Forbidden Neighbor: A Contemporary Romance Boxset (Forbidden Saga Book 2)

by Summer Brooks

  “What the fuck do you think you’re doing, Blake?”

  “Telling you how much…”

  I sighed and loosened my grip around her waist. I didn’t want to hurt her. I never could.

  “How much… what?”

  I didn’t want the moment to happen this way, but I had no choice. Every cell in my body was screaming at me to let her know.

  I placed my hand on her cheek and slid an arm around her waist until she was close enough.

  She could never be close enough.

  “I love you.”

  Her brown eyes narrowed down at me and she flicked her gaze away from my face to her hand that was still pressed against my heart.

  “Can I kiss you?” I asked.

  She shook her head repeatedly and her dilemma shone through.

  “I have to go,” she said. “I’m sorry. I have to go.”

  “Don’t.”

  The moment was quiet, peaceful, one that I would remember forever.

  I was baring my soul for this woman, who I knew was in love with me. But she couldn’t say it, maybe she didn’t even realize it herself.

  “I told you it was over,” she repeated, when she was no longer in my arms.

  “You don’t mean that.”

  “I do.”

  I nodded, watching her reach for the door knob.

  “We’ll see.”

  Her gaze was filled with guilt.

  “You need to leave, Blake. Please. And don’t call me. Not tonight, not ever.”

  15

  Jasmine

  There were a number of scenarios that I had already pictured in my mind before Blake said those three forbidden words to me.

  I had imagined what I would feel like, hearing him telling me that he loved me. I’d wanted it to be over-the-top. I’d wanted to be swept off my feet.

  I’d wanted to be happy.

  But most importantly, I had imagined this moment in my head before it actually happened.

  I knew it would happen, but it still felt more unreal than it did in my imagination.

  The butterflies in my stomach had turned into a black hole and I wished I could go back in time and undo everything that had happened between the two of us.

  But, when I really thought about what my reality would look like without him, I didn’t want to erase a thing.

  Blake was slowly taking over my entire life. I could barely take a breath without remembering his voice, his breath against my skin, and those deep eyes that I could lose myself in.

  I was in tears, not because I wasn’t happy that he’d confessed how he felt, but because I couldn’t say those words back to him. The moment where I had to pull myself together and step away was going to be etched in my memory forever. It was going to haunt me until the end of time.

  My feelings that were left unexpressed.

  I was going to carry that weight over my shoulders forever.

  But that wasn’t my concern. I wasn’t my concern.

  I couldn’t hurt Freya, not while she was already going through a heart break.

  How could I tell my own sister that the man she was trying to win back was in love with me?

  She would never recover from that. Our relationship would never recover from it.

  I cleared my throat while my back was still pressed against the door.

  Wiping away my tears, I quickly ran upstairs to my bedroom. I needed to shut my bedroom window before I got a peek of him and this became way harder than it already was.

  “Hey Jaz, I can’t find the…” Freya paused when she saw my red cheeks. “Are you crying? What’s the matter?”

  I was obviously not the best at keeping secrets.

  I’d already sobbed my eyes out after returning from the bar last night and now I was at it again.

  I couldn’t let Freya get suspicious. Even if she thought that I was going through some boy trouble (a boy that wasn’t Blake), she would go hunting until she found out who exactly he was.

  And then, she would break his bones for breaking my heart.

  That’s just who Freya was. The best sister in the world.

  She’s been protecting me from everyone, even from our own mother, ever since I was born. Every time Mom would favor her over me, she’d ask her to knock it off.

  And this is how I was repaying her for everything that she’d done for me — by letting myself fall for the man who was once hers.

  “It’s nothing,” I said, turning to my door.

  “Stop that!” She held me by the shoulders. “Either you tell me or I’ll ask Eva. I’m sure you’ve told her everything.”

  “It’s nothing, Freya…,” I grimaced. “Just… please leave me alone, will you?”

  I was snapping at her, though I didn’t mean to.

  I just needed to get away, and she didn’t need to see me break down in front of her.

  Freya loved me fiercely and seeing me this way would only hurt her.

  “Fine,” she backed off. “I’ll give you your alone time right now, but we need to have a chat tomorrow morning, young lady.”

  “Stop trying to sound like Mom,” I said, twisting the knob. “And you’re leaving tomorrow morning, aren’t you?”

  “Afternoon. But I won’t leave until I know that you’re not going to cry yourself to death.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” I whined from inside my room, then shut the door.

  The first thing I did was slide myself into bed and bury my face into my pillow.

  My fluffy pillow that would bear the brunt of my tears. I sobbed, suppressing the sound of my cries.

  Sniffling, I reached for my underwear drawer and removed the key to my diary.

  If I couldn’t tell Freya what it was that was bothering me, and if I couldn’t tell Blake how I truly felt, then my diary would have to listen to everything.

  Words started to flow out of me when I put pen to paper.

  Knowing that I have a private space to vent my feelings was always able to help me recover.

  I told my journal that I didn’t think that I would feel this way.

  It started with a crush and turned into something disastrous. I love my sister and it breaks my heart to know that this would shatter her soul into pieces. But I can’t control how I feel. I tried.

  I tried to not think about him. I tried to not let him enter my dreams, to not think about how he kissed me. But I need him to touch me again. I need to feel his skin against mine and I want to tell him that I love him too.

  As I continued to write more, describing exactly how I felt about Blake, heat radiated from within me. The mere mention of his name, the thought of his face being so close to mine only minutes ago, was driving me over the edge. I couldn’t believe the amount of power he had over me, even while he wasn’t close to me in person.

  I shut my diary and slid it under my pillow like I always did, then unlocked my phone to find a picture of him.

  It was a picture that he’d recently sent me when he was freshly out of the shower. His dark hair glistened and there was a smirk on his face that told a completely different story than what existed in reality.

  I’d been stupid to think that this could ever work.

  I woke up when the sun did. The hangover had subsided, though I suspected that it was going to take me a few days to be completely cured. My body still ached, not because of the excessive liquor but because of the sheer amount of tears that I’d shed last night.

  It was still way too early for Freya to be awake.

  I felt more positive today, more… hopeful.

  When I turned on my back, tucking my arms behind my head, I thought to write about that in my diary. It was important to document the positive feelings along with the negative ones, especially while going through something rough.

  I slid my arm under the pillow next to me, but found nothing.

  Frantic, I moved my head around and aimlessly scanned every part of my room.

  The diary was on my desk.

  I exhal
ed and a sigh of relief escaped my body.

  I didn’t remember keeping it at my desk, but I was a complete mess before I fell asleep. Who knew what I might have done?

  After gulping down the bottle of water that was sitting on my side table, I sat on my chair and re-read everything I’d written last night.

  I didn’t know what it was — the new day or just the fact that my liver was no longer cursing me. I felt this intense need to tear off those pages and toss them in the trash can. But I didn’t. Everything I wrote in there was valid. I still felt exactly the same way about Blake.

  I would still kill to have him in my bed.

  I would still love for him to be the first man I had sex with.

  The only difference was that I wasn’t feeling as hopeless as I was last night. I was wearing a smile and I couldn’t wait to make myself some soothing green tea and wake my sister up.

  She was leaving today and some sister-time was in order.

  “Freya,” I knocked at her door before getting to the kitchen.

  She never answered and I assumed she was asleep. Fifteen minutes later, I tried again.

  The only reason why I wasn’t barging in was because we’d promised each other that we would knock before entering. She broke that promise regularly, but I wasn’t as rebellious as she was.

  Eventually, I gave up and opened her door.

  She wasn’t there.

  “Frey?” I said lowly. I made way for the kitchen to grab my phone so I could call her.

  She didn’t answer.

  “Fuck,” I mumbled, raking my hands through my hair, then went back into her room to see if her running shoes were missing.

  I was realizing that I’d been living in fear since all of this started.

  I’d be worried sick every second of every day, praying that Freya would never find out. But what if she had today? And what if she never wanted to speak to me again?

  She was all I fucking had.

  My palms got sweaty when I got back to her room and between all the panic, I saw a piece of paper on her bed.

  I couldn’t tell if it was a note. From a distance, it was just a piece of paper that was laying over her pink sheets.

  I lifted it and swallowed.

  You’re no longer my sister.

  I clenched my jaw and snapped my eyes shut so hard that it hurt.

  She knew.

  She’d read my diary after I fell asleep without even bothering to put it back where she found it.

  If I knew anything about my sister, one would have to be a fool to ever get on her bad side.

  She didn’t forgive easily and she definitely never forgot.

  My phone rang. It was Mom.

  At first, I didn’t want to answer, but I knew this was about her favorite daughter and I was the reason that she’d left without saying anything.

  “Hey Mom,” I said, pressing my temples.

  “Is Freya with you?”

  “No, she isn’t.”

  “Well, she called me a bunch of times in the middle of the night. I was sleeping and didn’t answer any of her calls. Do you know where she is now? I hope there’s nothing urgent.”

  “I think she’s left for Chicago.”

  “Left? But she wasn’t supposed to drive back until later this afternoon. I was supposed to come over and help her pack.”

  “Okay, mother!” I snapped. “I’m sorry that you’re not getting to pack for her. I have to go now.”

  “Jasmine!” I heard her yell right before I hung up.

  I wasn’t one to ever be rude to her, even when she took jabs at me for inconveniencing her by being born at a time when she wanted to re-start her career.

  But I didn’t want to be nice today.

  Not to her. Not to anyone.

  I lifted Freya’s comforter and slid under it.

  I had a lot of thinking to do. My sister had left and was likely not going to speak to me for a while.

  I didn’t want to go to work that morning because I knew I would run into Blake there. It wasn’t like my job at the store was really doing anything for me, anyway.

  Of course, I wasn’t going to continue working there forever and I wasn’t exactly happy with the kind of life that I’d built for myself — in this small town with my seemingly unimportant priorities.

  Perhaps it was finally time to build a new future.

  A fresh start.

  16

  Blake

  I never allowed anything to distract me while I was on the job — my real job, not the one that Matthew had offered to me. Though that one was making me exponentially more money, at least in the short term.

  When I was promoted to the lieutenant position, the real weight of the responsibility didn’t hit me until much later. Brian used to tell me all about his days while he worked as a lieutenant.

  The position didn’t require me to go inside burning buildings or actually fight fire. I was the supervisor and oversaw all the activities that needed to be taken care of.

  As I hooked the hose to the fire hydrant, I remembered Brian’s epic story of when he helped the fire fighters inside a burning office building because he felt “useless” sitting outside.

  My brother was dedicated to the job in a way that most people weren’t. He was in a league of his own and people usually compared me to him. I considered it like a sign of respect, really, to be compared to a legend like him.

  That being said, there was nothing glamorous about the job. Apart from the moral satisfaction and respect, you didn’t receive much in return for the number of hours that you put in.

  I was grateful for Matthew and everything that he’d done for me. Not many people would go out of their way and help someone out with an extra job like that, though he claimed that it was me who was helping him out.

  In a way, it was true. I’d assumed way more responsibilities at the store in the last week, giving him the free time to relax more. As much as I wanted Jaz, I hadn’t been able to come to terms with how Matthew would feel if he knew about everything.

  I didn’t want to disappoint him.

  But he had to know how deeply I cared for his daughter, and not the one that he thought I cared for.

  I wished that Jaz would just embrace how we felt about each other, and then tell her family.

  But instead, she’d walked all over my heart last night. It had taken a lot of strength to open up to her, and even though she didn’t reciprocate the same words, I did see them in her eyes. Her lips had quivered while my arms were wrapped tightly around her.

  I knew how she felt. I knew that she was in love with me, too.

  It didn’t matter, though. I had no choice but to wait for her to come around.

  She deserved to take her time with this decision.

  And if her decision was to keep her distance from me, then I would have to come to terms with it and move the fuck on.

  I groaned, hitting the steering wheel on the van multiple times while driving to the store where I was meeting Matthew. The only thing that was holding me together was the fact that Jaz was going to be there.

  “What the fuck is wrong with me?” I mumbled, feeling weak and pathetic.

  This is why love was so damn stupid.

  I hated to not have any control over myself. I didn't want to spend all my days thinking about this problem. I wanted to go back to my normal routine.

  Jaz basically controlled me. She wasn’t even a part of my life, but was somehow still dominating every aspect of it.

  My eyes searched for her when I got to the store. She wasn’t there and I wasn’t really surprised.

  She’d made it plenty clear to me that she didn’t want to see me. She was probably avoiding the store just to avoid me.

  I was the stupid one to not believe her when she said she wanted nothing to do with me.

  Though, when I found out that Matthew wasn’t there either, I became concerned. He’d specifically asked me to meet him after I was done for the day. I pulled out my cell ph
one and tapped his name in my contacts list.

  “Matthew, yeah hi,” I said when he answered. “Are you in the back? I don’t see you.”

  “Sorry, son,” he sighed. “Something’s happened.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Freya,” he said. “She’s missing. She left early this morning without saying goodbye to her sister or either of us. We’re concerned. Have you heard anything from her?”

  “I haven’t. Did she say anything to Jasmine?”

  I suspected that Freya had found out about us, maybe even seen us standing outside their house. I couldn’t be sure and it didn’t matter if she knew or not. She was bound to find out eventually. The concerning part was that she was missing.

  “We think she might have driven back to Chicago,” he paused. “But she’s not answering our calls. It’s unlike her. Just let us know if you hear from her, okay?”

  “I will,” I said. “Don’t worry. I’ll try to reach her as well.”

  “I would really appreciate that, son. Thank you.”

  I hung up and sighed. My first instinct was to look for her at Chloe’s café, but her family would have probably checked there already.

  She was definitely not in Hinsdale at the moment if nobody could find her, because there weren't many places to look, and Freya wasn't good at keeping a low profile anywhere she went.

  I texted Jaz.

  Need to talk to you about Freya. Call ASAP.

  I knew that if I’d simply called her, she wouldn’t have answered. But my phone rang immediately after that text was delivered.

  She sounded disheartened and her voice was mousy.

  “She found out, didn’t she?” I asked before she’d even said a word.

  “It’s not your fault. It was mine. I left my diary next to me in bed.”

  “You were writing about me in your diary?” I felt like an asshole for asking that in a time of emergency, but she ignored it completely.

  “You said you wanted to talk about Freya? I doubt she’s been in touch with you so what did you want to tell me?”

  I blurted out the next thing that came to mind.

  “I’m going to Chicago. I think her and I need to have a little chat. Did you want to come with?”