Less Broken

by Eve R. Hart

  Even if that meant I’d never walk again.

  The possibility that Perry would actually kill me if I didn’t meet his demands was terrifying. And real. I wouldn’t have put it past him, not now that I’d seen who he really was.

  I didn’t want that to happen either, but I tried not to think about it.

  I wasn’t ready to die.

  I couldn’t.

  Sure, my life was pretty much going nowhere and I was a nobody, but I had more than myself to think about.

  Like my sister.

  I had to stay alive to look out for her.

  I was so lost at what to do.

  I’d been trying to come up with a plan for a week now and so far I had nothing.

  Not one single idea of how I could get out of this situation.

  Not only did Perry know about Reed, he knew about my sister as well. And not to mention my crappy home life that I’d left behind. The same one I’d selfishly left my sister in.

  God, I was such a crappy person.

  I just had no clue how to do it all.

  No idea how to fix this situation.

  No idea how to save my sister.

  No idea how to keep my relationship with Reed.

  I was starting to crack under the pressure, but refused to give up just yet.

  Somehow, I’d managed to shower, dress, and head out of my apartment. First, the coffee shop to get my head on straight. Then class.

  I hoped I wouldn’t have another one of those days where I faded out again. I’d tried to pay attention, but the truth was, the last few days I hadn’t caught much of the information that my professors had doled out.

  I was never going to make it though this first semester, let alone four whole years.

  I owed it to Reed to give it my best. He had pushed too hard to give me this gift and here I was blowing it.

  I’d tried to explain to him that I wasn’t college material but there was something in his expression that told me he wanted to give me something. It took months before I finally agreed and took his offer to pay for everything at whatever college I chose. I hadn’t ever thought higher education was in my future. Sure, my grades were decent enough that I probably could have gotten at least a partial scholarship somewhere, but I hadn’t even tried to apply for any.

  So, here I was. Miserable but trying my best not to be.

  I entered through the front door of the coffee shop a few minutes later, got my drink, and found a table in the back corner. I was barely aware of my surroundings, which wasn’t smart and I knew it. However, I was feeling so sluggish that it was all I could do to keep my sandpaper-feeling eyes open.

  Maybe I should have risked the caffeine this morning. Or at least asked Marci to make it half-caf. A little pick-me-up would have gone a long way, but it was too late now.

  On autopilot, I pulled out my Macbook, a gift from Reed. Just like the furnished apartment with the rent paid in full for the first six months. All things I didn’t ask for and left me feeling guilty for taking advantage of.

  I felt even worse now that I’d sold most of the furniture. All that I had left was the bedroom set and the small table with two matching chairs. It wasn’t that I hadn’t liked all of the things even if they weren’t exactly my style.

  I nearly snorted out loud at that.

  My style? I didn’t even have a style. Was using what you could find for cheap a style? Well, if it was then that was mine.

  So basically, it had nothing to do with how the furniture had looked. I’d sold the stuff for the money. It was silly of me to think that I could come up with a sum good enough to get Perry off my back. But of course it wasn’t enough for him. His target was Reed, and more importantly, Reed’s deep pockets.

  He’d made that point clear with the punch to my face and a few to my stomach a week ago.

  I snapped out of my thoughts and looked around. How long had I been lost in my head, staring blankly at the screen in front of me? Had anyone noticed?

  I met a set of brown eyes with golden specks as I looked to my left. I nearly gasped but couldn’t even do that right. So there I was coughing and sputtering because I’d ended up inhaling some spit.

  Smooth. Real Smooth, Theon.

  And of course mystery man noticed because he was already looking at me. He reached over and slapped my back a few times, which did nothing to calm the sharp coughs that didn’t want to stop. My throat burned and so did my lungs. If they would just quit working that might end up for the better.

  “You alright there?” he asked and if I wasn’t mistaken, there was a hint of laughter behind his words.

  “Fine,” I croaked out, my body finally feeling like I had it under control.

  I reached for my coffee but stopped before taking a sip. The last thing I needed was to have it go down the wrong pipe and start the fit all over again.

  “You sure?”

  “Yes,” I replied as I set my cup back down. My hand was shaking and there was no way that it had gone unnoticed.

  A moment of silence ticked by. I kept my focus on my cup even though I could still feel his eyes on me. Finally I broke, sliding my gaze to the side to see for myself that he was still looking at me.

  His face was stern, not a hint of amusement or friendliness. His jaw hard-set almost like he was pissed off. The stubble that covered the lower half of his face was thick and dark. For a second, I wondered what it would feel like against my fingertips.

  And it was that thought that had the heat rising to my cheeks.

  “Hi,” he said and I flinched. His tone wasn’t nice but I got the feeling like he hadn’t meant to come off as cold. Like maybe he wasn’t good with people but he was trying. Something I understood all too well.

  It was all I could do not to look around to make sure he was actually talking to me. It would just be my luck that Marci happened to be standing behind me right at this very moment.

  “Um, hi,” I said and then froze.

  What should I say next? Should I introduce myself? Why was he even talking to me?

  And not to mention the fact that I was still a little hesitant about this man. He seemed to come out of nowhere and now I was seeing him way too often. I didn’t easily trust, especially not now.

  That feeling of panic led me to jumping up out of my seat and frantically trying to stuff everything back in my bag as quickly as my shaky hands would allow.

  “I have to go,” I mumbled out, eyes down as I reached for my coffee.

  I could have sworn I felt his hand brush up against me but I had to be mistaken. I didn’t look behind me to find out.

  Then I took off, fleeing the coffee shop and the angry, unfriendly man that despite the unease in my belly, I wanted to talk to some more.

  I had just reached the lush lawn outside of the campus library when I swore I heard someone call out my name. I didn’t know anyone so I kept my fast pace, hoping to shake them somehow in all this wide-open space.

  “Theon,” the deep voice said right behind me, then I felt a hand on my upper arm.

  I spun around and this god-awful squeal-shriek hybrid noise fell out of my mouth as I laid eyes on my sexy mysterious stranger.

  Then my body went stiff, my knees somehow seeming to turn into jelly, and I went down fast. Landing on my back, coffee now splashed all over me, I could do nothing but look up at the sky.

  Could this day get any worse?

  I shouldn’t have even thought that because I knew that only invited the bad stuff in.

  Too late now.

  I blinked, the brightness of the sun, well, blinding at the moment.

  Then a shadow fell over my vision and a second later, I was able to focus on his face.

  “You alright?” he asked. That same hint of amusement in his voice that I’d heard back at the coffee shop was there.

  “Oh, yeah. Just fine,” I breathed out in a pant. My heart was still beating wildly in my chest. “Simply enjoying the view of the sky. This position is the best for cloud gazing,
less strain on the neck, ya know? Oh, look.” I attempted to raise my hand and point, but nothing happened with my arm. “A turtle. He has two heads, so I guess that’s kind of weird. Do you see it?”

  There was no turtle. I never had been one of those people that could see images in the clouds. And as much as I wished I could stop my mouth from vomiting up stuff, I couldn’t seem to zip it. I felt the embarrassing heat crawling up my neck and I was sure my face was red as a tomato by the time my rambling was done.

  But then I heard this rumble fill the air. It wasn’t long until that rumble turned into a laugh.

  Not a hint of it.

  Not enough to have me wondering if he might have found amusement in the situation.

  No, it was a full-on laugh that seemed to roll out of him all the way from the depth of his belly.

  And instead of feeling embarrassed, all I could think was that I never wanted that sound to end.

  7

  Cade

  I hadn’t expected this from him at all.

  I was rarely caught off guard.

  But Theon had managed to do just that.

  I was laughing and it felt good.

  Never in a million years would I have pictured this whole thing turning out this way.

  When I’d swiped his wallet from his back pocket, all I had been thinking was it would give me a chance to go after him. It would give me an excuse to talk to him and if I was lucky, get closer to him.

  I waited a moment after he left before I went after him in hopes that it wouldn’t seem so obvious.

  I expected him to turn around when I called his name but instead, he seemed to tense up even more and hurried his pace. Why was he so scared? Something about it didn’t sit right with me. Add in the bruising that I’d seen fading on his face and I knew there was more going on with him. I just didn’t have the first clue as to what.

  When I grabbed him in order to slow him down, he made a noise that was awful. I didn’t have the first clue how to describe it. The sound was unexpected and caught me off guard so that when he went down, I couldn’t even react quickly enough to stop it.

  And, damn, did he go down. It was like his whole body locked up and gave out all at the same time.

  The move reminded me of those fainting goats.

  If I hadn’t been so worried that he’d hurt himself, it would have been funny.

  But then he shocked the shit out of me with his little ramble. There was no stopping the laugh that tumbled out of my mouth.

  He was a mess. Still sprawled out on the grass, unmoving. His shirt was now splattered with coffee and I was sure there were grass stains all over his back.

  I actually felt really bad.

  “Well,” he said as he sat up. “I’m going to go now. Thanks for the… uh, scare.”

  I reached out to help him to his feet.

  I saw the way his body paused for a long second and the hesitation in his eyes before he finally accepted my hand. I wondered what the hell that was all about.

  “Wait,” he said, his feet shuffling back a few steps like he suddenly had a need to put some distance between us. “How’d you know my name?”

  All the color drained from his face as his eyes darted around wildly.

  “Tell Perry I’m working on it. He doesn’t need to send someone to keep an eye on me or scare the daylights out of me.”

  “What?” I asked as I tried to process what he’d just said. I didn’t know what he was talking about but I needed to. But the fear in his eyes was too great and I had to put him at ease as quickly as possible. “You left your wallet at the coffee shop.”

  Hearing that, he instinctively reached around and patted his back pocket.

  I held the thin leather holder out to him, the open part in his direction which clearly showed his license so he understood how I knew his name. Or at least that was what I needed him to think.

  The instant it all clicked, he visibly relaxed.

  “Oh,” he said with a sheepish look on his face as he reached out and pulled his wallet from my fingers. “Sorry. Thanks.”

  “No problem,” I said and tried to smile. I wasn’t sure how it came off, it had been a long time since I’d used those muscles. “I’m Cade, by the way.”

  “Theon,” he said reaching out to shake my hand. He rolled his eyes and I knew it was more at himself than at me. “But I guess you figured that out already.”

  He let out this nervous laugh under his breath and it was cute the way his cheeks heated.

  Cute?

  Fuck no.

  This whole thing had just turned into a fucking mess.

  I was here to check on him. Get information so I could call in and report to Reed that he was fine, living it up in college on Reed’s dollar like the little shit I pictured him to be. The plan was to stay in the background and watch him. Not wait for him in plain view. Not have him literally run into me. Not take the seat right beside him at the coffee shop.

  And certainly not seek him out to make contact and give him my name.

  “Yep,” he mumbled, head down as he turned away from me.

  He took two steps then stopped. I could see his body sag as he let out a soft sigh.

  “I didn’t want to go to class today anyway,” he said I guessed to himself.

  Then he spun around on his heels, facing me once again.

  I didn’t move, afraid that if I did, it would send him scurrying.

  He shuffled around me but didn’t look up. I let him get a few steps and then I was moving before my brain could even process what I was doing. He chanced a glance over his shoulder and that was when I saw the catastrophe that was about to happen.

  “Theon, watch out!” I called out just as he was about to walk into a tree. This guy was kind of a disaster.

  Luckily, my words stopped him at the last minute.

  “Maybe I should walk with you, make sure you get wherever you’re going in one piece,” I joked. “Are you sure you didn’t hit your head too hard? Maybe you have a concussion.”

  I knew he didn’t but I was trying to get him to laugh the whole thing off. It wasn’t hard to tell that he was embarrassed.

  “That’s okay. I’m just going to go home. I think I’ve had enough excitement for one day,” he said, but hadn’t taken a step in any direction. I hung there just on the outer rim of his peripheral. “Um, you know what? Yeah, if you want to walk with me, that might not be such a bad idea.”

  He cocked his head to the side and sent me a tiny upturn of his lips.

  Small as that smile might have been, it felt huge to me.

  As we walked in silence for a few moments, I noticed him taking quick peeks at me out of the corner of his eye. It was hard to keep my eyes forward and I might have broken and glanced back at him a time or two.

  “So,” he said finally cutting through the silence. “What are you doing here? I mean, I saw you on campus that one time, but you weren’t carrying anything. So I would assume you aren’t taking any classes. Unless you have one of those photographic memories. But I don’t think that’s it. You’re a little… older than most everyone here but you don’t really fit the professor role. So my only other guess is that you have a fetish for college students.”

  I turned my head and slowly raised a brow at him.

  “Oh, wait.” His face was beet red now. “I didn’t mean to say that last part out loud.”

  He was more observant than I planned for him to be. Or perhaps it was that I seemed to botch this whole thing up from the get-go. Either way, I found myself impressed with his observation skills and at a loss for a cover.

  There was only one thing to do in this situation.

  Redirect and distract.

  “So, you like it here?” I asked him.

  “Yeah, sure.” It wasn’t hard to tell that he didn’t. “Okay, so I hate it. My brother— well, half-brother— he insisted that I go to college and basically wouldn’t let me turn him down. Which, I tried to do so many times it wasn’t even funny.
Anyway, things are sort of complicated with him and I don’t want to let him down. I mean, he’s done all this stuff for me and I don’t want to seem ungrateful…”

  “But you hate it?”

  “Yeah.” He breathed the word out like it was a relief to finally admit it to someone. “Ugh, I sound like a whiny brat, I know. I’m just not good with people, or learning things, or anything that involves me being out in the world.”

  “I get it,” I told him honestly. After all, I had spent the last six months avoiding anything out in the real world.

  Thinking about it brought me back to myself. I shouldn’t be here enjoying this time with him. I shouldn’t allow myself to feel even the illusion of normal. I didn’t deserve any of it. Not his smile. Or his rambling nervousness. Or his curious glances in my direction that I suspected were partially so he could check me out.

  I didn’t deserve a damn thing because I shouldn’t even be here. I should be dead, buried right alongside my brothers.

  Why did I have to survive? Why did I have to be the only one?

  “Hey, are you okay?” Theon asked softly and I felt his hand gently settle on my arm.

  I shook the thoughts from my head and tried to play it cool. I wasn’t sure how well I pulled it off though.

  “Yeah,” I grunted out.

  “We’re here,” he told me and it was then that I noticed we were standing outside the building to his apartment. “This is me. Second floor.” He pointed up the stairs that were visible through the glass pane on the door. “Well, I should go.”

  Still facing me, he looked like he was going to try and make it up the three little stairs that led to the front door to the building. I saw it coming even before it happened. His foot slipped off as he attempted to climb up the first step. He stumbled, his backpack shifting and causing him to overcorrect. Luckily, he was able to keep himself upright. He sent me a small smile and it was easy to see the pink that instantly lit up his cheeks.

  “Made it in one piece,” he said with humor in his voice. The little nervous smile he tried to force out showed how he truly felt right now.