Broken Course Read Free

actual date.
    It’s been fourteen years since I went on my last first date. Although I’m not even sure you can really call that a date. I met Brett Sharp at a bar when I was twenty-one years old. Our first date was the next morning after he’d spent the night at my apartment holding my hair while I puked. He took me to breakfast, and within three hours, we were having sex on the floor in my apartment. Less than a year later, I married him. We spent seven years together before my life was altered forever.
    That whole whirlwind, wild-abandon love is not exactly what I am going for this time around, but a real date with someone who has no clue who I am—or, better yet, who I was —sounds amazing…and yes, still terrifying.
    Me: Sure. No Problem.
    Leo: Tomorrow?
    "Why the hell can’t he make it?" Emma asks from behind me.
    "Work." I continue to stare at the screen on my phone.
    "What’s he do anyway? Is he loaded?"
    "He owns a security company," I answer distractedly, trying to formulate a response.
    Do I want to go out with him tomorrow night? I think so. Does the idea of going out with him tomorrow make me want to crawl into a hole and hide? Completely. My response must take too long, because my phone chirps again.
    Leo: Feel free to copy and paste. "Sure, Leo. I can’t wait to see you."
    "What’s he saying?" she asks, settling down on the couch next to me.
    "He wants to go out tomorrow night. Em, I can’t do this. He’s going to realize I’m a basket case and it’s going to hurt like hell to swallow that giant pill of rejection. I’m just not ready yet."
    "You’re full of shit. You should have seen the way your face fell when he said he couldn’t make it."
    "I can’t do it!" I yell more at myself than at Emma.
    "What if Caleb and I go with you tomorrow night? We can drop Collin off with his sister and go to a bar. If Leo sucks or if you panic, you’ll have us there as a buffer."
    I laugh humorlessly. "No fucking way."
    My relationship with Emma’s husband Caleb is…well, unusual. Up until eighteen months ago, he hated me. I don’t mean he just disliked me. I mean he wouldn’t have poured water on me if I caught fire. And rightly so—I killed his fiancée. Or at least it had appeared that way at the time.
    Emma’s husband, Caleb, was engaged to my best friend, Manda Baker. He was the only person in the world who loved that fiery redhead more than I did. Emma is my sister by blood, but as far as I am concerned, Manda was no different. There isn’t a single day that passes where I don’t wish that she were still here.
    Seven years ago, I was involved in a car accident that destroyed all of our lives. I suffered a traumatic brain injury that changed my personality so drastically that it left me lost and confused in a life I recognized but was completely emotionally unattached to. And Manda…well, she paid the greatest price of all. She never took another breath after our car collided with that fated tree. I have no memory of that night whatsoever, and because I was the sole survivor of the accident, no one really knew what had actually transpired. However, jaded and grief stricken, Caleb blamed me. And he wasn’t the only one. I blamed myself for Manda’s death as well.
    Eighteen months ago, our other best friend, Casey Black, shed light on what had really happened that night. No one had any clue that she’d even been there when the accident had taken place—much less that she had been driving the car. Her on-again, off-again fling, Eli Tanner, had helped her leave the scene unnoticed. However, before her shocking confession, I’d lived with that guilt. I knew how it felt to be consumed by it.
    The pain of waking up every day knowing what I’d done was crippling. I hated myself, I hated my life, and I hated the very air in my lungs that was absent from Manda’s. I didn’t even know who I was anymore. I had every memory from my old life but none of the emotions to match them. I didn’t get