Breaking Without You: A Fractured Connections Novel Read online

  Breaking Without You

  A Fractured Connections Novel

  Carrie Ann Ryan

  Contents

  Praise for Carrie Ann Ryan….

  Breaking Without You

  Author’s Note

  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

  Epilogue

  A Note from Carrie Ann Ryan

  About Carrie Ann Ryan

  More from Carrie Ann Ryan

  Excerpt: Whiskey Secrets

  Fallen Ink

  Love Restored

  Delicate Ink

  Breaking Without You

  A Fractured Connections Novel

  By: Carrie Ann Ryan

  © 2019 Carrie Ann Ryan

  ISBN: 978-1-947007-42-0

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  Cover Art by Charity Hendry

  Photograph by Sara Eirew

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  This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person or use proper retail channels to lend a copy. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  All characters in this book are fiction and figments of the author’s imagination.

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  For more information, please join Carrie Ann Ryan’s MAILING LIST.

  To interact with Carrie Ann Ryan, you can join her FAN CLUB

  Praise for Carrie Ann Ryan….

  “Carrie Ann Ryan knows how to pull your heartstrings and make your pulse pound! Her wonderful Redwood Pack series will draw you in and keep you reading long into the night. I can’t wait to see what comes next with the new generation, the Talons. Keep them coming, Carrie Ann!” –Lara Adrian, New York Times bestselling author of CRAVE THE NIGHT

  “Carrie Ann Ryan never fails to draw readers in with passion, raw sensuality, and characters that pop off the page. Any book by Carrie Ann is an absolute treat.” – New York Times Bestselling Author J. Kenner

  "With snarky humor, sizzling love scenes, and brilliant, imaginative worldbuilding, The Dante's Circle series reads as if Carrie Ann Ryan peeked at my personal wish list!" – NYT Bestselling Author, Larissa Ione

  "Carrie Ann Ryan writes sexy shifters in a world full of passionate happily-ever-afters." – New York Times Bestselling Author Vivian Arend

  “Carrie Ann Ryan's books are wickedly funny and deliciously hot, with plenty of twists to keep you guessing. They'll keep you up all night!” USA Today Bestselling Author Cari Quinn

  "Once again, Carrie Ann Ryan knocks the Dante's Circle series out of the park. The queen of hot, sexy, enthralling paranormal romance, Carrie Ann is an author not to miss!" New York Times bestselling Author Marie Harte

  Dedication

  To those who were left behind.

  Like me.

  Like my family.

  Like so many others.

  Breaking Without You

  From NYT bestselling author Carrie Ann Ryan, comes a brand new series where second chances don’t come often, and overcoming an unexpected loss means breaking everything you knew.

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  I fell for Cameron Connolly at the wrong time. And when he left, I thought my life was over. But then, after the worst happened, I truly understood what that phrase meant. Now, he’s not ready for a second chance, and I’m not offering one. Though given that our families have been forced together after losing one of our own, I know there’s no turning back. Not this time. Not again. Not when it comes to Cameron.

  I never wanted to hurt Violet Knight, but there were reasons I had to leave all those years ago—not that she'd believe me if I told her what they were. I not only left her, I also left my foster brothers. Honestly, I didn’t want to come back to Denver to help run my father’s failing brewery. But when it comes to my brothers, I know I’ll find a way to make it work. Perhaps I’ll even earn Violet’s forgiveness and face the connection we both thought long forgotten in the process. Because I wanted her then, but now I know I need her. I just hope she needs me.

  Author’s Note

  I’ve suffered from depression and anxiety for over half of my life, perhaps longer at this point. I’m a survivor like many of my readers and friends. I lost two close friends to depression when they took their own lives. So, I have been on both ends of the pain that comes from this disease.

  The Fractured Connections series is what happens after you lose someone. I’ve had the idea for this series for a couple of years now, but after I lost my husband suddenly to a brain bleed, I needed to write about what happened after. What happens when you have to live on without those you love.

  Allison, a character you will not meet but who is on each page by just her memory, lost her battle with depression and anxiety. She was a fantastic person, one who smiled and held parties, who lifted up her friends and always had a joke for those who needed it.

  Her suicide is not on-page, is not detailed, and is not glorified. I talked to other survivors, had them read this book as well as help me with certain scenes before I even wrote a word. But there still could be some difficult topics for some.

  If you need help, please reach out to someone. We do not need to suffer in silence. We do not need to suffer alone.

  Prologue

  I’ll always remember.

  They say that some points in time will stay with you no matter what happens. But they also say that you can ignore those times, that you can bury them and move on.

  Those people don’t know anything.

  Because I’ll always remember.

  Of all the people who could have walked through that door, of the numerous individuals who had keys to that home, it had been me.

  I was the one to see.

  I was the one to find her.

  And I’ll always remember.

  Because you never forget when you see the end.

  Even when it’s not yours.

  Chapter One

  Sometimes people just don’t get it.

  - Allison in a text to Violet

  Violet

  It didn’t seem right that the sun was shining, and that birds were chirping in the air. It didn’t seem appropriate that the sky was free of clouds, or that the world seemed to scream of beauty and peace.

  I didn’t find it fitting at all.

  Because I was outside this afternoon instead of working or being with my family. I was watching strangers lower my best friend into the ground.

  My best friend wasn’t supposed to be dead. We weren’t even thirty yet. No, I wasn’t even thirty yet. She would never reach it.

  I watched as they lowered the casket inch by inch—ashes to ashes, dust to dust, as the saying goes. I watched it all and didn’t shed a tear. I’d done my crying. I had lost so many tears, so much of myself with each crying jag and hiccupping sob.

  I couldn’t cry just then.

  I was surrounded by my family, my friends, Allison’s family, and everyone who had known my best friend throughou
t her life.

  She had been such a joy, such a bright spot in this sometimes-dark world. She’d made me laugh, made me smile. And she had done so for countless others, as well. She was the happiness we all craved.

  But all of it was a lie.

  I knew that now. I’d discovered that the Allison I thought I knew hadn’t been the Allison she’d hidden deep inside.

  That shamed me. It made me want to leave, made me want to throw myself to the ground and curl up into a ball. It made me want to switch between pitching a fit and just weeping and praying that something could be changed.

  It made me angry, it made me sad, but mostly…mostly, I just felt ashamed.

  Because Allison was lying in that casket, wearing a blue dress that made her pretty blue eyes stand out.

  No, that wasn’t right either. Because Allison’s pretty blue eyes were closed, and they wouldn’t be looking at anything anymore. No more searching for the next best thing, no more looking for anything.

  Allison’s parents had decided not to do organ donation, even though I knew that Allison had wanted to do it. She hadn’t put it on her driver’s license, though, and since we were not old enough in our minds to finish our wills, there hadn’t been instructions for burying my best friend.

  I was going to make a will as soon as I could. Because I did not want my friends mourning for me while wondering what I had wanted, and then watching it slip through their fingers when they realized that my parents were the ones in control.

  Allison hadn’t been married, hadn’t had a power of attorney.

  When she died, her parents had been the ones to make all the decisions, and that should have been fine. But I knew Allison—at least I thought I had. And so had my sister, Sienna, and our other best friend, Harmony.

  The three of us thought we knew what Allison would have wanted.

  We figured she would have wanted to be cremated, her ashes scattered to the wind in the different places that we had known and loved together. That was something I wanted, as well. I vividly remembered my conversation with Allison about it one night when we all got a little too drunk and started talking about death. It was something that a lot of people talked about, at least that’s what I thought. It was part of everyone’s future—the end, the idea that you wouldn’t be around to make your own plans unless you wrote them down ahead of time.

  But I didn’t think that any of us had written them down. Well…maybe Harmony. Harmony had been through her own heartbreak. She probably had a full list of what she wanted when her end came.

  But now, I was going to make sure that I had my list. Because Allison had not been cremated. Her organs had not been donated. She was going into a hole in the earth, and her parents had every right to make that decision.

  I wasn’t going to hold onto any bitterness when it came to that. I had enough for everything else that had happened. I didn’t want to hold onto that and only remember watching my best friend being lowered into the ground and the darkness that came with that.

  Hell, I didn’t want to remember any of this at all.

  But it wasn’t like I had a choice. This day would be in my memory until the day I died. Until somebody tossed my ashes to the wind.

  I closed my eyes and held back a groan. No, Violet, it will be before that, won’t it? Before ashes and dust. I honestly wasn’t really thinking clearly.

  I almost jumped when Sienna reached out and squeezed my hand. My little sister—not quite so little since we were both nearly thirty—leaned into me, resting her head on my shoulder.

  We were almost the same height, but I was wearing taller heels, and that meant she could easily place her head on my shoulder. I wanted to turn around and just pull her into my arms, tell her that everything would be okay. And knowing Sienna, she wished she could do the same for me.

  I tore my gaze away from the hole in the ground where Allison lay and would forever stay until she was no more, dust to dust and all of that. When I turned, my gaze met Harmony’s where she stood stoically on the other side of Sienna.

  Harmony had her dark red hair pulled back into a bun, and I didn’t really understand why she had done that. She usually wore it down. All of us generally had our hair in long waves or straightened. The four of us had decided to see who could grow their hair the longest and the fastest. Harmony had won, but for some reason, her hair was back today.

  Then I remembered.

  It was how she had worn her hair at her husband’s funeral.

  She hadn’t wanted to look the same as she had every day when she had known and loved her husband. She’d wanted to appear different than when he had seen her, the times when he had played with her hair with his fingers.

  So, she had worn it back.

  It seemed we each had a special way to wear our hair, our makeup, and ourselves for funerals.

  I wasn’t even thirty yet, but I had been to enough funerals for a lifetime.

  I didn’t want to go to any more.

  I didn’t want to be here at Allison’s. She shouldn’t be dead. She had been alive and healthy and whole just a few days ago. But now I knew that maybe she hadn’t been. Perhaps she hadn’t been healthy or whole at all.

  Maybe that’s why she’d ended her life at the age of twenty-seven. Just a year younger than me.

  The four of us had been friends since high school, Sienna and I being close for far longer since we were sisters. We were all in the same two grades and became fast friends. We had even gone to the same college, and all stayed in Denver to retain our friendship.

  I knew that not everybody had that ability. With the way everybody kept moving for their careers and the way the world seemed to become a smaller place, most people didn’t have their childhood friends in their lives. But I was lucky. I had been able to keep my three best friends by my side throughout my pain—and theirs. We had grown together, lived together.

  But now, there was only three.

  We had lost our fourth.

  And I didn’t know what the next step was.

  Whispers brought me out of my thoughts, and I tried not to feel selfish. I was so busy worrying about myself and how I was going to feel that I couldn’t really think about the world without Allison in it.

  Every single person around me had been connected to her.

  My brother, Mace, was here, standing right behind me with his fiancée, Adrienne, at his side. He hadn’t brought their little girl Daisy with them, as they hadn’t known how she would react at a funeral, being so young. I understood that, though Daisy had known Allison.

  I had been in the room when Mace explained to his daughter that Allison wouldn’t be able to come back for another tea party. That she wasn’t going to attend another Thanksgiving like she had the past couple of years.

  I didn’t cry as I remembered these things, although my eyes did burn.

  Why couldn’t I cry? I should be crying.

  Sienna was crying. Harmony was crying. Adrienne was crying.

  My mom was sniffling on Mace’s other side, my dad putting his arm around her shoulders as he held her close. I had witnessed that as I turned to look before, but I knew he would still be there, comforting her.

  My parents were sweet, amazing, and they had loved Allison like their own daughter.

  And now, Allison wouldn’t be coming home.

  She wouldn’t be doing anything.

  Allison’s parents stood on the other side of the casket, crying into their handkerchiefs. They were poised, prim, and a little separate from the rest of the world. They had been that way long before they heard that their daughter wasn’t going to wake up again. I remembered going over to spend the night at Allison’s house when we were in high school. Her parents were nice but very reserved. Though that didn’t mean they were bad parents. They were wonderful, and Allison had loved them. I just didn’t think they had known their daughter as well as maybe my parents knew me.

  But, then again, I hadn’t known Allison the way I probably should have either.
r />   Maybe I would have seen it if I had. Maybe I would have been able to stop it. Or, maybe, I was being selfish again and just needed to stop and breathe.

  Others began talking, and I knew we would soon be moving from the cemetery to the wake at Allison’s parent’s home. They had a large house that could hold everybody so we could eat, drink, and maybe laugh at some memories.

  I didn’t know if I could do any of that, though.

  I had only been to one funeral before—Harmony’s husband, Moyer.

  I didn’t even know if I remembered that as clearly as I should. And I never asked Harmony if she did. I always felt like I shouldn’t. There were some things you just didn’t talk about until the time was right. I just didn’t know when that time would be.

  My gaze traveled over the rest of the mourners, and then I sucked in a breath.

  I should have known they would be here.

  Of course, they would be here.

  The Connolly brothers had known Allison almost as well as the Knight siblings and Harmony did. Even if they hadn’t been in our lives for a few years, the Connolly brothers had been part of our crew when we were in college and were very much part of Allison’s life back in high school.