Those Heartbreak Scars

Chapter One

“There is no better way to get over a personal crisis than to take a little holiday to the Amalfi Coast.” Dove blows smoke out through pouty fish lips as the music from the nightclub ahead grows louder. “You’ll see.”

Her arm hooked through mine, we stumble our way to the best nightclub in Positano with one goal in mind. We’re going to drink and dance and drink some more.

And maybe for a couple of hours it won’t feel like the end of the world. “After the last few months I really hope so.”

After almost losing my best friend to a brain tumor… and now I’m failing my doctorate. How am I supposed to tell my parents I screwed up so monumentally when they’ve done everything to support me? To raise me to be strong and independent and smarter than this.

“Professor Wanky McWank-Face is so last season, babes.” Dove sucks on her watermelon flavored vape as we make our way over the beachside path. “Him and his stuck up wife deserve each other.”

“She’s not stuck up.” If anything, she’s lovely. It’s just that she has no idea her husband was screwing me behind her back. Until a couple weeks ago when he introduced me to her in the faculty parking lot, I didn’t know either.

And then I received the graded assignment I submitted just before I found out about Alfie’s wife. I went from high honors to a failing grade. My study buddy couldn’t understand how our papers, which we’d written together, could have such bipolar marks. But I could. Especially after the professor sent me a text to meet him to discuss improving my grade.

“She’s the head of faculty. Tell me again how you think she doesn’t know that her husband is sleeping with his students? Grading his students according to his own dick-ish behavior?”

“I really don’t think she does. And I don’t think anyone deserves to be treated the way Alfie’s treating her.” After watching my best friend and her fiancé break up due to another man, I wouldn’t wish that pain on anyone. I refuse to be the cause of it.

“You don’t deserve it either. Nobody deserves someone like that to be in charge of their future.” She puts on a masculine voice while stroking my arm sleazily. “Blow me, beautiful, and you’ll get high honors. Break up with me, and you can forget about achieving your doctorate.” She rolls her eyes, her voice returning to normal. “He’s a prick.”

“I’m such an idiot. I should have seen it coming.” The worst part is in hindsight I really should have. He told me I was bright and had a promising future, and I took that at face value. When he offered to take me out to dinner to talk about my options going forward, I found myself saying okay, because I was flattered over the prospect that he’d singled me out.

I touch the tip of my thumb to each finger over and over.

I had no way of knowing they were married. They don’t have the same last name. Or work in the same department. And he certainly wasn’t sporting a ring on his left hand. But that’s not the point. I tap my fingers faster. Getting involved with my professor was a monumentally fucked up idea. The man is my teacher. I can’t avoid him without avoiding the lectures I need to attend to pass a class I need to graduate.

But I can’t bear the idea of being face-to-face with him when I’ve been on my knees and come face-to-face with the rest of him. And I can’t bring myself to admit to my friend that the only person to blame here is me.

Because I couldn’t find my voice to tell him that shifting our relationship like that wasn’t the best idea. And I really did find him charming. “God, I am so naive.”

Luckily, the blessing in this scenario is that my heart was never vulnerable. My ego, on the other hand, is battered and bruised.

“He’s a dick, babes. An itty-bitty dick.” She wiggles her little finger and then wraps an arm around my shoulder while blowing out another watermelon scented cloud. “Like Nathan is a dick. They’re all terribly dick-ish. In fact, the only good thing about them is when they have those big monster dongs, and they know how to dick you down just right. But even then, they’re still dicks.”

“Holy shit. You did not say that.” I snort laugh as I finally stop the repetitive movements. Stimming helps soothe my anxiety when it starts to become overwhelming. Her spin on things is what I need to not let it get me too down.

“What you need is to let loose.” She turns a slightly lazy, too wide grin, and feverish eyes on me. She’s been drinking since we stepped onto the plane. Straight vodka on the flight. Cocktails in the bar across the street from our Airbnb. “We don’t need to think about our poor choices right now. We need to drink and have some fun. Dance. Boys are dead to us. Dicks, and men, and men who are dicks. Your bell end professor. Nathan. All of them… Dead. To. Us.”

I’m not the only one whose life is in upheaval right now, but I’m not sure I would classify her problems as simply poor choices. Nathan, her manager, is a bigger asshole than my professor. And the lawyers she took her contracts to basically told her there was nothing they could do to get her out of them without destroying her career.

An arm around her waist, I tug her to a stop on the sand a few yards from the club. I noticed on the flight over that the oval bruises on her neck weren’t as well covered as the bruising around her left eye, though they are carefully concealed now. “I’m worried—”

Her eyes turn round as the first bars of a familiar new club anthem play. “Do you hear that? They’re playing my song.”

“They’re playing your song.” I grin back at her.

“I love it when they do that.” Taking my hand she spins under it and then sashays toward the club entrance. “We need to celebrate. We need to dance.”

The bouncers let us pass.

Dove drags me toward the bar. “We need another cocktail. Do your thing, girl.”

I order drinks in fluent Italian. The bartender mixes sweet, tart lemon cocktails and slides them in front of us.

“Let’s go dance.” Dove tosses back two-thirds of hers and then leads the way onto the dance floor. Her hips are swaying before we make it into the crowd of writhing bodies.

After a while the alcohol and the movement loosen my mood. All my problems… everything I’m stressing about will be there when I get home, but for tonight I’m all about limoncello cocktails and having fun with my friend. “You were so right. This is what we needed.”

“I know.” Her gaze locks on something or someone over my shoulder. Her lips part and her teeth sink into the bottom one.

For the next few minutes she flirts over my shoulder like it’s an Olympic sport, before eventually she says, “Would you forgive me for dragging you off the dance floor for a minute?”

I laugh. “You see something you like?”

“Like. Want.” She practically purrs, leaning in like we’re sharing the best kind of secret. “He keeps making eyes at me. The least I can do is go say hello and tell him to look elsewhere.”

“Absolutely.” I turn around and head in the direction she was looking, weaving between groups of dancers until we’re out of the throng and can snake our way around. “Which one?”

“Him.” She points over my shoulder, and I follow the direction to a man with brown hair who seems to be searching the crowd like he’s lost someone.

“No way.” I blink at my best friend Indy’s older brother EJ, like doing so will clear the familiarity and prove the guy I’m looking at is a stranger. It’s only been a couple of months, hasn’t it? But it feels like forever. What is he doing here? Thousands of miles from home. “This is unexpected.”

“Wait. You know him?” Dove wraps both hands around my upper arm and tugs on it excitedly. “You can introduce me.”

“I… uh…”

EJ’s cinnamon-colored gaze catches with mine and flares, then slides temporarily to the girl beside me before returning. His lips turn up as he moves from his position and starts striding toward us.

EJ, Indy, and I grew up together, and though he’s older than me and Indy by a handful of years, he’s always treated me less like a cousin and more like another pain in the ass sister.

“This is so weird…” I turn to Dove. Indy never mentioned her brother was taking a vacation. Well, not since he went with her and her husband Theo on a bucket list trip to Japan. “But yes, I can introduce you. He’s my cousin.”

“I did not see that coming,” Dove says. “Perhaps it’s best if—”

“Aren’t you supposed to be in Cambridge?” EJ asks me, swooping in for a friendly hug. “Your parents know you’re skipping school?”

“Very funny.” What is it about older brothers, including pseudo ones, that makes a girl want to roll her eyes so hard? “Shouldn’t you be arguing with someone in Chicago? I thought you hated flying.”

“Yes, well, you have enough of these…” he lifts a short, fat glass of a dark colored spirit up between us and swallows the contents. “And you don’t notice when your feet leave the ground.”

“So true.” Dove sighs next to me like EJ’s half-drunken ramblings are Yoda level utterances of wisdom.

His gaze settles on her with a keen amount of interest and an easy smile. “So who is your friend?”

“Dove.” She slips her hand into his when he offers it and gravitates into his personal space like she literally can’t do anything else.

“Just the one name?” he asks.

“Uh-huh.” She continues to shake his hand in slow-motion.

“Like Prince or Bono,” he says.

“Or Beyonce,” she adds.

“Nice.” His smile grows wider. “Edward James, but you can call me EJ.”

Wild horses couldn’t break the connection between them. Which is weird for Dove. She likes the attention she gets in crowds. Men flock to her, their tongues hanging out of their heads. Normally, though, they’re the ones feeling the connection, while she’s just in it for the fun. As soon as there is potential to move to one-on-one interactions, she retires from socializing.

This seems different. This feels like it could actually go somewhere. Like back to a hotel room with the way they’re undressing each other with their eyes.

Thankfully we’ve sworn off men for the night. I don’t know how I feel about my brother from another mother wanting to dick down my flatmate at first sight.

“I got you another drink.” A familiar masculine voice hits my ears as an arm—the wrist wrapped in an Oris watch with an aged brown leather strap—appears over my shoulder holding a second short, fat glass of black liquid. “I think you’re falling behind.”

That voice. That watch. That cologne. Spicy and warm. Sexy and comforting. As familiar as the perfume I carry everywhere I go, I’ve inhaled it so many times. His body heat behind me has my bare shoulders and arms breaking out in goosebumps.

I don’t need to turn around to know who is behind me. The other party to the awesome foursome that grew up hanging out at EJ and Indy’s house. The man I have been in love with since I was fourteen years old. When he was in his first year of college and still playing baseball, and I was too young for such big feelings. The man I moved countries to avoid when I couldn’t shake those big feelings after he and my bestie started planning their wedding.

Of course EJ isn’t here alone. It would take someone important to get him on a plane. Someone as important to him as his sister.

That person would be his best friend. And my best friend’s ex-fiancé. God, she made such a mess when she fell in love and married Theo instead.

“Look who I found.” EJ indicates me without taking his eyes off Dove.

I swallow a rush of saliva as I turn to glance up at him. His pale blue eyes widen and his cheeks crease as his lips pull back from his teeth. “America?”

“Hey, Gray.”