Broken Halo: The Montgomery Series, Book 2 Read online

  Broken Halo

  The Montgomery Series, Book 2

  Brynne Asher

  Broken Halo

  The Montgomerys Book 2

  Brynne Asher

  Text Copyright

  © 2019 Brynne Asher

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission from the author. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of author’s rights. Only purchase authorized editions.

  Any resemblance to actual persons, things, locations, or events is accidental.

  This book is a work of fiction.

  Broken Halo

  The Montgomerys, Book 2

  Brynne Asher

  Published by Brynne Asher

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  Brynne Asher’s Beauties

  Edited by edit LLC

  Cover Design by Dark Waters Covers

  Other Books by Brynne Asher

  The Carpino Series

  Overflow – The Carpino Series, Book 1

  Beautiful Life – The Carpino Series, Book 2

  Athica Lane – The Carpino Series, Book 3

  Until Avery – A Carpino Series Crossover Novella

  Killers Series

  Vines – A Killers Novel, Book 1

  Paths – A Killers Novel, Book 2

  Gifts – A Killers Novel, Book 3

  Until the Tequila – A Killers Crossover Novella

  The Montgomery Series

  Bad Situation – The Montgomery Series, Book 1

  Broken Halo – The Montgomery Series, Book 2

  Standalones

  Blackburn

  Contents

  Prologue

  1. A Decade

  2. A Green-Eyed Witch

  3. Lost

  4. Out of Body Experience

  5. Zero-Three-Zero-Nine

  6. He’ll Get Glad in the Same Pants He Got Mad In

  7. Love Makes You Stupid

  8. Does It Haunt You?

  9. Rock Our World

  10. I Hated Myself More

  11. The Good, the Bad, the Beautiful

  12. Puppeteer

  13. Guilt, Anger, and Lust

  14. Hate and Love

  15. Life Altering

  16. I Have Your Panties in My Pocket

  17. Unorganic Vodka

  18. Burn It

  19. The Course of Us

  20. Fallen-Fucking-Angel

  21. Therapy

  22. French Fries and Condoms

  23. Fancy as Fuck

  24. Good Cop, Bad Cop

  25. It’s Always Been You

  26. The Hardest and the Easiest

  27. Long Lost

  28. Deeper the Love, Greater the Wreck

  29. Criminal

  30. Sentimental

  31. Dead Women

  32. A Puzzle

  33. Half-Cocked

  34. My Angel

  35. The Other Side of Hell

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Bad Situation - Chapter 1

  For broken hearts and warriors.

  This happily ever after is for you.

  Prologue

  GHOSTS

  Ten years ago

  Trig

  “Don’t make me leave you. Not yet.”

  Her words are heavy and labored, cutting through my chest, as painful as a rusty hacksaw. She’s come twice and it doesn’t matter how many times we’re like this, it’s always better than the last. Feeding my addiction. Digging its way into my bones in a way I’ll never shake her. I don’t know how this can keep getting better, but it does. She lets go more every time we’re together—learning her own body and what it can do.

  What I can make it do.

  How I can make her feel when she gives me everything and I take it like the motherfucking asshole I am.

  There are moments I hate myself. For bringing her here when she deserves better. For not saying no to her. For fucking taking her when I have no business being with my boss’s daughter. Hell, no Barrett should be with a Montgomery, let alone take one for their own like I have.

  I’m not weak and I never have been. The shit that life has laid at my feet has made me who I am—steeling my bones, my mind, my soul. I knew if I let anything in, it’d chew me up and spit me out, nastier than the Skoal my dad tried to hit me with back in the day ‘cause shit like that was fun for him.

  Survival.

  I’ve clung to it for twenty-two years. There’s not a memory in my head where I wasn’t barely clawing at life with my grungy, tainted hands.

  Unwanted and vile, because I’m a Barrett.

  Never should’ve let her get under my skin. I never should’ve touched her and I damn sure never should’ve taken her.

  But I did.

  Now I’ve gotta find a way to keep her. And that might just be the biggest feat I’ve ever had to conquer.

  I press into her one more time, and even though I just came, I could take her again faster than my heart has a chance to skip a beat.

  I roll, bringing her with me, off the thick blanket we keep out here, and onto the hard floor of her family’s barn. Her blond hair falls over my chest and her body rests limp on mine.

  I run my hands down her bare back, feeling every bone and lean muscle. There’s hardly anything to her—not one curve or swell. When we lie here in the darkness of the night, she tells me how many hours she puts in a day dancing, making her body what it is, but I think it’s because she’s barely a woman. She just turned eighteen last week.

  “The sun doesn’t come up for another few hours, Trig. Let me stay.”

  I close my eyes and wrap her up tight, not giving a shit how sweaty we are from the hot, Texas night and the even hotter sex we just had. “If we fall asleep and get caught, your daddy’ll skin me alive and move you around the world, baby.”

  She pushes up from my chest and her face is shadowed with only the crescent moon filtering in through the open window behind her. Her eyes—which are usually deeper, warmer, and bluer than my icy ones—are black when she looks down at me. “I made a decision.”

  I slide my hands down to her ass. “Yeah? This doesn’t surprise me since you’re so sure of everything.”

  “I am.” She’s so small, when she pushes up my body to press her pink lips to mine, she has to slide off my cock to reach my mouth. Her hair falls in a mess, caging us in. “I’m not going to New York.”

  My fingers press into her skin.

  “I’m going to tell my parents tomorrow—or later today. Whichever.”

  “What?” The word slips through my lips with an edge to it as tense as my muscles.

  She shakes her head and brings a hand up, brushing her thumb across my bottom lip. “I’ll see if I can still get into SMU with Jen. If I have to beg my dad to make a donation to make it happen, I will. People do it all the time. Or I won’t go anywhere, I don’t care. I can’t leave you.”

  “You can’t stay because of me.”

  Her angelic face puckers. “There’s no other reason I’d stay.”

  “Then you’re definitely not staying.”

  It doesn’t matter how hard my voice turns, nothing fazes Ellie. She’s got the strongest will of anyone I’ve ever known, all encased in her small, perfect body.

  “You can’t tell me what to do, Trig Barrett.” She presses her tits into my chest, call
ing the attention of my dick. But when it comes to her, she wakes every inch of me, even nudging at the parts I didn’t know existed. “I’m going to tell them about us, too.”

  I exhale. “I don’t care about me. I’m sure I’ll have to find another job and I’ve told you before, I can do that. But if you think Kipp and Hattie Montgomery are gonna let the baby of their family be with a ranch hand, you’re crazy.”

  She kisses my jaw and whispers, “My dad loves you. You’re his favorite.”

  I roll her onto the blanket and rip off my condom before I cover her body with mine. “Him favoring me on his ranch is different than giving me the nod to be with his daughter. But none of that matters, angel. You aren’t giving up your chance at Juilliard to be with a guy who can barely afford to go to JuCo part time. You’re going to New York.”

  She pulls her knees up and wraps her legs around me. “We’re wasting precious moments arguing about this when we don’t have any real time together as it is.”

  Her features are lit up by the moon now—her eyes determined, full of lust … and something else I don’t want to think about. Something I’ve never seen in anyone when they glance my way. If I let that sink in, I’m fucked.

  Not that I’m not already fucked by getting involved with my boss’s daughter.

  I put it all out of my mind and lean down to run my tongue across her collarbone. It doesn’t matter that we grew up close to each other, we didn’t run in the same circles and she went to private school. We couldn’t be more different. “I remember the first time I laid eyes on you. I knew you were trouble.”

  Her expression melts into a small smile. “I did everything I could to get your attention for months. You never gave me a second look.”

  I gaze into her deep blues. “You’re too young for me now—you were really too young for me a year ago.”

  She presses her body into mine, a body that’s never been touched before I took it for my own.

  “You couldn’t resist me.” She sounds proud of herself. And she’s right, I couldn’t.

  I don’t say so because I need to do everything I can to put her off—there’s no way she’s ruining her life by staying here. I won’t allow it. “Don’t do anything, not yet. Let’s come up with a plan together.”

  “I love you, Easton Barrett.”

  My eyes flare and my gut twists like it does every time she says that.

  She sighs and runs her hand down my chest, killing me slowly. “Nothing you can do or say is going to change my mind. Whether I tell my parents tomorrow or in a couple months, I’m not leaving you. And I know you love me, too. It’s okay, you don’t have to say it back.”

  Fuck me, she’s right about that, too.

  I look into her eyes and realize I’m in deep because I can’t say no to her. “You can stay for an hour, but that’s it.”

  She smiles like she won the damn lottery.

  She’s crazier than I thought because I’m the farthest thing from a jackpot.

  * * *

  Nine years and eight months ago

  “Get the fuck off my property.”

  I look at the man who’s treated me more like a son than anyone ever has. The man who gave me a job when I needed one, slid extra money into my paychecks when he knew I had to pay tuition at the shit junior college where I’ve been slowly chipping away at night classes, and now, the man who has two reasons to hate me.

  “I’m not leaving ‘til I talk to her, Kipp.”

  “I can’t even look at you,” he seethes.

  “I don’t know what’s going on, but I know she wouldn’t do this to me—”

  “She’s gone.”

  His words hit me like a Mack truck going eighty around a bend.

  “Where is she?”

  “Juilliard honored her admission. She left with Jen this morning—wouldn’t let her mama or me take her. She made her statement to the police, then barely said goodbye.”

  My eyes fall and all I see is her in that hospital bed, wrecked and shattered in a way that had not one thing to do with a broken rib or mar on her porcelain skin. It was the last time I could get to her because her family fucking cut me out.

  “I won’t allow a Barrett to ruin our lives.” He moves away from the open front door but I can’t bring my feet to follow him. I’m numb and angry and empty. Before I know it, he’s back and shoving a slip of paper against my chest. “Take it. Take it and stay the hell away from my family. I never want to see your face again.”

  I’m forced to look down at the paper. A check. For one hundred thousand dollars.

  “I don’t give a shit what you do with it but stay away from my daughter.”

  I take in all the zeros put together next to my name. It’s more than I could contemplate in a lifetime.

  When I look back to the man I’ve just lost all respect for, I hold the check up between us. “Is this all she’s worth to you?”

  “Take it,” he spits. “Go to school. Start a new life. I don’t care what you do as long as it’s far away from here. She doesn’t want anything to do with you.”

  “I love her.”

  He ignores me. “Get the hell off my property.”

  “I love her, Kipp.”

  “You come close to my daughter again, I’ll come after you and this time I won’t let Ellie or Jen stop me.”

  I don’t even think twice. I rip his ugly bribe in two and then rip it again. When the pieces fall at his pretentious feet, his face reddens. “I might have Barrett blood running in my veins but I will not be bought. I’m not that kind of man. And I’ll say it a third time—I love her. I did everything I could to stand by her—all the other shit is not my fault.”

  “The police are lookin’ for you and you’d best cooperate. Do us all a favor,” his voice turns rough, “leave her be. She’s been through enough.”

  That’s the first thing he’s said that I agree with.

  She’s been through more than anyone should experience in a lifetime.

  But I don’t get a chance to fight for Ellie or agree she deserves better.

  Kipp slams the door in my face and, with that, I’ve lost. And it has nothing to do with what the police want to question me about.

  Yeah, I’ve lost everything.

  * * *

  Four months ago

  I almost lost her today.

  For the second time.

  Not that she was mine to lose this time. She wasn’t. She married that motherfucking shithead who almost killed her tonight.

  I can’t believe I’m here. I don’t even recognize myself. I’ve hated her for so long, I’ve forgotten what it was like to love her.

  It’s two in the morning and I’m sitting outside her mansion of a house situated in this absurd gated community. I was able to slip through security behind another car with no problem and the guard waved at me like I belong here. I guess no one questions a Benz.

  Good thing I didn’t drive my truck. In this neighborhood, they’d send SWAT after me in the rusted-out beast I still prefer over this G Class.

  Jen’s Rover is here which means her special agent lover is probably here, too. Ellie’s not alone, even though, from the outside, she looks like it.

  The pictures I’ve seen through the years say it all. She’s not who she used to be. Her smile isn’t hers. Her eyes don’t shine like they did for me. She might be ten years older and all woman now, but she’s not who she was.

  Doesn’t matter how much I hate her, I accept half that burden.

  And she’s got a child now.

  Fuck.

  I need to leave.

  I shouldn’t have moved back—should’ve brought my mom to California. What the hell was I thinking?

  Ghosts.

  I swear, if I don’t watch out, they’ll eat me alive.

  1

  A Decade

  There are times in life where you’ll fall deeper into despair. Those are the days that make you who you are. Embrace them.

  Ellie

&nbs
p; It’s the moment we realize, God has a solution.

  He’s full of shit.

  There’s no solution.

  If anyone is an example of that, it’s Faye Barrett.

  Blessed are they who mourn, for they shall be comforted.

  Bullshit. Years of mourning and the most I can be thankful for is numbness. When it’s not stabbing at my heart, I’m at least grateful for that … a shot of Novocain to my soul. Those are the days I can pretend I’m fine, even normal.

  We will deeply miss our friend in Christ, Faye.

  Tears prick at my eyes and I push my Marc Jacobs sunglasses up my nose, happy I thought to grab a pair of shades even though the skies are as dreary as this old cemetery out in the middle of the Texas hills. It’s as gloomy as what has become my life. At least I have Griffin. After all that’s happened, I’m grateful Robert was a shit dad. My son will never know what he was missing out on in a father and I’ll be everything for him. Griff is all I have now that Faye is gone. My secret visits with her were the only bright spot in my life besides my son.