Broken Promises (Broken Series) - By Dawn Pendleton Page 0,6

Although I wasn’t excited about it, I’d learned a long time ago to just deal with it. Fighting the gossips only seemed to egg them on.

I carried the box that held our dinners into the hospital and up to the second floor. Before I got to Joe’s room, I stopped off at the nurse’s station. Carrie, a nurse who I’d been dating for a month, waited for me.

“Hey handsome,” Carrie said, leaning over the tall counter to give me a kiss.

It was chaste and void of almost all emotion. On my end, at least. She was nice enough, but I didn’t feel the sexual attraction to her I’d felt with other women. Other women namely being Mallory Wells. Now that Mallory was back in town, I felt even more dissatisfied by my relationship with Carrie.

“I brought you dinner,” I said, pulling the bag marked with her name out of the box.

She smiled. “I get off at nine. Want to come over tonight?” she asked, her voice dropping to what should have been a seductive level.

I wasn’t seduced; however, I was turned off. If anything, I felt like scum.

When the boisterous laughter of one Mallory Wells floated into the hallway, I felt even worse. The kick her voice gave to my gut was unwarranted and unwanted. I couldn’t stop the way I felt. Lust washed over me. Like her or not, I was still physically attracted to her.

“I don’t think so, Carrie. I’ve got to get out to Joe’s early tomorrow to finish up the porch,” I said.

Carrie’s face fell but she nodded her understanding. I was the one who didn’t understand. Hadn’t I told myself I should relinquish the job to someone else? Hadn’t I given myself more than enough reasons to stay the hell away from Mallory? Why then, was I doing everything in my power to stay close to her?

I was one big ball of conflicting emotions, my brain mixed up with the feelings from memories and lust. I smiled at Carrie and went over to Joe’s room, where more of Mallory’s laughter filtered the hallway.

THREE

Mallory

My dad was in high spirits; he was excited to go home. He was sitting up straighter on his bed when I walked into his room. I wanted to believe that meant he would beat the cancer and be perfectly fine in a few weeks. I knew better, but that’s what I wanted to believe.

We spent several minutes talking about memories from my childhood.

“Do you remember that trip we took to Niagara Falls when you were twelve?” he asked.

“How could I forget? You tried to throw me off the Maid of the Mist boat at the bottom of the falls. I spent that entire summer deathly afraid of water.” I laughed.

“You blasted your depressing emo music as loud as the car stereo would go the entire ride back to punish me. Longest ten hours of my life!”

I’d forgotten about that. I let out a full, hearty laugh and realized that even though my dad had come to visit me every year these past few years, I hadn’t really talked to him in a long time.

I missed him. He’d been the only adult in my life throughout my childhood. I didn’t have the luxury of going back and forth between parents. I was suddenly aware that he’d been mother and father and he’d done a pretty good job. I couldn’t find much to complain about in my childhood. Of course, when I was adolescent, I’d all but hated him. Now I wished I could go back to those years when life was simple, and the bond we’d shared was easy.

“I remember you telling me you were ‘a woman’ that summer,” he said, his eyes alight with merriment.

“Oh, God! That had to be the worst conversation of my life.” I groaned, remembering the conversation where I’d had to explain to my dad that I started my period. It wasn’t a memory I wanted to relive or remember. Ever.

“You have no idea how much I wanted to laugh when you told me.”

I was appalled. “Wait a minute. You acted like you had no idea what I was talking about. You made me explain, in detail, what happened. Are you telling me you knew and just wanted to drag out my humiliation?” It was definitely something my dad would do, though, so I had to laugh.

“Dinner’s here,” a masculine voice called out from the doorway.

I wasn’t surprised to see Luke standing there. Dad had been kind enough