The XOXO New Adult Collection: 16 Full Length New Adult Stories

by Brina Courtney

  “I missed you more,” he chuckled.

  His fingers locked in my hair, guiding my head back, and his mouth crushed mine. My head was dizzy from him lips moving with mine, our breath mingling and tongues exploring. Every inch of my being was on fire, wanting Cade like never before. I snaked my hands up and down his arms, finally looping them around his neck and digging my fingers into his skin. He groaned, pushing my body back until I was against the wall beside the entrance to my office. His hands explored, grasping my wrists and holding them tightly as he pressed his full, hard body completely against mine. Moaning, I leaned my head up, lips parted waiting for him.

  “You’re so gorgeous, Francesca,” he huskily muttered in my ear. Chills ran the length of my spine.

  “Cade, I think you’re even more handsome than you were when I last saw you,” I replied, hearing the desire oozing out of my voice.

  His lips found mine again, kissing me more gently this time, then leaned and locked his forehead to mine. “I have to ask you a favor,” he said, his expression gleeful.

  “Anything for you, Cade,” I replied, giving him a sexy grin.

  He pulled back, his face registering my words. “Those are my words,” he accused.

  “I stole them. What’s the favor?” I asked.

  He glanced me over, giving me a small wink, and dropped to one knee. My body began to shake, my heart beating in overdrive. His hand slipped into the breast pocket of his jacket, pulling out something I couldn’t quite see.

  “Francesca Taymon, the love of my life, you are more than I ever deserved and everything I hope to be. I can’t live without you, nor do I want to. I know being with me has never been easy, but I’m going to make it up to you. From this day on, I will be there for you, support you, help you, love you, and desire you. I need you to become my wife. I can’t stand the thought of not seeing you every night before I go to dream of you, or every morning before I start my day. I couldn’t have gotten through these past few months without you. I know how badly I’ve screwed up in the past and it helped me to become a better man. You make me a better man. You’re the most beautiful, wonderful, brilliant, and sexy woman I’ve ever come in contact with and I would be so honored if you would be my wife.”

  The tears fell freely from my eyes, my hands shaking in excitement. I couldn’t speak through my sobs, so I just nodded quickly over and over. He jumped to his feet, grabbing me and swinging me around. He planted kisses all over my face, then I slid to my feet, giving him a sly grin. Holding my left hand out, I watched in delight as he took out a very large, beautiful diamond ring. He slid it on my finger, his gaze penetrating my soul as he did.

  “I love you, Francesca,” he said, taking my lips in his. He kissed me until I was feverish and lightheaded, only stopping so we could catch our breath.

  “I love you, Cade,” I whispered, smiling at him widely. “I want to take you back to my place and do every naughty thing I can think of, but we have to get through this party first,” I groaned, rubbing my hands all over his hard chest.

  He sucked his breath in sharply, closing his eyes for a moment. “Anything for you, Francesca,” he moaned, pressing full, red lips to mine.

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  Entangled Souls and Anxious Hearts, the next books in the Scarred Hearts series, are available on ebook platforms.

  Breakdown

  by

  Amanda Lance

  Chapter 1

  On the day I went to die, I didn’t leave a note.

  Don’t get me wrong, I had written plenty. One rough draft after another found itself in the garbage; however, after a while I thought the entire ritual itself was cliché, basked in the glory of teenage angst. And being all of twenty years old now, I felt too old for the stereotypes of crying during sad songs and mulling over suicide notes.

  Still, I had made a last ditch effort to scribble something out. It too, however, ended up in the paper shredder. This time, it wasn’t just because I found a grammatical error in my drafts or even a few, for that matter. Ultimately, when it came down to it, I couldn’t find the right thing to say, the words to make my act sound justified without being too pathetic.

  I couldn’t find the right excuse.

  Maybe it also didn’t help that I knew there would be no one around to read it.

  In all fairness, I had gone to some decent lengths to make sure no one would even know I was gone—not for a while, anyway. It wasn’t exactly a rare occasion that Mom and Dad were out of town at the same time. Though they didn’t exactly make it a secret, either, that they both their planned work trips to avoid one another. But to have both of them gone on the same weekend was an ideal situation that didn’t occur often.

  It was already after midnight when I switched from my pajamas into my jeans and a light sweater. It seemed silly, but I went ahead and put on the wool peacoat Mom got me for Christmas. It was itchy and way too flamboyant for my taste, but that didn’t stop Mom from buying it for me anyway—or the furry boots that seemed to go with it. I thought they looked like they were made from a couple of Ewoks, but I put them on, too.

  Maybe that was my equivalent of a note—my way of apologizing.

  After I got changed, I pulled my hair up high, not bothering to smooth out the bumps or

  detangling the knots that came with it. Even before my hands were finished with the ponytail, my dark locks were a mess. But I didn’t care—or at least I didn’t want to care. I wasn’t shallow enough to think that it somehow still mattered—especially considering what I would look like when they found me. For an instant the ghoulish image made me smile. Looking in the mirror, I vaguely wondered if the pooled blood around my head could possibly make my hair any darker. Would my brown eyes glaze over after I was gone? Or pop out on impact? Certainly, an open casket would be out of the question.

  I glanced at the drawer of unopened make up Mom had gotten for me over the years and slammed it shut. Would they leave my room the same afterward? A shrine to show what good parents they were? Or would they transform it into something else as soon as the wake was over? Using the excuse that they needed to move on. My eyes moved to the corner without even thinking about it. Suddenly, it was incredibly easy to picture an elliptical machine there, a stack of unused yoga mats and dusty dumbbells in the spot where my bed now was. How long would they wait until they remodeled? A month? A year?

  I decided on the flight from the overpass on Port Elizabeth Street, surprised by how well the location turned out to work in my favor. Was it a sign that my plan fell so perfectly into place? Maybe not. But it sure as hell made it a lot easier to follow through with.

  The Port Elizabeth Street consisted of a single-lane overpass, with a busy four lane highway beneath it. While it wasn’t a pretty way to die, at least this way I was guaranteed a contingency plan. If somehow the 100-foot drop to the pavement didn’t kill me, I had to figure a passing vehicle going 80 miles an hour or so would.

  Since my tactical idea was to go head first, I made sure my driver’s license was secured in the pocket of my jeans before leaving home for the last time. I did this along with making sure my car was safely off the overpass—no sense in holding up traffic any more than necessary. Like having a piece of identification on me, I wanted to make things as easy as possible for everyone else. After all, just because I was going to die didn’t mean I had to ruin everyone else’s weekend.

  Just like Mom remodeling my previous living quarters, it was all too plain to see some

  coroner in the morgue trying to put my face back together while some poor intern filled out the Jane Doe paperwork. Meanwhile, traffic cops below and above would have to direct cars around blood splatter and skull pieces, while others waited for the tow to come for my Subaru. When a couple of state troopers solemnly knocked on the front door of my house, how long would they stand there before they realized
no one was home?

  I left my keys by one of my front tires and glanced up at the medical office. I was almost certain that they were closed on Sundays and probably only open for a few hours on Saturday, so if anybody thought anything of my car, it probably wouldn’t be until Monday morning. By then, Dad would be grabbing a ride home from the airport, and Mom would be checking out of her hotel. If everything and everyone stayed on schedule, they could find out about me together. And who knew? Maybe bonding over the “tragedy” would help their marriage—Christ knew that aspect of their life couldn’t get any worse. Maybe they could cry together. They could “reconnect” over the charity they’d start in my name, start having a weekly date night with the support group as the feature event...

  Despite the little jokes I made to myself, I walked slowly from my car to the overpass, kicking random pebbles at my feet until I was out of the parking lot and well down the street. I rounded the corner and felt the weight of my heavy ponytail shift back and forth. The only time I did stop was when I realized that I hadn’t thought to hesitate at all or even once reconsider my choice. I had wanted to die for so long that anything else was just a fictional possibility—an alternative ending in the DVD extras. Sure, I could think about other options all I wanted, watch a happy ending over and over in my head, but it would never be real—death, however, was as real as it gets.

  I looked back but couldn’t see the Subaru anymore. I had traveled too far to even see it with squinting eyes but didn’t feel as bad about it as I thought I might have when daydreaming about it originally. Instead, I felt nothing, no sadness like you always see in the movies or music videos but no relief like I had hoped, either. Alternatively, there was a weird sort of indifference that kept me even-keeled, apathetic to my own forthcoming demise. It was as if I weren’t even the one experiencing it—like I wasn’t even the one about to cause it.

  I watched while the road evolved from one of pavement to that of matted stone. Though there was a toll on the new road, the condition of the street that led up and past Old Port Elizabeth made sure almost no one used the elderly overpass anymore. Those who did were usually tourists who didn’t know better and ended up hitting a deer or bottoming out in a pothole for their trouble. How many times had Dad lectured me about taking that same road when I first got my license? How many times had I heard Mom curse about the dropped calls there?

  Once the gates of the overpass came into view I didn’t feel as indifferent as I had just a moment ago, invisible boulders found their way to my stomach and made me feel heavy. Right away, I noticed how my imaginary stomach rocks didn’t hurt exactly, just gave off this strange sensation of holding me down. I kept on walking, strangely encouraged by the combination of mass and indifference. The feeling in my stomach, however, did invite a memory of a gangster movie, where the feet of a snitch were plastered in cement before being dropped into an angry river. If it had been a happier memory, I might have smiled.

  Then, just like that, I wanted my last smile. I wanted to remember the last real smile I had smiled or at least the last occasion I had felt anything to smile about. Sure, there had been plenty of pretend smiles, the ones for Mom and Dad, and all the ones for customers at the bakery, a professor’s bad jokes... but when was the last time I had genuinely smiled for anything?

  I was still trying to think of it when a set of headlights passed. I didn’t know anything about cars, but I did recognize those techie LED-looking high beams that would have made me see black dots, had I been looking directly at them. And even though the traffic below was loud, I could still hear the soft engine of the car as it roared away.

  For the second time, I stopped, waiting until I was sure the car was out of sight and long gone before I finished walking out to the space just outside of the guardrails. Once there, I let my head dangle over the side while hanging on tight. Almost right away, the California winter winds blew the stray hairs to my lips. For an instant, I mused that if I went to pull the hair from my mouth, I could easily fall.

  No jumping required.

  I watched the traffic for a moment, counting the broken headlights and sports racks. Even on a Friday night—or Saturday morning, rather—most of the traffic on the freeway belonged to trucks and bus drivers. For the first time, it made me truly reconsider. There was something ghoulish about the idea of landing in front of a bus. Forget about ruining someone’s weekend—what if I mistimed my jump and landed in front of a school bus filled with a bunch of kids on their way back from a sporting event? Or some senior citizens on the way back to the nursing home? I’d never thought of myself as much of a humanitarian, but I didn’t want to be that person whose spine, dangling from a windshield, traumatized some poor little kid forever or gave an old lady a heart attack. I was hardly superstitious, but at this point, I couldn’t figure that gaining myself all that bad karma just before dying could be any good.

  I glanced at the sleeves of my coat. Maybe it would have been better if I had worn a lighter color—something white—or at least stuck a piece of reflective tape on my arm. If I was going to bet it all on the pavement then I could at least be gracious enough to consider the safety of everyone else—at a minimum I could make sure a semi driver wouldn’t have to rinse me out of his tires.

  I was still looking at my sleeves when the lights came back, shifting noticeably from high beams to low. Cursing, I stepped down from the side and snuck back under the guardrail as gracefully as I could. Pulling the hood up over my head, I started walking. If I pretended hard enough, maybe it would look like I had somewhere to be.

  Unfortunately, it didn’t work. And I cursed even louder in my head when the engine slowed down completely and the music that blared from within became clear, so close, the lyrics audible.

  “Excuse me?” a male voice asked

  I kept walking, deaf and blind to everything but my cause.

  This time, the voice was a little louder. “Uh—excuse me?”

  I stopped, blinked hard, and turned.

  The soft thundering of the engine belonged to a muscle car with a square front and low top. Even in the sliver of moon, the white paint gleamed enough that I had to look away from it, focusing instead on the face that looked at me from the driver’s side window.

  The face belonged to a younger guy with blond hair that fringed just by his ears. I saw right away that he had that intentionally-messy, bed-head look guys sometimes have that always makes me wonder if they do that on purpose or if they were just lazy and got lucky when it looked good. Either way, the driver with his well-cut face and prominent blue eyes radiated confidence, making it clear that he was aware of how attractive he was.

  At least I got to look at something beautiful before I died.

  “Do you know where McKinley Street is?”

  I shook my head. I did of course know; I had lived in Riverside my entire life and remembered the park there that had been a brief part of my childhood. Yet I was unnerved by the question more than I wanted to acknowledge. I hadn’t expected to talk to anybody in those last few minutes, and suddenly there was the slightest fear that the interruption would somehow mess up my concentration. I had to admit that I hadn’t thought out this aspect of the plan—what were the odds that someone would use this overpass? That they would stop to ask for directions?

  “Okay.” He tapped his wrist against the edge of the window pane, making little noises from the beaded and leather bracelets he wore. “Thanks anyway.”

  The driver shifted, and his blue eyes looked away from me, his brows narrowing in thought. But just as I figured he would speed away, he looked back at me at the last second.

  “Hey, are ah—are, you okay?”

  I nodded, still afraid to open my mouth. In my mind, I had just registered that he had an accent—his broad A and hard R making me guess somewhere between New York and New England.

  The driver smiled and scratched the back of his head. Though the heaviness in my stomach didn’t quite go away, the sight of his smile did something
else that felt unique to me, making me wonder if I should have taken an Alka Seltzer before I left.

  “Not much of a talker, huh?”

  I shook my head and bit my lip. If I start walking again, then he will keep driving. He will go away, and I can go back to the middle of the overpass, climb outside of the guardrail and do what I came here to do. I can be dead in no time if he just drives away...

  Unfortunately, though, I heard the distinct sound of a car door opening, prompting me to upgrade my speed from snail, to turtle—my body unwilling to work with me despite the possible danger. Who else but me would go to kill herself and get abducted by some Ted Bundy wannabe instead?

  Okay, so that wasn’t very likely. But the entire point of suicide was to end pain, not expose myself to more. And considering there wasn’t a single person in the world who knew where I was, my remaining spidey sense told me to be weary. I took exactly three steps in reverse, backing myself into the guardrail. I felt the cold metal through the denim of my jeans instantly—a small comfort, all things considered.

  “Are you sure you’re okay?” he called after me. “Do you need a ride or something?”

  I made myself open my mouth and speak, unsure if him thinking I was handicapped made him more or less likely to leave me alone. Swallowing hard, I turned to look over my shoulder. The lights of all those cars were practically calling to me, begging me to throw myself in front of them.

  “I’m f-fine—” Great, because that sounded convincing.

  The car door closed, and I heard footsteps behind me.

  “There isn’t a whole lot out here. Did you have a date go bad or something? I could take you back to your car—”

  “No. No. P-please—” I turned to face him, surprised by how quickly he had caught up with me. Going up there to make out? Why didn’t I think of that excuse? For that, I yelled at myself, that and for just then acknowledging how much taller he was than me, how much bigger. It made me realize that if he really wanted to, he could stop me from jumping or—just about anything else he wanted. “Please leave me alone.”