by Lisa Suzanne
Table of Contents
one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten
eleven
twelve
thirteen
fourteen
fifteen
sixteen
seventeen
eighteen
nineteen
twenty
twenty-one
twenty-two
twenty-three
twenty-four
epilogue
CLEAN BREAK
A Little Like Destiny Book Three
©2017 Lisa Suzanne
All rights reserved. In accordance with the US Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and sharing of any part of this book without the permission of the publisher or author constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except where permitted by law and except for excerpts used in reviews. If you would like to use any words from this book other than for review purposes, prior written permission must be obtained from the publisher.
Published in the United States of America by Books by LS, LLC.
This book is a work of fiction. Any similarities to real people, living or dead, is purely coincidental. All characters and events in this work are figments of the author’s imagination.
Content Editing by It’s Your Story Content Editing
Proofreading by Proofreading by Katie
Cover Design by CT Cover Creations
Cover Photograph by Eric Battershell
Cover Model: Mike Chabot
Reese Brady needs a clean break from the family she destroyed and the brothers who shattered her heart. When an ex attempts to rekindle an old romance, she basks in his familiarity and friendship until the night he surprises her with tickets to see her favorite band.
Everything spirals out of control when she receives a desperate call from the man she never thought she’d hear from again. Will Reese get the clean break she seeks, or will she be forced back into the center of everything she’s trying to escape?
author links
Web
Newsletter
Facebook
Reader Group
Twitter
Instagram
Pinterest
Goodreads
Google+
Amazon
books by Lisa Suzanne
A LITTLE LIKE DESTINY
ONLY EVER YOU
CLEAN BREAK
CONFLICTED
CLICKBAIT
STALEMATE
OUTWAIT
NOT JUST ANOTHER ROMANCE NOVEL
VINTAGE VOLUME ONE
VINTAGE VOLUME TWO
HOW HE REALLY FEELS (HE FEELS, BOOK 1)
WHAT HE REALLY FEELS (HE FEELS, BOOK 2)
SINCE HE REALLY FEELS (HE FEELS, BOOK 3)
THE HE FEELS TRILOGY BOX SET
SEPARATION ANXIETY
SIDE EFFECTS
SECOND OPINION
dedication
To the two boys who have given me my happily ever after.
table of contents
one
two
three
four
five
six
seven
eight
nine
ten
eleven
twelve
thirteen
fourteen
fifteen
sixteen
seventeen
eighteen
nineteen
twenty
twenty-one
twenty-two
twenty-three
twenty-four
epilogue
one
“What are you doing here?” Mark asks. I almost stand up to see who’s there, but I realize the couch is hiding me. If it’s Brian, I don’t want him to know I’ve been up here with his brother.
“Looking for you.” Brian’s voice cuts through the night, and my heart races.
“Why?”
I hear a laugh, and I can picture Brian’s cocky smile. “I think it’s time we had a talk.”
Mark steps around the couch without looking down at me, without drawing attention to the fact that I’m here.
“About what?” Mark asks.
“You know what,” Brian mutters.
I freeze on the couch as I strain to hear what they’re saying without making a sound. I’m terrified Brian’s going to step around the couch and find me here. He can’t find out about Mark and me, not this way—especially not if I want to try to fix things between us.
“Are you drunk?” Mark asks.
There’s a beat of silence and I remember Mark telling me that Brian tends to make bad decisions when he drinks.
“Yeah. So?” There’s a short pause and some rustling, then Brian says, "Did you think I wouldn't find out?”
“Find out what?” Mark asks.
“About the two of you fucking each other behind my back.”
My heart stops as an icy fear filters through my veins.
He knows.
I consider getting up from the spot where I sit on the couch. Brian already knows about Mark and me. I might as well stop hiding now, both literally and figuratively. It’s over with Mark, anyway.
Mark doesn’t deny anything, though he doesn’t admit to it, either. Instead, he takes a chance by tossing out an accusation. “You don’t want to marry Reese.”
“No, I don’t.” Brian laughs, and it’s a snide, vicious sound I’ve never heard from him before. “But it’s worth it to see you suffer. You should’ve seen your dumb ass in the backseat of the car when I brought it up.”
No, I don’t. His words grate on my mind and reverberate through my entire being. I start to vibrate with confusion as it seeps into my pores.
“You know what’s the best part of all this?” Brian asks, slurring on the s sounds in his words.
“What’s that?”
“Your voice on replay from that night in my head. This girl’s different.” His voice goes up a few octaves and drips with sarcasm. “Tonight meant something to me. Blah-de-fucking-blah.” Brian laughs, and the sound is harsh and grating. Mean.
“Is that supposed to be me?” Mark asks.
“It’s you acting like a pussy the night you met her.”
My heart races. Mark told Brian about me?
“You remembered her?” Mark asks.
“Of course I did. You think I’m gonna forget about the girl my brother said has the potential to change the course of his life? I ran into her the next morning when she was getting off the elevator.”
“And that was it?”
“Well, no. I had to do some handiwork with the principal of her school to make sure Reese would be the one who came begging for a donation. A little research goes a long way, though, and I snagged her pretty easily after that. Throw a little cash around, and they drop right to their knees, eh?” He pauses, and his voice is nasty when he speaks again. “I learned that from my big brother.”
A wave of nausea washes over me. I feel like I might be sick right here on the couch as I listen to this garbage, as my heart fills with hatred for the man who was just talking to me about marriage a few hours ago.
“Destiny dropped her right into my lap,” Brian says, using the code word Mark and I share
, “and I’m not talking about the same Destiny whose G-string I was sticking dollar bills into last weekend.”
“You went to a strip club last weekend?”
Brian grates out another harsh laugh. “Every weekend I’m out of town. It’s a business expense.”
My chest tightens and my breathing labors as tears prick behind my eyes. I shouldn’t feel spurned after cheating on him with Mark, but his words cut into my ribs with a sharpness that nauseates me.
“What the hell is wrong with you?” Mark asks.
“It’s sweet. Revenge, I mean. It tastes good. Almost as good as Reese’s cunt.”
“Why’d you go after her if you knew I wanted more than one night?” Mark’s voice is broken.
“Let’s use our fucking heads here, big brother.”
It’s quiet for a beat. “Kendra,” Mark murmurs.
“Bingo.”
I hear someone blow out a breath.
“You're fucking sick,” Mark says.
I can picture Brian’s cocky smirk, but neither of them speaks for a minute.
“Why are you telling me this now?” Mark asks.
“It’s time to end the charade. With what happened to Pops, I realized life is short. I don’t want to waste time anymore, though she is a sweet fuck. I did what I needed to. I got my revenge. It’s time to move on. You can have her if you still want her.” It’s quiet for a beat, then Brian asks, “You tapped that bareback yet?”
“Fuck you,” Mark spits out.
“She rode me bare and she felt like a fucking velvet piece of heaven. You should try it sometime.”
The sound of a sack of potatoes falling to the ground greets my ears, and I can’t take it anymore. I stand up and turn around to see what’s going on.
Brian is on the ground, completely defenseless and obviously drunk as Mark straddles his waist and pummels him, punching his jaw with one fist and his nose with the other. Brian’s reflexes are slowed from the alcohol.
I’ve never seen an actual fight in person—even fights on television give me anxiety—but this isn’t much of a fight. It’s a defenseless man who’s had far too much to drink getting bashed by a man who bears a grudge.
Fresh blood glints in the moonlight on Brian’s face, and a new wave of nausea passes over me.
Mark sees me frozen in place on the other side of the couch. I should run over there, grab his arms, stop him from hurting his brother further. There will be ramifications to this—of that I’m sure. But I don’t know how to stop him, and I don’t know if I want to. From my perspective, Brian deserves worse than a few hits to the face.
Mark’s eyes are full of raw anger, but when they meet mine, they refocus and soften. He pauses in his pursuit of beating the shit out of his brother.
“This one’s for you,” Mark whispers, then he backhands his brother across the face, leading with his knuckles. Brian spits out a mouthful of blood as Mark stands, opens the door, and walks down the stairs leading back to his penthouse.
two
Soft moaning greets my ears, and I stand stock still as I stare at the door Mark just disappeared through. Brian groans softly, and I’m faced with a decision—another in a long string of them. Each one I’ve made lately seems to be the wrong one, and I’m certain whatever I do this time won’t yield a different result.
Do I help the man bleeding from the face all over the rooftop?
Or do I go back down to the man who just beat the shit out of his brother in some convoluted attempt to defend my honor?
My heart longs for Mark, needs to talk to him about everything that just happened, wants to make sure he’s okay after losing his grandfather, his brother, and me—all in very different ways and all in the span of a few hours.
I’m so fraught with confusion that the thought enters my mind that maybe he didn’t lose me in that equation.
But the girl from Sevens...the pictures he admitted were real. The words he said about how I’m better off without him.
Those take up the forefront of my mind. And then my brain registers that the man on the ground moaning in drunken pain probably requires medical attention.
Despite the confession Brian just made to his brother that he never loved me, that he only pursued a relationship with me because he wanted revenge on his brother, I can’t just leave a man bleeding all over the ground. My conscience won’t allow it even if I believe he got what he deserved.
Deep down, though, I can’t truly believe what he said to his brother was true. I refuse to believe he’s so bent on revenge that he’d use me in such an evil way for such a long time. He’s related to Mark and Lizzie, and they’re good people—there must be some good somewhere inside him.
He’s drunk. He’s hurting—his grandfather died and his girlfriend cheated on him with his brother. He said things he’ll regret in the morning—we all might’ve.
I take my time dialing my phone for emergency services. It’s hard to feel bad for Brian when I’m battling my own internal rage over his words.
“Nine-one-one, what’s your emergency?”
My immediate instinct is to protect Mark. “I found a man badly beaten. He needs medical help.”
“Is he breathing?”
“Yes.”
“Is he conscious?”
I glance down at the drunk man moaning on the ground. “Yes.”
“Can you give me an address and a callback number?”
I give the dispatcher the information, and then she asks the one question I’m not real sure how to answer.
“What suite number?”
I can’t say we’re on the roof. Despite the confusion clouding my head, one thing is clear. Mark is the only tenant with access, and he’ll immediately be brought in for questioning. That’ll be all over the news in seconds.
“He’s, um...down near the front entrance.” I’ll figure out a way to get him there before they arrive.
“What happened?”
“Uh,” I say, stalling as I form a lie. “I don’t know.”
“An ambulance is on its way.” She asks more questions, but I’m trying to figure out how the hell to get him off this roof. He’s still conscious, but he’s definitely drunk and there’s blood everywhere as it pours out of his nose and from his lip. I get off the phone and glance around.
Part of me wants to go get Mark and tell him to clean up his own damn mess, but he shouldn’t. He’s got too much to lose and there’s too much at stake for him to get involved, especially now that I’ve called the paramedics.
“Brian,” I say. He groans. I step over toward him. “Brian?” I repeat. I nudge him a little with my foot, leery to get too close to the blood pooling around him.
I hate seeing him like this. This is the man I thought I was in love with, the man I thought owned my heart, the one I started picturing a future with. This is the man I thought was the secure, safe, logical choice. Yet here he lies on the ground, suddenly not at all the man I thought he was, and despite everything that’s happened, my heart breaks a little more.
I kneel beside him. He looks worse up close than he did from a few feet away, and I fight the nausea I feel at the sight of all this blood glistening in the moonlight way too close to me.
“Can you stand up?” I ask, keeping my voice soft. “I’m gonna get you some help, but I need you to stand up. I need you to help me.”
He grunts out some unintelligible sound. I pull on his arm, but I think he might’ve passed out. I’m not sure if it’s from the alcohol or from the beating he just got. I look around desperately, hopeful there might be something up here that can help me but sure there isn’t as my heart races.
I yank on his arm some more. If I can drag him over to the elevator, I can get him downstairs and off this godforsaken rooftop.
I pull on his arm as hard as I can, but he barely budges. He’s deadweight and I don’t have the strength to move him.
I text Mark because I don’t know what else to do, who else to contact, where else to turn.
<
br /> Me: I need to get him off the roof. I need your help.
I wait all of three seconds before I realize he’s not going to respond. Of course he won’t. He’s not just pissed at his brother for what he did—he’s hurting because of everything that went down today, and the way he sees it, Brian got exactly what he deserved.
Protecting Mark right now is the least I can do.
Lizzie.
Her name pops into my head as the answer. She’s the only person I can think to call.
“Reese?” she answers.
“Lizzie, I need your help.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Mark beat the shit out of Brian and we’re on Mark’s roof. Brian’s drunk and passed out and I called an ambulance and I don’t know how to get him off the roof.”
“Jesus Christ,” she mutters. “When did you call the ambulance?”
“Just now.”
“Okay, listen carefully. I’ll call Vinny. Stay out of it. Go down to Mark’s condo right now. You shouldn’t be there when the ambulance shows.”
“Why not?”
“We’re wasting time. I need to call Vinny.”
She cuts the call and I stand there wondering what the hell just happened. I can’t just leave him here all alone. Who knows how much he had to drink? Who knows the extent of his injuries? He needs someone with him. As much as I hate him for using me—and keeping Mark and me apart—he’s still a human being, and my sympathy wins.
I stay with him until my phone rings.
I glance at the screen before I answer. “Lizzie, what’s going on?”
“Vinny was down in Mark’s lobby. He’s on his way up.”
“Thank you.”
“I’m serious, Reese. Don’t go to the hospital. Get out of there. Let Vinny handle it.”
Why? I want to scream the single word, but I’m desperate for a solution to this huge problem. “As soon as he gets up here, I’ll go back to Mark’s place.”
“Is he okay?”
“Brian? I think so. He’s bleeding a lot and smells like a bar, but I think he’ll be okay.”