The Good Girl (Damaged Book 1)

by Jenna Mills

  “You know what the doctor said.”

  I did. “He’s being cautious. That’s his job. I feel fine.”

  “Concussions—”

  “It’s been a month, Mom.” A month of rest. Of being watched, monitored. Of my parents freaking out so badly at every headache or dizzy spell that I no longer told them when they happened. But they did. Not as often now, not every day, but still a few per week.

  “I’ll go easy,” I promised. I needed to get back on my feet, to feel the sunshine and the breeze, to feel my body working. “Just two miles. Slow.” Six short weeks before, taking it easy would have been ten miles in slightly over an hour.

  My mom frowned. “Your father won’t like this.”

  My father didn’t like much of anything, except work and quiet. “Then don’t tell him.”

  She sighed.

  “Did you talk to him about Santa Fe?” I finished tying my last shoe and stood. “Cheryl says they need someone.”

  Cheryl was my boss, the owner of The Java Joint. Her sister ran a similar shop in Santa Fe. They had an opening. The job was mine if I wanted it.

  I very much wanted it.

  “No.” My mom’s voice was quiet—the bad kind of quiet, like it always was when she said something she knew I wouldn’t like, as if her tone could actually soften what she was saying. “I didn’t.”

  They were just words, but they landed like a physical blow. “Mom, you promised—”

  “You can’t run from this, Emily.”

  My throat tightened. I wanted to ask run from what, but that was dumb. I knew, and she knew that I knew.

  “Running never fixes anything.”

  I knew that, too. “I’m not running.”

  She let out this sad laugh. “Moving to Santa Fe won’t change what happened, sweetheart. Until you face it, the hurt will always be there.”

  I wanted to shout at her. To shout that she was wrong. That she didn’t understand. That there was a big difference between running away and starting over. But I was so beyond that, and I knew nothing I could say would change her mind.

  “I’ll talk to him myself,” I said, grabbing my phone and brushing past her, even as everything wobbled.

  Goldie bounded after me.

  I could just go to Santa Fe on my own. I knew that. I was eighteen. I made my own money. My parents couldn’t stop me—I didn’t need their permission.

  “Emily…”

  “Forget I said anything,” I called as I hurried down the stairs.

  From a small table, I grabbed my earbuds, then yanked open the front door and hurried outside.

  I should have looked out the window first.

  Chapter 2

  THE JEEP SAT parked around the corner, in the shade of an old elm. And that was all it took, the sight of the blue color, the one I’d picked because it matched his eyes, for everything to tilt. Time slowed, the fractured moment locking around me and holding me there, even as some place inside me screamed for me to turn away.

  But it was too late. The door swung open, and he was there, emerging into the bright sunshine, and some place inside of me responded, responded as it always did, as it always had, even when we were little kids, seven-year-olds with no idea what that odd, wobbly sensation meant, only that I liked it, even as I hated it. Then, way back when everything was so innocent and easy, he would chase me, insisting that he was a vampire and that when I slept at night, he would sneak into my room…

  Later, he had. Years later, and just as he’d once teased, he’d put his mouth to my neck, while my parents, my whole household, slept. But it had been his lips, not his teeth, that made my body sing. Ache.

  Soar.

  Now he stood there, so horribly, unnaturally still, a stranger in an achingly familiar body, the dark, unkempt hair falling against piercing eyes, the wide cheekbones and full mouth, and the shoulders, the chest that went on forever, the powerful pitcher’s legs. He just stood there, while memories crashed through me, like the rocks and sticks of a flash flood, racing along and destroying everything they touched.

  It was the first time I’d seen him since opening my eyes in the hospital five weeks before.

  I turned fast, ripping myself from that frozen moment and heading the opposite direction.

  “Emmie—wait!”

  The voice. God, his voice. Low and strained, it slashed through me, and for a heartbeat, I wanted to run, not slow like I’d promised my mother, but fast and hard, like I’d done before.

  Instead I pivoted—I didn’t want him to think he still had that power over me.

  But God, the sight of him hurt, hurt in ways I’d never imagined the night I’d looked into his eyes and locked my fingers with his, and given him every corner of my heart.

  I’ll never hurt you, he’d promised.

  Now he moved toward me, crossing the quiet street one slow step at a time, like he was afraid if he moved too fast, in that confident manner he usually did, the manner of a feared pitcher taking the mound, I would run.

  But I was done running. That’s why I made myself watch him, the way his t-shirt—the Colorado State one that matched the one I’d left on my bedroom floor—hugged his shoulders, and the warm breeze ruffled his hair. And finally he was there, on the sidewalk with only a foot or two between us—the closest we’d been since I found him sitting by the sterile hospital bed, my hand enclosed in the warmth of his.

  “You…look good,” he said.

  The sun beat down from a ridiculously blue mountain sky, but the heat didn’t touch me, only a deep slice of cold. He always knew exactly what to say, even when it was a lie. I knew how I looked. I’d seen myself in the mirror, and it wasn’t good. Pale skin. Flat brown hair. The dull, empty eyes.

  Maybe I should have shot back that he looked tired, that dark circles ringed his eyes, too, but those words wouldn’t come, either.

  “How are you feeling?” he asked. “Are you sure you should be running?”

  Memories crashed through me, each faster than the one before—the bar, the girl, the lie.

  His apartment.

  The drawer.

  The cards and pictures.

  The truth.

  “I told you not to come here,” I said.

  His shoulders dropped. “Emmie—”

  I felt my eyes flash. “Don’t call me that.”

  He winced, his face twisting with emotion I refused to label.

  “Look, I gotta go,” I said, turning back toward my house.

  Nothing prepared me for him to reach for me, to stop me by closing his hand around my forearm. I froze, first staring dry-eyed at the Flatirons ramming up against the horizon, then, slowly, turning to look at him.

  “Don’t touch me,” I said with a strength born from countless hours reliving those final moments in his apartment, when I’d stood there in that cold wash of reality, dying. Dying inside. And knowing. Knowing he’d been with someone else. Knowing there was no way to go back. Ever.

  I’d been in no condition to drive.

  “You can’t keep running,” he said quietly.

  And I wanted to hit him. I wanted to hit him so hard, hit him with everything I had. But I knew, I knew even that would never be enough.

  I jerked back, yanking my arm from his hand. “I’m not running,” I said, just like I’d told my mom. “I’m moving on.”

  There was a difference, and it was huge.

  Dark hair slashed against the lines of his cheekbones, the hair I’d once loved to run my fingers through. And his eyes, they burned down at me. But he said nothing else, and neither did I.

  Sometimes words mean everything, and something they mean nothing at all.

  I didn’t turn from him, though. I looked from him, toward the winding, tree-lined street behind him, where we’d ridden our bikes and skinned our knees all those years before, and walked past him, leaving him standing alone in the shadows behind me.

  It was only when I turned the corner that I started to run.

  “Yo
u haven’t heard a word I said, have you?”

  I looked up from my phone, not sure why I kept checking the stupid thing anyway. There was no one I was waiting to hear from, and nothing I especially wanted to see.

  “Of course I have,” I lied.

  Double mocha in hand, Lexi eyed me from across the small table. Long, silky dark hair framed her stupidly gorgeous face. “So what do you think? Should I sleep with him?”

  I felt my mouth fall open—I was so busted, and we both knew it. Leave it to Lexi to say the most provocative thing she could think of.

  “Absolutely,” I said. Who? I thought.

  But I was pretty sure she was only testing me. I may have zoned out, but if she’d brought up sleeping with someone, I would have perked up for that.

  “Which one?” she persisted.

  I laughed. “How about both?”

  The gleam in her wide, tilted eyes told me she knew I was on to her. “Now there’s a thought,” she said, pretending to consider. At least I thought she was pretending. With her, you never really knew. “Who first?”

  I lifted my eyebrows.

  She tapped a French-manicured finger against her thick white mug. “Dr Rivers—or Detective BadAss?”

  It was a good thing I hadn’t just taken a sip, or I would have spewed chai tea all over her. Some things were possible, and some just weren’t.

  Lexi and Detective Cooper—or BadAss as she called him, among other things—definitely wasn’t happening in this lifetime.

  Lexi and Dr. Rivers…that probably wasn’t happening either, but it was a little more in the realm of possibility.

  My shift at The Java Joint had flown by, as it always did, with the usual mix of locals and tourists. The eclectic coffee shop did an amazing business, especially after expanding the seating area that looked more like the inside of a genie bottle than a coffee house and adding frozen yogurt to the already incredible menu of free-trade coffee and handmade concoctions. From open to close, there was rarely time to chill, except my mid-evening break, when Lexi sometimes stopped by after she got off work at the art studio a few blocks away.

  “Definitely Cooper,” I said, playing along. The thought made me laugh. Talk about spontaneous combustion. He probably wasn’t more than twenty-five or six, but he was all structure and discipline, a total play-by-the-rules kind of guy. He was about as close to a marine as you could be without actually being one.

  Lexi, on the other hand, didn’t believe in rules. Or if she did, she didn’t believe they applied to her. Even as a little girl on the playground, she always did exactly and only what she wanted.

  That’s what happened when your parents had more money than they could spend in ten lifetimes.

  Now her smile was slow, knowing. “Liar,” she said. “You were so far away, you have no idea what I was talking about.”

  I shrugged, drawing my tea to my mouth for a long, slow, stalling sip.

  “Something happen after group?” she asked.

  It was weird hanging out with her again. Once, a long time ago, we’d played together a lot. Our moms had been college roommates. But then Lexi went off to private school, and I stayed public, and we’d quickly gone different directions.

  Funny that almost dying brought us back together.

  Lexi didn’t talk about the night she was found unconscious in her bathtub, but the more time I spent with her, the more I thought Zoe was right about the pills Lexi had taken, and whether she’d wanted to die—or create drama.

  Where Alexis Abbott went—or any of the Abbotts, really—drama followed.

  “I saw Josh.” The words just kinda shot out of me, leaving all the implications unsaid. But Lexi knew. Dr. Rivers had pulled enough crap out of me in Group for her and Zoe to know seeing Josh was like taking a knife to my chest and slicing clear to the bone.

  I’d always thought of Lexi as one of those float-through-life-without-taking-anything-too-seriously-or-making-any-connection-too-deep kind of people. She was like the stunningly gorgeous house on the hill that no one ever got to see inside. But she put down her mocha and, frowning, met my eyes with her own, as always, perfectly made-up and flawlessly lined.

  “And?” she asked.

  Everything played through me, as it had been doing since I walked away. The jolt of seeing him. The sound of his voice. The feel of his touch. The memories of the night of the accident and all the nights before. The shock of how badly I’d wanted to feel—

  No. I didn’t want to feel anything, not from Josh. Not anymore.

  “And…I really wish my parents would let me go to Santa Fe. I don’t want to be here this summer, not if he is.”

  “So you’re going to let him run you out of town?”

  I winced. “I’m not running,” I said for the five hundredth time. “It’s called moving on.”

  “You don’t need to leave town to move on. You can do that right here.”

  I looked away, toward the front window. The cheerfully painted slogan—We’ll Perk You Up!—blurred.

  “Emily,” Lexi said firmly. “If you really want Josh to leave you alone, all you have to do is show him that he no longer matters.”

  Outside, dusk fell softly, the lights of Pearl Street replacing that of the fading sun. Tourists no longer jammed the sidewalks. In a few hours, a local musician would arrive with his guitar, and the regulars would gather to listen.

  For now, it was one of my favorite times of day, the in between.

  “Find someone else,” Lexi was saying. “Not forever, maybe not even for long. Just long enough for Josh to see that you really have moved on.”

  I flicked my gaze back to her. “Find someone else.” She made it sound so easy, like I could just stroll into the nearest boyfriend store or login to the latest and greatest hookup app, and pick out the perfect new guy, ready and waiting just for me.

  “There’s got to be someone,” she said. “Someone you like…someone you think is hot. Someone like…”

  I followed her gaze around the coffee shop, the aging hippies with coffees in one hand and their phones in the other, past the eccentric grandfather-looking author who came in every evening for exactly two hours with his laptop, the college girls in yoga pants, the young family I’d never seen before, on toward the back corner...

  The strangest little zap went through me the second I saw him sitting at the small round table, like he did almost every evening at this time, with his long legs stretched in front of him as he read a business magazine.

  “He sure looks like someone to me,” Lexi murmured.

  All by itself, my pulse quickened.

  “And from the look on your face—”

  I jerked, shooting her a will-you-shut-up look. “I babysit for him,” I blurted.

  Her smile widened. Her eyes sparkled. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought she’d just put the most delectable piece of chocolate in the world into her mouth, and was totally savoring the flavor.

  “Trust me,” she said, smiling. “I know who he is.”

  She made it sound like everyone did.

  Which was very possible.

  Boulder wasn’t that big of a town, and Coach Mitch Grimes wasn’t the kind of man who went unnoticed. In addition to teaching history and coaching cross country and football, he was extremely visible within the community and a well-known local athlete.

  At over six-foot-four, he was the kind of man people noticed.

  “And here you said there was no one,” Lexi said, eyeing me. “Girl, what are you waiting for? You’ve got the perfect, most amazing candidate sitting right there.”

  I felt myself go very, very still.

  “Don’t tell me you haven’t thought about it—”

  I looked away, back toward the windows—but saw him, there, too.

  Saw him look up, look across the coffee shop.

  Toward me.

  Through the glass, our eyes met.

  And for a moment it was all I could do to so much as breathe.

&
nbsp; “All those nights alone at his house? How could you not think about him? Isn’t that every girl’s fantasy? Older? Experienced? I bet he could teach you things Josh doesn’t even know.”

  “Lexi!” I said, twisting back toward her. “Stop it. He was my cross country coach—my teacher.”

  She grinned. “Was,” she said, as if the fact it was past tense made a huge, monumental difference. “Did you ever go into his bedroom?” she asked, completely ignoring me. “When he wasn’t there? Did you ever climb onto his bed—”

  The big four-poster one, king size—

  “—and imagine him there with you?”

  —so high off the ground I needed a step stool—

  “You have, haven’t you?” she said, laughing. “I can totally see it in your eyes.”

  I blinked, erasing whatever it was she saw—and whatever it was I remembered. “He’s married.” At least, technically. Truth be told, I hadn’t seen Jillian in months.

  “Then she’s clearly not doing it for him anymore,” Lexi said, “or he wouldn’t look at you the way he does.”

  That got me. I jerked back toward her, the strangest rush buzzing through me. “What are you talking about?”

  She just kept grinning at me, like we were schoolgirls again, talking about brushing hands with the cute new boy—not hooking up with the hot coach.

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe the fact he stops by here almost every evening?”

  He did. That was true. And something inside me always jumped when he strode in. “A lot of people do, including you—and Detective Cooper,” I pointed out.

  A quick little flash went through her eyes. “But neither of us sit around and watch you the way he does.”

  Automatically I glanced back over—

  His eyes were deep-set and narrow, a rich brown, I knew, and trained directly on me. He smiled, slow, razor sharp, like he was reaching across the shop and touching me ever so softly…

  Trying not to squirm, I smiled back.

  “You see?” Lexi said. “There you go—the solution to your problem. There’s no better way to solve the Josh situation—fling with the hot coach.”