Shattered Chances: A Breaking Black Companion Novel

Shattered Chances

ISBN-13: 978-1500194611 (CreateSpace-Assigned) 

ISBN-10: 1500194611 

Copyright 2014 – Addison Kline

All Rights Reserved

Cover Art- Obtained from depositphotos.com
olly18

Fonts obtained from 1001 free fonts baby and font squirrel: Eutemia I, Gabriola

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without express written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Any resemblance to persons dead or alive are sheer coincidence. This is a work of fiction and is the product of the author’s imagination.

Dedication

To Tessa Burman:

My Assistant. My Friend. Randy’s biggest fan.

#CheyenneWho? #TheRealMrsRandyFord

You rock, woman!

PROLOGUE

Cheyenne

Seven year’s bad luck. It seems an awfully steep punishment for slamming my fist into a mirror… but that is exactly the sentence I got. Seven years without him. Seven years where I could barely look at myself in the mirror. Seven years I couldn’t stomach the sight of myself, without Randy by my side.

Randy. He’s not as big of a hard ass as he wants everyone to believe. It’s a guise; a shield, a barrier. Underneath his tough as leather exterior, his brash attitude, lethal glare and seemingly out of control temper, lies a heart of gold. A heart I’ve dropped more times than I’d like to count.

Randy’s always been a little crazy. You can’t pin that on me. It’s probably why I found the boy so effing irresistible. He knew a thing or two about rising up from a broken life. Yeah. I guess you can say that about me, too.

My name is Cheyenne West, and my heart belongs to one man. Say what you will about the road we’ve traveled… It’s real. It’s raw. It’s not a God damn fairytale. Randy is no Prince Charming and if you call me a damsel in distress, I’ll chop you in the throat. I know what you’re thinking… You’ve heard this story before. But trust me when I tell you, honey, you don’t know shit.

So if you can sit there and get over your hearts and rainbows and Walt Disney version of what you think love is supposed to be, I’ll tell you about how Randy and I came to be.

We have a love that’s real. Emotions that are raw and unforgiving boil over. We are two people that love each other, but don’t always make the smartest decisions, but somehow, we always manage to run right back to each other.

That mirror I broke after Randy left, my bloody wrist breaking the smooth surface of my reflection into a jagged mess of glass and sand, fell to the floor in a million tiny pieces. Pieces of us scattered across the bathroom floor. Our reflection broken, our relationship fractured. The average person sees a broken mirror and they see something destroyed, an unfixable object; something to be swept away and discarded, but I was born with an artist’s eye. It’s a rare gift to be able to take something broken and create something beautiful… something better. That is exactly what I set out to do… take the broken pieces of us, and create something beautiful.

It wasn’t easy. Even the cautious hand could be attacked. These pieces of us… they draw blood.  But until all the crimson was drained from my heart, I would never give up on him. Every shattered chance acted as a challenge, a catalyst, tempting me, no, daring me to pick up the pieces and create the life we were meant to have.

We’re crazy in love… that’s for sure. But we’re crazier apart. Go ahead. Judge me. Label me. Just don’t
ever
get between me and my man.

1.

Randy

“Cheyenne.”

Sigh.

My love for her is a sickness, a madness that infiltrated my body, spreading from cell to cell, until she was all i thought about. All I knew. I had to have her, and once I had her, there was no turning back.

I sat under the dim red hue of the traffic light, not so patiently waiting for it to turn green. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

I cast my eyes on the taxi cab in front of me, if looks could kill, the cab would burst into flames, right now. Cheyenne, as usual, refuses to listen to me. But this isn’t her fault. Not by a long shot. I am an idiot; a dunce-cap wearing imbecile who cannot manage to sit alone for ten minutes at a bar without getting myself into some ridiculous situation. I should have just waited for Chey, Colt and Averi at home instead of heading to the bar early, straight from work.

Even I had to admit that it looked bad. Real bad. Caught in a lip lock with some gorgeous girl from Nebraska that I barely knew. Her hands were all over me, and me with my bewildered
What the fuck is happening?!
look that Cheyenne apparently confused with my
Oh, Baby!
stare. How on earth was I going to talk my way out of this one? I had already explained that it wasn’t what it looked like, but Chey isn’t a stupid girl. I was going to pay for this big time.

I never thought that I would be chasing behind Cheyenne’s cab that was bolting up the road en-route for San Antonio International Airport. My heart pumped in my chest, rattled and stressed.  Tapping my fingers against the steering wheel as I waited for the light to change from red to green, I felt as if I was about to have a heart attack.

“C’mon!” I yelled at the light, my eyes glaring with a dangerous edge.

How did it come to this? Our reunion, which was so blissful, so victorious for both of us, how could a simple slip of the tongue from a girl I didn’t even know bring it all crashing back down again? Surely our love was stronger than that? But as I fought to catch up with the taxi-cab, my mind was giving me a million reasons why we failed.

“I’ll be damned if I’m gonna let her walk away without hearing my side of the story.”

Oh, how the tables have turned.

As the light turned green, the engine fired, catapulting me forward at 70 miles per hour, hell bent on setting the story straight and getting my girl to come home. This is
not
how I wanted to spend my thirtieth birthday, but I’m not about to let Cheyenne walk out of my life forever, especially over something as inconsequential as this.

She kissed me.

Now with just forty minutes til her flight departed, I was in a race against time.

“How did it come to this?”

2.

Cheyenne

“Where to, darlin’?” The driver of the yellow taxi cab asked me as I got in with nothing more than my heavy Coach bag. The driver looked at me strangely, probably staring at my pair of dark Jackie O sunglasses on my eyes. It was night time, the shades weren’t being used to block out the bright Texas rays. It was to hide my eyes. I couldn’t let Randy see my eyes. He knew me too well. There was too much truth there. He’d see right through me.

I passed a piece of paper to the driver as Randy ran to the window to try to stop my hasty departure.

“Chey!” Randy yelled with a hurt look upon his face.

I couldn’t stomach this. I felt like my heart was about to give way. It had to be done, though.

“Everything okay, Miss?” the driver asked, looking in his rear view mirror at me.

“Fine. Hit the gas.”

As the cab sped away, I watched out the back window as reality set into Randy’s eyes.

3.

Randy

14 years earlier…

“Honestly, Randy! You’re a mess!” Mary Hall complained as she looked at my dirty face. She licked her thumb and proceeded to wipe the dirt off my cheeks. I scrunched my face up in disgust.

“Gran! Ugh! That’s disgusting!” I complained.

Player # 11, the new kid, laughed at me as my grandmother washed off the dirt as if I was a messy toddler who had just made a mess of himself while eating a cookie. Colt McClain, bane of my existence, strolled up to the new kid, and began to sneer at me.

“Shut up!” I yelled.

“Manners…” my grandmother reminded me.

“Oh, Mary. Leave him alone… it’s all part of football. Getting dirty. Talking trash,” Hank, my grandfather said as he peered down at me with a raised eyebrow.  I had escaped my grandmother’s reach and put my football helmet back on, but before I could escape completely, my grandfather grabbed the mask of my helmet tightly with his calloused hands that had turned leathery from so many years of tending to the ranch.

“Look here, boy… One thing you need to do is harness all that negative energy. Instead of fighting with #11 over there or the McClain boy…”

I looked over at Colt who proudly wore his #13 jersey. He gave me a smug look while he said something to #11. Averi sat nearby on a bleacher cheering them all on.

“You need to focus your energy in getting the ball into the end zone. You don’t fight with your own team mates,” my grandfather reminded me.

“He started with me,” I carefully reminded my grandfather.

Hank grabbed my helmet again and tugged hard.

“Don’t back talk me. Get the ball in the end zone. Focus.”

Tim, my brother who now towered over our grandmother, ran up to her with a broad smile on his face.

“Gran… Can we get hot dogs?  Me and Averi are hungry.”

Without much thought, my grandmother pulled out her black coin purse, popped it open and gave Tim a ten dollar bill.

“Get me one, too. With relish.”

“Blech, relish…”

“What?! It’s delicious.”

“Pop, do you want one too?” Tim asked, waiting for his grandfather to respond.  

“Yes, no relish, though. Onions and ketchup.”

“You guys are gross,” Tim said as he walked off to the hotdog stand.

“Get me two, with ketchup!” I yelled, but my grandfather nudged me in the shoulder and gave me an evil look.

“Do you wanna upchuck all over the field? Eat after the game.”

I roll my eyes, even though I know he’s right.

I’m freaking starving!

The thought was fleeting as my grandfather grabbed the cage of my helmet and gave me an intimidating look. 

“Listen up… Harness all that energy and rage, and you work it out on the field.”

“I’m still pissed I wasn’t picked to be quarterback, instead they gave it to that smug jackass over there,” I said as I pointed to Colt who was practicing his throw with a couple of the other players.

“You’re too strong to be a quarterback. You’re no featherweight!” Hank said as he swatted Randy in the gut. “You’re all brawn! Now get out there and get the pigskin in the end zone.”

I rolled my eyes. I wonder if any linebacker has ever been disqualified for sacking their own quarterback. I was willing to find out.

I don’t make friends easily. I never enjoyed answering the questions that come with meeting new people. How are you? What’s your name? Where are your parents? Why are you so angry? Why do you hate Colt McClain so much? Let me tell you, if you walked my path, you’d hate him, too. His father killed my parents, and he has my sister fooled into thinking he’s a good guy. We used to be brothers. My mother actually adopted him after his mother and grandmother died and his father skipped town. It was probably the biggest mistake of her life. It was because of Colt that she’s dead, whether he pulled the trigger or not. It’s something I don’t know if I will ever be able to forgive. My grandparents take care of my brother, my sister and I. They try to give us a normal upbringing. It’s hard, when half of our family is gone. Black Horse, Colt’s father, killed my father, Nathan, my mother, Corinne, and my older brother Seth. You walk away from something like that and not be filled with rage.