Broken Dreams (Franklin Blues #2)
Read Broken Dreams (Franklin Blues #2) Online
Authors: Elizabeth Princeton
ELIZABETH PRINCETONCopyright
Copyright 2016 by Elizabeth Princeton
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
To the reader: If you have downloaded this book for free or have downloaded from a site other than Amazon, Barnes and Noble or iBooks, this may be a pirated copy. Please contact the author immediately. Piracy is illegal. Please honor this author and all other authors by purchasing legal copies of their work.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, places, or incidents are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, locations, or events is purely coincidental.
This book is intended for mature audiences only.
Cover models: Lance Jones and Melissa Wilkinson
Cover Photography: Shauna of Kruse Images & Photography and Rick Gamby of Timeless Photography
Cover Designer: Kari Ayasha of Cover to Cover Designs
Editor: Cheryl Keene
Formatter: CP Smith
To Lance Jones, the inspiration behind Lance Underwood and one of my dearest friends. Thank you for all that you’ve done for me!! I love you my #Lancelot!!
Amy
Helping people is what I have always wanted to do, especially since my parents died in a car accident and I wasn’t able to help them at all. I was only twelve at the time, but I still remember that day like it was yesterday. They say I was lucky to survive the crash, and honestly, I’m not so sure I was. I wasn’t wearing a seat belt because I was trying to prove a point to my mom. She was yelling at me to put it on, but I thought I would be okay since nothing had ever happened before.
Ever since that fateful night, I have known that I wanted to help people heal and live, especially since my parents couldn’t. I have always loved being able to travel anywhere the job needed me to; traveling is something I am used to. After my parents died, I was bounced around from foster home to foster home. I thought I would end up permanently at one, but things didn’t work out for me and I was in the foster system until they booted me out at the age of eighteen.
After getting out of the foster system, I knew I would have to make something of myself or I would end up a dead beat, and for my parents’ memory, that wasn’t an option. I took a year off to work as hard as I could at dead end jobs to save enough money to get into the local community college. After I started school, I worked my ass off and graduated in three years instead of the normal four it took other students. I wanted to start working and start my life.
I’m shaken out of my thoughts when I hear my name being called. I look over to my husband, Jeremy, and know this is it; it’s time to find out if we got pregnant. He squeezes my hand reassuringly and nods his head. We get up and head back to the patient room. I strip, put on the ugly paper gown they make us wear, and sit on the exam table with Jeremy in the chair next to me.
The doctor comes in and I don’t like the look on her face. I can tell that it didn’t work. We’ve been trying IVF for the last six months and nothing has worked. This the last time we are going to do the treatment because we have gone through all of my parents’ life insurance money, the treatments are very expensive, and it’s really been putting a strain on our marriage. I can tell he’s not happy anymore and sex is now a chore for us. Neither of us are enjoying it anymore, and he’s the only one who gets off from it. I long for the days when we couldn’t keep our hands off each other. There used to be days we’d have sex three or four times a day and still be all over each other, but those days are long over now. We have sex now when it’s convenient for me because I’m ovulating.
“I’m sorry guys, it didn’t take. We can keep trying though; this isn’t the end of the road. We will get you pregnant; it’s going to take time and patience on your part.”
I look over to Jeremy who is looking at his feet, and the tears begin welling up in my eyes. I’m not sure I can keep doing this, I get disappointed each time and my heart breaks a little bit more. One day there won’t be any heart left to break.
“Can we let you know doc? I’m not sure I can keep doing this. This is the fifth time that nothing has worked. We’ll go home and talk about it, and if we decide to keep going, then we’ll call and make an appointment. At this point, I think I need a break from it all, and let’s face it, I’m not sure we can afford another treatment. We’ve gone through all of the life insurance money, and neither of us makes enough to continue.”
The doctor nods and lets me get dressed. I look over to Jeremy who still won’t really look at me. Hmm, that’s weird, but I try not to think anything of it, he’s probably as disappointed as I am. I finish getting dressed and we walk out of the office in silence. The whole drive home is spent in silence. I shake my head, I know he’s upset, but he can at least talk to me about it. He’s been in a weird mood for a while now, and I’m starting to get nervous. Maybe he wants to leave me or something. I make a note to talk to him as soon as we get home.
Once we get home, he immediately goes into his home office and shuts the door. He began working from home once we started this whole mess. He said he needed to stay close to home so that when I was ovulating we could make a baby. So far, the only thing we’ve gotten is disappointment.
I can hear yelling coming from his office, and even though I can’t hear what is being said, he sounds angry, angrier than I think I’ve ever heard him talk to anyone. I’m not sure what’s going on but I walk up to his office door. I start to walk in as he walks out, running right into me and knocking me on my ass. He looks down at me with sympathy in his eyes and walks out the front door. I’m not sure what just happened, but I don’t like the look in his eyes as he walked away from me.
I grab my phone and call him. I need to know what’s going on. I call him four times and it goes to voicemail every time. I start to get worried, and I decide to call my best friend, Jessica, to come over and hang out with me until Jeremy gets home. Her phone goes straight to voicemail too, but that’s not exactly weird for her though. She’s always getting a new flavor of the month, and I won’t hear from her until things go wrong. I swear that girl is looking for love in all the wrong places.
I can’t sit at home anymore and decide to go for a drive. I take a drive around Nashville, since it’s not far from our little town of Crossville, looking at everyone relaxing and having a good time. I remember those days, being carefree, able to relax and act my age. You would never guess I am only 24, I’ve aged so much these last six months that I don’t feel my age anymore. I feel almost middle aged. I’m so sick and tired of everything right now.
I’m not sure how long I drive around before I decide to go home, I want to curl up in Jeremy’s arms and have him tell me everything will be okay. I have always felt so content and happy in his arms. I pull into the garage and notice Jessica’s car is in the driveway behind Jeremy.
That’s weird, maybe she got my texts and decided to come check on me.
I walk into the house and it’s strangely quiet, you could hear a pin drop it’s so quiet. I walk into the living room and I see clothes scattered on the floor. I’m not sure what to make of it so I keep investigating, walking up the spiral staircase. I fell in love with this staircase; it’s what sold me on the house. I finally hear something, and I’d know those sounds anywhere. I should turn around and go back out to my car, but it’s like I’m hypnotized and I keep following the sounds.
The bedroom door is open so I walk into the room. I need bleach for my eyes when they adjust to the darkness of the room and realize that they are seeing. I never expected to see what I saw when I walked into my bedroom after getting news that I hadn’t conceived this month either, I’m really not sure if my heart can be broken anymore, but once again I’m wrong.
Jessica is on all fours, naked with my very naked husband behind her, pulling her hair and practically fucking her into the mattress. All I can hear is their skin slapping and I have to force myself not to throw up right then and there. Jessica looks over at me and smiles. The bitch actually smiles at me.
“Oh Jeremy, fuck me harder. You know what I like, and I know you like it too. Oh, God, yes, like that, Baby,” she keeps moaning and screaming. Jeremy, who is completely oblivious to his wife standing in the room, complies and fucks her harder.
How can he do this to me? I thought that we were okay. I mean yeah, we’ve had our share of problems since trying to start a family, but he always reassured me that there were other options too. I need to decide what I’m going to do here. Will I become the crazy wife who goes bat shit crazy, or the cool, calm, and collected wife who lets it roll off her back, picks up and moves on with her life?
Decisions, decisions.
Amy
Thinking back to the night that changed my path in life is a painful one. I never thought Jeremy would do that to me, I always thought I’d be with him until my dying breath, but life has a funny way of shifting everything you thought you wanted.
I need to stop thinking about that day though, because right now I am in Mr. Temptation him self’s house. I’m not sure why he was adamant that I be the one to take care of him. It’s not like he couldn’t have gotten another nurse with more experience than what I have, to come in after being shot, I have to go where they tell me to go.
Lance Underwood has been on my brain ever since he arrested me for public intoxication; he looked so good in his suit and tie. I’m not sure why he came to arrest me since he wasn’t a patrol cop, but I was really too drunk to think about it. He, of course, called my best friend Hailee, and she had to haul her pregnant ass to come get me.
Now, I find myself sitting in his house, nursing him back to health. The man is hot as hell and I’m not sure how much longer I can hold out on him. He’s made so many sexual innuendos this past month that I’m surprised I’ve held out this long. I have two weeks left, then I can walk away proud of myself for not giving into him.
I hear that damn bell again. I swear to God, if he rings that bell again, I’m going to beat him with it. He thought it was a great idea since the first two weeks he was on bed rest, to ring a bell for anytime he needed something, and it worked out great in the beginning, but now he uses it to get on my last nerve. I know he’s doing it on purpose because every time I go up there, he’s lying in bed with his shirt off. I’ll go over to his side of the bed and his sheet will “magically” fall to where he’s lying there in a pair of his tight as hell boxers and nothing else. I’m not going to lie; I had to do a drool check the first time it happened. The man has a very nice body covered in beautiful artwork. His arms are covered from shoulder to wrist with all different types of ink, and even though everything is so different, it all fits together well.