Broken in Love (Studs in Stetsons Book 2) Read online

  Megan Hetherington

  Broken in Love

  Copyright © 2020 by Megan Hetherington

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, scanning, or otherwise without written permission from the publisher. It is illegal to copy this book, post it to a website, or distribute it by any other means without permission.

  This novel is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author's imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.

  First edition

  This book was professionally typeset on Reedsy

  Find out more at reedsy.com

  This series started with Forged in Love which is part of the Girl Power Collection. The dedication in that book is relevant to every female character in this series.

  Not all women are strong. Not all women have the strength to move on.

  If you know a woman like that, be patient, be kind and help where you can.

  If you are a woman like that, don’t beat yourself up.

  Hold your head high, let go of the past, and live your best life.

  Contents

  Acknowledgement

  1. Carson

  2. Lemon

  3. Carson

  4. Carson

  5. Lemon

  6. Lemon

  7. Lemon

  8. Lemon

  9. Carson

  10. Lemon

  11. Carson

  12. Carson

  13. Lemon

  14. Carson

  15. Lemon

  16. Lemon

  17. Carson

  18. Lemon

  19. Carson

  20. Lemon

  21. Lemon

  22. Lemon

  23. Carson

  24. Lemon

  25. Carson

  26. Lemon

  27. Lemon

  28. Carson

  Also by Megan Hetherington

  Acknowledgement

  Editor - Juliette Williams

  Cover Designer - MHL

  One

  Carson

  2010 - the year that sucked balls.

  I punch open the swing doors and leap down the stairs. The rest of the kids press against my back and threaten to engulf me like a tidal wave. Their screams ring out all around and I snatch a look over my shoulder, just in time to duck Mitchell’s messenger bag as he lassos it above my head.

  “We’re free,” he screeches in my ear as he dives on me.

  Before he can grab me in a headlock, I shrug him off and scan the sea of fresh, excited faces pouring out of Gunner Ridge High. My heart thunders in my chest as I search her out. I need to find her, tell her, before it’s too late.

  There she is. My pulse slows and everyone else fades away.

  “Lemon.” I raise my fist high and jump above the melee to grab her attention.

  As she skips down the steps, her long blonde hair flaps over her shoulders. Wild and beautiful. Just like her. When she spots me, a wide smile grows on her perfect lips, and I love that I have that effect on her.

  “C’mon.” I reach through wriggling bodies to grab hold of her hand.

  She giggles as I race us through the crowd. “What’s the rush?” She pants out as she tries to keep up with my long strides.

  All I have is two hours. Two measly hours before Dad hands over his sheriff badge and hauls us away for our annual vacation.

  “Carson? We’ve got all summer.” She pulls back on my grip and we halt near the bicycle store. “Well, apart from the extra shifts I’ve gotta do at the gas station.” She drops her shoulders dramatically and blows a frustrated breath from her pale pink lips.

  Masking my worry, I flash a smile over my shoulder. There’s no time to explain why we don’t have all summer to do this. She hates walking the road out of town to the gas station, and hates even more the lifts she sometimes takes with the manager, so I want to listen to her woes the way no-one else does in her life. I really do. I want to promise her I’ll walk her there and back, and as soon as I get my driver’s license, I’ll give her a ride. But not right now. Right now, we have to get to our place. Our piece of paradise.

  Bicycles are dumped randomly in the shelter. I yank mine free from the stack and wheel it out next to her. Pushing my head and arm through the strap of my school bag, I spin it around until it rests on my back so I can swing my leg over the cross frame unencumbered. I hold the bike steady; both hands curled around the handlebars.

  “Hop on.”

  With a light giggle, Lemon clutches her bag to her chest, pushes off the front tire and nestles her backside on the handlebars.

  “You set?” I push on the pedal before I lose balance, launching us across the school parking lot and toward the road.

  “Yup.” She crosses her slender ankles and straightens her legs out in front of us, like a figurehead on a majestic sailing ship.

  Hovering above the seat to get a good view of the road ahead, I peer over her shoulder and her coconut-scented hair brushes against my face. I love being this close to her. It’s when I feel most alive.

  The raucousness from our school buddies diminishes, and with only a cursory glance over my shoulder, I escape with my girl to our secret spot at old man Guthrie’s lake.

  It became part of my police cadet community duties to deliver groceries and cut logs for Earl Guthrie at his cabin hidden from the main road deep in the backwoods. It’s unusual to have such privacy in this landscape. Gunner Ridge is surrounded by wide open pasture all the way east to the majestic Sierra Nevadas that stand guard like a rank of soldiers over the community. And it’s that privacy that draws me to Guthrie’s land over and over. When I’m there, I can be myself and not the boy everyone else sees and my father expects me to be. There, I only show one person who I really am. And she’s sitting shotgun on my bike.

  As I pedal closer, my cock stirs. It’s been happening a lot lately, and especially when I think about Lemon Gillespie. And right now, the promise of being alone with her makes a hard-on an uncontrollable certainty.

  The air before us shimmers with the heat of the mid-afternoon sun, and red dust flies up around the wheels as I pedal harder and faster than I’ve ever ridden before. Every minute precious. Every second wasted in getting to our spot.

  After narrowly missing two huge potholes, which have long since outgrown the stones thrown in to fill them, we reach the end of the dirt track and I skid to a halt. Hair sticks to my scalp with sweat and there’re enough flies wedged in between my teeth to use as bait to hook a decent-sized catfish.

  Lemon leaps from the handlebars. “Ooh, my ass is numb.” She drops her bag to the ground, places a palm on each cheek and rubs vigorously.

  I stifle a groan and swallow deep. Her checkered yellow and white dress rides higher than her underwear to reveal a peach-shaped ass with a handlebar mark seared across each cheek. I want to drop to my knees and kiss along the welt and massage the flesh until it heals.

  Ignoring my desires, I flick my leg over the cross bar and discretely adjust my hardening cock away from the zipper of my school pants. I wrench my eyes from Lemon and try desperately to think of something less alluring. Like Earl’s pants, gray and moth-eaten, hanging apologetically from his sagging laundry line.

  “That’s better.” She bends over to pick up her bag, which puts me right back to square one. Blood surges into my cock. It’s no good, no amount of ugly images will soften my erection now. I let my bag hang from the handlebars to mask the bulge.
>
  Lemon frowns at me, and I bite on my bottom lip as her eyes snake down to my bag. “Do you want me to get that?” Before I’m able to protest, she grabs at it and her knuckles glance against my pants.

  Holy fuck. My eyes snap wide in protest at the rush that pulses through me.

  She smiles through gritted teeth. “You okay?”

  “Yeah,” I mumble.

  Oh, to hell with it.

  I push my bike alongside her and put up with the discomfort. Pacing the last few yards to the cabin where branches of bull bay trees meet overhead and cast a cool shadow—a welcome relief from the sun.

  Earl doesn’t mind me coming to fish or to swim—as long as I let him know I’m here. And that’s more for my safety than his privacy. He’ll take a pot shot at any trespassers with no qualms, so it’s best to let him know who’s around. I holler out and he yells back over the noise of the usual blue-grass radio station he listens to for company.

  I dump the bike against his rickety workshop wall and we scoot around the edge of the lake and under the trailing branches of willow trees that dip in the water’s edge. Finally, we reach the sandy bank where we swim from.

  “I’ve been dreaming about this all week, it’s been so goddamn hot.” Lemon says, kicking off her shoes and crossing her arms to pull on the hem of her dress.

  You and me both. I turn away as she wriggles her dress up over her head. I’m not controlled enough to see Lemon in only her underwear just yet.

  “I’m not wearing a bra today, Carson,” she says matter-of-factly, just as I’m bending to untie my Vans.

  Holiest of holy fucks.

  It was a shock last summer when Lemon first revealed her bra at one of our evening swims. And it was pretty much about that time that everything between us seemed to change. Or for me, at least. Before that, I considered us kids, and I understood what we were to each other. Friends. Buddies. Now, I’m confused. It’s as if she’s become someone I can’t afford to lose with my insecurity and gawky adolescence.

  “You don’t mind, do you? I’m waiting on Mom getting me an extra one.”

  Her mom is a loser. Putting whichever new man comes her way before her only child. She probably spent the money a bra costs on a new lipstick or whatever it is women use to entice rich cowboys.

  I try to say, ‘No problem’, but a gurgling noise in my throat stops me.

  Sand flicks onto my legs as she hurtles toward the water, and I can’t help but look. Her titties jiggle as she turns around on the spot and her panties ride up the crack of her perfectly shaped ass. I tighten as a spasm hits hard with no warning, followed by a warm sensation that seeps over my groin.

  No. Not now.

  Too late.

  I groan. What a fucking dork.

  Quickly, while Lemon dunks her head and thrashes around, I wrench off my pants and tee, sprinting into the lake in my boxer briefs before she notices my accident.

  Fortunately, I get away with it and the relief as icy water hits my cock makes me smile wide. That’ll teach the undisciplined fucking appendage that is ruining my life right now.

  Lemon’s eyes glisten and I swim toward her, catching a playful scoop of water that she pushes toward me.

  “You don’t wanna do that, Sherbet.” I dive under the surface to grab hold of her knees and pull her down. She flails around for a few minutes then circles me, loops her legs over my shoulders and tows me backward. Our horseplay goes on for a while until we’re both breathless. Treading water and shooting the shit.

  “I’m cold.” She shivers and her bottom lip trembles and tinges blue.

  “Come on.” I swim on my back toward the shore, not sure how we got so far out. She hangs onto my ankles and I power my arms backward until we reach the edge. Where she scrambles through the weeds at the bank and flops onto the sand, panting out her breath. I collapse beside her and as her eyes close, I sneak a look at her chest as it rises and falls; trickles of water running around her titties.

  Her breasts are the most beautiful things I’ve ever seen. More beautiful than the ice cream sundaes at Alma’s, and her nipples are exactly like the glacé cherries the servers drop with a flourish into the fancy glasses. I close my eyes as I think of wrapping my tongue around the sweet taste.

  “Did you bring anything to drink?” She waggles her wet eyebrows.

  “What, beer?”

  She nods, a sassy grin on her face.

  “No,” I fire out. Her tendency to be lawless always makes my heart race. And one reason I keep my friendship with Lemon a secret from my dad. He warns me off certain folk, using the Gillespies as an example of the type I should avoid. A missing father who my Dad says the less I know about the better, and a wayward mother, who even my mom sighs about whenever her name is mentioned. And Dad’s not restrained in taking his police-issue baton to the back of my legs if I disobey him. So, for all round peace, I don’t speak of her at all.

  She laughs. “Oh, Carson Perrins, what am I going to do with you?”

  I close my eyes and make a wish.

  Suddenly she sits up. “Did you see that?”

  “What?” I sit up too, looking out at where she points.

  “A fish jumped out of the water.”

  I settle back down. “It’s only a carp.”

  “Glad it didn’t do that while we were in there. I would’ve screamed.”

  I laugh and pull her toward me. “If it came near you, Lemon Sherbet, I would catch it in my bare hands and squeeze the life out of it for scaring you.”

  She laughs and a sharp pain stabs at my heart.

  “Do you not believe me?” I ask, unable to hide the hurt tone in my voice.

  “No, it’s not that. I just had visions of it wiggling in between your fingers.”

  “Hmm.” I side eye her and lay back.

  As is her way, she shuffles her head on to my chest. “You are sensitive, Carson Perrins.” She drums her fingers over my heart.

  I pull some wet strands of hair from her sun kissed cheeks and smile at her because she’s right, I am sensitive to her. Not knowing what to say or to do. I overthink everything when I’m with her and even more so when I’m not.

  She lifts her head slightly. “We should race to that boat next time. See what’s under it.” Her sky-blue eyes twinkle with mischief.

  We’ve never been able to reach the rowing boat upended in the middle of the river, its turquoise nose pointing up to the sky from the dark green water. We’ve stopped referring to it as the pirate boat, because now, looking at it through fifteen-year-old eyes, it’s clearly not. My protective instincts rapidly surface whenever Lemon mentions swimming out to it. Memories hurtle over me of that first time she dove in from the crumbling boat jetty and got tangled up in the pennywort that floats in thick clumps in that murky part of the lake. And how, even after I rescued her, the pain I experienced of nearly losing my very best friend was unbearable. Now we’re older, it might be possible to reach it. But “next time” will not be soon.

  A dragonfly darts back and forth inches above the surface of the water. Then another joins it and they dance together, their iridescent blue-green bodies shimmer in the late afternoon sun. Lemon exhales softly beside me and I know she feels it too. This is our paradise. Our place. And I can’t hold it in any longer. The dark anger of being pulled away from this place—from her—eats away like a rancid disease in my gut.

  “I’ve gotta go away for the summer,” I blurt.

  “Where to?”

  “Gramp’s farm in Texas.”

  She rolls onto her front and rests up on her elbows. “When?”

  “Tonight.”

  She stares at me intently and my heart thumps loudly. In this place, everyone else ceases to exist. Parents. Friends. Teachers. And especially their rules and discipline. If she asks me to hide out here with her, I will.

  “When’ll you be back?” The thought of me not being around doesn’t seem to hit her as hard as it does me.

  “Not ’til school starts a
gain.”

  She cups her jaw and blows out a sigh. “That sucks balls.”

  I laugh at her comment, although deep inside I’m screwed up to hell about going away. “Yeah,” I whisper. “Big fat hairy ones.”

  She laughs and leans over to poke a finger in between my ribs. “Big fat hairy ones that have been sweating in a pair of heavy overalls all day long.”

  I grab ahold of her finger and then her wrist, pulling her toward me so I can tickle under her arm. Her nipple rubs boldly on the back of my hand, and this time I don’t care that my cock stirs. I want it to. I want to remember how she makes me feel for the rest of the summer.

  She stills, and the sparkle in her eyes switches to high beam. “I’m gonna miss you, Carson.” She grabs hold of my palm that rests bravely on her stomach.

  “Will you?” I ask with a voice that does little to hide my incredulity and hope.

  The corner of her mouth eases into a crooked smile that I watch grow with exact precision. “For a day or so, anyhow.” She giggles.

  I gasp in mock anguish, which is unsurprisingly realistic, as it kills me to think she would not hurt a little every day I’m not here.

  “Only kidding.” She pulls her bottom lip into her mouth. A slight movement that holds so much meaning. One that I will ruminate over all night and for the next few weeks in this hateful summer.

  “I’m hungry,” she says, clamping a hand to her stomach as it growls.

  I mentally punch myself for not bringing any food.

  “Ugh.” She slaps her neck. “And the bugs are out now, too.”

  Or mosquito spray.

  She pulls on her dress.

  “Shall we go then?” I ask half-heartedly.

  “Suppose.” She sighs. “Next time you bring me here we should cover ourselves in citronella spray and stay all night. Bring food. And beer. And a big ‘ole blanket.”

  I laugh, because even though my father would have a hissy fit if I stayed out all night, Lemon is reckless enough to rise to the challenge at the drop of a hat. “Sure. Next time.”