Beautifully Shattered (The Beautifully Series Book 1) (31 page)

She sets down her
notebook on the coffee table in front of her and I know she’s about
to get serious.

“Stop me if I’m
wrong. You never thought you would be behind the camera again because
it would remind you too much of your father. In a negative way,
correct?”

I nod, hating where
she’s going with this.

“You finally did when
Jax pushed you by buying you a new camera. It brought back good
memories, the memories that you refused to remember. Now you’re
taking pictures, even looking through your old photos and going
through your things from before the accident. The same things you
kept telling Logan to throw away. He never did and you always kept
those objects close to you.”

Avoiding her scrutiny,
I direct my attention to the window. She has a point, but I still
don’t want to be hearing this.

“Addie, swimming can
bring back happy memories, too. Just think about it.”

I continue to stare out
the window. “Swimming is different than taking pictures. Taking
pictures didn’t kill my family.” I lock gazes with her as I say
the last part.

She doesn’t say
anything at first. Then after a minute or two she says, “Neither
did swimming. A horrible accident killed your family that night. You
had no control over what happened, Adalynn.”

I jump out of my seat
and grab my purse, ready to leave.

“This is too much for
today. I have to go.”

I make my way to her
door but stop when she adds, “Addie I’m not going to apologize
for saying that. It’s the truth and you need to stop blaming
yourself. I understand why you need to leave, just think about
everything we discussed.”

When I get home, I need
to take my mind off everything before I lose it. It’s time for a
much needed run. Running always helps me when I feel like this. I can
just leave it all on the pavement. I opt out of running outside
because it’s too dark. Reluctantly, I get changed and go to the gym
in my building. The treadmill will have to do. After my warm-up I
increase the speed so I can sprint. I need to feel the burn. I need
to focus on that instead of swimming, and all its reminders.

It takes six miles
before my body loosens up. I’m dripping in sweat, my breathing is
heavy, and my legs burn from being out of shape. I need to start
running more, I’ve been too distracted. I welcome the heat working
its way up my thighs. I focus on the fire building in my calfs,
enjoying the reprieve. Another three more miles, I’m done. I’m
barley able to cool myself down. I over-did it, but I couldn’t have
stopped until I reached this point. When I get in these moods, I’m
a machine. I push my body into overdrive, relishing the pain. I dry
the sweat off my face and arms before I wipe the machine clean. I
leave the gym. Like a beacon, I find myself in the last place I want
to be right now.

The pool.

I smell the chlorine
and close my eyes. I can picture myself gliding through the water
with every stroke. The water has always been a way to escape. Every
time I would inhale a whiff of the chlorine, or make the first dive
off the block and into the water, it was like coming home. All of
that is gone; it’s just a fading memory now.

I take one final deep
breath, I turn around and walk away as I remember the old red and
white flags.

The week flies by. It’s
now Friday and I can’t wait for work to be over so I can enjoy my
first girls’ night with Harper. It’s crazy that I have a
girlfriend to engage in girl talk. I will admit to being sexist on
that part, but there are just some things I can’t discuss with the
boys, especially since most of it involves Jax.

I haven’t spoken to
Jax since the night of Logan’s party, which isn’t a surprise.
Connor has been Connor and has texted me nonstop about taking Harper
and me to lunch ever since I sent him a picture. I love teasing him,
but we both know he doesn’t have a chance with her. She isn’t the
bimbo one night stand type. I may bring her over for Sunday brunch,
though.

Bumping her shoulder
into mine, she points her head in the direction of my desk. “Someone
has a secret admirer.”

I look up from my phone
and follow her line of sight to a huge bouquet of peonies. I stop
mid-step when I realize they are from Jax without even seeing a card.
I know they’re from him because nobody else knows these are my
favorite.

Harper reaches the
flowers before me since I’m frozen to the spot. “Do you know who
they’re from? There’s no card.” She continues to search around
my desk as if a card will magically appear.

I nod. Of course Jax wouldn’t
write a card; he’s not talking to me, not even in letter form.
Bending to smell the flowers, I decide that I’ll wave the white
flag. I shoot him over a text.

Me:
Thank you, they’re beautiful and make me smile whenever
I look at them.

I even add the white
flag emoji at the end. I’m surprised when I glance up from my phone
to see Harper casually leaning against my desk. She isn’t fooling
anyone. I know exactly what she’s after. I was hoping that she
would just leave it be, but she won’t be derailed. I should have
known better.

“Why do I get the
feeling that they’re not from Kohen?”

I shrug. “I have no
idea,” I grumble but then admit, “They’re from Jax.”

Harper smiles at me and
strides away as if she just won something. I just shake my head at
her. I lean over my desk to smell the flowers. I can’t believe he
did this. Peonies are my all-time favorite. He remembers silly things
like this. I check my phone again, willing it to show me I have a new
text message, but I’m disappointed.
He’s
probably just busy.

I’ve forced myself
not to check my phone for one hundred and twenty minutes, not that
I’m counting or anything. That’s enough time, right? He didn’t
text back, no big deal. I don’t care in the slightest.

As I drink my water, my phone buzzes
on my desk. I force myself to swallow my sip and calmly reach for my
phone. I square my shoulders, take a deep breath, and slide the
unlock on my screen. My whole face lights up when I see it’s from
Jax.

Jax:
Welcome, Ads. I have a chocolate cupcake with your name
on it whenever you’re free.

I bite my lip,
contemplating what to say. Of course I want to say something along
the lines of, “I’m free whenever you are,” or my personal
favorite, “Can I eat it off of you?” but I know there’s no way
in hell that I will ever be able to say something like that to him. I
also don’t want to seem too eager to hang out. His mood swings are
worse than a woman on her period. I decide to ignore his text for now
and get back to work.

An hour later I’m shutting down my
computer when my phone beeps again. Glancing down at the screen, my
face falls.

Kohen:
I miss you. Date after work?

Me:
Can’t. Have plans with Tinkerbell. Remember?

I’m not gonna lie,
I’m a little annoyed that he asked again today. He called me this
morning and he sent me a text asking the same question I answered
this morning. I just don’t see how he can forget, especially since
this is all I’ve talked about this week.

Harper comes over to my
desk. She frowns when she notices that I’m worked up.

“What’s going on?”
She hands me my flowers as I rise.

As we step into the
empty elevator I give her a quick run down about Kohen’s
persistence.

When we reach the lobby
she says, “Men are stupid. For some reason they think we need to be
at their beck and call. But don’t worry your pretty little head
over it, Addie, soon we will be drunk and your problems will float
away on the dance floor.” She even shakes her hips at the last
part.

I laugh when an older
man walks into a wall because he was watching her instead of paying
attention to where he was going. When we part ways, promising to meet
in a few hours, I can’t help but wonder . . . how much trouble are
we going to get into tonight?

Stepping into the
nightclub, Basement, I gaze around the mass of people and wonder how
the heck I’m going to spot Harper in this crowd. I should have
listened to her and met her outside or someplace easier than this
chaos. I walk around aimlessly for ten minutes until I realize, when
in doubt check the bar.

She’s most likely to
stake out the bar nearest the door to watch for me. So I head in the
direction of that one, which also happens to be the most crowded with
men. I shove a few men out my way.

“Holy shit!” I say
out loud when I realize they’re clustered around a hot woman in a
gold metallic short dress that fits her like another skin.

Fuck, I’m not even
into girls and I’m turned on. I would seriously consider switching
teams for her. She stands on the bar pouring drinks into men’s
mouths. Wow, they actually let people do this at clubs? I thought
that was only in movies. I can just see from her chest down because a
tree of a man hulks in front of me.

Sighing I step around
him and look for any flash of red. Out of the corner of my eye, I see
the flash of her red hair that I’ve been searching for and turn
towards the bar. My mouth drops open.

“Holy shit!” I say
again.

Harper beckons me with
her finger. A man helps me onto the bar. I shake my head at her, but
I open my mouth as she tilts the bottle to my lips. As the alcohol
burns all the way down my throat, I have only one thought.
Tinkerbell
is the best kind of trouble.

Someone inserts a key
in the elevator and says, “He’s expecting you, so stay here and
he’ll come get you.”

I press my hands to my
face and try to gather enough strength to figure out what’s going
on. I think I focus enough to see a black dancing arm. Wait, that
doesn’t make sense. A dancing arm, what is that? I need to focus.
Where am I? More importantly, where am I going? I’m in a elevator
so I must be going home.

Bed.

That sounds amazing.
Wait, Tinkerbell! I laugh when I hear myself shout her name out loud
instead of saying it in my head. Vaguely, I remember her saying
something along the lines of not using her nickname at work, while
she was helping me into the lobby. Oh man, did I call her Tinkerbell?
A lot? Whatever, she must not have hated it too much if she helped me
inside the lobby.

“FUUCCCKK!” I shout
when I realize where she left me.

I start pressing the
down button, but the stupid elevator keeps going up.

“No! This cannot be
happening!” I say a lot louder than I intend just as the elevator
doors chime open and a devastatingly handsome god smirks at me.

“Nice to see you to,
Ads,” The God says.

I throw up on him.

OH . . . MY . . . GOD .
. . please let this be the worse nightmare in the world. From the
sour taste in my mouth, I know it’s not. I refuse to open my eyes.
If I don’t see it, this didn’t happen. His fingers wrap around my
forearms and he steers my drunken self out of the elevator. Hopefully
he’s nice enough to avoid the vomit. I really wouldn’t blame him
if he made sure I stepped in it.