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BEAUTIFULLy Broken

​BROKEN SERIES, BOOK THREE
(Reimagined and expanded with 40,000+ more words than the original)
My mind forced me to forget the pain, but when he walked back into my life, my heart begged me to remember.
I blinked. 
At the time, I didn’t think anything of it. It was automatic. A harmless bodily function I did often. I didn’t expect that the next time I opened my eyes, I’d be waking in a hospital room with a gunshot wound and a concussion. 
Eight months forgotten. 
I’ve been told it’s better that way. To have my memories suppressed. To forget the pain of everything I endured. But if it was all so terrible, then why does the stranger with the stormy, chocolate brown eyes make my heart betray me? Why does he make me feel things I have no right to feel when my heart belongs to someone else?
My hand instinctively flies to my neck, sliding along the bumps popping up beneath my fingertips. I feel like I should already know how to read them.
And maybe I should. 
Because the man in front of me connects me to my memories. He’s the reason I forgot. The man who betrayed me. Killed to protect me. The reason my heart’s been torn in two. 
​PLEASE NOTE: This book series contains sensitive subject matter. If you are easily triggered or have experienced serious trauma, it may not be for you. Not recommended for persons under 18 years of age.

Tropes

Amnesia
Alpha Hero
​Betrayal
​​Friends-to-Lovers
Love Triangle
Redemption
​​Revenge
​Second Chance Love
​Soul Mates

​Triggers

Amnesia
​Cheating
​Explosives (Causing Death)
Murder (Attempted)
Physical Abuse (Discussed)
Physical Assault (Discussed)
Sexual Abuse (Discussed)
Sexual Assault (Discussed)
​I’ve seen the scars, the people I’ve met, the places I’ve been. I’ve heard the words spoken from people I trust. But none of these things belong to me. I have one foot in the life I remember and one in this new one—where I’ve lived and loved and lost—and I can’t figure out how to make my feet work to bring them together.” - Hannah
I saw my forever in her eyes, and I was willing to take the leap over the edge of reason to grasp it.” - Ryan
Digging my fingers into his back, I feel his love spread through me, taking possession. I feel him in every cell of my body. It hums beneath my skin, courses through my veins, embeds itself so deep in my bones I can’t imagine standing without him.” - Hannah
My hand instinctively flies to my neck, sliding along the bumps popping up beneath my fingertips like I should already know how to read them.” - Hannah
​That feeling…that intense yearning you feel beneath your skin… It’s your soul reaching out to mine. It doesn’t want to let go, Hannah. Because even if we physically don’t touch, our souls always will. They’re one and the same. One dies without the other.” - Gavin
It’s as if from the moment our love died along with my memories, it’s been hovering above us, waiting to be reincarnated into something bigger. Stronger. But death isn’t a two-way street where you can come and go as you please. It’s permanent. Unchanging. A permanent wall separating what is and what could’ve been. And I can’t keep balancing on the top, expecting not to fall.” - Hannah

Excerpt

[Playlist Idea: Infinity by Jaymes Young]

​“Don’t.” He lazily shakes his head. “You can’t touch me and expect me to not feel something. If I’m going to move on, we need to stop pretending like we can be friends because I can’t. I can’t be your friend, Hannah. That was made painfully clear the moment I saw the two of you together. I can’t be in the same room as the two of you without wanting to go caveman and beat the shit out of him for being able to love you the way I want to. And I know that makes me an asshole because I know I lost my right to feel that way, but I’m not strong enough to be around you and not want to touch you. To not see you as mine and want to go that extra step or covet that mile that Ryan gets to take with you. Every. Single. Day. Because I should’ve never let you go.”
“I—” My mouth opens and closes like a fish. I don’t know what to say. 
The rawness of his words causes a gnawing ache to fill my stomach. The thought of not seeing Gavin anymore feels like a death all of its own. Because on some level, I need him. Like he’s somehow merged into my DNA. A part of me. He’s responsible for the life I have, and I’ll forever be tied to him. Whether I have the imagery to match the details or not.
Panic turns the ache into a raw, open sore, and it nearly propels, “I don’t know if I can let you go,” from my mouth, not understanding where it’s coming from. Thankfully, I somehow manage to keep the compulsion from being freed into the unbelievably thickening space between us and instead say, “What if we take it slow? I could keep my distance for a little. Give you more time to adjust. I want you in my life, Gavin. I just… What do I have to do?” I basically beg him to not push me away while knowing he’s right—though I don’t want him to be. I know it’s unbelievably selfish of me to want him to hold on, to force him to feel the pain of loss, but I can’t picture my life without him in it. 
He closes his eyes, seeming to hold them for a count. When he opens them again, he’s already steeled himself, mumbling, “Fuck it,” under his breath. He quickly prowls across the sofa into my personal space. 
“What are you doing?” My voice is panicked as I shuffle backward to increase the distance between us, but he crawls over me. Braced only inches above me at any given point, he hovers his mouth over mine, letting his hot breath invade me with the malty notes of his beers and ravages my insides with non-friendly sensations.
“What’s gotten into you?” I try to escape, but I’m pinned beneath him with nowhere to go.
“You. You’re what’s gotten into me, Hannah. There’s not a part of me you haven’t possessed. One minute you tell me we have to be friends, and the next you’re begging me like you can’t live without me, and it’s killing me.” He groans a low rumble as he weaves his nose back and forth in the space over mine, ghosting the surface with phantom sensations. The motion causes his mouth to follow in tandem, sweeping his laboured breaths across the skin of my lips. Its dampened warmth searches out the sudden dryness in mine. And it’s then that I realize I’m parched. Like my mouth has been filled with an arid desert that hasn’t yet discovered water. “Why can’t you just admit it?”
“There’s nothing to admit.” 
“Don’t lie to me. Your body betrays you,” he says in a throaty voice—nearly guttural. “Tell me you can feel it, too.” 
He shifts slightly closer, and I whimper, feeling his essence caressing every nerve ending on my body, humming beneath my skin. 
“I—I can’t.” My heart vaults against my ribs, trying to escape the overwhelming sensations storming my insides.
When he sees the confliction in my eyes, he licks over his lips, then slides over to nuzzle near my neck. “That feeling…that intense yearning you feel beneath your skin… It’s your soul reaching out to mine. It doesn’t want to let go, Hannah. Because even if we physically don’t touch, our souls always will. They’re one and the same. One dies without the other.”
He moves impossibly closer without actually touching me. I gulp, sliding my hands between our chests to fend off his advance. Rippling muscles twitch beneath my fingertips as they betray my need to flee. They dig into the fabric of his shirt, clenching tightly. The heat of his body flows through the fingers woven around it.
Movement at my hips catches my attention, and his attraction makes itself well known, pressing against me, barely concealed through the thin cotton of his joggers. His entire body is too close, and it’s muddling my already jumbled head.
“Gavin…” My whimper brings him back from where he’s teasing me.
He visibly swallows as if he’s pushing past the thickening in his throat. His voice sounds strangled—rough—when he finally manages to speak. “This…. This is why I shouldn’t be around you.” He searches my eyes. “Because when I see your reaction to me, you make me question this is all in my head. And I have to wonder if you do—on some level—remember me. And that’s a dangerous place for me because I might just act on what I’m feeling and steal the million kisses we’ve been dancing around.”
He lifts his hand to the space just beside my face, though he fists it instead, burrowing it into the pillowed arm next to my head. 
“You know, I made a promise to myself that I wouldn’t touch you. But every time I see you, I’ve been gritting my teeth, struggling to keep my hands to myself because I’m weak, Hannah. You make me so fucking weak.” The sound of our heavy breathing fills the room. It pulses simultaneously with our racing hearts.
Adrenaline burns through my veins as I fight the instinct to pull him closer, knowing nothing about this situation is right—no matter how right it feels.
Somehow, I manage to force my voice through the constriction in my throat as I pant. “We can’t do this.” I shuffle my body to the side, wiggling, struggling to slide out from beneath him. When he notices my agitation, he immediately hinges back, positioning his knees behind my legs at the back crease of the sofa. When he throws up his hands in surrender, I lunge off the front cushion and scurry my feet across the room, gasping for the air that can’t seem to find my lungs.
Gavin’s face pinches with frustration. Then as if he can’t help himself, he hops to his feet and tries again.
“If this isn’t what you want, then why do you keep coming here, Hannah? Why do you keep toying with me?” He pounds against his heart. Before I can answer, he continues, “You know what I think?” he challenges. “I think the Hannah I know is still in there, and she’s fighting like hell to get out, to reach me.” He slowly stalks toward me. Each step deliberate. Lithe. Seductive. His eyes darken as they hold me captive. “She needs me as much as I need her.”
I shake my head in denial. “She’s gone. You need to let her go.”
“If I’m wrong, then why are you still here? Why aren’t you running back to your fiancé?”
He takes a step forward, and I take two steps back.
“I—I don’t know.”
“You want me, Hannah. We’ve been bouncing around our feelings for too long.”
Step.
“That’s not true. I care about you, yes, but I love Ryan.”
“Then why. Are. You. Here?” he repeats with more emphasis, taking another step as I steal two more behind me.
“I wanted to make sure you were okay.”
He leisurely waves his head from side to side. “You’ve already done that. Try again.”
“You’re my friend.”
Head swaying, he smoothly takes another step. 
“We’ve never been just friends, Hannah. Tell me you don’t want this feeling. This electricity. Tell me you don’t want it on your skin.” Step. “In your blood.” Step. “Inside of you.” 
I shuffle backward.
“Tell me to leave you alone and never look back.”
“I—I can’t.”
For every move forward, I reverse in the opposite direction until my back meets the wall behind me.
He closes the distance and slides his fingers through my hair to cradle my face in his hand.
“If I can’t have you, then tell me I shouldn’t love you with every cell in my body. Tell me not to kiss you.” His hot breath pulses against my lips. “Please,” he pleads with a heart-wrenching amount of pain cracking his voice. He stares so deep into my eyes I’m sure he can see right through all the walls my brain has put up.
I try to say those exact words, but it’s like I’ve lost control over my entire body, and the electricity arcing between us has short-circuited my brain’s ability to resist, rendering my mouth speechless. My moral compass is spinning out of control as my body falls victim to the hold he has over me. If I asked him to stop, I have no doubt he would. But I can’t seem to curl my mouth around the words. 
He must take my silence for acceptance. Because in the next achingly charged breath, his body melts against me, and his gentle mouth has covered mine. He passionately pours a sated moan between my parted lips, and it feels like a cold, rain after a year-long drought. Relief rolls over me like it’s just crested the top of a waterfall, then it all comes crashing down, slamming me into the truth of what he’s done below, and I finally find my voice.
“No. Get off me.” I shove hard at his chest, and he immediately stumbles back, panting. “What have you done?!”
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​Sample Playlist: 31 Songs ▶