All That Remains
Authors: Michele G Miller,Samantha Eaton-Roberts
Tags: #Literature & Fiction, #Genre Fiction, #Coming of Age, #Teen & Young Adult, #Love & Romance, #Romance, #Contemporary
Contents
If you’ve loved the From The Wreckage series
All That Remains
By
Michele G. Miller
All That Remains (From The Wreckage, book 3)
Michele G Miller
Copyright © 2014 by Michele G Miller
Kindle Edition
License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
This book is a work of fiction. Any names, places, characters, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or, if real, are used fictitiously. Any resemblances to any persons, living or dead, are completely coincidental.
For more information:
http://michelegmillerbooks.com
Cover design by Starla Huchton of Designed by Starla
Edited by Samantha Eaton-Roberts
To my readers. You are
MY
anchor.
“When he kisses her, storms rise beneath her skin;
For she is the ocean, and he is her moon.”
~ Unknown
Fear, guilt, and jealousy all rear their ugly heads as Jules and West strive to figure out what they want now that they've emerged from the wreckage of the storm.
A year has passed since the night Jules Blacklin and West Rutledge were thrown together by a tornado.
Now college freshmen, they’ve worked hard to overcome the tragedies of their pasts to start anew.
As they embark on their future, there is one last obstacle standing in the way of them finding complete happiness: themselves.
Prologue
West
Gilded Copper
.
It’s the color he searches for every time he steps onto the sprawling A&M campus. A fiery red, laced with golden highlights that curl around a slim porcelain neck as it arches back inviting his lips in for a taste.
Nine months ago, he twisted that copper hair around his fingers as his lips skimmed the slim column of
her
throat reveling in the taste he could never get enough of. Nine months ago, he climbed behind the wheel of his Jeep to take
her
back to his place to enjoy more of
her
taste when an angry addict decided to play chicken with them. Nine months ago, he’d slammed his vehicle into a silver sports car, breaking
her
body and his heart.
Seven months of counseling have brought him back to the place where he was his happiest once upon a time. He stands under the heavy branches of The Century Tree at A&M watching couples come and go, holding hands on their way to someplace or another, and it reminds him of
her
.
He doesn’t do it often, stand under the tree and allow himself to think of
her
. He usually reminisces in his room, in private, where he’s able to beat himself up for all the ridiculous choices he has made. In the almost two months since he walked out of the rehab, he’s maintained his distance, choosing to stay at the house he shares with his brothers and Mindy, or on campus at Freemont. Freemont, the junior feeder college across town from A&M where he’d made the conscious decision to start school instead of attending A&M.
It was a decision not entirely of his own making, but it was a good decision in the end. He’s rekindled one of the many loves he’d given up when his mother passed away six years ago. He is now playing quarterback for Freemont Junior College as a walk on. His first game is a little over a week away. Nine days and he’s not sure how much anonymity he will have anymore. At some point, he has to find her and tell her where he is and what he’s doing. He owes her that much.
His body is too weary to think of such things. He’d come to the campus to hang out with Austin and take it easy, and yet, here he is, under the tree again, wondering when he will see her. He has no idea if she’ll be here for fall semester or if, perhaps, she’s already there. He can’t imagine her giving up the dream she had to attend A&M, regardless of all that happened. He stands there, wondering what she will say when he reappears in her life. He’s tempted to call Danica back at Crestdale Victory Center, the rehab, and get another one of her pep talks; instead, he decides to skip hanging with Austin and go home. He should leave before he gets the notion to knock on every dorm door on campus calling her name.
As he prepares to leave, laughter rings out nearby and he pauses as the familiar music reaches him. His pulse speeds up as he peers across the campus to a couple.
Gilded Copper
.
Every muscle in his body tenses at the sight of her. Darkness is encroaching, long shadows growing everywhere he looks, but there - across the grass walking away from where he stands - God is shining the last bit of his August sun on Jules Blacklin’s silky red hair. The strands are sending off imaginary sparks as her hair swings along her back in vivid contrast to the white top she is wearing.
A million words come to, and leave, his parted lips before he is able to utter them. The second he comprehends how perfect this moment is, how it must be fate for her to be here at this exact time; he’s also reminded that two inches over is a person walking next to her. Her arm is threaded through his, and as she throws her head back while laughing merrily at something he’s said, her partner turns his head and West is punched in the gut by a betrayal of epic proportions.
Standing by the girl he once pledged to marry is one of only three people he has always trusted with every ounce of his being. Smiling at Jules, his hand lifting and tugging playfully on her long ponytail, is Austin. West’s brother.
One
Seven Weeks Earlier
West
“It’s crazy how little you can actually know about yourself.”
“How do you mean?” Dr. Steel’s ever moving pen stops working over her notepad as she tilts her head up, her small eyes narrowing as she looks at West.
The first time she’d looked at him that way, he’d felt as if he were a bug under a microscope. Her features always remain smooth, unchanged by anything he says; but those eyes? Those eyes are comparable to the tractor beam from the Death Star; they latch on, and West feels as if she’s pulling every bit of his soul from him.
“I’m amused, that’s all.”
She pushes her tongue forward making a clucking sound, once. It’s a tell. One of the many he’s picked up on from her in his seven months at Crestdale. It means they’ll sit there all day until he spills the proverbial beans. He starts to wonder if he should have kept his mouth shut.
“All right, all right,” West mutters, sinking farther into the leather chair in her office. He props his feet on a stool in front of him, the picture of a relaxed man. If only. “I was thinking about it all last night. Football, my mom, the tornado… Jules.” He stops there, because saying her name always cuts him just enough to make him pause, the need to take a breath is overwhelming.
The pause, the breathing, it’s one of
his
tells. She’s picked up on the way he pauses every time he speaks Jules name during his time at Crestdale. Dr. Steel sits there quietly and she waits, as she does every time, knowing he will continue on in a moment.
“I’m glad I decided to stay here this past month,” West admits for the first time out loud.
“Do you think it’s helped?”
“Yeah.”
When Dani had suggested he wasn’t ready to go home and fight for Jules, he’d been angry at first. As if she knew anything about him, about their relationship, anyway. She was right, though. West wasn’t ready to face Jules yet because he hadn’t faced himself.
“West, do you think you can tell me about the night of the tornado?” The way she speaks with very little inflection amazes him. The soothing monotone words never feel threatening the way everyone else's always does. Somehow, it made her easier to talk to. The family grief counselor he’d seen right after his mom passed away always put emphasis on his name, drawing it out with her southern Texas drawl. Obviously a transplant to the south, Dr. Steel’s sentences are quick and to the point.
“Again? Haven’t you heard it enough?”
“I’d like to hear more about your time spent with Jules. We need to talk about her before you leave, don’t you agree?”
He shrugs, well aware of his issues with talking about Jules. For the past seven months, six required by the deal his dad made to get him out of any trouble over the wreck and the one extra one he decided he needed to admit to his issues, they’d covered all of his issues with his family. They’d yet to discuss his trouble with Jules. That one scares him still. Talking about her means he’s closer to trying to see her, and seeing her means she can say no to hearing him out.
Reluctantly, he looks up from the leather bracelets on his arm and answers her. “Yeah, we can.”
She lets out a small sigh, and West can just make out the slow sinking of her shoulders as she releases the air. It makes him smile for some unknown reason.
“You can begin wherever you want, West. It’s your story to tell.”
“It’s thinking of Jules and our story that made me think about how little I knew about myself.” She nods; a silent urging, telling him it’s okay to continue. He appreciates the way she listens to him without putting words in his mouth. “Before her, I thought I was maybe a little screwed up, a little depressed still over my mom, angry at the world… you know all that angst-ridden, teen cliché stuff. After her, I knew what I really was.”
Her brow raises, and her pen once again moves over the pad of paper on her lap.
“I was wrecked.”
Two
West
“I hated going to the Shack on Friday nights, it was always packed full of football players, cheerleaders, and all of the students who wanted to be around them. The ones who were hoping for instant popularity because they were seen with the cool crowd. Do you know how many girls give it up to jocks in the back of their pick-ups for a chance to hang on their arms for a few weeks?” West asks, his face twisting in disgust. “I hated that scene.”
“Then why were you there?”
“I was there before the crowd rolled in. Ironically, I was flirting with a girl who worked there. She was a friend of Lauren’s, and she seemed willing to hang out, so I was waiting for her shift to end. I can’t even remember her name anymore. It would have meant nothing to either one of us.”
“It?” Dr. Steel cocks her head.
“Sex.”
“So you were hanging around hoping to score with some girl you didn’t know.”
Those words coming from Dr. Steel’s lips sound crass. West nods, stifling a laugh with a shrug. “Um, yeah. Basically.”
“Basically? Did you do that often? Sleep with girls for no reason?” His brows raise as she adds, “Well, for no reason beyond the obvious ones?”
He feels the heat in his face at her obtrusive questions, but she looks cool as a cucumber. Her right leg crosses over her left, the tip of her shoe tapping the air to the beat of some unknown song as she takes notes on the little pad in her lap. She is not easily shaken. Her face – similar to her monotone voice - is always a clean slate of thoughtfulness.
