Hooked #2 (The Hooked Romance Series - Book 2) (9 page)

And so I told him. “Kevin. You’re allowed to do
whatever you want. You’re allowed to give up if you want. You shouldn’t; I
should add there’s so much the world has to offer you.” I had been so hopeful,
so sure of myself.

But now, laying there, drinking my sixth glass of
wine, I was no longer so sure of myself. I understood that the world had nothing
to offer me. It didn’t want to offer me sex, at least without taking something
eternally important away from me. It didn’t want to offer me success. It didn’t
want to offer me love.

Instead, it wanted me here—so much like
Kevin—engaging with television shows, with a depressive alcoholic substance,
and with as many Cheetos as I could find at the local convenience store.

And this was how the loathing commenced the next
several days. I wondered; what I could have done wrong, how I could have
proceeded differently. But, beyond anything else, I simply wondered how I was
going to survive the following few days.

The next day, I left the apartment only once. I took
a long, long walk out to the lake, not even bothering to walk through Wicker
Park to see what had been done to my beautiful corner.

On the beach I stood in the sunlight, trying to feel
hope again. I listened as the lake swarmed up on the rock, then the sand. It
was brilliant, the way the sun lit the tops of each wave. But to me, it all felt
the same as it ever had been before. Usually, this sameness of nature is a
comfort for people. “We live, and we die—and the earth goes on.” That sort of
spiel.

However, this time, I understood the sameness of the
waves as a sort of knowledge that nothing in this world would ever go well or
change for me.

I watched as small children played along the
boardwalk, their parents rushing up behind them to capture them in their arms.
I watched as old men walked somberly down the boardwalk, making a strange juxtaposition
between the fresh-faced boys and girls running this way, then that on the
boards.

I tried not to focus on the lovers, both young and
old. One lover of my life had given up on the world, had retreated to the
darkness of the living room. Another lover of my life had pushed headfirst into
everything the world could give him—even taking things that didn’t belong to
him.

I didn’t know which was worse. I stood, uncertain,
as the waves crashed. Where was the world going to take me next?
 

Part 3
of Hooked comes out February 6
^th

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Once complete the
Broken
series will consist of 5 books in total.

This
book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are
products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not
to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual
events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright
© 2014 Claire Adams