Fall for Me Read online

  Flawed

  Copyright © 2017 by Claudia Burgoa

  Cover Design by Hang Le

  Edited by: Brandi Zelenka

  Christine Yates

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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, brands, organizations, media, places, events, storylines and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, business establishments, events, locales or any events or occurrences, is purely coincidental.

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  www.claudiayburgoa.com

  Also By Claudia Burgoa

  The Baker’s Creek Billionaire Brothers Series

  * * *

  Loved You Once

  A Moment Like You

  Defying Our Forever

  Call You Mine

  As We Are

  Yours to Keep

  September 2021

  * * *

  Luna Harbor (2021/2022)

  Finally You

  Simply You

  Truly You

  Always You

  Perfectly You

  Madly You

  Second Chance Sinners Duet

  Pieces of Us

  Somehow Finding Us

  Against All Odds Series

  Wrong Text, Right Love

  Didn’t Expect You

  Love Like Her

  Against All Odds: The St. James Family

  Until Next Time, Love

  Something Like Love

  Betting on Love

  Accidentaly in Love

  Waiting for Love

  * * *

  The Spearman Brothers

  Maybe Later

  Then He Happened

  Once Upon a Holiday

  Almost Perfect

  * * *

  My One

  My One Regret

  My One Despair

  * * *

  The Everhart Brothers

  * * *

  Fall for Me

  Fight for Me

  Perfect for Me

  Forever with Me

  Standalones

  Us After You

  Someday, Somehow

  Chasing Fireflies

  Something Like Hate

  Until I Fall

  Finding My Reason

  Christmas in Kentbury

  * * *

  Chaotic Love Duet

  Begin with You

  Back to You

  * * *

  Unexpected Series

  Uncharted

  Uncut

  Undefeated

  Unlike Any Other

  Decker the Halls

  Co-writing

  Holiday with You

  Contents

  Hunter’s Prologue

  Willow’s Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Life goes on . . .

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Excerpt

  Fight for Me

  Perfect for Me

  Where can I find them?

  About the Author

  Also By Claudia Burgoa

  To Paulina

  “...and when one of them meets the other half, the actual half of himself, whether he be a lover of youth or a lover of another sort, the pair are lost in an amazement of love and friendship and intimacy and one will not be out of the other's sight, as I may say, even for a moment...”

  ― Plato, The Symposium

  Hunter’s Prologue

  My entire world collapsed when I was twelve. It was a Tuesday morning. Two airplanes crashed into the World Trade Center towers. Those are the commonly known facts to outsiders. There are no mentions about Charlotte and Christopher Everhart being inside the North Tower at the time. I watched as smoke poured out of the towers while the raging fire consumed the World Trade Center. Everything was deadly quiet while I waited to hear some news about my parents. I couldn’t breathe, I couldn’t talk, and before I knew it, I was under the bed waiting for my brothers and my parents to come home. It was my oldest brother, Harrison, who arrived with Fitz along the way.

  “Scott is at school, he’s alright, buddy.”

  “Mom and Dad?”

  He pressed his lips together, shaking his head. “They will always love you, Hunt.”

  His words were brief, but my heart shattered into a billion pieces. I lost my balance at that moment. I became unmoored. That sense of being afloat, not being able to hit the bottom or reach the top, became a constant. After that day, I couldn’t leave my room without having a massive panic attack. I spent more time under the bed than any other place in the house. Fear that my brothers would die gripped my heart.

  I started talking to myself, there’re no voices in my head. It was a way to fill the void and the silence that surrounded me after my parents died. It took six years, endless therapy sessions, and other treatments to convince me to leave my room and have somewhat of a normal life.

  It’s been ten years since I looked around, searching for something or someone to fill the loneliness from my heart—the missing piece to replace the hollow space in my soul. No one is interesting enough to let into my life, past the barriers I built long ago. Feelings are messy. Relationships are messy and easy to lose. I’m afraid to lose my loved ones again. Falling in love is tempting. Loving a woman like Willow Beesley is heaven and hell. She’s the beautiful fire I want to touch even when I know the blazing flames might destroy me.

  I should hide under my bed. Instead, I’m fighting for us.

  Willow’s Prologue

  “What brings you here?”

  I stare at the flowery, yellow wallpaper, concentrating on one of the white flowers. The answer shouldn’t be hard. It’s his tone. To my ears, it’s condescending. I bet he’s thinking another one with a broken life.

  Well, yes hello, that’s me. Willow B
eesley. The woman with a fractured mind and a tortured soul.

  He doesn’t know how screwed up I am, not yet anyway. On the outside I look like an average New Yorker visiting a middle-aged man with rimmed glasses and a crooked nose holding a notebook. Everyone sees a therapist these days. It’s a trend. If you don’t spend two hundred and fifty dollars a week to visit one, you’re nothing.

  It’s like the Paleo diet or the gluten-free infatuation. As I feel ready for the scene, I turn my gaze toward him, flashing him one of my sweet smiles. He doesn’t know who I am, and I’m not ready to show myself. Not yet. I made sure to pull my hair up this morning; keeping my cheeks clear from any strands so he can notice my flawless face. The makeup I wear is subtle, natural. Like the girl next door, I wear a pair of jeans and a green sweater that brings out the color in my eyes. This is the part where I should answer with a sophisticated tone that I’m here because I need help with a character.

  All my life I’ve gotten into the right character to get noticed, be loved, or simply disappear because I don’t want anyone to know who I am. I fear they would hate the person I am.

  “There are too many reasons that brought me to you. The most important of them, I want to live.”

  He nods as if saying, “go on.”

  Since I can remember, I’ve been on the verge of drowning. Staying afloat is a full-time job—my brain is always set on survival mode. There’s this gut-wrenching pain deep inside my body and my soul. There’s no source and I can’t soothe it. Some days, I feel like it’ll be easier to disappear. To die. I might finally be in peace—forever.

  My mission is to stay alive because someone else depends on me. That would be my little sister. She’s been my anchor to this world for as long as I can remember. I love her as much as I resent her. What an ambiguous thought. It’s because of her that I can’t just say: “Fuck it all.” It’s because of her that I still cling to this life.

  The first time it happened I was around ten. My head hurt, my skin felt foreign, and I wanted to disappear. Our parents had left for a couple of months on a mission trip. They dropped us with the neighbors. I felt uncomfortable being around so many people. There was so much noise I walked out of the house. Hazel, my little sister, followed behind, watching me as I continued walking toward the water, hoping it’d remove the ants crawling over my limbs.

  “Where are you going, Willow?” her little voice inquired. “You need your swimming suit if you’re going into the water.”

  “I want the ocean to take me away,” I responded, watching the waves crashing against my feet. “Far from here.”

  “You’ll drown,” she stated the obvious. “What will I do without you?”

  Those six words stopped me from acting that day. The words still resonate inside my head when I feel lost. They have ceased throughout the years. Seeking help and all the therapy isn’t about stopping, but finding my motivation to live. Finding something different than those six words. I want to keep going. I just don’t know how.

  Handling emotions, relationships, and even jobs are hard. I go from zero to one hundred in nothing flat and lose my fuel almost immediately. What I would give to be loved—to be understood and get better. All the same, I wish to die; to stop existing as the useless piece of shit I am.

  Is this the byproduct of my parents neglecting me?

  Or is it the constant need I have for attention?

  Do they correlate?

  “I’m here because this might be my last chance.” I wait for his comeback. A retort about how over dramatized my words sound. This is why I try to keep my thoughts inside my head. No one cares about a nobody like me.

  He scribbles in his notebook, then looks up at me and says, “Then, I hope you’re ready for the next step.”

  What’s next? The rehash of my life from the beginning until I walked out of the subway station and into this building? I’ve done that for the past several months with different therapists. None of it has helped.

  “Can you place yourself in a time when you felt an emotion you couldn’t handle?”

  The room goes still and my lungs collapse every time I see him. Nothing makes me happier, sadder, angrier, or more joyous than Hunter. He’s the biggest emotion I’ve ever felt. I can’t handle it. He isn’t just love; he’s everything I love and hate to feel.

  Chapter One

  Hunter

  Living in one of the biggest cities in the world means more people are out and about at all hours of the day—even at night. Lights illuminate the sky. There’s not a moment of silence. The cars drive around with their headlights on. I can’t see a single star in the sky. Nights like tonight make me wish I lived in the country, a house in Upstate New York. I’d trade my penthouse for a piece of land where I can watch the sky, littered with dazzling stars, relax near a lake, and listen to the backdrop of crickets in the long, fresh grass. Instead, I’m hurrying through midtown Manhattan. I fight the crowd as hundreds of people bustle in and out of the theaters on Broadway, all of them dressed in their best.

  Debating between fighting for a cab or walking faster, I stop to check my phone. Henrietta’s picture and name flash on the screen as I pull it out of my jacket pocket. Over, we are over, I repeat inside my head. Once it stops, the notifications appear. I have thirty texts and eight missed calls—from her.

  Why can’t I find an ordinary woman? My brothers ask why I’m even looking for a woman. They don’t have time for relationships and would rather play the field. I’m the youngest of four, and we couldn’t be more different. I’m the one who prefers routine. Is it so wrong to want the same person next to me every night?

  The dating scene is complicated. Being me makes it at least a hundred times harder. If given a choice, I would date a woman who doesn’t know who I am, like the one coming down the sidewalk at the moment. Her hair is straight black; she wears a pair of jeans and flats, her figure a perfect hourglass. Out of habit, my eyes fall on her hand to look for rings. When she comes close to me, I see the stream of tears falling down her cheeks.

  “Sorry,” she says, as she bumps against my shoulder.

  I grasp her elbow, breaking her fall. “Careful, sweetheart. Are you okay?”

  She shakes her head, eyes focused on the ground. Her sobs are muffled by the honking sound of a car.

  “Is there something I can do to help?” Her head tilts to the left; I remove the black curtain blocking her angelic face. There’s a need inside me. “The Everhart Complex” as my brothers would say, yearning to erase her pain. “Can I walk you home?”

  “No, thank you.” She dries the tears with the sleeve of her light jacket.

  “What’s your address?”

  She snorts. “I live in Queens. I have a long way to go.”

  Not letting her go, I hail a cab helping us both inside it.

  “Where in Queens?”

  The beauty lifts her head, her dark green eyes that contrast with her dark hair. “No, thank you. I’ll walk.”

  “This one’s on me,” I order the driver to head to Queens. “What’s your address?”

  “Sorry, usually I don’t . . . it wasn’t a good night. A week—or a year . . .” she apologizes, searching inside her big, black purse. “Park Avenue and Seventy-second Street, please.”

  That’s not Queens, but I’m interrupted by the buzzing sound of my phone. I pull it out of my jacket and regret it. There are several new texts from my brothers, and Henrietta, my ex.

  H: We need to talk.

  Scott: Your ex is harassing me.

  H: No one will tell me where you are. I think this break is taking too long.

  Fitz: H is texting me. You said it was over.

  I text my brothers from our group chat. It is over.

  Scott: Let her know and tell her to lose my number.

  Fitz: Stop being a serial monogamist. But if you must, find someone less . . .

  Clingy, fake?

  Scott: The word you’re looking for is fake.

  Stop sending me tex
ts, I want to type. Or throw my phone out the window.

  Being the baby of the house has few benefits, in general, it’s a pain in the ass. My brothers continue texting for the next few minutes. Giving me unsolicited advice on how to get the perfect girl. Not that either one of them has landed a girl—or plans on doing as much.

  The woman next to me snorts. “Is she always that bold?”

  I turn my attention to her. Hers is on my phone. “Do you always read over people’s shoulders?”

  H: We have to get back together. We have something great going on.

  H: At least give me a chance to talk about the summer.

  H: Can we rent a house in the Hamptons? My parents would love to join us.

  “What do you mean?”

  She twists her lips to the left while her dark green eyes stare at the screen. “She wants you to rent the house. As in you pay for it.”

  My eyes narrow, the memory of last December hitting me hard on the head like an ice-cold bucket thrown from the sky. H wanted a big cabin in Vermont for the winter. I paid for it, and her family enjoyed it all fucking winter long.