.

  Even though his key dangled from the keychain held in my left hand, I pressed the doorbell and waited for him to allow me in. This wasn’t the kind of conversation I wanted to start by waltzing into his home unannounced. And maybe I wanted to buy myself a little extra time.

  Whatever the case, all too soon the door was swung open. Eric stood before me in all his six foot plus glory, his emerald green eyes drinking me in with a mixture of confusion and lust.

  “Did you forget your key?” he asked as he ushered me in.

  I shook my head.

  He shut the door behind me, his eyes falling to my hands and most notably their contents. His brow furrowed momentarily before his gaze snapped back up to meet mine.

  “Your key still works even with the lockbox on the door. You of all people should realize that. Why would I go to the expense of changing the locks right before we move?”

  “I just didn’t want to barge in on you, that’s all,” I said, feebly excusing my behavior in a voice that sounded little like my own.

  “Don’t be silly,” he said, reaching for my arm. I shrugged him off. “Lauren, what’s going on?”

  “I didn’t get much sleep last night,” I admitted. Not getting any counted as not much, right?

  He grinned. “You know, you didn’t have to drive down here tonight to accept my proposal. I wasn’t expecting you until tomorrow. But I’m really glad that you’re here right now.”

  I knew he was waiting for me to concur, but the words wouldn’t come. Instead, I remained still as a statue save for my frantically pounding heart. Either Eric didn’t notice or he was doing everything in his power to ignore this, for he continued on.

  “You were right, Lauren. I am going to make a tidy profit on this place. I met with the realtor last night and signed the contract. The list price is higher than I could have hoped for, and she doesn’t seem to think we’ll have any problems getting a full price offer. As much as I’m going to miss this place, I know we can get even better with both of our incomes, plus the proceeds from this as a down payment.”

  “You’re sure about this, Eric?” I asked finally.

  “I’ve never been more sure about anyt
hing before in my life.”

  My stomach clenched as he took the jewelry box and the key from me and set them atop the table that stood guard by the door. After he had set the items down, my left hand remained in his. His thumb grazed my ring finger, rubbing it methodically as he considered what to say next.

  “Doesn’t the ring fit? I had it sized.”

  “I haven’t tried it on,” I admitted softly.

  He chuckled under his breath. “So traditional, aren’t we? You couldn’t bear to put it on without me being the one to do the honors. I guess we’ll just have to rectify that.”

  As if the scene were filmed in slow motion, he reached for the ring as I stood in abject horror. Just as he was about to kneel down before me, I found my voice.

  “Eric, please don’t.”

  Undeterred by my words, he lowered himself anyway and peered up at me.

  “No need to be embarrassed; it’s just you and me. As it should be. And I am going to do this right this time.”

  He didn’t get it – he wasn’t understanding. So I uttered the same words that had broken me so completely mere hours before: “I can’t.”

  Can’t.

  It killed me to say it. Comprehension flashed in those eyes that I had once imagined growing old looking into. Even as I stood before him crushing his hopes and dreams, he still looked at me with his newfound devotion. My heart seized as part of me relived being on the opposite side of the rejection. I knew exactly where he was coming from.

  I withdrew my hand from his. “I can’t marry you.”

  He was silent for several agonizing moments. He remained crouched on the floor, his head bent in reflection. I hovered awkwardly above him, afraid to move. Part of me wanted to kneel down beside him and wrap my arms around him, to comfort him. Instead I stood rigid.

  “Why?” he asked finally. His tone was pleading, as though he was begging me to reconsider. “Why would you leave now? I’ve just given you everything you asked for, and you’re going to turn around and walk out?”