Shattered promises, p.1
Shattered Promises, page 1
SHATTERED PROMISES
BOOK THREE IN THE SHATTERED TRILOGY
PHOENIX WOLFE
Phoenix Wolfe Publishing
Copyright © 2024 by Phoenix Wolfe
All rights reserved.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Contents
DEDICATION
TRIGGER WARNINGS
1. CHAPTER ONE CHARLIE
MARK
TUCKER
LILA
2. CHAPTER TWO CHARLIE
TUCKER
MARK
CHARLIE
3. CHAPTER THREE CHARLIE
LILA
TUCKER
CHARLIE
TUCKER
MARK
4. CHAPTER FOUR CHARLIE
TUCKER
MARK
5. CHAPTER FIVE CHARLIE
LILA
TUCKER
6. CHAPTER SIX CHARLIE
MARK
7. CHAPTER SEVEN CHARLIE
TUCKER
8. CHAPTER EIGHT CHARLIE
MARK
CHARLIE
TUCKER
CHARLIE
9. CHAPTER NINE MARK
LILA
CHARLIE
10. CHAPTER TEN CHARLIE
MARK
LILA
11. CHAPTER ELEVEN CHARLIE
LILA
MARK
12. CHAPTER TWELVE CHARLIE
TUCKER
CHARLIE
MARK
13. CHAPTER THIRTEEN CHARLIE
MARK
CHARLIE
MARK
LILA
14. CHAPTER FOURTEEN MARK
CHARLIE
MARK
CHARLIE
15. CHAPTER FIFTEEN MARK
TUCKER
MARK
CHARLIE
16. CHAPTER SIXTEEN CHARLIE
MARK
CHARLIE
MARK
CHARLIE
17. CHAPTER SEVENTEEN LILA
TUCKER
LILA
18. CHAPTER EIGHTEEN CHARLIE
MARK
CHARLIE
MARK
19. CHAPTER NINETEEN CHARLIE
MARK
CHARLIE
20. CHAPTER TWENTY MARK
CHARLIE
MARK
21. CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE CHARLIE
MARK
CHARLIE
MARK
22. CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO CHARLIE
MARK
CHARLIE
23. CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE CHARLIE
MARK
CHARLIE
MARK
CHARLIE
24. CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR TUCKER
MARK
LILA
25. CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE MARK
CHARLIE
MARK
CHARLIE
MARK
26. CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX MARK
CHARLIE
MARK
CHARLIE
27. CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN MARK
CHARLIE
MARK
28. CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT CHARLIE
MARK
CHARLIE
29. CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE MARK
CHARLIE
30. CHAPTER THIRTY CHARLIE
MARK
CHARLIE
LILA
31. CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE MARK
CHARLIE
MARK
CHARLIE
32. EPILOGUE CHARLIE
33. FOLLOW ME FOR UPDATES!
LETTER FROM THE AUTHOR
DEDICATION
To anyone who’s ever felt broken or damaged,
who’s struggled with body image issues or depression,
who’s listened to the LIE that you aren’t good enough –
this book is for you.
YOU ARE MORE THAN ENOUGH!
TRIGGER WARNINGS
This book contains references to physical injuries, physical assault, sexual assault, kidnapping, PTSD, depression, anxiety, suicidal thoughts, and graphic violence.
Please read the note from the author and a sample of the first chapter for free on my website at www.phoenix-wolfe.com/sample-of-chapter-one to see if this book is a fit for you.
CHAPTER ONE
CHARLIE
No. No! No!
This isn’t real. This can’t be happening.
Mark wouldn’t do this to me. He loves me.
He promised he’d never leave. He said nothing could make him leave me, nothing.
He promised me.
He promised.
But here I am. Alone.
All alone.
I’m on my knees in the hall outside Mark’s room, envelopes scattered across the floor where I dropped them when I realized he was gone. My phone lies on the floor beneath the wooden foyer bench. My fists are clenched beside my ears, my head tucked down so my arms shield my face. My heart slams erratically in my chest. Iron bands surround my ribcage, squeezing ever tighter, making it difficult to breathe. I’m gasping, my breaths coming fast. Too fast. Black spots crowd my vision, and my hands and forearms tingle.
Somewhere inside my head, I hear a gentle voice. Slow, deep breaths. Slow your breathing down. You’re hyperventilating. You’re safe. Slow your breathing. Nice deep breaths.
Lila’s voice.
I focus on slowing my breathing, trying to block the stark reality crashing over me. I have to close my eyes to concentrate, to stop seeing the truth.
That I’m alone.
That Mark left me.
That my best friend, the man I love, walked out on me.
Worse, he waited till I was at work to pack up his belongings and leave, sneaking away like I was a mistake, a mortifying one-night stand. No phone call. No text. No note.
Just an empty house and my shattered heart.
Lila called to tell me he was staying with her and Tucker at their house. She said not to worry, that they’d talk to him. I’d lied and said someone was at the door and hung up. My phone has buzzed more times than I can count, but I can’t talk to her. I can’t talk to anyone.
She and Tucker can talk to Mark all they want, but it won’t make him love me, and that’s what it all comes down to.
He doesn’t love me.
How could he? I’m too fucked up for anyone to love.
The sky grows dark as hours pass. Shadows crawl across the floor, reaching for me with long claws, threatening, menacing. My heart thunders in my chest again.
I can’t be alone in the dark. I can’t handle the darkness.
Somehow I get to my feet, turning on every light downstairs before returning to Mark’s room.
To the floor.
His floor.
I remember with startling clarity the night we discussed taking our friendship to the next level. I was afraid I’d lose my best friend if things didn’t work out between us. Mark had stared at me with intense blue eyes from across my dining room table, his large hands gripping mine.
You won’t lose me, Charlie, not ever. You’ve been the best part of my life for as long as I can remember, and nothing would make me walk away from you. Nothing.
Yet here I sit, crumpled in the floor, because he discarded me and walked away.
I drag his pillow off the bed, clutching it to my chest, hoping to dull the sharp pain slicing through me. It doesn’t work. Instead, his scent assaults me, reminding me of the perfection of mere days ago, when he made me feel cherished. Loved. Like I was important to him. Like I mattered.
He said he doesn’t love me.
He insisted I deserve someone better. Someone whole.
He said people who are broken and scarred don’t deserve love, referring to his own war wounds. His amputation. His scars.
I’m still flabbergasted he said those words to me, a woman whose entire back is a web of interlacing scars from razor wire, leather strips, and an Arabic-script brand that declares me to be a “stupid cunt whore”. He made his declaration to a woman whose breasts and upper thighs bear scars of mutilation, a woman whose insides are scarred and ruined from repeated rapes and violations from a rusty knife and filthy metal pipes. A woman whose psyche is most definitely broken.
People who are broken and scarred don’t deserve love.
So he took his love away.
When I could breathe again after his harsh words, I'd recognized he wasn’t talking about me. My wounded expression left him confused until I removed my shirt. When comprehension dawned, he was horrified I’d thought he was talking about me. He’s seen my scars so many times that he’d stopped seeing them, the same way I don’t see his. I only see him. I only loved him.
But it wasn’t enough.
I gave him all of me. My trust. My body. My heart. It still wasn’t enough.
I’m not enough.
I still don’t understand what I did wrong. Sunday night was the most tender, beautiful, perfect night of my entire life. His kisses, his touches, were reverent. He made me feel cherished. Treasured.
And I knew with complete certainty that he loved me.
The next evening, I came home to find him waiting for me in the hall, telling me we needed to see o ther people. His sudden one-eighty was a knife in my heart. I told him I loved him, but it didn’t matter. I fled the house and got drunk, ending up at a bar until my friend Tom came to my rescue. He took me back to my hotel room and stayed at my side, keeping me safe.
Tom and I attempted to make Mark jealous by having dinner together and being affectionate where he would see us. We needn’t have bothered. Mark was already emotionally gone. He had been for weeks. Telling him I loved him only made him more desperate to end things between us.
Last night I thought I’d finally gotten through to him after his scar comment. We made love urgently, frantically, unable to get enough of each other. Our bodies said what our words couldn’t. I thought we’d fixed things, that he’d realized how he felt about me.
I was peacefully curled up against his chest when he called our lovemaking “closure”.
Closing the door on us.
On me.
I begged him to admit he loved me. I was positive he did. He just needed to let go of his fears and say it. He said he couldn’t tell me what I wanted to hear. I argued it wasn’t that he couldn’t, but that he wouldn’t.
He didn’t deny it.
Instead, he left me.
Telling Mark how I feel about him has destroyed the most important relationship in my life.
It might destroy me.
This pain is unbearable, ripping through my chest, shredding me to ribbons from the inside.
I can’t take this pain.
I can’t take this.
I can’t.
Make it stop.
I just want the pain to stop.
I spend the night on the floor, knees drawn to my chest, clutching his pillow for dear life as though it will bring him back to me.
MARK
I’m facing a furious Lila, trying to explain things. It’s not going well, not that I'd expected it to. She and Charlie are like sisters.
“Let me get this straight,” she says, the heat of her violet stare searing me. “You told Charlie you needed to see other people less than twenty-four hours after going out of your way to make her feel more loved than she had in her entire life.” My face burns with shame, but I don’t look away. I don’t trust Lila not to slap the shit out of me, especially since I’ve earned it. “Then you tell her she deserves someone whole. You tell her people who are broken and scarred don’t deserve love.” I swallow hard. “You used those exact words, knowing the hell she’s been through, knowing that's the shit Blake told her, and knowing that’s exactly how she views herself — as broken and scarred.” I wince. “Then you two make love, and just when she thinks that means things are okay, you tell her it was just ‘closure’. Then you call my husband –” she turns to glare at him before whirling back to me, blond curls flying over her shoulder with the speed of her movement, “– to come and help you sneak the fuck out of her house, the house she remodeled to accommodate your disabilities after you were released from the hospital, the same hospital where she stayed by your side for three months when you were injured. You treated her like shit after claiming she was your best friend, after you swore to her nothing could ever come between you.” Her voice has steadily gotten louder, and a big vein throbs in her forehead. “Did I miss anything?”
“Lila –” I begin, but she cuts me off.
“Don’t,” she says, holding up a hand and pressing her lips so tightly together they turn white. “Just don’t. I love you, Mark, but you’re a fucking asshole, and if you say one more word, I swear to God, I’ll knock every one of your teeth out and shove them down your sorry throat.” She rounds on Tucker. “And you? Helping him do this to Charlie? What the fuck, Tucker?”
“He didn’t know what was happening, Lila,” I interject quickly. “All I told him was that I needed help.”
Lila mutters something that sounds suspiciously like, “you’re both gonna need help when I’m done.” Then she holds up both hands, fingers splayed and shaking with rage. “Take your shit to the guest room at the end of the hall. It has a bathroom, but there aren’t handrails in the shower, so use your fucking walker.” She turns to Tucker. “You can stay on the couch or with Mark, I don’t care which. I can’t stand the sight of either one of you right now.” His blue eyes widen and he opens his mouth to protest, but reconsiders at her murderous expression.
Tucker waits until her door slams upstairs before he sighs heavily. “Sorry about that. The hormone shots and the ectopic pregnancy – it’s been hard.” His voice trails off. Lila and Tucker have been trying to conceive, and Lila’s been taking hormone shots. Just a couple of weeks ago, they rushed her into surgery for a tubal pregnancy, resulting in the loss of one of her fallopian tubes and effectively halving their already-slim chances of conception.
I shake my head. “No, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to get you in trouble.”
He shrugs. “She might calm down in a couple of hours. Sometimes once the anger fades, she gets a little weepy. I might not have to spend the entire night on the couch.” He frowns. “Or it could go the other way, and I’ll be down here long after you and Charlie have patched things up.” He steals a hopeful glance in my direction.
But that won’t happen.
It can’t.
Charlie deserves someone better. Someone who doesn’t have a fucking metal peg sticking out of his stump of a leg for a prosthetic to attach to. Someone whose body isn’t a goddamn patchwork of scars from burns, shrapnel, and surgeries. Someone who isn’t half a man.
She deserves someone as beautiful and as perfect as she is. Someone who sees her true worth and loves her more than life itself. Someone who would die for her without hesitation. Someone who can do anything she wants, like dancing in the kitchen or going horseback riding or making love without having to worry about skewering her with his fucking peg leg.
Someone like Tom.
The thought makes my chest burn, even though I know he’d be perfect for her. He’s strong, good-looking, kind, hard-working. They’re already good friends, and his daughter Maya worships Charlie. The three of them hang out together regularly. One small nudge in the right direction is all it might take. The burning in my chest gets worse, and I force the image of the three of them as a happy family out of my mind.
I remember the two of them lying together on the couch a few days ago, his hand just beneath her left breast. Entwined in the dark beside his car. Slow dancing in the kitchen.
The pain in my chest becomes a searing, raging monster, and it takes everything I have to force it down.
Despite my jealousy, I can admit Tom is the perfect man for Charlie.
When I said decent people deserved better than to be stuck with someone who’s broken and scarred, I was talking about Charlie deserving someone better than me. Her scars and self-described brokenness never entered my mind. I don’t see her as scarred or broken. It’s true that she has scars, but they don’t even register with me. If I do notice them, it only makes me appreciate her strength even more. She’s always been beautiful to me. No matter what those bastards in Afghanistan did to her, Charlie could never not be beautiful to me.
She said last night that she knew I loved her. That it wasn’t that I couldn’t tell her I loved her, but that I wouldn’t. I didn’t bother to deny it, because she’s right.
I do love Charlie, more than life itself.
And that’s why I had to leave.
Charlie wasn’t supposed to fall for me. It wasn’t supposed to be like this. We’ve been best friends for most of our lives. We kissed once, in her kitchen, and it ignited an insatiable fire between us. Once we accepted our mutual attraction, we agreed to explore a no-strings-attached physical aspect to our relationship.
