The Breaking Season Read online K.A. Linde

Categories Genre: Alpha Male, Angst, Billionaire, Contemporary, Romance Tags Authors:
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Total pages in book: 100
Estimated words: 96513 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 483(@200wpm)___ 386(@250wpm)___ 322(@300wpm)
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“Then it wasn’t enough,” he said flatly.

“Well, if you weren’t enough at home,” I growled, “you certainly won’t be enough here.”

He flinched slightly at that. As if I’d struck true.

“Okay.” He backed away from me. “If that’s what you want.”

“It is.”

He stepped around my bed and headed for the door. He stopped with his hand on it and looked back at me as if he were going to say something. I could see it in his eyes, how earnest he was in that moment, but then he buried it deep down. The way both of us had always been taught to deal with our problems.

“I’m going to check on my sister. If you need anything, you can text. I’ll be upstairs.”

Then he departed without another word.

The wind rushed out of my sails. Everything ached—my body, my head, my heart. I hadn’t wanted to send him away. And yet, I couldn’t draw him back. I couldn’t forgive the trust that he’d shattered so callously.

I knew… some part of me knew that he’d only done what he thought was best, that he was afraid, and he wanted to prevent a repeat. But there were other ways. There were so many other ways than forcing me into a hospital again against my will. He had known how much I would completely freak out and be unable to survive in here.

Six weeks. I’d spent six weeks locked inside and away from the rest of the world. I wouldn’t do it again. They couldn’t make me. Not even my husband could force me to do it. I wasn’t sick. Not like that. Not anymore.

I could get through this at home like a… normal person. Couldn’t I?

I balled my hands up and pushed them hard against my eyes. I didn’t want to cry. I didn’t want to feel any of this. Not my panic attack held at bay by anger. Or the fear that I might still… maybe… possibly be sick. And what that could mean for my future. And still, I felt like I shouldn’t have sent Camden away at all.

Because, now, I was alone.

I was facing this all alone again.

But wasn’t that the story of my life? I didn’t have a savior. My father wasn’t a white knight. My brother wasn’t ever coming home. Penn had chosen someone else. And now, Camden’s betrayal cut like a knife. In the end, I only had myself.

I’d dug my own grave.

Time and time again.

I would survive this, as I always did. Because every time I opened my heart up… someone came through with a bulldozer to crash into it.

Maybe it would be better to seal my heart off for good and save myself the heartache. If this was always the outcome, why did I even bother?

34

Camden

I’d known she’d be angry.

I hadn’t known she’d be that angry.

I deserved it. Every word that she had thrown at me. I had done precisely what she had told me not to. It had been out of fear… blind terror, if I was being honest. The sight of her lying on the floor, unconscious, would never leave my mind.

Not that it mattered to her. What mattered was that I had stepped over a line. An unforgivable line in her eyes.

She’d told me the one thing she feared. That she was only beginning to get over because of Jem, and what had I done? At the first sign of a problem, I’d packed her away into an ambulance and sent her to the hospital without a second thought, just like her mother.

She was right to hate me. I couldn’t help her. I wasn’t enough. Nor had I ever been enough.

Now, she was gone. Long gone.

I couldn’t see a way to bridge what I had destroyed. Especially since she still wouldn’t recognize that she had a problem. I knew that was a sign of anorexia. No one wanted to believe they were sick, especially with a mental illness. She wanted to think that it had something to do with her job or that she was just working out to try to stay healthy for her socialite status. But she just didn’t see it.

And she had lied to me.

No… it hadn’t even been to me. She was lying to herself. She was so deep in this shit that she couldn’t even see.

I didn’t know how bad it was. She was right that I hadn’t been there to see her hospitalized right out of high school. But I knew that it was bad enough for me to worry, for Lark to worry, for her to faint at the gala. I wished there had been another way. A way where she wouldn’t hate me. But that solution hadn’t been present when I fucking lost it at the gala.

And I’d rather her hate me and be alive and get help than her to still be lying on the ground, pretending nothing was wrong. Pretending it was the fucking dress and not the fact that she hadn’t eaten anything for days.


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