Breaking Him (Love is War #1)(77)

“I can’t sit down for another class, so I’m skipping,” I continued.

His hands squeezed my hips, and I may as well have been reading his mind.

“You know what’s not sore, though?” I asked him.

His only answer was a few helpless pants into my ear.

“My mouth.”

“At this rate,” he told me later. We were in my bed, his naked form spooning me from behind, “I’m going to get kicked off the team.”

I didn’t tell him that that wouldn’t have made me sad. He knew how I felt about football.





It was just a few weeks later that it happened.

It is so sad and so terrible how the most random and senseless things can set about your destruction.

Walking home alone that day was a complete fluke. Nothing but a temperamental whim on my part. Something so silly, some petty, jealous fit over Dante being too nice to Tiffany, and I’d gone into a rage and decided to go home early, ditching out while Dante was at practice, and sulk by myself.

When I think back on it there’s always some significant echo, some resounding weight to the steps I took alone into the woods that day.

But I couldn’t say if I noticed it then, only that it has attributed itself quite securely to my memories.

It is a powerful echo, one that aches with regret and a million what ifs.

What if I hadn’t gone that way? What if I hadn’t gone alone?

What if I’d waited for Dante to walk with me?

Any of those things could have prevented so much heartache, so much pain, and the domino effect of destruction that followed.

One thing was for certain, whether it was memory or retrospect, those footsteps would reverberate like gunfire through the rest of my life.





*****

BOOKS BY R.K. LILLEY





THE DANTE & SCARLETT SERIES

BREAKING HIM

BREAKING HER - COMING SOON





THE WILD SIDE SERIES


THE WILD SIDE


IRIS

DAIR





THE OTHER MAN

TYRANT - COMING SOON





THE UP IN THE AIR SERIES

IN FLIGHT

MILE HIGH

GROUNDED

MR. BEAUTIFUL





LANA (AN UP IN THE AIR COMPANION NOVELLA)

AUTHORITY - COMING SOON





THE TRISTAN & DANIKA SERIES

BAD THINGS

ROCK BOTTOM

LOVELY TRIGGER





THE HERETIC DAUGHTERS SERIES


BREATHING FIRE


CROSSING FIRE - COMING SOON





THE BISHOP BROTHERS SERIES


BOSS - COMING SOON





HERE’S A TEASER FROM THE FOLLOW UP TO

BREAKING HIM.





BREAKING HER





“If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh? If you poison us, do we not die? And if you wrong us, shall we not revenge?”

~William Shakespeare





PRESENT





SCARLETT


I was drunk. Good and stinking drunk.

We were at the crew hotel in Seattle (not my favorite town) on a layover, and we were trolling the lobby bar.

Okay, I was trolling the bar. My girls were just there for moral support.

No wait, that wasn’t all. We were supposed to be celebrating. Something great had happened, I had to remind myself.

I’d just landed my first starring role in a feature film.

Yes, that was it. We were celebrating.

Also . . .

I was planning to make up for the fact that I’d just spent way too much time being a pathetic, lovesick fool, moping in my room, hiding in my bed.

Hating myself. Wanting to disappear.

I’d barely scraped myself together enough to make it to the fateful audition that had landed me the part that might change my life.

Even when I’d gotten the news (that I was finally, at last, going to star in a movie!) I’d barely felt even a stirring of happiness.

The last round with Dante still had its hold on me. I’d let him do his worst and the wounds he’d inflicted were just not healing.

But I’d vowed tonight that I was done with that.

I was on the hunt for a standin punching bag. I had decided about three drinks ago that I’d feel much better about myself if I put at least one man between me and my last memory of Dante.

I was looking around, a pout on my face. “No cute boys,” I told the girls.

Demi agreed.

“I’m not sad,” Leona said, studying me. “I don’t think I want you to find a cute boy when you’re in this shape.”

They were sitting in a booth and I was standing next to it. I was not in a sitting mood. I was in a sway to the music and get some male attention mood. I just wished there were some males around worth being noticed by.

I’d already shot down two that just weren’t cute enough. More specifically: Reject Number One wasn’t tall enough and Reject Number Two looked too wholesome.

I didn’t like wholesome, never had. I craved sinister categorically.