Unbreak Me (The Montgomery Brothers #1)
Chapter 1
CHAPTER ONE
RYDER
T hey say there is one soulmate, one true love for everyone in the lifetime they are in. The one person, when you see them, the world stops, and everything else ceases to exist. I know this to be true to the very depths of my soul because I found her. I felt what it was like to have that kind of love.
What they don’t tell you is…just because you find it doesn’t mean you get your happily ever after. I found my soulmate, but the cold, hard truth is I wasn’t hers.
“Ryder,” she moans, bringing me out of my thoughts and into the present. My fingers are deep inside her as she grips my shirt tighter. I press her against her living room wall while I give her what she wants. I can tell she’s close as I work her with my fingers, just the way they always like it.
Her hands dig into my hair as I feel her walls start to squeeze my fingers. She cries out as her orgasm hits her. Once her tremors have subsided, I slide my fingers out. I drop my hand to my side, not bothering to taste. She’s not the one I crave on my tongue.
She immediately drops to her knees and frees me quickly, eager to see what’s underneath. Her wide eyes are replaced with hunger as she sees how big I am.
Her hand finds me, and I suck in a breath as she strokes me. When her lips go around me, I do what I’ve always done for the past three years…I picture the girl I can never have again.
I close my eyes and see dark auburn hair cascading down her back with colors that the most beautiful sunset would never be able to capture. Big blue eyes look up as her full red lips wrap around me. She has a dusting of freckles across her cute nose that I’ve traced a thousand times as she lies in my arms.
I grip her hair tighter as she brings me further in, and a moan escapes her lips as I begin to guide her like I want. When she takes me further to the back of her throat, I feel myself tighten. Grabbing her hair, I fuck her mouth harder before shooting into the back of her throat.
“Eve,” I silently moan, unable to stop her name even though I try so hard. The pain is always fresh and new.
Opening my eyes, I come back to the present as the blonde stands up. I think she told me her name was Brittany, but I’m not certain. She’s on vacation with her girlfriends, and I’m just a story to tell her friends back home.
She smiles at me and brings her hands around my neck. When she moves to kiss me, I dodge it and step back from her grip.
“We already talked about this. No kissing.” I fix my pants and raise the zipper.
“I don’t see what the big deal is. It’s just a kiss.” She does her best to pout and look sexy, but it falls on blind eyes.
“Not to me. I told you what to expect when you asked me to come back with you.” This isn’t the first time this has happened, but I’m always honest with them. I promise to get them off, and they get to suck my dick.
I know the girls notice me when I walk into the bar. It’s hard not to notice my brothers and me when we are out. We are all over six feet tall, with dark hair and grey eyes. The girls practically drop their panties on the spot when they see all the tattoos covering hard muscles.
I waited over two years to even let a girl talk me into coming home with her, still holding out hope that she was coming back. I don’t know if I’ll ever want to be inside or taste another. The boundaries I’ve set are enough for now.
“I know. I just thought I could change your mind. I don’t understand why you don’t want to fuck me. All the other guys want to. I know it would be something you would never forget.” Her hand runs along my hard abs, and I grip her wrist to stop it from going lower.
I don’t doubt she has the guys lining up. She’s a beautiful blonde with a great body, but she’s not her. I know eventually, I’ll need to get her out of my head, but for now, this is the last thing I have to hold onto. She was the last one I was deep inside of, and for the longest time, I thought she was my last. I don’t want to replace that memory just yet.
“It’s nothing against you. It’s my own ghosts that I can’t let go of.” I walk to the door of the condo she rented for the week.
“I can make you forget,” she says, trying one last time.
“If it were that easy, I would have fucked her out of my system a long time ago.” I hear her frustrated sigh as I walk out the door. She’ll forget about me in an hour and have someone new to play with, so I’m not worried about her in the slightest.
I guess that’s the perk of living in a small town in Florida. We get vacationers all year round, and the girls are all too eager to have some fun during their wild week here. It’s less messy that way because they are gone and forgotten the minute they leave town.
I fish my keys out of my pocket and hit the button to unlock my car. The only girl I ever bring back with me is standing two feet away. I restored her from the ground up, making her just the way I wanted. I open the door to my black Porsche and slide in on the leather seats. Pushing the ignition, she roars to life. I can’t help but grin every time I hear that beautiful sound. Shifting into first, I peel out of the parking lot and head along the coast.
I’ve lived in Blue Haven my whole life and know these roads like the back of my hand. Growing up, I’ve gotten in trouble more than once for my thrill of speed. My love for cars goes way back to playing with Hot Wheels when I was younger.
I was told my dad was a car guy, so I guess I got it from him. I was three when both my parents died in a plane crash. My Aunt Meaghan and Uncle Trevor took me in without hesitation, and that night, I became a part of their family with three new brothers and a sister. Aunt Meaghan and Uncle Trevor became Mom and Dad. They’ve been the only parents I’ve ever known, and I owe them everything.
As soon as I could work at fourteen, I begged Jimmy for a job in his shop. He restored exotics in town and taught me everything I know. Every weekend, he would take me to car shows around Florida. Eve loved and supported my passion and would go with us whenever she could sneak away from her parents’ watchful eye.
When Jimmy passed away, I was only twenty, and it was like losing a parent all over again. His family had no interest in keeping the garage. By then, I had close relationships with a lot of the clientele and had made a name for myself in the car community. People were still wanting me to work on their cars, so with the help of my dad and another client, Kevin, who had money to spare, I secured a loan to buy the place from Jimmy’s family.
I’ve worked my ass off the past three years, doubling the revenue and making a name for myself. I paid back my dad and Kevin and now am the proud owner of Ryder’s Restores . This shop has saved me in more ways than one. Shortly after Jimmy died, Eve left without a trace. My work has kept me getting up each day and putting one foot in front of the other. When I work on a car, it’s the only time when my thoughts are silent, and it’s just me and the beautiful machine in front of me. Everything else fades away, and it’s the only time I feel at peace.
I pull up to our blue two-story beach house and park in the garage before going inside. I live here with two of my brothers, Jake and Miles. Our parents gifted us this property when they sold our childhood home and wanted to travel with their AIRBNB business, keeping this property in the family as a place for all of us to use for vacations and get-togethers. Right now, the three of us see no reason to move out and get our own place. Savi, our only sister, is away at college in Georgia, and we aren’t married like our older brother, Travis, so this arrangement works out best for us.
Walking across the light bamboo floor, I bypass the pool table and big leather sectional in the living room, heading straight for the kitchen. Opening the fridge, I grab a cold beer.
Jake walks in from the master bedroom and grins when he sees I’ve been out. At twenty-seven, he’s the second oldest and four years older than me. Even though we are technically cousins, no one would know. Our moms looked so much alike, and I guess they passed it on to their kids. His dark hair and grey eyes are identical to mine. Crossing his arms over his bare chest covered in tattoos, he leans against the counter and eyes me.
“Finally came out from under your cars to live a little tonight?”
I don’t go out much, so when I do, my brothers always make a big deal about it. Normally, I stick to my routine of working out in our home gym when I wake up and then working on cars until I’m too tired to do anything but crash, repeating it all over the next day. I could easily hire more people to give me some free time, but I learned early that the harder I work, the easier it is to fall asleep, so the loneliness can’t take over.
“I finished a restore today that I’ve been working on for six months, so I thought a drink to celebrate was in order.”
“Hopefully, you got a little more than a drink to celebrate.” He grins at me.
“I might have.” I take a sip of my beer, wanting to change the subject. “Why are you home so early? It’s only midnight on a Friday night.”
“I have a client coming in early tomorrow morning. It’s a large piece he wants finished, so I need to be on top of my game. Nice diversion, by the way,” he laughs before getting serious again. “It’s good to see you getting back out there again,” he says softly.
Jake and our older brother Travis are tattoo artists. They own Inked in town, and Travis moved an hour south of here last year to open another one. They are both damn good at what they do and have made quite the name for themself in the art community. It’s no wonder why all of our chests and arms are covered in tats. When you have two of the best tattoo artists in the family, it’s easy to become addicted.
I absently rub the tattoo over my heart before I realize what I’m doing and stop myself. It was my first one at seventeen. I talked Travis into doing it behind our parents’ backs, but I knew the moment I saw her that I wanted her next to my heart. I’ve thought about getting it covered with something else, but I can’t seem to erase her off of my body.
“I told you there was nothing to worry about.” He studies me, and I avoid his eye contact. I’ve felt like I’ve been under a damn microscope for the past three years. I know they mean well and are just worried about me, but every time I get their pity look, it’s like a constant reminder of what I lost.
I down the rest of my beer and walk it over to the recycle bin. “I’m going to turn in. I have a vette coming in that I want to start on in the morning. I’ll see you tomorrow evening after work.” I walk past him and hear him sigh as I open the cottage doors to the backyard.
No one really understands what I’m feeling. Three years may be a long time to some people, but to me, it still feels like yesterday when I came home to an empty apartment with all of her things gone.
I hear the waves crashing against the shoreline as I walk across the back deck to the pool house. My brothers and I added to it, creating a one-bedroom apartment. When Travis was here, we shared the main house because we were the only ones not bringing girls back. He became a dad at twenty-two and was very protective of who got to hang around his son, Max. Once he moved out, Jake took the master bedroom, and I gladly came out here. I like having my own space and being able to have a place to go when Jake and Miles have company over. They tried more times than I can count to hook me up with some girl they bring back. After several attempts and turning them down, they finally accepted it and leave me alone now when they have girls over.
I walk across the light wood tile planks and head straight to my bathroom to take a shower. I still have Brittney’s perfume smell all over my clothes, and I don’t want the reminder of where I’ve been. Even though I know I’m not with Eve, the guilt of being with another girl always seems to weave its way in. The promises I made to her as we lay in each other’s arms always resurface and find a way to make me feel like I’ve broken them. She broke hers first, though, the minute she left me. Everything she had told me was a lie. You don’t leave someone you love. There was no note, no explanation, and no way to find her…just gone like she never existed.