Honest Love (Broken Hearts duet Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Honest Love

  Broken Hearts duet #1

  Lauren K. McKellar

  Copyright © 2018 by Lauren K. McKellar

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Cover design: Be Designs

  www.be-designs.com.au

  Contents

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  THANK YOU

  BITTER TRUTH: A PREVIEW

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Also by Lauren K. McKellar

  Dedication

  For anyone who has suffered unjustly at the hand of another.

  May you find peace.

  May they find hell.

  Chapter 1

  May 12, 2016

  Loss.

  It ate at my soul. It dwelled in my blood, pumped through my veins like a life-sustaining fluid. And some days, hurt really was the only thing keeping me going.

  Other days, it was the whiskey.

  “Honey, can you please take out the—ah!” Bella squealed as I grabbed her around the waist, lifting her up in the air. Our lips met, and I melted into the kiss. I could never get sick of kissing her. Never get sick of tasting her.

  “Cam, you need to put me down.” She giggled, planting her hands on my shoulders.

  “No,” I teased, holding her tighter. “I’ll never let you go, Bella.”

  She tucked a strand of long red hair behind her ear, her green eyes softening. “I’ll never let you go, either.”

  “You all right, bud?” Someone slapped my shoulder—Mack. Of course.

  “Fine,” I grunted. I weighed the tumbler in my palm, knocked the contents back. “Another.”

  “Cam, I think you’ve had en—”

  “Another,” I growled.

  My best friend held up his hands. “I didn’t ask you out so you could drink away my bar tab. I know you’re still in pain, but you need to move on. Go out, see—”

  “Move on?” I stumbled off my chair, grabbing the table for support. “I need to move on?”

  Mack’s shoulders heaved as he shook his head. “Not literally, Cam. I just meant you can’t stay in your apartment forever. Aside from work, you haven’t left the building in six months.”

  “Don’t need to.” The apartment was where she was. Where I felt her the most.

  I placed her gently on the ground, her long, white dress tickling my ankles. “I couldn’t imagine doing this with anyone but you. You know that, right?”

  She nodded once, demure, then picked up the pregnancy test again, shaking her head as she stared at it. “I just can’t believe it, Cam. It’s a miracle.”

  “Cam?”

  I blinked, shaking the memory from my mind. Damn it. “Yeah?”

  “I was sayin’ that you need to get out more, leave the building.”

  “And I was sayin’ I don’t.”

  Hands roaming up her body, my finger tracing over that soft yet easy smile. “I’ll never let you go.”

  “But this isn’t right. It’s not you. Do you think this is what Bella would want—”

  “Don’t. Please …” Pain stabbed at my insides. God, I missed her. I missed her with a physical pain, one that hollowed out my chest, my heart.

  Mack didn’t know what Bella would want. She would want to be here, with me. To be preparing to give birth to our child.

  She needed me. I needed her.

  That was why I needed to do everything in my power to remember. Even if remembering hurt. Even if remembering meant I needed the numbing power of alcohol to take away the vicious pain.

  “Look, I gotta go.” Alone. If I was alone, I could focus on those memories.

  I turned and headed to the exit.

  “Cam, wait!”

  “No.” My eyes struggled to focus on him.

  His gentle smile fell. His voice softened. “I’ll walk you home.”

  “I’m thirty-two years old, Mack. I can make a few blocks by myself.” I sighed, exhausted. “Just … just, please, give me some space.”

  “Okay.” He held his hands up in absolution. “Okay.”

  I staggered onto the street, the chill of the late autumn air creeping into my bones. The yellow glow of speeding vehicles blurred into a long, never-ending light.

  “I’ll never let you go.”

  I rubbed my thumb against the ring on my finger. Today was the day. The day he would have been born. The day our baby …

  And then I saw her.

  Red hair curling down her back.

  A white dress, billowing in the breeze.

  She was about ten feet ahead with two other women I didn’t know.

  My chest tightened. My throat constricted.

  I grabbed at the wall of the building next to me, but my hand couldn’t make purchase. It slammed against the ground, my body’s weight behind it, but I didn’t feel the sting, didn’t feel the pain.

  Bella.

  “Wait!” I pushed to my feet, darting between the shadows of people, my eyes on the red hair moving so far in front. “Please!”

  I ran, my breath coming shorter. Too much whiskey. Too much love—both were the culprits and I didn’t give a damn. Because I didn’t know how, and I didn’t know why, but she was here. My Bella. She’d come back.

  My feet pounded against the pavement, my soles slapping on the concrete. People turned to look, but for once, I didn’t care. Let them look. I wanted to laugh, a crazy, maniacal laugh. Let them look all they want.

  Bella.

  It was her.

  I was sure of it.

  It was her—

  And then she turned around.

  And for one glorious second, it was her. The woman I loved.

  The woman I saw every time I closed my eyes, and sometimes when they were open, too.

  The woman who’d own my heart forever.

  “Hey,” she said.

  Her voice—it wasn’t right.

  I shook my head. No.

  “Hey.” She tried again, but her smile was big. Too big.

  Bella never smiled like that.

  Nausea churned in my gut.

  “Aren’t you that guy from the—”

  Bile raced up my throat. I doubled over, clutching at my waist, and emptied the contents of my stomach into the gut
ter. Acid burnt the back of my tongue, and I coughed and spluttered, wiping at my mouth.

  It wasn’t Bella.

  No matter how many times I thought I’d seen her during the last six months, it was never Bella.

  And as I stared at my own vomit, wanting her to be there, needing her to be there, I wished that just once I could pretend she was. That for one night, I could hold her in my arms, stroke her long, red hair, and tell her everything would be all right.

  “You guys go ahead,” the redhead told her friends. She placed a cool hand on my back, bending to my level. “Are you okay?”

  “No,” I croaked. “I was s’posed to be a father. Today.” I would have met my baby. Our baby.

  She gave a smaller smile this time, and damn, she looked like my wife. “My name’s Giselle.”

  “I’m Cam.” I straightened, the world sliding as I overbalanced, then corrected myself. “I have to go …”

  “No.” She linked her hand in mine. “Let me take care of you.”

  And I shouldn’t have. But I was so tired of fighting, of blocking out the past, that I let her lead me to her hotel room, let her pour me another drink, let her take off my clothes. I let her take advantage of me while I took advantage of her, because sometimes, as humans, we needed to pretend. We needed to pretend that everything would all be okay, even when we knew that there was no way in hell it could be.

  “We’re so incredibly lucky, babe.” I pressed a kiss to the soft skin of Bella’s neck.

  “The luckiest.” She smiled up at me, tossing her hair out of her eyes. “The luckiest people in the world.”

  Only it turned out that we weren’t.

  Because seven weeks after that positive pregnancy test, Bella died. Bella let go.

  It was just me holding on after that

  Chapter 2

  October 20, 2017

  Dear Bella,

  It’s been so long—nearly two years since you died.

  And you know what the fucked up thing is?

  The fucked up thing is that they said the pain would stop. They said I’d stop missing you so goddamn much—but I haven’t.

  I miss you when I get home from work and you’re not here.

  I miss you when something funny happens, and I want to tell you—but you can no longer laugh.

  I miss you when I think of your body in that white bikini, when want calls to me … and I let it come. I welcome the torture, let it swamp my body like a murky ocean, one without relief.

  Only that’s a goddamn lie.

  A little less than eighteen months ago, I wasn’t strong enough to withstand my need. I let that want consume me.

  I made a mistake. A mistake I only realised the true extent of today.

  Bile churned in my throat. I stopped writing, staring out at the marina from the table on the balcony. Water lapped at the bows of the boats resting in the water. A helicopter clapped its blades overhead, taking a pilot in from the sea. I breathed deep. Relax.

  The ocean was always able to calm me like that. And after the phone call I’d received earlier today, I sure needed calming.

  The woman I was with—for just one short moment, I could pretend she was you. And I missed you, and that doesn’t make it right, but it was the day our baby was supposed to be born and I just—I made a mistake. I slept with her, even though all I knew about her was the fact that her hair reminded me of yours, that her smile was kind of the same.

  I hate myself for that.

  I’ve hated myself for that for the last seventeen and a half months, but not as much as I do now.

  She called today. She’s called before, asking for money, threatening to go to the press and tell them how I called your name while we—

  My hand stopped. While we’d what? Fucked? That was all it had been, but in my mind, she’d been my dead wife. I’d made love to a ghost.

  She’s blackmailed me ever since. Used the media’s fascination with me as an excuse to get coin for whatever the hell she wants.

  But now, she doesn’t want money.

  Now, she wants me to look after her child for three long months while she goes to jail for drug possession.

  Sounds simple, right? I should just say no. Or I should let her go to the local papers, the breakfast television shows and tell them all how I betrayed the memory of my wife, the memory of our son, with someone who turned out to be little more than a hooker, using that one night to rob me again and again and again.

  Only, that wasn’t the only bombshell Giselle dropped.

  I took a deep breath, glancing inside past the dining table at the bottle on the bottom shelf of the bookcase. Whiskey. Just one drink …

  No. I didn’t do that anymore. Not since back then.

  Back then, I’d used alcohol to numb my pain. I’d locked myself in my apartment, unwilling to see the light of day.

  Now, I treated my body like a temple. Life was too short to fuck it up.

  But somehow, I’d managed to do that anyway.

  When Giselle had asked me to look after her daughter, I’d laughed. “Giselle, be serious. How could you trust me with your child? You don’t even know me.” Was she out of her mind?

  “I know enough.” Giselle’s voice wavered. “I know you have money. You’re kind. And you’re a good … good role model.”

  I was sure she’d meant to stop at money. “Huh.”

  “Look, she’s just an infant, Cameron. And the only other person in my life I trust is Rita, and—”

  “Quit saying I’m in your life.”

  “And she’s a stripper. She works nights. She can’t look after a kid.”

  “Giselle, get off whatever crack you’ve been smoking and leave me the hell alone.” I couldn’t believe she was trying to pull this crap with me again. “I don’t owe you a goddamn thing. And even if I did, my apartment isn’t really the place for a small child.”

  “It was going to be.” Her voice was quiet.

  Quiet, but it hit me louder than the roar of a lion.

  It was going to be.

  Now, as I looked at the letter, that familiar dread rolled in my gut once more.

  What if this is your chance to make up for it all?

  It was a quiet voice, but the words shouted their message, loud and clear.

  I didn’t know that I could ignore them.

  I didn’t know that I could let this chance go.

  My pen hovered over the paper. How was I going to write this? How could I put this new hell into words?

  I have long-service leave due. Somehow, Giselle knew that. Or, maybe she didn’t. Maybe she just thought I’d figure something out.

  I don’t want to say yes, Bella. Not when if things were right, we’d have a kid who was nearly one and a half by now. You’d be pushing him on the swing. I’d be throwing him in the air as we played in the rock pools at the beach. We’d be one of those picture-perfect families you see in photo frames at Target.

  But then Giselle told me the kicker. The real guts of her argument.

  My phone buzzed from its spot on the counter.

  I jumped, the sound too loud in the quiet of the room.

  As I stood to get it, I balled up the piece of paper and threw it in the trashcan, just like I did every letter I tried to write my wife.

  The therapist had said it would be good for me, but I always seemed to find myself stuck. I always struggled to find words just like some days, I struggled to find air to breathe.

  I checked the name on the phone before picking it up. Mack.

  “Hey.”

  “Hey, man. How you doing after … what happened?” He’d been with me when Giselle had called. He knew what she’d had to say.

  “You know …” I shrugged, even though he couldn’t see.

  “Because I have an idea,” he said. “Meet me out the front of your joint in half an hour.”

  The call ended, and I placed the phone back on the counter, headed to the shower.

  That letter never left my mind.
/>   Not as I towelled myself off.

  Not as I tugged a shirt over my head.

  Not as I grabbed my wallet and keys, shoving them in my pockets before walking out the door.

  Because this time, I knew what I should have written next—I just didn’t have the balls to do it. I didn’t have the guts to put pen to paper and tell the great love of my life why I was considering Giselle’s bizarre request.

  Because I’m the baby’s father.

  “You’re not going to regret this.”

  I glanced across the car to Mack. A wicked grin lit his round face, his red beard glinting in the afternoon sun. “You think?”

  “Mate, I am sure of it.” He slapped the wheel as the vehicle began a steep descent down a hill. Houses towered on either side of us, red tiles poking out amongst spots of green, and in front—ocean. Ocean, blue and glorious and forever, stretching across the horizon. It felt like we were driving right into it.

  When we reached the beach, Mack turned left and then left again, taking us down a street that meandered this way and that with no seeming rhyme or reason until he pulled up out front of a small cottage. A wooden verandah stretched across the front of whitewashed walls and blue-framed windows.

  “Wow.” I shook my head. “It’s—”

  “Exactly the same as when we were kids, right?” Mack clapped my shoulder as the car shuddered to a stop. “Mum and Dad said the holiday renters all take pretty good care of it.”

  “Clearly.” I opened the door and got out of the car. The fresh sea breeze reached my nose, and I breathed it in. Summers at the beach with Mack and his family—they’d been some of the best of my life.