Phoebe: Book One of Broken Girls Series

by J. A. Hornbuckle

  How long was it going to take to get over him?

  I’d hoped I was over the worst of my desolation of him leaving, that I didn’t have any more tears to shed, but obviously I was wrong. Because when my keening finally stopped and the sobs wound down to only hitches, I couldn’t stand up. My legs and feet had fallen asleep during my crying jag on the floor and I had to wait until the blood flow resumed, accompanied by a nasty case of pins and needles before I stood upright.

  One good thing came out of my sob fest though, and that was the ability to think more clearly, more soberly about the whole freaking situation.

  And about what I wanted to happen.

  When I’d first opened and read I’d been accepted to the master’s program, I’d vaguely, blithely thought I’d go there, get my certification then come back to Grantham and Ryker so we could pick up where we left off.

  Evidently, he seen it a lot differently. Saw it as me blowing him off and that I’d never intended to keep him in my life.

  So what do you want to do? My mind whispered to my heart. Is he, and what you have together ,worth fighting for?

  My questions haunted me in the hours afterward as I put all his stuff back where it belonged and returned to my packing in the kitchen as I allowed my head to listen to the arguments of my heart. The ones which insisted I should confront him, to state my case about the continuation of ‘us’, even if we had to do it over time and space. Long-distance relationships were hard, but not impossible. And sure as shit were better than coming back to Grantham to find Ryker involved with somebody else. Or even worse, married.

  Two years wasn’t that long when compared with the length of one’s life, was it? When push came to shove, could we handle being apart for so long with only intermittent visits and phone calls to sustain us?

  I didn’t know Ryker’s feelings about those kind of things because we hadn’t, as Diana damn-well pointed out, talked about it.

  But my heart knew what it wanted and needed.

  Since my heart had already claimed him as part of my future, I realized I’d stop at nothing to ensure what I wanted would happen.

  I just needed to help him realize it as well.

  *.*.*.*.*

  Ryker sighed as he slid another file folder from the towering stack in front of him to the center of his desktop. Even though he and Max were interviewing for people to help with Ryker’s work load, they’d found only a couple were qualified and could pass the tests Ryker’d devised to separate the ‘wanna-bes’ from the ones with real skills and a clean background in order to work for Black Ice.

  But the two new people wouldn’t start until Monday. And until those potential candidates had asses in chairs, he was still responsible for doing all the background checks as well as designing the security systems for the myriad of BI clients.

  In truth, the amount of hours he put into his job would’ve leveled a lesser man.

  Ryker needed them though.

  Needed to fill his hours in order to plug the holes in his heart, his thoughts. If he was being honest with himself, he missed Phoebe with an unsurpassed rawness, even though he’d been the one to cut it off and walk away. Although as time passed, he couldn’t remember why he’d gotten so upset. Why his emotions had forced him to walk away from her in the first place.

  All he knew was that he loved her.

  Missed her more than an appendage that’d been stripped away.

  And that it had been him, that he’d fucked up in walking away from her when hitting the first real problem of the relationship?

  Regret it? Oh fuck to the yeah.

  But he didn’t know how to make it right, how to start the conversation with Phoebe in order to make her want to stay with him.

  Their three minute phone call a couple of days before had been horrible. So disjointed and awkward, he hadn’t been surprised when she hung up before he could ask how she was doing. He’d replayed their words over and over, adding more to their conversation in order to let her know how much she meant to him, that he loved her. He should’ve argued with her about leaving or told her he was willing to moving with her to Aurora just so they could stay together.

  He should’ve fucking fought for her, for them!

  And it was at that point in his thinking, the one he got to each and every time he replayed their conversation, that he stopped.

  Because who would he be fighting? Her and her dreams? Fighting her just so he could be a part of her life?

  He looked down at the file and none of the words made sense. So he closed it and rubbed his eyes with a forefinger and thumb until the throb behind them eased.

  His internal line rang and Ryker wasted no time in picking up Daisybelle’s call. If memory served, their receptionist and his right-hand girl was again wearing a pink-camo’d thermal with a pair of Army issued fatigued pants. On anyone else, the clothes would have looked ludicrous. But on DB? It somehow worked. “I have a Phoebe Marquette here to see you, Mr. Ryker. Says she doesn’t have an appointment.”

  With his mind darting from DB’s attire to the fact Phoebe, his Phoebe was in the lobby, Ryker’s heart stuttered. “I’ll allow,” he mumbled in the words he and his brothers gave when admitting someone upstairs. Any other phrase would find the visitor in some serious shit as DB was military-trained and loved to show-off her skills, be it by knife point, gun point or in simple hand-to-hand combat.

  “Affirmative,” DB clipped before disconnecting, even as Ryker’s eyes and hands moved over his desktop to straighten and tidy. This was Phoebe’s first visit to his office, impromptu though it was, and he was determined to make a good impression. Even though he didn’t have a fucking clue why she’d shown.

  Ryker decided to await her arrival standing, as he smoothed and then re-tucked his shirt into his pants before stepping to the door of his office. With his heart booming in his chest, he dragged a finger-full of hair from his forehead as he waited for her in the doorway, his airways closing as his entire body stilled.

  Coming through the glass doors, she gave a wave accompanied by a smile as she entered the main space both hands carrying the cloth grocery bags she liked to use. He wondered what was in them because he was sure he’d left a lot more clothes and toiletries at her place than just a couple of bags full.

  To his mind, she’d never looked better. Bright eyed with pink cheeks, she appeared to be in the best of health. Her shiny hair was down and she’d dressed in form-fitting jeans and a light green top that skimmed her curves beneath the flaps of her coat.

  “Hey,” she breathed when she was twenty feet away. Close enough Ryker saw her trembling chin, her shaking hands as she stopped and adjusted the straps in her fists.

  Ah Dios, she was still his beauty, her skin a particular shade of white he could only call alabaster, her loose hair swinging about her shoulders as her curvy hips and legs narrowed the space between them in slow measure.

  “I’m sorry to interrupt,” she said when she came to a stop before him, close enough his arms ached to reach for her, to feel her pressed against him. “But I was hoping we could talk, if you have a few minutes.”

  Ryker shifted his body to the side, idly watching as both Cruz and Max (the nosy bastards) came to watch the doings from their own office doorways as he waved her inside. Both of the assholes had noticed and commented on how much time he spent at the office. Cruz even speculating aloud about the state of his love-life during a staff meeting, leaving Ryker to mumble something along the lines of, “It just didn’t work out.” Luckily, no one ever brought up again.

  Until he saw the question in both his brother’s eyes at the unexpected arrival of his former girlfriend at his place of work. In answer, he just gave them the finger after Phoebe cleared his office door before he closed it firmly.

  She immediately went to one of the visitor chairs and tidily tucked her bags on the floor while her eyes roamed the room. “Nice,” she chirped, tossing her hair over her shoulder, filling his space with the aroma his nose used to s
eek to bury itself in every night.

  Rounding his desk, Ryker told himself to be cool, professional…distant. She was the one leaving in a couple of weeks and who’d planned on spending two years away before he’d even met her. Finally, he felt his mad-on resurface and held onto it like a life-raft, a shield against the allure of her.

  They stared at each other over the piles of files for a length of time and, for Ryker, it was as if time stopped. His eyes couldn’t drink in enough of her, of the emotions he watched skitter across her face, the way her fingers fiddled and danced with her top, her coat, her hair.

  “Why are you here, Phoebe?”

  It was then she stopped all movement and he saw her eyes flare before she quickly turned to look through the windows comprising one of his walls. Swallowing deep, she told him, “The other night you asked me where you were on my master-plan of success. Where we were on that timeline and I didn’t answer it right.”

  “Baby, it doesn’t—”.

  But she cut him off before he could tell her it didn’t matter. That what was done, was done.

  She turned back to look at him as her hands fumbled beneath the edge of his desk before she brought one of the cloth sacks up to rest on the seat of the other visitor chair and began pulling a large, three-ring binder out. “Do you want to know how anal I am?”

  Huh?

  “Diana taught me to keep a journal since the first week I was placed in her home,” she breathed, bringing out a blue one and setting it on top of the shortest stack of folders on his desk. “She told me writing things down would show me what I wanted out of life and where I was on my life’s path of achieving them. And she was right.”

  He glanced at the slick plastic cover festooned with stickers of unicorns and rainbows marked ‘2002’ in gold glitter glue. Looking back up at her, he canted an eyebrow.

  “Go on, read it. Or rather, read the part marked with a sticky note, honey.”

  With doubts about what the fuck was going on, Ryker pulled the binder toward him and flipped to the page marked. Taking in all the drawings and stickers first, he grinned at the glimpse of a much younger Phoebe before his eyes caught on the childish handwriting that was a mixture of cursive and printed, with lots of underlining and exclamation points.

  ‘Practically every girl in class talks about boys. Getting all starry-eyed as they talk about being with a boy or getting kissed. Not me, though. Why would I want them to put their dirty mouth on mine. Eww! Don’t they know boys have cooties? And you can get a cold or the flu from just pressing your lips together? Yuck! Every morning I write CP on my wrist so everyone knows I have Cootie Protection. Tonya and Maizie tell me I’m a baby for doing it, but I don’t care what they say.’

  Ryker couldn’t help his smile because at that age, he’d felt pretty much the same way. A lot of his buddies were interested in girls early but Ryker’d had other things on his mind. Noticing no other markers on the myriad of pages, he closed the cover.

  Deftly, she pulled the blue binder out of his hands and replaced it with a red one. Instead of a cover decorated in stickers, this one sported multiple pictures of a popular boy-band crowded around the ‘2005’ done in a thick black marker. “I was thirteen in this one,” she mumbled, pushing the heavy book (there was no other word for it) his way.

  Flipping to the first marked page, he read about how Jason Meeks asked her to the eighth grade graduation dance even though she was only a seventh grader. And about how she agonized over whether to go or not. He remembered Ron Meeks, Jason’s older brother, who was a complete loser and wondered if the younger Meek was equally as bad.

  His fingers found the next marker and read, ‘Why, why and WHY did Jason have to ruin everything? I thought I looked pretty in my light blue dress and pink sandals with the one inch heel. Even Vonnie said so. And I had a good time when we first got to the auditorium with its streamers and balloons. But it didn’t last. Not after Jason thought he could cop a feel of my butt during the slow dances and then tried to stick his tongue down my throat when he walked me up to Diana’s door, his dad (his DAD!) waiting in the car at the curb. And here’s the weird part, he got mad at ME for pushing him away and telling him he was a creep!! Told me I was a TEASE!! God! Jason has acne and braces but worst of all he has NO GOALS, which means he could never be my boyfriend!! I just want to forget this night ever happened!’

  Ryker tried to swallow his chuckle, because his girl had perfectly captured the angst of his own middle school graduation dance. When he’d been so horny but proud as shit with Delores Vergara on his arm, the other boys giving him props just for bringing the bustiest girl in school as his date. But she’d rebuffed him just as Phoebe had done with Jason at the end of the evening. Although, at the time, he didn’t have bad skin or braces. And he’d had plenty of goals.

  Raising his eyes to the beautiful woman on the other side of the desk, he caught her blush and his heart caught on the pink as it went from her neck to her cheeks. Dios, how his heart had missed seeing it.

  “Have you had enough yet, Ryker?”

  “Bring it, mi cariña,” he murmured without thinking, sliding the binder toward her before accepting a green one marked ‘2007’. “So you would’ve been, what? Fifteen or sixteen by this time?”

  “Fifteen,” she admitted with a head nod without looking at him or acknowledging his uncensored endearment in any way.

  ‘It’s been a bad day today, a completely sad-house kind of day because Derek and Tonya broke up. Broke up right in the living room and in voices I could hear from the kitchen since it was my week for dish-duty. Diana is with Tonya, in her room now, trying to help. But I don’t know how since Tonya and Justin were more than just a THING. They were a FOREVER COUPLE!! Everyone said so. To the point, Tonya bought bridal magazines with her extra money and decorated her corkboard with pictures of what she wanted their wedding to be like. But I’d HEARD him. Heard him flat out tell her he couldn’t see her anymore. And I started crying when she did.’

  Of all that Ryker’d read, this page was devoid of any squiggles in the margins, without any symbols of butterflies, hummingbirds or dragonflies which he thought meant hope to the young girl his woman had been.

  His eyes drifted up to Phoebe’s profile, again pointed to the windows before his eyes went back down to her writing.

  ‘It was awful enough when she argued, citing what they had together and giving reasons why he couldn’t let her go. But then he turned it around, TURNED it so it sounded like Tonya was letting him go with her action and words…I really lost it! And had to go out onto the service porch so they couldn’t hear me sobbing.

  If that is LOVE, then I don’t want it!! No, no and HELL NO!!’

  Ryker took a moment, his memory reaching back and realized he’d done much as the faceless Justin did at probably the same age. Taking whatever words his ‘girl of the moment’ said and twisting it, turned it until she was the person who was breaking up with him instead of the other way around.

  And at the memories, it was his turn to blush as he resumed reading.

  ‘Because MY MAN won’t be that kind of loser. He will be handsome and gentlemanly. My guy, the one my heart picks will pursue me and I won’t have to chase him because he wants ME. Not just for my chest or my butt, but for my smile and smarts. And he’ll treat me like a queen by being protective and understanding even when I’m cranky.

  My chosen one will want our hearts to get closer until they almost beat as one. He’ll understand my fear of the dark and of enclosed spaces and will prove himself worthy of defending me from the demons of both. And the man I choose as a life-partner will never let me go, never turn my own words against me. Because he will LOVE ME UNCONDITIONALLY!’.

  Ryker read the last two paragraphs three times before he could he could close the binder and shove it across the desk because it made his heart hurt. Made him see Phoebe’s younger self’s point of view, her confessions while combining it with him abruptly leaving, walking away from her on that mothe
rfucking horrible night.

  “Are you okay?” she asked in a soft voice as she took the binder and tucked it down in the depths, inside one of her unseen bags.

  He nodded, but he could admit to himself he really wasn’t sure. Especially as he reviewed what he’d read and compared himself to what she’d wanted in a man.

  Yeah, he was easy on the eyes, something he’d had no control over due to genetics, but he knew he was well-mannered and gentlemanly. Which was all up because his mom and the drills she’d practically beaten into Max, Cruz and him as they’d grown up.

  To open doors, hold chairs, let the female proceed you.

  If a man really wants something, he’ll go after it.

  Want a date, ask outright because no girl of worth pursues a boy.

  Pick your mate, your queen with a definitive eye, because she will be the one to rule your world as you protect her and your children from everything the outside realm throws at you and your love.

  It was as if Phoebe had wished for him, just him.

  Even though he’d made a hard right-turn at the same age.

  A turn which took him away from her and her dreams of a man who fit her.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  My Ryker appeared shell-shocked, his eyes unfocused and face pale after the binder of 2007. And we hadn’t even gotten to the 2009 one yet.

  “Are you okay?” I asked yet again as I slid the binder into my satchel, hidden by the looming, over-ledge on my side of his desk.

  “I’m good,” he muttered, his eyes trained on the same skyline I’d perused as he’d spent more than a few minutes of silence reading the entries I’d found to uncover the reality of me in my journals. “Or I will be, mi cariña. Just give me uno momento, si?”

  God, those words.

  That endearment.

  I still had one journal to go. The one which more than showed my dedication to my how-to-succeed checklist and why.

  And that was primarily because I’d seen other girls, even the smart and driven ones derailed from their goals. Distracted because of some guy they considered ‘the one’. Why even Selma Harrison, the smartest girl in my graduating class and a shoe-in for valedictorian found herself pregnant halfway through our senior year, thus ending our long-running-but-amicable-contest of who was the better student.