Broken and Beautiful Read online

  “The woods are lovely, dark and deep,” I say, slipping the ring onto her finger. “But I have promises to keep. And miles to go before I sleep.”

  Her eyes shine a brilliant amber hue in the sunlight. They might be unconventional wedding vows, but they’re ours. It was Frost who said, All poems are love poems.

  She slides a matching band onto my finger and says, “And miles to go before I sleep.”

  I’ve waited long enough.

  I drag her into my arms and press my lips to hers. It’s like being able to breathe again after hours underwater. I drink in her taste, her feel, even her tears. I lick deep into her mouth, making promises with my tongue. Things I’ll do to her body tonight. I promise myself heart and soul, but even more than that—I promise this body, I give it to her keeping, to her happiness, willing it to keep her safe through the woods.

  * * *

  Thank you so much for reading MATING THEORY.

  There are also many characters in this book who have their own story!

  •Christopher and Harper. Read SURVIVAL OF THE RICHEST >

  •Hugo and Bea. Read ESCORT now >

  •Blue and Hannah. Read BETTER WHEN IT HURTS >

  •Anders (the doctor)’s book. Read THE BISHOP >

  •Damon and Penny, who own the Den. Read THE KING >

  And don’t miss the sexy virgin auction romance THE PAWN with Gabriel and Avery set in Tanglewood. There’s one way to save our house, one thing I have left of value—my body. Download THE PAWN now!

  For a complete listing of Skye Warren books, visit her at:

  www.skyewarren.com/books

  Rebel Hearts

  Lili Valente

  Present Day

  Samantha

  “And thus the heart will break,

  yet brokenly live on.”

  -Lord Byron

  We’re not going to make it.

  We’re not going to fucking make it.

  I pace back and forth across the flowered carpet in front of Gate 11B, fighting the urge to scream as the minutes tick by and the Croatia based flight crew takes their sweet time getting the doors to the Jetway open. Danny is less than fifty feet away, but he might as well be at ten thousand feet. I can’t get to him, he can’t get out, and we’re about ten minutes from missing our last chance to get out of Maui before it’s too late.

  The plane to Auckland, New Zealand leaves in twenty-five minutes. They’ve almost finished boarding. Every time my pacing takes me closer to Gate 7, I can see the line of people shuffling past the flight attendant dwindling.

  Twelve people…nine…seven…

  I squeeze my fingers into a fist and press it hard to my lips, afraid I might actually scream in the middle of the international terminal if I don’t.

  Panic dumps into my bloodstream and for a moment all I can hear is the blood rushing in my ears and the desperate thud thud thud of my heart thrashing in my chest. My ribs contract, my lungs seize up, and the urge to run becomes almost unbearable.

  Dad and Penelope think I’m just picking up Danny at the airport, but if Alec calls while I’m gone they might start to suspect something. If they take a second to glance in my closet, they’ll know I’ve packed for an epic journey, not a forty-minute drive to Kahului. They could come looking for me, force me to go home with them tonight, and put me on a plane back to California tomorrow.

  My stepbrother’s future hangs in the balance. Penny never believed he was guilty and she’ll do anything to prove it, even feed me to the wolves. Penny loves me, but not as much as she loves her son. Not even seven years of being the best and brightest blended family on the island can change that.

  I glance at my watch. It’s three thirty in Los Angeles. Two hours past my one-thirty appointment time with Detective Spanuth. I’m betting Alec knows I’ve missed it by now, and I know he wasn’t kidding when he said he’d tell our parents the truth if I didn’t come clean about the subpoena and everything else.

  I don’t think he’s called his mom yet, but it’s only a matter of time. He needed me to keep that meeting, and prove he isn’t responsible for what happened to Deidre Jones. If the police believe my version of events, Alec’s buddies might still go to jail, but Alec believes unveiling my secret is going to make everything all right. He thinks, once the beans are spilled, the lawyers will be able to prove this was all some big misunderstanding, and the boys are blameless.

  I’m the one who started the rumor, after all. I’m the one who hurt that girl.

  Innocent girl, whose only sin was looking too much like me.

  I close my eyes, swallow hard against the nausea making my stomach heave, and force Deidre’s face from my mind. If I could go back in time and take it back, I’d like to believe I would. I’d like to believe I’d do the right thing, but if I look deep into my heart…

  My heart….

  I’m not sure I have a heart anymore. It feels like there’s nothing at the core of me except fear, pain, and hate. I hate Alec and his friends and I hate myself. And when a person is this full of hate, maybe there’s no room for anything else.

  When I booked this trip late last night—hiding under the covers in my room like I was a ten year old reading after lights out—I was certain all I needed was distance to make everything all right. Just distance and Danny, and I could be the person I used to be. I could put the past five months behind me and move on.

  I am rotting from the inside, hanging on to my sanity by a fraying thread, and so sad it feels like I’ll never smile a real smile again, but Danny always knows what to say to talk me back from the edge. In his arms, with his love wrapped around me, muffling the chaos of the world, I was sure I’d be able to feel good again.

  Or at least okay.

  But maybe I was wrong. Maybe this time I’m too broken for anyone to put the pieces back together again.

  No sooner is the thought through my head than the door to the Jetway opens. Two businessmen in rumpled suits are the first out, then a family with a little girl asleep in her father’s arms. Danny is right behind them, his familiar overstuffed North Face backpack dangling from one hand.

  His long, dark blond hair is pulled back in a tangled ponytail, his green eyes look bruised from lack of sleep, and he has his patchy, golden version of five o’clock shadow, but I’ve never seen anyone more beautiful than he is to me at this moment. The second our eyes meet and he smiles that crooked grin, I know it’s not too late. It’s not too late for me, and it’s not too late for Danny and me to have the fresh start I’ve been praying for since I woke up New Year’s Day.

  I still love him. I love him so much that, by the time he crosses the carpet in three long steps and scoops me up in one strong arm, tears of relief are streaming down my face.

  “Thank God,” I mumble against his neck. He smells so good. So safe.

  “Damn, I’m glad you’re here. I’ve missed you so much,” he whispers into my hair, hugging me so tight my feet leave the floor and my breasts flatten against his thickly muscled chest.

  By the time we were seventeen, Danny had five inches on me, but it’s only in the past two years that he’s become the kind of man whose chest turns heads when we walk down the beach. If someone had told me when I was thirteen and still capable of pinning Danny to the sand when we wrestled that one day he would have fifty pounds of pure muscle on me, I would have laughed.

  When we first started dating, Danny and I were both five-three and I outweighed him by ten pounds, no matter how vehemently he insisted he weighed in at one forty. He was the runt of our junior high school, even shorter and skinnier than the two genius kids who’d skipped a grade.

  But he isn’t a runt anymore. Working as an extreme-sports tour guide has made him strong, strong enough to hold me in one arm and his giant backpack in the other. Hopefully, strong enough to slay the demons that have kept me awake for forty-eight hours as I ran from the nightmare my life in Los Angeles has become. If we can just get on that plane and on our way to the opposite hem
isphere, everything might still be all right.

  “Come on,” I say, pressing a swift kiss to his scruffy cheek before pushing on his chest. “We’ve got to hurry, or we’ll miss our flight.”

  His eyebrows lift as he sets me down. “Where are we going?”

  “New Zealand.” I take his hand and pull him toward the gate, feeling like my heart is going to explode with relief when I see the door to the Jetway still open. “I’ve booked rooms for our first four days,” I say over my shoulder. “After that, we’ll see where the adventure takes us.”

  “I thought we had to wait until after you graduated,” Danny says, even as he picks up his pace, hurrying toward Gate 7 beside me. “Did your dad change his mind?”

  “No, I changed my mind,” I say. “I have some savings and I decided it was past time to use it.”

  “Sam, wait.” Danny slows and his hand squirms free of mine. “I can’t let you do this. The tickets must have cost thousands of dollars, and I told you, I’m cash poor until the business—”

  “I don’t care,” I say, snatching his hand and holding on tight. “You can pay me back later. Or never, I don’t care. I just need to do this. Now. With you.”

  “Why?” His tired eyes narrow as he searches my face. “What’s going on Sam? Why haven’t you returned my calls? I swear, I was starting to think…”

  “Thinking is overrated,” I say, throat tightening as panic threatens to take over again. We have to get on that plane. Only when we’re strapped into our seats in row twenty-two will I finally be able to take a breath without feeling like it might be my last.

  “I don’t know,” Danny says, hurt clear in his voice. “I knew you were okay because your dad said he’d talked to you, but I—”

  “I’m so sorry.” I cut him off before he can say what I know he’s thinking. I can’t stand to hear him say he thought I was going to end it, or think about how close I came to telling him I never wanted to see him again. “I should have answered the phone, I’ve just been…really upset.”

  “I thought I was the person you talked to when you were upset,” he says, the furrow between his brows deepening. “Or has something changed?”

  “Nothing’s changed,” I lie, forcing a brittle smile.

  I reach up, smoothing away the line between his brows the way I always do, even that simple touch reminding me that we are us. We are Sam and Danny and together we’re bigger and stronger than anything chasing me.

  We have to be, or I’ve emptied my savings and flushed my future down the toilet for nothing.

  “I’ve been doing a lot of hard thinking,” I continue, holding his troubled gaze. “About college and my family and all the compromises I’ve made so that other people can be happy…”

  I swallow past the lump rising in my throat. “I’m just so tired of it. I’m tired of waiting for my life to start. That’s why I want to go on this trip. With you, my favorite person.”

  He sighs, “Sam, you know I’ve been dying to—”

  “Passengers Samantha Collins and Daniel Cooney.” The female voice on the loudspeaker turns the middle of Danny’s last name into an “ew” sound, making him raise an eyebrow. “Please report to gate seven for immediate boarding, the doors are about to close.”

  “Please!” I capture Danny’s hand in both of mine and squeeze. “Please, just get on this plane with me. We can talk about anything you want once we’re on board. We’ll have ten hours in the air to catch up on everything we’ve missed since Christmas.”

  The skin around Danny’s eyes relaxes, but the uncertainty in them remains. “I don’t know, Sam. Do you really think this is the right time?”

  “Yes! Absolutely, yes!” I fight to keep the tears from my eyes. If I start crying again, Danny’s going to know something a lot more serious than a missed flight is to blame.

  He knows me too well, something I should have considered when I put this crazy plan into motion. We can run halfway around the world, but if I can’t leave the past behind, it won’t matter how far I am from the scene of the crime. Danny will know something’s wrong, and he’ll get to the truth, sooner or later. The past few months have proven I can hold up under incredible amounts of stress, but I’ve never been able to hold up under the gentle weight of his eyes.

  Danny shakes his head. “After this week, and the way you’ve been on the phone the past few months…”

  He bites his lip for a moment before pushing on. “Things don’t feel the same, and it’s more than the time or distance. It feels like you’re hiding something from me.”

  I’m hiding everything.

  I’m hiding a secret so ugly it could destroy every dream we’ve had since we were too young to realize how lucky we were to have found each other.

  Or how hard it would be to keep love alive in a world like this one.

  Aloud, I say, “We don’t have time for the No Bullshit game, but I promise you, if you get on that plane, you won’t be sorry. I’ll make you remember why you fell in love with me, Danny, I promise.”

  “You don’t have to remind me.” He reaches out with both hands, squeezing my arms below the capped sleeves of my gray tee shirt. “I still love you so much.” He pulls in a rough breath and continues in a softer voice, “I just need to know you still love me.”

  “I do.” I fight the tears pushing at the backs of my eyes. “And I don’t want to lose you, okay? I can’t lose you.”

  “You’re not going to lose me,” he says. “Come on, Sam. You know me. I’m with you. For keeps.”

  “Then come with me.” I cup his scruffy cheeks and stand on tiptoe, bringing our faces closer together. “Let’s have that adventure we’ve been dreaming about forever.”

  Before he can respond, I press my lips to his.

  It’s our first kiss since Christmas, and my first kiss since my life started falling apart. I don’t expect to feel anything—I’m so desperate to get on the plane I’m certain there’s no room on my neural pathways for anything but panic—but the moment his warm lips brush mine, something deep inside me flutters.

  Nearly forgotten wings beat, sending dust puffing into the air, reminding me that there is still life in the locked rooms of my heart. Parts of me have been covered with blankets and secreted away, but they haven’t been destroyed. With Danny’s help, there might be hope for me yet, and even the possibility of hope is enough to make me get down on my knees and beg him to run away with me if that’s the only way to convince him.

  But thankfully, it seems a kiss—and hearing our names called over the loudspeaker again, this time accompanied by the warning that this would be our “final call”—is all it takes to win Danny over.

  “Okay,” he says, threading his fingers through mine. “But I’ll probably have the world’s worst case of jet lag by the time we get there.”

  “It’s okay.” My heart lifts as we hurry toward the gate. “I booked a room near the airport for our first night. We can crash as soon as we get there. Just draw the curtains and sleep for twenty-four hours straight if we need to.”

  He groans. “That sounds like heaven. I didn’t sleep at all on the last flight. The guy next to me was snoring loud enough to shake the entire row of seats.”

  “You can sleep in my lap if you want.” I hand our tickets to the agent at the gate, a sour-faced woman who looks out of place in the cheery Hawaiian Airlines uniform. “I’m too wired to sleep.”

  “I don’t want to sleep yet,” Danny says. “We should talk first.”

  “All the overhead bins are full,” the agent says, casting a pointed look at Danny’s giant weathered backpack, distracting from the anxious look I’m sure just flickered across my face. “You’re going to have to check that at the end of the Jetway.”

  While Danny fills out the bright orange luggage tag and gets it strapped to his pack, I give myself a mental pep talk worthy of my toughest volleyball coach back in high school. It’s time to leave all the shit in the locker room and get out onto the court.

  I
f I carry my misery and pain onto the plane, I’m going to ruin my new life before it gets started. There’s no room for that junk in my head anymore. I’m going to leave it right here, at the door to the Jetway, a pile of psychic waste I’m better off without. Regret isn’t going to change the past, and I can’t survive for much longer carrying the weight of two ruined lives on my shoulders.

  It may make me a bad person or a sociopath or something worse, but I’m officially erasing the past five months—and anyone or anything that reminds me of them—from my timeline. From here on out, it’s Danny and me against the world and I will do whatever I have to do to protect our second chance.

  Our last chance, because if this fails, I know there won’t be enough of me left to try again.

  “Ready?” Danny shoulders his pack and turns to me with a smile.

  “Ready.” I take his hand and follow him down the Jetway without a single look back over my shoulder.

  I’m leaving the past behind and I swear on everything good in the world that I will never, ever look back.

  Danny

  “You gave me the key to your heart, my love,

  then why did you make me knock?”

  -Lord Byron

  I’m determined to stay awake and keep talking to Sam until I can get to the bottom of whatever’s been going on, but by the time the plane reaches cruising altitude, my eyelids feel like they’re made of granite slabs. The week before I left Croatia, I led three mountain bike tours and four overnight rock-climbing expeditions, wedging in as much work as I could before I headed to Maui to take a month off before opening another branch of Extreme Adventures on the island.