Broken Promises (Broken Series) - By Dawn Pendleton Page 0,18

I was prepared to jump off the balcony and swim to shore, I was staying at the prom until it was over.

We did a fair job pretending for the night; not a single person suspected a thing. I was proud of our efforts, but I still had to drive her home.

“I’m exhausted,” she yawned when we were back in my truck. “Do you mind?” She gestured to my shoulder and I shook my head. This would be the last time I was this close to her. She laid her head on my shoulder and sighed.

“Why does it have to be so hard, Luke?” she whispered.

I didn’t have an answer. We were too different to make it work. I wanted to stay in Casper and grow old here; she wanted a fancy Boston life. We were doomed before we ever even began.

The similarities between that night and our current situation weren’t lost on me. It felt as if history was repeating itself and I wasn’t sure I could handle that. A broken heart from Mallory Wells was more than enough the first time around. I didn’t need to feel the hurt all over again.

I heard a soft snore from beside me and let out a sigh of relief. If she was sleeping, she couldn’t pester me with questions about our past and us. I turned the radio up a bit to fill the silence and regretted it immediately. Our song was playing. My heart constricted, the world stopped spinning for a moment and my heartbeat raced on.

I realized in that moment, I would never be able to escape the past we shared. Even though my apartment had been completely redecorated and there wasn’t anything in it to remind me of her, moments like this would happen for the rest of my life. I would hear our song, or even any song that reminded me of her, and I would feel the pain all over again. If I hadn’t been able to move on after three years of separation, I probably wasn’t going to anytime soon with her back in town. How on earth did people ever survive break-ups?

Maybe it was just me. Maybe I was the one with a problem—I couldn’t let go of Mallory. She seemed to have been able to live a happy life in Boston, away from her friends, her family, and from me. I’d never received so much as a phone call from her since her prom. I’d written her several letters over the course of that first year. The first had taken me two full weeks to write and at least a month to gather the courage to send. They weren’t returned, so I knew she’d received them. She never replied, never called; I hadn’t heard a word from her. Her stand on how she felt about me was clear. There was no way to know whether or not she’d read them, though. I knew she’d rejected me already, but I was, for some unknown reason, a glutton for punishment.

I pulled into the driveway of her house and gently shook her awake. She sat up, looking more than just a bit disoriented.

“Where are we?” she asked.

“You’re home,” I said.

“Oh good. Are you going to carry me? I feel sick,” she muttered, her head falling back to my shoulder.

I laughed but recognized that she would definitely need help into the house. I wanted to drop her at the door and take off, but I knew I couldn’t. There was no way she would make it to her room. I got out of the truck and pulled her out through the driver’s door. Her body was almost completely limp, which meant I would, indeed be carrying her. I hauled her into my arms, her legs draped over one arm while the other supported her back. Her head lolled to the side until it rested against my chest. I managed to grab her purse with my fingers and walked to the house.

Thankfully, the door was unlocked, just the way Joe always left it. There wasn’t a high crime rate in Casper, especially when everyone knew everyone else’s business. I made my way down the short hallway to her room and laid her gently on the bed. Her duffel was on the floor so I picked it up and put it and her purse on the desk. It amazed me how little this room had changed in the last three years. Even though I saw Joe on a regular occasion,