Damaged (Triple Canopy Book 1) Page 2

  Sadness.

  I fucking hated, despised, loathed when she looked at me like that. The wordless pleading gutted me.

  “Never mind,” she murmured.

  I was impatient by nature, but as with all things Hadley, my impatience was exacerbated as were my finely honed observational skills. I knew when the woman was close, not because I was clairvoyant, but because when she was in proximity, everything intensified. All cognitive thought narrowed to just her.

  “Spit it out, Hadley. What’s on your mind?”

  “You don’t have to humor me. I just thought it would be fun.”

  She turned to leave. On impulse, I reached out to grab her hand. Though when I did and I felt her soft fingers curl around mine, I was taken aback. The curl was immediate like it was natural, intuitive, automatic. I wanted to drop her hand and put much-needed distance between us but I was caught in a web of awareness.

  A dangerous web spun by a girl who was too young, too innocent, too sweet for the likes of me. I’d snuff her beauty and steal the good she had in her.

  But before I could turn away, water hit me in the face.

  Hadley shot forward and her body collided with mine as she tried and failed to avoid getting doused. We were sopping wet, holding on to each other. Teenage laughter rang out but I ignored Carson’s loud giggles, as well as her father, Ethan’s, encouragement. Like always, I tuned in to Hadley. Her scent, her breasts pressing against my chest, her soaking-wet hair that still looked silky even though it was plastered to her head, her body shaking against mine with laughter, the way her hands gripped my sides. I seriously needed to get the fuck away from a very wet, very beautiful, very sexy Hadley Walker.

  “It’s on!” Hadley shouted, and thank fuck she pushed off of me, reached inside her pail, and started rapid firing balloons.

  Her aim sucked.

  She missed Carson more than she hit her. But her face was lit, her smile so big and beautiful, I couldn’t stop myself from grabbing a balloon and launching it at Ethan.

  My aim was true.

  I hit my next three targets and soon the backyard birthday party was mayhem. Carter rushed forward and scooped up his daughter Emma as she toddled around and just as quickly, he reached for his nephew, Hudson, as Ethan ran to his daughter’s side and took the hose.

  Squirt guns, buckets filled with water, and more balloons came out. Six grown men engaged in a hostile water fight.

  Six—seven if you included the teenage girl—against Hadley and me. The women stood off to the side, cheered their men on, and laughed themselves stupid. Usually, this would cause my chest to burn with jealousy and I’d abruptly excuse myself and leave the party I hadn’t wanted to attend in the first place. But with Jasper, Clark, Lenox, or Levi’s urging, I always went. My bosses refused to allow me to be the loner I enjoyed being. They pulled me into the fray, into their family.

  “Watch your three o’clock, Nick’s coming in hot,” Hadley announced.

  Coming in hot.

  Cute as fuck.

  It was then I let go and had fun.

  It didn’t take long for Hadley and me to lose what Delaney had deemed the Water War of the Century. We were soaked to the bone, all of our ammo was gone, and we stood hand-in-hand while the others pelted us by any means they could find.

  Of course, I could’ve charged one of the guys and gotten us more balloons, but I’d take a pelting anytime if it meant I got to stand next to Hadley and hear her excitement, see her smile, smell her flowery perfume, breathe in her innocence.

  I was royally fucked.

  2

  “Can’t tonight, Addy,” I told my sister as I balanced my cell between my ear and shoulder.

  “Mom’s making twice-baked potatoes,” she returned.

  If anything could get me to hightail my butt to my parents’ house for dinner, it was twice-baked potatoes.

  “Wish I could but it’s the first Monday of the month. The Writers’ Club meets and I can’t leave the library until they’re done.” I reminded her of something she knew because I stayed late two times a week for after-hours clubs. “Mom knows this, too, so you can tell her I’m seriously disappointed she’s making my favorite dinner on a night I can’t come.”

  There was a stretch of silence both coming from the phone and the empty library as I made my way out the doors to the outside return bin.

  “Out with it, sister,” I sighed.

  One of the many awesome things about being a twin was I knew my sister. Not like regular singletons knew their siblings. Adalynn and I took it to a whole new level. Normally, it was totally cool to be able to look at someone and just know their thoughts. Other times when you wanted to keep something to yourself, not so much.

  Addy knew me better than anyone. And I, her.

  “Brady.”

  One word.

  She knew. Of course, she did—everyone knew I was in love with a man who wanted not a single thing to do with me. And they knew because I didn’t try to hide it. My family was nosy as hell, and they had ways of finding shit out, so why bother?

  But it was only Addy who knew the truth. I wasn’t in love; I was head over heels and I had been for a long time.

  “Nothing’s changed,” I told her.

  “But, I saw you two at Emma’s party. He looked different.”

  Indeed he did. I could count on one hand the number of smiles I’d seen and never had I heard him laugh. But yesterday at my niece’s first birthday party he’d gifted me with both. And coming from Brady Hewitt they were gifts, precious gifts that I wanted more of.

  However, Brady had a whole host of reasons why he’d never give me anything. His first excuse was because he worked for my father. Though, technically he no longer did. My dad and the uncles had all retired and turned Triple Canopy over to their sons and nephews, Carter, Nick, Jason, and Drake.

  In my opinion, his excuses were ridiculous. He respected my dad—and there was a lot to admire, my dad was the best—so he wouldn’t go after me, but I still found the excuse invalid. He was too old for me—I was twenty-four and he was thirty-one. Again, totally invalid. I was an adult, even though Brady seemed to miss that.

  Two cars pulled into the library parking lot and pulled me from my thoughts.

  “Hey, Addy, I gotta go. Cars are pulling in and I have to grab the books out of the collection bin.”

  “Don’t think you’re off the hook,” she mumbled.

  “With you? Never. I’ll call you later if I have any energy left.”

  “You’d have more energy if you laid off the soda, drank more water, and started exercising.” My mind wandered as she gave me the same lecture I’d heard a million times. “…you can’t live off sugar and caffeine.”

  Knowing I wasn’t going to change my unhealthy habits, and not having time to hear about metabolic-something-or-other, and really not caring about sleep patterns, I rudely rushed out, “Love ya, sis, gotta go, have fun at Mom and Dad’s, hugs and kisses to all. Bye.”

  I hung up and smiled at Mr. Jennings as I pushed my cart past him.

  “Good evening, Miss Walker,” the older man greeted me.

  “Hello, Mr. Jennings. The door’s unlocked.”

  “Thank you, sweet girl, I know I’m a little early.”

  “No bother. Go on in.”

  I made my way across the lot to the box and was happy to see there were just enough returns to keep me occupied with check-ins while the Writers’ Club had their meeting and I wouldn’t have to stay any later.

  I was pushing the cart back into the library just as Anne, a lifestyle blogger and author of three books on parenting, walked in.

  “Hey, Anne, how are your hoodlums?”

  This was not derogatory, it was ironic, because Anne’s four children were the most well-behaved children I’d ever met.

  “I left them sitting at the table doing their homework.”

  “Of course you did.” I smiled.

  Within ten minutes, the rest of the authors had arri
ved and they were sitting at their normal spot talking about word counts and revisions as I checked in my cart of returned books.

  I much preferred to hear their conversation to the knitting club’s. Not that the group wasn’t pleasant, but after an hour of listening to knit, knit, purl or knit a stitch, slip a stitch, the repetition was burned into my brain and I’d dreamed about cable cast-offs and rib stitches.

  I was ten books in when I came across it and an angry growl slipped out.

  “Everything okay?” Simon, one of the authors, asked.

  “Yeah, yeah. Sorry.” I waved off his concern but inside I was seething.

  This was the fourth book in the last month that had been returned defaced.

  I scanned the bar code, and like the others, it hadn’t been checked out. Unfortunately, this happened sometimes. People walked out with books without properly checking them out. Sometimes they were returned, other times they were just gone. It was hell on our budget when we needed to replace stolen copies. Luckily, it didn’t happen frequently but it happened.

  This was different.

  This bit my ass.

  This infuriated me beyond belief.

  Some asshole had taken Ernest Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden and scribbled on the pages. I thumbed through the book and found more blacked-out passages. There were also notes in red pen in the margins.

  Vile. Disgusting. Evil. Lesbian.

  My blood boiled and I flipped back to the title page.

  Godless heathens be warned.

  What the hell did that mean? Be warned? Hell to the no.

  I set the book aside and finished the stack of check-ins as the Writers’ Club finished. The hour had passed by in a blur, my mind unable to stop thinking about why someone would think it was okay to destroy a book. Why someone thought they had the right to be judgmental in any way one could judge. It was wrong, it was vile, it was disgusting and evil. And frankly, it said a lot about the person who called up God’s name and used it in judgment.

  After I delivered a round of half-hearted goodbyes to the authors, I noticed Simon hadn’t left. This wasn’t unusual—he often stayed behind to walk me to my car, especially in the winter months when it was dark by the time their meeting was over. But sometimes he stayed in the spring and summer even though it was still light out. He was a nice guy. Geeky. But nice.

  “What’s wrong, Hadley?” he asked as he stopped in front of the circulation desk. “And before you tell me nothing, you’ve been huffing and sighing for the last thirty minutes. Not to mention your face is bright red.”

  As I mentioned, Simon was a nice guy. He also wrote erotic romance under a female pen name. Not that he’d told me this, but I’d overheard the club discussing one of his novels. Which, being the nosy person I was, meant I’d gone home, looked him up, and bought one of his books. It was good, so good I was sucked into the plot. Therefore when I read the first scorching hot sex scene, it conjured up about a million new fantasies about Brady and I forgot the nice guy, geek guy, Simon, had written those words. And when it finally hit me, I turned my tablet off and couldn’t finish the book. The next time I saw him, I blushed red and hid in my office the whole meeting.

  That was a year ago, and thankfully I could now face him without remembering he either had an active imagination or an extremely adventurous sex life, one in which he tied his partner to the bed and did insanely hot things to her. Either way, I didn’t want to know.

  But he’d understand why I was angry about a book being ruined.

  “Someone vandalized Hemingway’s The Garden of Eden.”

  I handed him the book and started to close down the computer. Approximately two-point-five seconds later, I heard him make a disgruntled sound.

  “Fucking asshole.” Then he muttered, “Excuse my language.”

  “No need. I agree. That’s the fourth book in a month,” I told him.

  “Seriously?”

  “The first was Lolita, and as much as I disagree with censorship or books being ruined, that book has always been controversial and always will be. But The Handmaid’s Tale? I don’t get. I didn’t see the book but I heard every page had “vulgar” written across it. Thirteen Reasons Why had “going to hell” written on the pages. Now this one.”

  “What does, “be warned,” mean?” he asked.

  “No clue and I don’t care.”

  “Hadley. You should care,” he gently warned.

  “No, I shouldn’t. Whoever wrote that, their opinion is meaningless to me. The only thing I care about is stopping this person from removing any more books from this library.”

  “Had—”

  “Nope. No more talk about judgmental pricks,” I told him and grabbed my purse from under the desk. “I have a new book I’m dying to get home and start. Speaking of, how’s the new work in progress coming?”

  “Look at you, trying to sound all authory,” he teased.

  “Is authory a word?” I laughed.

  “Artistic license. It’s a beautiful thing, I can make up any word I want to, and as long as it makes sense to my readers, I’m golden.”

  I set the alarm while Simon waited for me at the door, then he followed me out of the library and again waited while I locked up.

  “You don’t have to wait around, Simon. I appreciate it when it’s dark but it’s summer.”

  “Freaks and criminals don’t just lurk at night, Hadley.”

  Jeez, how many times had I heard that from my dad, uncles, brother, and male cousins? Enough to carry pepper spray and a stun gun in my purse. We started toward my car.

  “I might find that offensive if I hadn’t grown up with a bunch of overprotective apes around me. So, I’m choosing to believe you’re being gentlemanly and not apeish.”

  “Is apeish a word?”

  “Nope. But as long as you understand what I mean, I can make shit up, too.”

  “Right.” He chuckled and stopped at my car. “See you next month.”

  “Yeah, see you.”

  Simon waited until I was in my car before he got into his.

  I was out of the parking lot and down the street when I realized I left my cell on the desk. I contemplated leaving it behind. But if Addy tried to call and I didn’t answer she’d drive to my house. Normally I’d welcome this but I hadn’t lied to Simon. I had a new book waiting for me at home and I couldn’t wait to start it. I also had some work to do around my money-pit of a house.

  Everyone thought I was crazy when I purchased my condo, and there had been a few times since I’d started renovating it I worried I’d made a mistake. But I was determined to finish it. That meant every night I did a few hours’ worth of work. The downstairs bathroom was almost done and it looked fabulous.

  I drove around the block to get back to the library, which took for-freaking-ever with all the traffic. Fifteen minutes later, I pulled into the lot, scanned it to make sure it was empty, then hurried back into the building to get my cell.

  With my phone in hand, I locked back up, walked to my car, opened the door, and my stomach flipped. Then all the hair on the back of my neck stood on end and tingled. My gaze left the copy of Sex is a Funny Word on my seat and I looked around the parking lot again.

  Then I decided I was being one of those stupid women who hung out in an isolated area when there was obviously a crazy person around. So even though I didn’t want to, I picked up the book, tossed it in my back seat, got in, locked my doors, and reversed out of my parking spot faster than I needed to.

  I was no less irate when I got home. I was more infuriated when I opened the book, and in the same slanted, perfect handwriting I read, “Teaching children about sexual intercourse is a sin. You’re going to hell.”

  With a heavy sigh, I set the book on my kitchen table. The board of trustees for the library was already hemming and hawing over some of the books we had in circulation. They looked at the American Library Association’s list of challenged books as a list that meant banned. This was something I’d fough
t against and would continue to fight.

  Censorship was a slippery slope.

  One I wouldn’t support.

  Now I had four books that at some point had been on the ALA’s list. Four books that the board would not replace. Which meant I would purchase copies and donate them to the library. Wasn’t the first time I had to do that and it wouldn’t be the last.

  What I didn’t do was start my new book. I didn’t work on my bathroom. Instead, I stewed. Not just about the asshole trashing books, or the creepy fact someone had been in the parking lot watching me and broke into my car.

  No. My mind went to Brady.

  Always back to Brady—and his beautiful, albeit sad, eyes.

  It was good Jasper Walker had raised me. Even better, I had three uncles who helped make me the woman I was. I was used to hardheaded men. But more than that, Emily Walker was my mother. And she was the master of taming wild and stubborn. She’d shown me the way. And if I stumbled, she’d be there to give me advice.

  Brady Hewitt wasn’t going to know what hit him.

  I was done playing games.

  3

  I was five minutes from my apartment when my radio cut out, to tell me I had an incoming call. It was annoying as fuck, and every time it happened, I vowed to unpair my cell from my truck.

  Today’s interruption was from Hadley.

  My jaw tightened, reminding me I had a splitting headache. I hit the decline button and two seconds later, it rang again.

  This wasn’t annoying, it was alarming. Hadley called, not every day, but with regularity. The calls consisted of her inviting me places. Some I accepted—like taking her shooting, going rock climbing at the indoor rock wall, and once I’d gone paddleboarding with her off Tybee. I didn’t accept the invites that involved food, drinking, or watching a movie.

  But she’d never called multiple times.

  “You okay?” I answered.

  “Thanks for sending me to voice mail,” she hissed.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “What’s wrong? I’ll tell you what’s wrong. I have a flat tire. And before you ask, yes, I know how to change a flat. And, yes, I’ve tried. But I couldn’t get one of the stupid, freaking lug bolts loose, and I stripped it. And before you say it, yes, I know that was stupid, and I know it’s a damn problem. My dad is in Atlanta with my mom. I called my loving, sweet brother, and he told me he was busy and to call you since you’d left work. But since I didn’t want to bother you, I called Ethan and he’s on shift. Jackson is, too. Addy’s with a patient. Since Jason told me Nick and Drake were both with him finishing paperwork, that leaves you. Can you please come pick me up?” She rushed all of that out without taking a breath.