Shattered: A Salvation Society Novel by Bella Emy (pdf to ebook reader .TXT) 📕

back to doing what I was before I came out here. Mr. Elmers said I’d always be welcome back, but I really had my heart set on opening my own lounge. The reality that it’s not going to happen is hitting me hard.

“Lexi?” she urges. She wants some kind of answer and I know I need to give her one. As much as I don’t want to, I know I need to let her know what happened with Kalen.

Or what almost happened.

Come to think of it, nothing really happened, and as usual, my mind got the best of me and started thinking of the past.  Dammit, why am I like this?

I take a deep breath. “I need to change my flight to tonight. They have one leaving at nine.”

Yeah, I know. Not a real explanation, but at least it’s a start.

“And why do you need to change your flight to tonight? You want to give me a little more detail than that, please?” She closes the lid of the laptop and places it to the side. Then she turns her body so that she’s facing me.

I shrug and frown. “I need to go back home. I can’t stay here any longer. The memories from the past constantly haunt me. I don’t know how to deal with them.”

She takes a deep breath and scoots closer to me. “Come here, girl,” she says, draping an arm over my shoulder as I move closer to her.

My head leans on her shoulder, and then, the waterworks. Without even a warning, unbridled tears spill over onto my cheeks and I start bawling. I didn’t even realize or feel my eyes start watering. It just happened without warning.

Kind of like my feelings for Kalen this past week.

Everything I felt for him so long ago, I’m feeling once more.

I never got over him. I was just hiding how I felt from him. From my friends.

From myself.

“Lexi, shhhh, shhhh. It’ll be okay.” She rocks me back and forth, holding me tightly to her.

I never needed my best friend more than I do now. And Erin has always been there for me. Even if we’ve been miles apart for years.

“Erin, I don’t know how to do this… I don’t know how to deal with things happening now with Kalen… or whatever was happening because now I blew it. His face as I asked him to bring me back here, letting him know I couldn’t do this with him… it was enough to break my heart all over again. I’m terrible... I’m horrible… I’m a mons—”

“No! Stop! Lexi, you’re none of those things. You dealt with everything the best way you knew how. And because of how much you cared for Kalen, it hurt so bad when things between you two ended. Now of course you’re scared. Of course the memories of the past will come crashing back to the front of your mind. You don’t want to go through the pain all over again. You don’t want to start something with him again, and that’s normal. Who can blame you for that?”

I swallow hard and wipe at my eyes. “He can.”

She pulls away from me so that she can see my face. “Why? You didn’t give him any idea that you were ready for something with him again. You didn’t lead him on, so why would he blame you?”

I shrug yet again. “Because I did.”

Her eyes light up and her mouth takes on the shape of an O. “OMG! Lexi, you kissed him?!” She’s trying to hide the smile that I already see forming there.

I look down at the ground before us. “Yes, and…” I meet her gaze once more.

“And…” she says, leaning forward.

I look away yet again. “And, I may have slept with him…” I rise up from where I’m sitting and walk toward the window.

“Wait a minute! Wait a second! What?!” Erin gets up and comes within two feet of me, waiting for me to continue or to explain further.

And I know I have to because there is so much she still doesn’t know.

“Yeah, well, we may have almost kissed at an old ice cream parlor he was showing me but were interrupted by a couple of kids crashing there, and then we may have kissed on a Ferris wheel near Starfish by the Sea, which may have led us back to his boat, and we may have kissed again once we got there as the rain came down all around us, which we then may have made out in the lower deck on his bed, which may have ended up with us making love over and over again last night… may have.”

I study her gaze as she’s taking this all in, and it’s like she’s hearing the most epic news in the world. Something tells me she’s enjoying this more than she should be. Finally, she lets out a gasp. “OMG! Girl, are you kidding me?!”

I shake my head. “I said may have…”

Now she’s chuckling. “Right… may have… Just like you may have had the best orgasms of your life, judging by the way you were just turning red as you went through those moments from last night in your head. But, oh yeah, you may have…”

I bite the inside of my cheek and shrug.

She nudges me on the arm. “May have my ass! Girl, details!”

I roll my eyes playfully. “It was amazing. I haven’t felt the way he made me feel in, well, probably ever. It was complete bliss. The way he kissed me… the way he tasted… the way he held me in his arms after we were done and I felt so safe…” I close my eyes, reliving the memories from just hours before.

“So what happened? If everything was so good, what made you think of the past and made you run off?”

I open my eyes once more and see her waiting for me to tell her the rest.

I frown. “I don’t know. I woke up and something just felt off. I didn’t