Broken by Love (The Basin Lake Series Book 2) Read online

  I sigh. There isn’t much use in telling Mom what to do. I’d asked her not to take me away from our house in our quiet neighborhood in North Seattle where we had an actual backyard and lived in a quaint old house, but she’d done it anyway. She said Aiden was so nice, so welcoming, that not many men would take her and I as a package deal, but he did. She made us sound like a charity case, and if I’m grateful for anything, it’s that Aiden at least isn’t lecherous or creepy.

  “Anyway,” she says, rubbing her finger along the dusty top of the sewing machine I used to spend hours making some of my own clothes with but hadn’t touched since Mr. Thatcher. “I think we should spend a weekend together, just you and me, I feel like I never—”

  I’m saved from the next syllable when my phone chirps and I see Angela’s name flash across the screen with a short message:

  Waiting.

  “I’ve got to go,” I say, pushing out the chair I’ve been sitting in and grabbing my small purse.

  “What club tonight?” Mom asks, trailing me out of my room and into the long hallway to the door. “You never tell me where you’re going.”

  “Not sure,” I say with a shrug, then turn on my heel at the door and offer her a quick squeeze. “I’ve got to go. Don’t wait up.”

  “No, I suppose I won’t,” she says as I’m dashing toward the elevator.

  When I’m in the elevator and the doors close, I let out a breath, glad to be away from her, glad to be away from her musings and her wish to spend more time with me. I can’t help but laugh when I think of the last time I’d fallen for that, how I’d spent the better part of a Saturday waiting for her to get dressed so we could go see a movie and have dinner at that really nice mall downtown, Pacific Place, only to be told after three hours that she didn’t feel well, that we could rent a movie instead, one that she fell asleep halfway through after she’d drained a wine bottle.

  That’s not the mother she used to be. Not even close. I have to go way back to before my parents got divorced to find the woman who used to read stories to me and tuck me in at night, a woman who preferred the company of real people to that of alcohol.

  It’s dark when I get outside, the air stiff and muggy. There’s no breeze coming off the water to help, making this August night even less comfortable. Angela is double parked in her Mercedes coupe, blocking a full lane of traffic and in the process of flipping someone off behind her when I run up to the passenger side and slip in.

  “About time,” she says. “These fuckers think this is the only lane they can drive in.” She looks into her rear view mirror, and I follow her gaze, nearly jumping back when I notice the figure in the backseat.

  “Ike?” I turn around to see my ex-boyfriend splayed out in the middle of the small backseat, smiling at me like he did the first time we met, November of junior year at my new high school. It was a smile I mistook for kindness.

  Ike is anything but kind.

  “Hope you don’t mind, babe,” he says, pushing himself forward and looking down the low cut of my dress as Angela merges into traffic.

  “Actually, I do mind.” I turn forward and then flash an angry look at Angela. “What’s he doing here? In your car?”

  She shrugs like it’s no big deal. “He misses you. And I figure maybe you miss him.”

  “Well, I don’t,” I say, loud and clear.

  Ike just laughs. It’s what he always did when I got upset about something. When I caught him kissing another girl in the halls at school, he laughed like it was no biggie. When he’d gotten high for our high school graduation, his eyes red and glazed, he laughed and said I needed to chill. Then he’d remind me that I shouldn’t get my panties in a wad, told me I’d fucked my high school teacher, hadn’t I? Said I didn’t have any room to talk.

  It wasn’t the first time I’d regretted telling Ike that secret.

  I’d allowed him to walk all over me until I’d had enough, until I stopped returning his calls or texts two months ago, hoped he’d gotten the message it was over between us.

  “Just give it a chance.” Angela checks her makeup in the rear view mirror and nearly cuts someone off in the next lane. “Shit,” she says after averting an accident.

  “Don’t kill us,” Ike says. “This is a night for new starts.”

  I ignore his little comment. “Is he coming with us? To the club?” If she’d been on time, we were going to grab a late dinner first, but I’m guessing it’s straight to the club on an empty stomach with Ike in tow.

  “Jesus, just chill Emma. He’s got a hookup for Rampage, so be nice, okay?”

  “Yeah, be nice,” Ike parrots.

  I can tell how much he’s enjoying this, wanting to get a rise out of me. It used to be that Ike could just offer me that smile of his and I’d forgive him. He was so different than any boy I’d ever dated back in North Seattle and the complete opposite of Mr. Thatcher. Ike had tattoos up and down his arms, had scruffy brown hair that just always seemed to fall into place and blue eyes that you could lose yourself in. He was fairly muscular with a tongue that was pierced and gauges in his ears, not giant ones that tugged his lobes toward his shoulders, just small ones that seemed to tell everyone at our high school that he was the shit. But we’re not in high school anymore, and, as far as I’m concerned, Ike is just another hipster douche-bag.

  “We don’t have to go to Rampage,” I say, especially if it means Ike is our in.

  Both Angela and I have just turned nineteen, so getting into twenty-one and over clubs has depended on Angela knowing half the bouncers in Seattle. It means we can go to The Under-Earth, Tiger, and sometimes Eclipse if the right guy is working the door, but even if she knew the bouncers at Rampage, I doubt they’d let us in. Rampage is the Tesla, the BMW, the Mercedes Benz of nightclubs, a place that doesn’t need to let underage girls in and risk getting shut down. Girls older and more beautiful than us flock there, and they still turn a quarter of them away, or so I’ve heard.

  “No, we have to go to Rampage,” Angela says like it’s a done deal. “I’m not waiting another two fucking years. Ike is our in, so he stays in the car and gets us there.”

  She could care less about Ike missing me. She’s just using him as a way to get into a club she wants to go to and barreling over my feelings about it in the process. I could say something, but arguing with Angela is like arguing with a wall that keeps closing in on you. She’s used to getting her way. She’s privileged and beautiful, and no matter what trouble she’s gotten into, no matter how bad her grades have been, her parents who own a multi-million dollar house on the shores of Lake Washington bail her out. They bought her this car as a graduation present, and somehow they got her into Seattle University. She always seems to come out of any situation unscathed, and I learned a long time ago that being her friend meant just having to go with the flow and do whatever she wanted.

  “Fine. We’ll go to Rampage… with Ike.” I say his name with accentuated disgust in hopes he’ll get the message and leave me alone once we get into the club.

  “Of course you will,” Angela says with a smirk.

  She’s so full of herself, has been since I met her in French class junior year, but being friends with her comes with its privileges. Without her, I wouldn’t have the nerve or the connections to get into the nightclubs most girls our age will have to wait another two years to get into. If I’m especially annoyed with Angela, I just think about how good it will feel to dance, to have guys watch us, to know they’re there for one thing. They won’t tell me they love me like Mr. Thatcher did or promise me things they can’t deliver. If I’m low enough and desperate to feel something, I’ll sleep with one of them and tell them, and myself, it’s only sex. I’ll take their phones from them so they can’t record me, paranoia at its finest, something they go along with in the heat of the moment because of the thing between their legs that drives them to do crazy things. It’s the only way I feel safe, in control.

  But besides the dancing and the men, there’s somethi
ng more that I need from these nights with Angela, something that turns my brain off completely and makes me forget my fucked up life, makes me drift off into another world completely.

  Alcohol.

  It’s not the stuff I could easily pilfer from Mom or Aiden at home and drink in secrecy, but the alcohol that is made so much more special because of the atmosphere. It will be the first thing I go for once we’re in. Even though I’ve been working at a high-end handbag boutique for two months now and Mom offers me money all the time, Angela still runs a tab for us, hands her credit card over to the bartender and tells me to get whatever I want, whatever I need.

  “So, you seeing anyone?” Ike asks as we near the updated warehouse in South Lake Union that Rampage occupies.

  “Are you asking me?” I say with an annoyed flair just as Angela has turned the dance station up on the radio.

  “Yeah…” he says, breathing on my neck. “Like Angela is ever going to settle down with one guy for more than a week.”

  “Fuck you, Ike,” Angela snaps back with her usual edge.

  “Come on,” Ike says, ignoring her. “You single or what?”

  I roll my eyes, knowing that whatever my answer is, Ike will find a way to push around it, looking for any cracks or crevices for him to worm his way back into my life just to torture me more. He’d done it before numerous times, including getting me back after he’d ditched me for his friends on Valentine’s Day.

  “Emma… Emma…” he whispers into my ear, his breath more annoying than ticklish.

  “I will never go out with you again.” I turn my body toward him, trying not to make it too quick, wanting to look completely in control of myself.

  “Never say never,” he practically sings, easing back and offering me that same smile.

  I’m furious now, furious at Angela for bringing him along and furious at Ike for trying to get to me. The only thing that will calm me down is a drink.

  Angela usually likes to make a grand entrance in the front of a club, savoring the moment when she and I walk past everyone in line in our slinky dresses and heels, when all she has to do is say a few words to her bouncer friend before we go in. But Ike says the guy who’s supposed to let us in will be waiting at the door in the back alleyway, which we find to be pretty much deserted. After knocking, he hands a bag of something that I suspect might be heroin over to the guy who opened the door and let us in. Among other things, Ike is apparently a drug dealer.

  Vile.

  “I can’t believe you,” I say to Ike as we walk through a maze-like hallway, the thumping sound of music reverberating through the walls.

  “I got you in, didn’t I?” he says, putting his hand at the small of my back before I shake him off.

  “This better be good,” I tell Angela, and she looks surprised. That’s the kind of thing she’d say.

  “It’s going to be better than good,” she snaps back.

  Once we find our way out of the rear hallway, we’re deposited into another world. This club is like no other I’ve been in, a huge, expansive space lit with hues of purple, gold and almost every color in between. There’s a balcony that wraps around the entire space, acting as a second floor, wide columns bracing it every dozen feet or so and rising to the very top of the club where a giant chandelier hangs along with dozens of smaller lights that flash over everyone.

  There are so many people, dancing and drinking, talking, kissing and grinding on each other. It’s a sea of attractive people, girls in short dresses and heels, guys in tight shirts and slim pants, those not on the dance floor or at the bars congregated around smaller tables at the periphery of the club, each table with its own chandelier sparkling and refracting whites, yellows and oranges.

  “This place is off the fucking hook,” Ike says, his body already moving to the music and his eyes darting around at the never-ending supply of beautiful women.

  “Let’s go to the bar.” I grab Angela’s hand and start pulling her toward one of the several bars I can see from our vantage point, all of them busy with lines of people and hundreds of bottles of alcohol lining the glass, lighted shelving behind the busy bartenders.

  “Slow the fuck down,” she says, but I don’t, and she keeps following me, pushing through the mass of human bodies and trying not to get stopped by any of the guys who look just about to say something to us as we pass by them.

  When we get to the edge of one of the bars, I look at Angela to hand over her credit card. She eyes me with what I think is suspicion, like she doesn’t like the fact that I’d just led her around. I can see the wheels turning in her head, and she’s probably making a mental note not to let me get away with that again.

  Before she can even pull her card out, a tall guy in a black button up asks, “You ladies thirsty?” in the kind of booming voice you need to be heard above all of the noise.

  Angela takes a moment to look him up and down, smirks, and then responds in that same loud tone, “Are we ever.”

  He smiles. “What can I get you both?”

  “Vodka on the rocks,” Angela says coolly and quickly to him before offering her hand. “I’m Angela. And this is Emma.”

  “Stephen,” he says, taking her hand and kissing it.

  I want to laugh, Angela standing there like royalty, like the guy should bow down to her next. And he’s so her type. Tall, muscular, tan, with dark eyes, really white teeth and that look… put together, kind of conservative, preppy but still styled. It’s why she’s being so nice to him, so forthcoming with our names. If she’s immediately attracted to a guy, she won’t waste time. She’ll get him to buy us some drinks if she doesn’t already have a tab running, and then she’ll screw him before the night is over.

  “This your first time here?” He’s asking both of us, though his eyes are pretty much glued to Angela after he’s ordered us our drinks from one of the scantily clad female bartenders.

  “Mmm… we’ve been here a few,” Angela lies. “You?”

  “Rampage virgin for me and my friends,” he says with a crooked smile, diverting his gaze to me for a moment, like he wants to hook me up with one of those friends of his. “Heard about this place for a while. It’s kind of amazing.”

  “Pretty much.” Angela pulls her long, blonde curly hair over her bare shoulders and pushes her ample chest out.

  Stephen is in lust—I can absolutely tell by the way he’s looking at her, like he wants to devour her whole. Tall, curvy blondes are obviously his thing. It’s totally fine with me—all I want is to keep away from Ike and get my drink. Just thinking about the bite of the vodka and how it will burn going down my throat is enough to make my mouth water.

  “You guys want to come and sit with me and my friends?” Stephen asks. “I mean, it’s like roped off… you know, you pay some extra money and you don’t have to worry about someone stealing your seat.” He almost sounds humble about it when most guys would make it clear it was a VIP section.

  “Sure. We could do that,” Angela says, running a finger down Stephen’s chest. Then she looks at me and raises her eyebrows.

  “Yeah, fine.” It’s all good as long as I have a drink.

  “There you are,” Ike says just as Stephen is handing us our vodkas from the bar. “Who the fuck is this?” He sticks his thumb up toward Stephen and looks at me with that stupid smirk of his.

  “I’ll meet you over there.” Angela looks at me while totally ignoring Ike. “Lead the way, Stephen,” she says before Stephen can wonder who the hell Ike is.

  I’d protest further and grab onto Angela, tell her not to leave me alone with my ex-boyfriend, which I’m currently hating her for, but with drink in hand, all I can do is stand in place and tilt it against my lips, letting the chilled liquid slide down my throat.

  “Damn,” Ike says when I come up for air and put the empty glass on the bar.

  “Another, please.” I motion toward the same bartender and dig a ten-dollar bill out of my purse.

  “So, who’s the stiff Angela just
walked off with?” Ike is so smug, thinking a few tattoos make him the hottest guy here.

  “No idea, but he’s her type. She likes those kinds of guys.”

  “But not you.” Ike steps toward me, puts one of his hands on my ass. “You need a guy with edge, right?”

  I slap his hand away, then toss my ten dollars over to the bartender as she slides me my drink. “You and I are over, Ike,” I remind him, taking another long slug of vodka, feeling fuzzy and warm, like I’m about to forget every rotten thing that’s ever happened to me in my life.

  He shakes his head. “You don’t know what you’re missing, babe.”

  “No, I do, and I’m a hundred percent fine with it.” I close my eyes and toss back the rest of my drink. When I open them, Ike is gone.

  Poof.

  There’s one thing Ike can’t handle, and that’s rejection. If he can’t get me back with that fraudulent smile of his, then he’s off to find someone else. Not to say he won’t try again later after striking out.

  Good luck.

  After some dancing and back and forth to the bar where I order two more drinks, I decide to slow down. I can’t lose control. I’m out on the dance floor, letting the music move me, focusing on the words and the beat that will drive me right into the night. I’ll wait another hour, and then I’ll drink more, drink enough to send me right into oblivion as long as I know Angela will be around to make sure I get home okay. But considering she’s nowhere in sight, I might just have to pace myself.

  But for now, I’m buzzed enough to let go, imagining flying through the blue sky when someone grabs my hips. I’m about to tell whoever it is to fuck off when I see that it’s just Angela looking mischievous and Stephen right behind her, his chin leaning on her shoulder, kissing her neck.

  “I was wondering where you were,” she calls out, laughing and at more ease than I’ve seen her in a very long time.

  “Just dancing,” I say with a slight shrug, wanting to get back to it when I notice a guy moving right up to me.