by Mara Lynne
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Copyright © 2017 by Mara Lynne
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Shouldn’t Have Series
Shouldn’t Have Gone
By: Mara Lynne
ISBN: 978-1-68030-902-7
©MaraLynne2017
Table of contents
Chapter 1 – Clearing
Chapter 2 – The Encounter
Chapter 3 –Warning
Chapter 4 – Taking Over
Chapter 5 – The Night of the Engagement
Chapter 6 – Uncalled Sacrifice
Chapter 7 – The Road to Peril
Chapter 8 – A Look into the Past
Chapter 9 – Tongue-tied
Chapter 10 –Selfless No More
Chapter 11 – Intercepted
Chapter 12 – In Search of the Little Boys
Chapter 13 – His Duty
Chapter 14 - Magdalene
Chapter 15 – The Gain
Chapter 16 –Opening the Lid
Chapter 17 – The Valley
Chapter 18 – By the Fire
Chapter 19 – The Request
Chapter 20 – Telling Him
Chapter 21 – Blood Versus Water
Chapter 22 –Breaking the Borders
Chapter 23 –Red Herring
Chapter 24 –Blue
Chapter 25 – Clouds
Chapter 26 – Sweet Coffee
Chapter 27 – What She Wants
Chapter 28 – Genetic Folly
Chapter 29 – The Fisherman
Chapter 30 - Becoming
Chapter 31–All is Fair in Love and War
Chapter 32 – Strawberry and Champagne
Chapter 33 – Breaking Softly
Chapter 34 – Entrapped
Chapter 35 – Licked Wounds
Chapter 36 – His Aim
Chapter 37 – A Dead Man’s Body
Chapter 38 – Love Stoned
Chapter 39 –The Choice
Chapter 40 – The Closing of a Door and an Opening of a Window
Chapter 41 – The Opened Window
Chapter 42 – Eighteenth Floor
Chapter 43 – Once Lost
Chapter 44 – Not A Regret
Chapter 45 – Shouldn’t Have Gone
Epilogue
Shouldn’t Have Dealt
To my siblings, who do not even read my books.
And to my mom and dad, who should not read this book.
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Chapter 1 – Clearing
His gaze is directed into the clearing, into the vast empty garden with nothing but a lonely water fountain. His gaze sees more than that, though. His mind takes him farther than what his eyes can see.
No. He was not thinking of the timeless beauty of cathedrals or stone citadels.
Not the vibrant, colorful parades on the streets of the small town where he had stayed.
And definitely not the mouthwatering sultriness of the brown-haired woman who kept him company and provided him momentary carnal bliss. Though the thought of Christina, the green-eyed vixen who frequently warmed his bed, plasters
a smile on his face, it is not enough to take him away from his lingering thoughts.
She is an excellent distraction.
But it is not her.
Absolutely not.
There is something more profound than this superficial diversion.
Something that goes deeper than the reason he is staring out to the clearing like an empty vessel.
It is something that is thoughtlessly done; something done out of pure impulse and sheer confidence.
He came here because of a deeper cause.
Then he recalls what Will said to him yesterday morning. He called him to meet at a small bar in town. He no longer wondered why Will would opt to drink his way to oblivion at such an early hour of the day. He had known the man his entire life, and alcohol is his battery, his lifeline.
“We’re moving out tonight,” Will had said to him as he drew his chair close to his. “You’re very much welcome to join, Fawn.” Will knew that Damien has lost his place in Princeton, and that was why he was inviting him to his adventures westward.
“I have far more important things to do,” he answered Will.
“Like this.” With his pointer finger, he slid a photo against the wooden bar towards him.
Damien’s eyes widened as he sees who was in the picture.
“Angel Grant, Hunter’s fiancé,” said Will. “Your future sister-in-law.”
His chest squeezed.
“Hunter’s got her. He owns her now. She’ll never be yours,” added Will.
He felt fury rose within him—from a tiny flame into a sea of inferno. Perhaps Will could be right this time. Perhaps this was the reason for his suppressed outburst.
“Stag’s winning. When he marries, he gets your fortune. You’ll be left with nothing.”
Will lit a stick of his cigar and breathed out until ringlets of smoke fill the space in front of him.
“And so the option left for me is to join you? Is that what you are suggesting, Will?”
“Apparently yes,” answered Will. “We can be great together. You and me! We could conquer the world!”
“I thought Hunter’s your best man.”
“Was. He was until his heart softened into clay. Hunter’s useless for me now.”
It is him he wants—he knew how Will’s brain works.
“Listen, Will.” He turned to his right to face the man who had been gulping all the toxic chemicals in his small stick. “I’m not leaving Princeton. Not even your promise of greatness can persuade me.”
Because in his mind, he wants more than what Will could offer.
The answer to that is the woman in th
e picture.
He heard Will laugh.
Then when he saw him narrow his eyes, he stopped.
“I completely understand your sentiments, my friend,” uttered Will. “I, for once, had fallen in love too, and I swear it was the most horrid tragedy that happened to me. I swear I’ll never let that curse take hold of me ever again. But the best way to forget about this witch”—his pocket knife, which he took out from his inner pocket, pierced right through the girl’s face—“is to join me. She’s not coming back to you.”
A sneer escaped Damien’s mouth.
Will noticed it, and he seemed to dislike it.
He cocked his head to the side and surveyed the man whom he thought was foolish enough to go after the woman who left him for his brother. This was not the Damien he knew. This was not what he expected to happen.
“Let me make some amendments, Damien,” he said after a short, meaningful sigh. “I’m okay with you staying behind. I’ll give you the peace you want to operate whatever plan you have in mind.”
“Plans of what, Will?”
Will shrugged his shoulders. “You can do better than that,” Will said.
Damien smirked.
“I am suddenly reminded of Hunter’s injury which nearly took his life away. When was that?”
“Seven years ago,” Damien replied, his smile fading away.
“Was it in Delaware? When we were…”
“Just get into what you want to say, Will!” he argued irately. “You don’t need to narrate the past.”
“Alright!” Will managed to hide his amusement, but that definitely annoyed the hell out of Damien. He went on. “I just thought you could do better than that, Damien.”
He instantly froze.
“Shoot Hunter right through his chest without missing his heart,” added Will. “I heard the bullet is still there.”
Instantly, he slammed his feet against the floor and rose in fury.
“I was just stating a fact, Damien.” Will defended. “It’s the easiest way to get your woman back!”
Kill Hunter.
It did cross his mind—several times.
And several times, he was tempted to do so.
Just by seeing how happy she is with him, made him want to strike his gun at him and end his brother’s life and his agony. No one will even know he did it. Hunter had a lot of enemies after all.
A warm tight embrace from his back shakes off his thoughts from the evil and darkness of murder. It is so warm yet foreign, new, and surprising. And yet he knows who he will see the moment he turns around.
It took him months to gain the courage to see her again.
And here she is, barely an inch away from him, embracing him tenderly like she means it.
His chest screams for her name. Right there, he wants to take her into his arms despite the truth that it could not be him in her mind. Angel does not know he has come back, and she is completely unaware of his sudden visit. She must have mistaken him for his brother.
He silently gnashes his teeth just thinking how her fondness for his brother has quickly grown deeper. How he wishes it is him she wants to see and embrace, that it is him in her mind and not his spiteful half-brother.
And so he turns on his heels, faking a smile—practiced and measured. He knows what he is doing, and he gets what he wants.
Angel turns as pale as the immaculate over-sized plain polo shirt she is wearing as she lays her eyes on him.
“Hi, Angel.” He makes sure his voice is firm and whole, though seeing her wearing Hunter’s shirt awakens a horrendous demon at the pit of his stomach.
Despite the fake smile, his mouth trembles with anger.
Hunter had just laid his hands on his Angel. Hunter took her innocence away. He took what is rightfully his! Angel is his! She belongs only to him!
“Damien…” she speaks of his name softly, and her voice mellows the churning rage inside him. His knees weaken under him.
Oh, how he longed to hear her call him!
The last time he heard her sweet voice was when she ran after him in the hospital lobby. It was sweet, yet filled with sorrow. How he deeply regretted that day when he chose to leave. She was there, calling for him, completely in love with him, and yet he chose to leave.
Now that he has come back, her heart belongs to someone else, more so he thought.
But it doesn’t hurt to believe that something is left in her heart for him. He knows that what they had before is real, and it doesn’t go easily like summer. He believes that Angel still loves him and that what she has with his brother is nothing but a diversion—like what he had in Spain with Christina. No matter how he tried to forget Angel, it’s still her. He knows it’s the same thing with her. Angel’s heart doesn’t forget easily.
It is hurt, but it never forgets.
Chapter 2 – The Encounter
Unquestioning.
Are they? she asks herself as she tries to bury her gaze through his impenetrable ones. And yet all she gets from him is an answer she longs not to see.
Yes, they look unaffected. They see through her, and she fears that her growing anxiety does not affect them.
Why am I even bothered?
His gray eyes bear coldness—arctic and painfully empty—and yet deep within her, she believes. She believes that those crystal colored gray eyes are just pretending to look at her with disgust and repugnance—sentiments she knows Damien could be fostering all the while. They both know that these feelings undoubtedly exist, sentiments that had already changed the best they had before it turned for the worst today.
Why is she bothered then?
Simply because he showed up at the wrong time, at the most unexpected instance of her life, in the wrong place. And for what? What is his reason for showing up now? These questions float in her head like a gel inside a half-filled cup of water, insoluble and will remain there until some miracle happens.
Does she prefer him to have never shown up at all?
Maybe.
Maybe that would be the best, for now, she thought.
Things are going right for once. She is this close to happiness. Her perfect happy ending is within reach. She is in love with Hunter, and the wounds in her heart are surprisingly catching up with the healing process. And yet here he comes, seeming to be well equipped to destroy what she has rebuilt for months.
Angel cannot help but think of Damien’s untimely return to be anything purely coincidental. She fears that the peace she has always wanted after the storm would be taken away from her all because he has come back.
He doesn’t even flinch although he has obviously noticed how pale she has turned the moment she realized it was not Hunter Stone she hugged. He was hard as a rock, impervious like a thick solid wall along the coast of an angry sea.
She feels her heart beating so fast and loud that her ears grow more sensitive to every tiny change inside her body. Her skin feels weirdly warm each time she thinks of their time together being alone in the dining area impossible to be interrupted. She doesn’t even think she could do anything other than stand there frozen like a stunned leprechaun.
“Damien?” Her voice croaks.
A boyish smile breaks out of his solid face.
“It wasn’t that hard to say my name, was it?” he says, still suppressing his response to a meager curious question. Not even a tinge of malice is in there to change her impression of him. The heart-fleeting smirk is gone now.
With her arms wrapped around her waist, she feels the hair on her legs stand as Damien’s sky-colored eyes travel from down there to her ashen face. He appears to have understood the implication of her appearance.
“Seems like the storm last night warmed your bed, Angel,” he says, his words piercing her heart like tons of sharp needles, leaving her flesh bleeding. She doesn’t exactly understand why she feels upset by Damien’s comment, but she knows the man is way too smart to not discern the one eighty degree change in her life. Alas, Damien is no longer part of it.
This, she makes herself to believe so.
But is it really gone?
Is Damien totally out of the picture now?
Is he not worth her attention anymore?
Why does his gaze still twist the insides of her stomach? Why does the sound of his voice rush fire through her veins and spine? Why does her head spin at the sight of him looking so gorgeously cold and distant in his white cotton shirt?
His looks did not change at all.
And, surprisingly, she realizes she had missed watching his gray eyes when she got used to staring into Hunter’s dark ones. She wonders, surprisingly, how she missed them. Perhaps because it has been over half a year since the last time she has seen them. Nonetheless, no amount of yearning could change the fact that she was deeply hurt by him, by his disinterest, his immaturity, or better yet his lack of care for her. Truth be told, she now believes it was only her who have loved.
A strong grasp around her hips steals her attention from Damien. When she turns to her right, a smiling man whom she had spent a wonderful night with generously kisses her on the cheek. A sense of lightening washes over him as Hunter caresses her face with his strong, sturdy hands. His arrival is just perfect. Angel thinks she would go crazy the longer she spends time with Damien, who’s nothing but a stranger now in her book.
“Good morning.” His voice feels like a feather caressing every fiber of her being, and she blushes when Hunter starts kissing her on the neck.
Angel notices Damien’s shadow move a step farther, and it was then that she realizes it is not the best time to succumb to pleasure when your ex-boyfriend is watching you.
She pulls back from Hunter, burning with embarrassment.
Hunter turns to his brother in a rather cool way like he is not surprised by his presence as how it usually does.
“I think you have met my fiancé,” Hunter tells Damien, who’s now raking his fingers through his chocolate brown waves. His hair’s starting to grow a bit, and they curl just perfectly nice at the back of his head.