Rose of Thorne (29 page)

This can’t be the bracele
t. It’s just a mere coincidence.

When I open the clasp
, the words my parents had inscribed are inside
.

There is only one way he has this bracelet…
Oh my God… NO! NO! NOOO!

The room begins to sway and I grip the desk
as I see him walk in. There is pure terror in his eyes when he sees my face and the silver bracelet in my hand. I manage one word. “How?”

Sebastian

Of course, my bachelor cousin would stand me up for a workout to hook up with the Kylie again. I swear those two have been glued together since Nik moved back here to Austin last month. It is just as well that he ditched me anyway because I am way too concerned about Skylar to stay and exercise. She had been pale and tired lately and I am worried she has been working too hard between the Yung account and our wedding. Many nights I had seen her up working on details or drafting a new design. I pull my workout bag back on to my shoulder and head back home to check on my beautiful girl.

I try to stay quiet when I enter the apartment because I figured that she may still be sleeping on the couch, but she isn’t there.
I quietly check our bedroom but I find that it’s also empty.

“Skylar?
” I call through the apartment. I continue my search for her down the hall, when I see her figure standing in my office. She is looking down at something in her right hand and gripping onto my desk for dear life with her other. She looks pale and exhausted standing there in only her sleep shorts and shirt.

“Skylar?”
I say softly as I step into the room. She jumps and turns toward me, and it is then that I get a clear look at her. My beautiful girl is wearing a look of horror and confusion on her tear stained face, and I instantly become panicked. I glimpse down to her shaking hand see the glimmering silver bracelet that she is holding and everything seems to close in around me.

She knows.

“How?
How do you have this Sebastian?” she says, waving the bracelet in the air.

For so long
I have waited for this moment. I somehow have convinced myself that I would be able to explain everything to her, but here I stand, facing the woman I love more than life itself, and there are no words.

How do I tell her
that I am the reason she lost everything when I know I will lose everything when I tell her?

“Answer me
, Sebastian! How do you have my bracelet?” she shouts at me and narrows her eyes. But I don’t have to answer her because my betraying eyes do the job for me.

“No…NO!
Oh my GOD! NO. NO. NO! It was you? You were the one driving that night?” she sobs and grabs for her chest. Because she is such a part of my soul, I can feel her intense pain. It radiates from her to me and slams into my chest. It is all I can do to breathe and I know I have to do something…but what?

I can’t lose her! I will never survive without her!

I try to reach out to her… to my beautiful angel in agony. I watch her gorgeous turquoise eyes flood with tears that pour down her flawless face. Through the tears, I can see all the pain in her haunted eyes. The pain from losing her parents, the pain of all the years lost, all of her hopes and dreams destroyed, and then, there is the pain of my deception. All of her pain… every single painful memory of her life is because of me.

“Baby, please…you are my life. I wanted to tell you from the beginning. Please let me explain…
baby, PLEASE… look at me,” I desperately plead, now crying myself. I wait for her to scream at me. For her to hit me...to tell me that she hates me…ANYTHING, but none of that happens. Instead, she does something else and it is something more painful than I could have ever conceived to be possible. She slides the ring representing our future together from her trembling finger and places it on my desk. She turns to face me and opens those beautiful eyes. What I see next will always haunt me. I am still expecting to see hate, rage, even disgust, but instead I see nothing. The startling color that once held so much life now holds nothing at all. I know in that moment that I have completely lost her… forever.

She looks at me blankly and whispers, “Goodbye
, Sebastian,” before she walks out of the door and down the hall. I stand there in shock staring at the ring on my desk. The ring that represented our future life together is no longer on my beautiful girl’s hand. Realization hits me and I run.

I can’t let her leave!
I have to stop her!

Panicked, I begin running
down the long hallway and see her stepping inside the elevator. I am so frantic that I stumble and fall onto the floor of the living room. I can see her repetitively pushing the button inside the elevator and I scramble to get to my feet. With my final desperate plea, I beg her with everything in me and dart for the closing doors. She stares back into my eyes with a cold lifeless glare. When my hands finally reach the closed steel door, I know that this goodbye really is for good.

Lucas

Seven months, sixteen days and four hours…that’s how long it’s been since I have seen her. As I drive through the familiar traffic of downtown Austin, I am reminded about how nice it is to finally be back behind the wheel of my Aston Martin again.

I try
calling her cell phone, but the number has changed. Making my way to her house, I see the
SOLD
sign in the front yard, which confirms to me that she must be living with Sebastian at his penthouse.

Since my company still handles
the financial business of Thorne Enterprises, I decide to let this visit look like a business call. With his latest quarterly reports and documents to be signed underneath my arm, I walk confidently into their apartment building. The doorman recognizes me and waves me on through to the elevators. I press the button to call the elevator downstairs and shuffle my feet nervously as I await its arrival.

You can do this, Lucas. She is worth everything. FIGHT FOR HER!

Skylar

“Baby, please… you are my life. I wanted to tell you from the beginning. Please let me explain… baby please… look at me!” he begs. But I cannot answer him… I can hardly stand to look at him. There is absolutely nothing he can say to me right now or ever that will make this better or make me forgive him for what he has done. My chest constricts and I gasp out in agony. I don’t think I have ever hurt this bad in my entire life. It’s the pain of losing my parents mixed with the pain of knowing the man I love was responsible for their death.

For almost eight
years, I have thought about what I would do or what I would say, if I ever got the chance to be face to face with the person that took everything from me that night. I imagined the screaming and the violent blows that I would give them, but for some reason none of that matters now. I have nothing left in me. I’m completely hollow.

Gradually
, I slide the infinity diamond from my left hand and study it. I never imagined I would ever want to take this off my hand. His amber eyes look at me with such fear and pain, but I didn’t care. I stride over to his desk and deposit the ring and my heart with it. He now has officially taken everything from me.

His desperate pleas through his tears don’t affect me.
Coldly, I stare back at him and whisper, “Goodbye, Sebastian,” and turn to leave his office. I feel like a zombie as I walk back down the long penthouse hall and past my belongings. I don’t even worry about what I’m wearing, or the fact that I am barefoot. I just keep walking to the elevator and hit the close button on the inside panel.

Sebastian is rounding
the corner and running towards me when he slips, falling to the floor. His panicked face looks at me with pleading eyes. When I now look back into them, I feel absolutely nothing. Every wonderful feeling that I once held for this man no longer exists, replaced with an agonizing emptiness. I press and hold the door close button, praying for the doors to shut. Sebastian scrambles to his feet, and as he makes a mad dash towards me, he begins screaming.

“SKYLAR!
NO, BABY! DON’T GO! PLEASE!” he screams in anguish. Sebastian desperately tries to reach the closing doors in time, but he’s too late. It is all just too late….

THE END
… for now.

Endings are funny sometimes
, because sometimes, just sometimes, they aren’t really endings, but instead only the beginning.

Can’t wait for book 2?
(I hate cliffhangers too) So, to give you a little something more, here is a little sample from Book 2 of the Thorne series,
THORNELESS.
Hope you enjoy.

Skylar

It’s just too late
. It’s really over.

Anger overtakes me and I slam the cold
, mirrored walls over and over with my hand. I don’t care that I am bleeding. I don’t even notice the pain in my right hand because I hurt too much everywhere else to care. The tears that threatened earlier now are pouring down my face. I lean against the cold metal, slide down to the floor, and wrap my bloody hands around my legs. When I hit the cold floor, I feel every emotion turn off like a switch and the numbness overtakes me again. The tears stop and I zone out and begin willing myself never to feel anything ever again.

I vaguely notice the doors open in the lobby, but I don’t move.
A blurry figure rushes to me, kneeling down closer.

“OH MY GOD! SKYLAR
! Look at me, angel!” A familiar voice calls my name. He pulls me into his arms and the elevator door shuts behind him. He sits on the floor and holds me and I breathe in the wonderful smell of woodsy leather. I blink back out of my daze and into the sparkling terrified emerald eyes of Lucas Drake.

Lucas

The elevator is almost to the lobby and I nervously shift the folder underneath my arm. I had thought that I had myself together but being this close to seeing her is making me a nervous wreck.

What if my plan fails and I am not able to speak to her privately? What if she hates me for never calling her
in all this time? BREATHE… Lucas.

I hear the familiar chime of the elevator indicating its arrival and it pulls me out of my thoughts and back to reality.

Ok
ay Lucas it’s now or never… you can do this! You know she is worth it! You have to fight for her!

When the doors opened my heart stops at the sight in front of me
.
Skylar.

She is curled up on the elevator floor with her arms wrapped around her knees.
Her legs and hands are dripping with bright red blood and she is shaking. I drop the folder to the lobby floor and immediately run to her and fall to my knees.

“OH MYGOD! SKYLAR
! Look at me, angel!” I scream as I try to pinpoint where she is hurt. Frantically scanning her body, I discover that the blood is coming from her right hand.

She continues sitting there
with a completely blank stare.

“Please, Skylar. You’re scaring me, baby!
” I plead as I pull her into my arms. It feels so good to hold her in my arms again, but I hadn’t wanted it to be this way. Gently, I brush the curls away from her face and cup her face with my hands. I’m now face to face with my gorgeous girl. Her beautiful eyes are both glazed and unfocused and are red from crying.

“SKYLAR!
Please look at me, it’s me, Lucas.”

Finally, she blinks out of her daze and looks at me with a shocked expression.
She looks around at the elevator door and seems to realize her surroundings. She pushes me away from her as she begins to stand.

“What are you doing here?” she says with anger in her questioning tone.

“I’m here to see you, but right now we need to get you to a doctor.”

“I don’t need a doctor…
OUCH,” she says as she tries to open her hand.

“
Are you hurt anywhere else? Did Thorne do this to you?” I ask with rage in my voice.

If he did this, I am going to fucking rip his throat out of his body and feed it to him.

“No. No… I did this... I got upset,” she answers with a pained look on her face.

I reach my hands out and tenderly hold her injured hand and she hesitantly lets me examine it.

“He must have upset you pretty bad for you to hit an elevator wall.
What were you arguing about anyway? Let me guess you were fighting over what kind of cake you wanted at the wedding,” I say in a cold tone. I want her to know just how much it was hurting me that she is getting married to him.

“Why the hell do you care
anyway, Lucas? You’re the one who dumped me remember? Or at least I’m assuming you dumped me since you haven’t bothered to call me since December. And not that it’s any business of yours, but there isn’t going to be a wedding!” she says angrily shoving me and yanks her injured hand away.

“OUCH
!” She screams out in pain and holds her arm to her body.

“First, I’m taking you to the doctor to get that hand looked at. Then we can discuss things later. Can you walk?”

She nods and I have the doorman pull my Aston Martin around to the front. He stares at both of us with wide eyes when he sees me lift her up and put her in the car.

She slaps me on the chest with her good hand and narrows her eyes.

“Put me down right now, Lucas! I told you I can walk! ”

“And I can carry
you, besides, your barefoot and there is no way in hell that I’m letting you walk outside on that pavement without shoes on your feet,” I fire back at her. I gently lower her and place her in the seat and secure the seat belt around her body. She huffs at me and rolls her eyes. Smiling, I close her door and make my way around to the driver’s side.

What a stubborn
, fucking gorgeous woman!

Skylar

“Well, Ms. Rose, it’s not broken, but you have a pretty nasty injury there. I’m going to have my nurse wrap your hand up good and tight. You’ll need to keep it wrapped and dry for at least a week or so. I’m going to prescribe you something for the pain and you will need to take these as directed in order to keep the pain tolerable. The next couple of days that hand is really going to be bothering you,” the doctor says as he tears off the prescription from his pad and hands it to me.

“Thank you so much, Doctor,” I reply as I take the piece of white paper in my hand. Just as he is about to open the door he turns to me and begins speaking.

“Oh, and try to not slam your hand in any more car doors,” he teases and walks out of the room.
I hate to lie about how I had hurt my hand, but there is no way that I am going to be confessing to him what I had actually done.

A few minutes later, the nurse enters the room and starts cleaning and wrapping my injured hand. Before she leaves the
room, she gives me instructions on how to care for it and warns me to contact them if it doesn’t heal within the next week. Looking down at the cold floor, I am grateful that she had given me the thick socks and scrubs when I arrived.

Lucas is waiting patiently for me in the waiting room when I walk out of the doctor’s office.
He is studying something on his phone, but when he sees me coming out, he quickly tucks it away.

I wave my newly bandaged hand at him and say, “Not broken.”

He appears relieved by my response, but the concern is still very evident in his emerald eyes.

“Um…do you mind taking me to Kylie’s apartment?
I don’t have my purse with me and I certainly don’t want to get into a cab looking like this,” I say as I point at my attire.

“Yes
, of course I’ll take you, Skylar,” he says as he leads me out to the parking garage. I surprisingly don’t cringe when he places his hand on the small of my back. I just don’t get why he is here after all this time. He even looks at me the same way he had before he left.
Why is that?
As we head across town to Kylie’s apartment, I decide to break the awkward silence that fills the car.

“Thank you for bringing me
, Lucas, but you didn’t have to stay.”

“You’re welcome
, Skylar, and yes I did need to stay. I was worried about you… I still am. Are you sure you are okay?” he asks me with a look of genuine concern.

“I told you the doctor says that my arm isn’t broken, so I’m fine.”

It’s my heart that is broken
, and I am far from being fine.

“I’m not talking about your arm, Skylar.
You were completely out of it when I found you in that elevator earlier, so that makes you definitely NOT fine. What the fuck happened anyway and I want the truth?” he demands as he continues to fight downtown Austin traffic.

“We broke up.
He did something I can never forgive him for, okay? I don’t want to talk about it anymore!” I say coldly.