Bad Seed

I didn’t want to write for the money or the fame. I wanted to write to pull people from their lives and delve with them into truths we don’t always want to admit to ourselves.

And in the process, what I wanted most was to discover more about myself.

After finishing my cup of coffee, I sat back down and stared at the page. An opening line and one paragraph, and I didn’t know how to continue from there. Why in the world was this so hard? In college, I could rattle three hundred pages away in a month.

No problem.

Writer’s bloc

k had never been an issue, but now it seemed to be a major struggle. The one thing keeping me from writing what my fingers wanted desperately to communicate.

I leaned back into my chair as the sun rose above the water. People were beginning to stir and now the mirrored reflection of the ocean was muddled with vacationers diving in. The island was coming alive with children and families, and it forced my mind back to the other night.

Back to Kevin and his kids and that mouth-watering dessert.

I’d had so much fun. Even though that wasn’t the purpose of the outing, I did enjoy my time with Kevin. I’d forgotten how easy it was to talk with him, how safe I felt whenever I was around him. The conversation was light-hearted and easy, and his children were little carbon copies of him. Sydney, with that confident sass and Daniel with his sincere expressions.

Despite what I chose to focus on, my time with Kevin hadn’t been all bad.

I closed my eyes and slipped back in time to college, to the first time I’d seen Kevin in that bar. His chiseled jaw and high cheekbones showcased his dominance, but it was his large hand that caught my eye. It dwarfed the glass he was drinking from and made me painfully aware of other things that could dwarf me if I had the chance to get underneath his clothes. His chest pulled at the shirt he was wearing, and his shoulders were swollen with muscles.

Even as I sat in my chair in my bedroom, heat surged between my legs.

I’d fallen for him quickly in the three months we’d known one another, which was new territory for me and something I’d never done before. I’d had my share of flings as a wild college girl, but I’d never allowed myself to fall for any of them.

But I did with Kevin.

It was hard not to.

He was hot, he was driven, and he was an older man and capable of showing a twenty-year-old wild child how a real man treated a woman. You know, except for standing her up for multiple dinners.

But what had really drawn me to him was his intelligence. Once I peeled away the cocky layers and the incessant need to throw his money around, I found an intelligent man who was self-made, confident, and well-spoken. His body was something for my eyes to behold, but his mind was something for my heart to behold. Whenever he was around, our conversations never ceased. He was genuinely interested in my college career and I was genuinely interested in his business.

That was the paradox of Kevin. When he’d been good, he’d been very, very good. But when he’d been preoccupied with work, it had seemed like I didn’t exist. After being stood up one too many times, I’d broken it off, and what had really hurt, was that he hadn’t fought me on it one bit. He had simply said nothing as I walked away. Then six months later, a wedding announcement popped up in the local newspaper. Kevin was engaged to a woman named Sarah, and that was that. I had been nothing but a fun last fling before he had found a suitable wife for a billionaire entrepreneur.

I wondered where his wife was, since he and the kids appeared to be alone on the island.

Were they history?

Did he screw that up the same way he screwed us up?

“You got any more of that coffee?”

I turned my gaze to Morgan and was shocked to find her dressed in her bathing suit.

“Going somewhere?” I asked.

“Yep. To the beach, once I’m caffeinated,” she said. “Heard from lover boy yet?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Cut the shit. I know you gave him your number last night.”

I grinned as I took a sip of my coffee.

“No. I haven’t heard from him,” I said.

“Just guard yourself, Brooke. He already broke your heart once.”