Bespoken: An Opposites-Attract Standalone Romance (Carmel Cove Book 2) Read online

  Jules

  I felt like I was on a boat about to dock, drifting almost close enough to be anchored before a dense drowsy current pulled me away. Over and over and over again.

  “Jules?” Laurel’s voice dipped and dove through the murky depths to reach me.

  I tried to remember why she would be at the resort. I couldn’t. I tried to remember what I could have possibly done to be so disoriented. I couldn’t. I tried to remember the last thing I remembered.

  And I couldn’t.

  But my name was enough. It was the person on the dock who’d caught the imaginary rope I’d been trying to use to tether myself to reality and finally reeled me in.

  My eyelids heaved like twin Olympians, deadlifting an impossible weight to push them open. Through the fog, there was no mistaking the white walls, computer monitors, and IVs, nor the concerned looks on Laurel and my mother’s faces.

  I was in the hospital.

  My body jerked into the realm of consciousness.

  “Hey, there.” Laurel reached for my hand that lay limply at my side, gently squeezing it in hers.

  “Oh, good, Jules.” My mother dabbed her cheeks, carefully checking her face in her compact mirror to make sure there was no trace of any emotion. Clipping it shut, she began to fan herself and walked to my side. “The doctor thought you’d be up an hour ago. We’ve just been sitting… waiting…” She spun and began to pace, like that would stop any more tears from popping out and ruining her appearance.

  I’d lived with Jacqueline Vandelsen long enough to know there was only so much concern underneath her layers of foundation, and the way it presented itself was generally through irritation. Because emotions were inconveniences.

  “Sorry…” I trailed off, my gaze drifting down to the IVs in my arm and the colored bands decorating my wrists. “Everything feels so… heavy…” I turned to my cousin and asked, “What happened?”

  Like a leaky faucet, tears pooled in Laurel’s eyes. “I’m so sorry, Jules—”

  “You were kidnapped, Julia,” my mother interjected as her hand flapped even harder in front of her face. “Kidnapped and then beaten. And it’s just” —she shuddered—“I need some air.”

  She flitted out of the room before either of us could say anything, only stopping briefly to say something to Tom, one of my father’s security team, who was standing guard outside the door.

  My God, what had happened?

  I winced with pain as my brain tried to go down a road that was blocked off.

  And why couldn’t I remember?

  “You okay?” Laurel asked quietly, her brow furrowing with concern.

  “Aside from the fact my body feels like it was turned into a piñata someone hit with a baseball bat, I guess I’m okay.” Grunting, I pressed my hands into the stiff mattress, trying to push myself up straighter, but retreating from the idea when my whole body protested with pain. “What happened?”

  “Do you… remember anything?” she probed gently.

  I tried. Even though it hurt, I tried.

  But it felt like I was in a room that I was familiar with—that I’d been in before—but I was in the dark, and no matter how hard I tried I couldn’t make out the details I knew were there.

  With a slight whimper, I bit my lip and continued to push backward, farther and farther, until I reached a point where I could see again.

  “I remember coming up from dinner and going to my room. Wait, no. I remember I stopped at my dad’s office because I heard arguing.” That piece was right there, my mind just about to touch it. “But from there, it’s all in pieces.”

  Like logs bobbing in the middle of a swamp, my brain jumped from one snippet to the next, recalling only the single memory I stood on and nothing around it.

  “I remember knowing I needed to call you… or I did call you? I-I’m not sure.” My fingers toyed with the edge of the hospital blanket, like tugging at the fabric could uncover the pieces of my memories that lingered underneath the edge. “I remember there was a knock on my door…”

  And that was where I hit a wall. Hard. Immovable. It took my breath from my lungs and replaced it with searing, erosive pain.

  “That’s it,” I admitted numbly. “I don’t remember anything after that, and before it…is all in pieces. I don’t… even know if it’s right.”

  I reached up and gingerly touched my mouth, feeling my lips bruised and split. My hand traveled higher to my forehead, the skin burning as I traced over it until my fingertips reached the bandage on the side of my head. Nausea rolled through me and even though I tried to swallow, I couldn’t; my throat was locked closed. Just like my memory.

  There was a piece of my life that was missing. A piece that had put me in the hospital. A piece I couldn’t find.

  And the fear that accompanied the amnesia was worse than the pain trying to remember had caused.

  “Why can’t I remember?”

  There was pity on Laurel’s face but also a small measure of relief. Was it that bad that she didn’t want me to remember?

  Seeing my thoughts spiraling, she sat on the bed and claimed my attention.

  “You have a severe concussion and a broken rib. They want to keep you for another few days but the doctor said you’re going to heal perfectly fine. As far as the memory.” She paused for a moment. “Once the inflammation goes down, you should get your memory back.”

  I should’ve been relieved, but everything just felt so thick and muddied and wrong.

  “What happened last night, Laurel?”

  I needed to know. It didn’t matter how much my body protested for rest or my mind begged for reprieve. I needed to know what happened to me.

  Her head ducked for a second before she spoke, “Remember when I decided to stay in town and run Roasters?”

  I nodded, clearly able to recall the conversation we’d had a week ago when she’d confessed to wanting to move back to our hometown and run the Ocean family business.

  “Well, there was a man who wanted to buy it from me—Alexander Blackman.”

  I felt a twinge, but decided it must be from my injuries and not a memory.

  “He’d tried to buy it from Pap and then from me, but when I told him I was keeping the business, he resorted to threats,” she continued, her voice drifting lower to accommodate the unsavory topic.

  I sucked in a sharp breath and regretted it instantly when my broken rib sent a knife-like pain ripping through my chest.

  “I thought—we thought—Eli, the Covington brothers, and I—that we could trap him into admitting his guilt for the threats and for the break-in that happened at the coffee shop.”

  “It was him?” I choked out.

  About two months ago, before our grandfather passed away, there had been a break-in at Roasters. The police had written it off as vandalism since nothing valuable or otherwise was taken, but I knew Laurel, Eli, and several of the people who worked there, weren’t convinced by the easy explanation. And now, it seemed they were right not to.

  Laurel nodded, but before I could ask how they proved it, she continued, “You remembered right, you did call me last night. You were upset and said you needed to talk, something about family, and asked me to meet you at Roasters.”

  I swallowed down the bile that rose like the tide into my throat. I remembered needing to call her, but I couldn’t, for the life of me, remember dialing her number or asking to meet her at Roasters.

  “When I got there—” she choked on a small cry. “When I got there, he had you, Jules. Blackman had kidnapped you from the resort and he brought you there and threatened me with a gun to your head.”

  My lips parted and the heavy thud of my pulse echoed in my head.

  Re-member. Re-member. Re-member.

  But there was nothing.

  My breath caught, feeling Laurel’s hand link with mine, a shudder running through my body at how incomprehensible it was to know I’d had a gun held to my head—my life threatened—and I couldn’t remember a single
second of it.

  “He threatened to hurt you if I didn’t give him the deed to the building,” Laurel murmured, bringing my hand up to her chest and clutching it tight as emotion overwhelmed her voice. “I-I’m so sorry, Jules. I didn’t know… I didn’t know he knew the deed was there. I-I told him the lawyer had it. I thought it would buy me some time. But he knew I was lying.”

  I wanted to comfort her seeing how badly her shoulders shook, but I couldn’t. Everything was either too hurt or too heavy.

  “He knew… so he hit you in the head with the butt of his gun and you fell. Then he kicked you and broke one of your ribs,” she choked out. “I’m so sorry—”

  “It’s okay, Laurel,” I assured her sincerely, even though every word felt like fire on my tongue.

  I didn’t blame her for this but with the guilt ravaging her face, neither could I tell her just how excruciating it felt to be missing a piece of my memory—of my life. I didn’t want to hurt her. I didn’t want her to feel any more guilt than she already did.

  “How did you stop him?” Maybe something else in the story would trigger my mind, like a light switch that just needed one flick to illuminate all the facts.

  “I told him I would give him the deed, but I knew he’d just kill us both once he had it.” Her chin dipped. “So, when I led him to the back, I grabbed one of the frying pans and hit him in the head.”

  “Oh my God, Laurel.” I squeezed her hand. “Did you—Did he—”

  “No.” She shook her head. “I didn’t even knock him out, though I was hoping I would. But it gave me enough time to get us out of there before he fired off a shot.” Her throat bobbed. “We made it a little ways down the street, but you were too hurt for us to move fast enough to get down to the Pub.” Her eyes glazed over and I knew she was reliving the moments as she spoke them. “I sat you in the alley a few buildings down from Roasters. I was going to attack him… or distract him… or do something to keep him away from you when I saw the Mad—” She stopped a split-second before the door to my room opened and my mother walked back in, much more composed than when she left.

  “Your father is glad you are awake,” she informed matter-of-factly as she tucked her phone back into her small, designer purse.

  Even now, even at a hospital, she was dressed elegantly. When I was little, I thought my mother was a queen and the letters on her purses told everyone who she was. Now that I was older, I knew better the kind of kingdom she reigned over—one of prestige and power. And the letters…they said nothing of who she was, only what she had. Sometimes, I wondered if there was even a difference between those two things anymore.

  “W-where is he?” Maybe it was silly of me to expect him to be here.

  “He had a lot of very important meetings that he couldn’t put off.” She waved me off, almost nervously fidgeting her hands together. “He was here last night for a bit,” she added as though it was some sort of consolation.

  Still, it didn’t help the hole of loneliness in my chest.

  I was missing a chunk of my memory and there wasn’t even the effusive concern of my parents to fill the void.

  I remembered the time Laurel had fallen off her bike while we’d been riding around at the resort. She’d only needed a few stitches but her parents were at the hospital, her grandparents were there; I was pretty certain they even closed the coffee shop for a few hours.

  Meanwhile, my almost being killed was an inconvenience to my parents.

  But I knew better. My parents cared through money and material things. They bought me things, paid for a life most could only dream of, and to them, that was better than showing emotion. It was my fault I wanted something priceless like love; they only valued things that came with a price tag.

  Thankfully, I was an adult, and I was going to be okay. I would get over expecting something that would never happen—I always did.

  “You were saying?” I turned back to Laurel and swallowed my fruitless emotions.

  Her crystal blue eyes clouded and flicked over to my mother who stood like an impatient schoolmistress waiting for class to be done.

  “Right.” She nodded and continued, “I ran out to distract Blackman just as Ace and Eli pulled up. He had a gun aimed at me, and there was a shot.” She paused. “I thought he shot me, but then he fell.”

  I had no memory, but I could hear how Laurel fought to keep her voice level and calm even though her recollection came out in short, shocked snippets.

  “Ace…shot him,” she finished with a quiet voice.

  Her chin dipped, unable to hold my gaze any longer. Maybe it was because she felt guilty. Still, it felt like she couldn’t hold my gaze because her words didn’t hold the truth.

  “He’s…”

  “Dead,” she confirmed.

  “Yes,” my mother’s clipped tone cut in. “Dead and gone. Now, I’m going to try to find the doctor to see when we can get you home. Perhaps, Laurel, you should let your cousin rest after everything she’s been through. Perhaps, sort out your business problems before any other innocent people get hurt.”

  “Mama!” I exclaimed, my eyes darting to Laurel.

  My mother had never been one for public displays of emotion, preferring to believe that, as the royalty of Carmel Cove, we had an image to maintain. Still, I’d never seen her this agitated and curt before.

  Judging from the less-than-shocked look on my cousin’s face, this wasn’t the first time my mother had laid the blame on my oldest—and arguably only—friend for something that was not only not her fault but, a situation where she’d been ready to sacrifice herself in order to save me.

  I opened my mouth to apologize, but Laurel’s soft smile beat me to it.

  “It’s okay,” she reassured me. “I’m just glad you’re okay and awake. She’s right about resting, though. You should relax and focus on healing. I have to head over to Covington Security anyway, and then down to the police station to give another statement.”

  I nodded, wishing she didn’t have to go so soon. She was the only link—the only light—I had to last night, and I didn’t want to be left in the dark again.

  “I’ll be back tomorrow,” she promised and leaned in, gently hugging me. “Love you.”

  “Love you, too,” I murmured, catching her eye before I added, “Thank you, and thank Ace for me. I wish…I wish I could remember.”

  It was strange to feel overwhelming gratitude for something my body—my heart remembered but my mind didn’t.

  “Mama,” I said wearily once we were alone. “It’s not Laurel’s fault. How could you say that?”

  “Julia, your cousin should have sold that godforsaken coffee shop when she had the chance. She brought this on herself and brought it on to you,” she snapped. “If she’d just sold it to me, none of this would’ve happened.”

  “Roasters has been in the family for generations. You wouldn’t want me to sell the resort, would you?” I protested, the ache in my head growing like an expanding thundercloud, trying to process what happened.

  Since I’d opened my eyes, this was the first time I’d seen horrific concern written on my mother’s face. My chest hurt—and not from the broken rib—to know that it wasn’t for me.

  “That is not the same thing. Technically, I’m still family.” A fact she clearly begrudged to admit. “And you would never think to do something so careless and foolish,” she scoffed and began digging in her purse. “Your father is calling again. Rest so we can go home.”

  She hardly glanced back at me before her phone was at her ear and her heels tapped a determined path to the door.

  Home.

  A strange word to describe a resort. A wrong word.

  Rock Beach was like a castle on a hill: beautiful and shiny from down below. But if anyone ever managed to make it up high enough to look at the world from my view, they’d see how lonely and hollow living there was.

  It wasn’t a home; it was a way of life.

  For almost thirty years, it was a place of smi
ling and nodding, parties and events. It was a place where I gladly did what I was told because I cared about the people who came to stay and, more than that, because I kept hoping it would change my relationship with my parents.

  A hope that dwindled with every minute.

  “Miss Vandelsen.” I looked up, not even noticing that a nurse with a Julia Roberts’ size smile had come into the room, instantly brightening and warming the space. “Well, good morning there, gorgeous!”

  Wearing light blue scrubs, her dark brown hair was high up in a ponytail and her bangs draped across her forehead. She beamed as she approached my bedside and introduced herself.

  “I’m Gwen, and I’ve been helping Dr. Botkin since you came in last night. Your cousin let me know you were awake. How are you feeling?”

  She stood, still smiling, and waited for my answer. She didn’t take notes. She didn’t check my chart or the machines around me. She waited on me, and I knew right then and there, this woman cared about her patients above and beyond what her job required.

  A sharp pang hit my stomach and I inhaled quickly.

  I’d always wanted to be a nurse.

  Before I’d been sent to private school.

  Before my parents told me it was better if I didn’t go to college.

  Before I was told that Rock Beach was my legacy and my family, and that I would never want to betray that.

  “Heavy. Tired,” I admitted with a weak smile, the pain in my stomach fizzling into a lull of regret at what I could’ve become if I wasn’t who I was.

  Never too late to start over where you are. My pap’s words tumbled into my mind like a calm, cool breeze through the injured turmoil.

  I’d confided in him a few weeks before his death about my desire to change course. We’d talked, mostly about how to approach my parents, but also how he’d be there for me no matter what happened, but then he’d passed away and the very fragile foundations of my alternate future drifted apart like ashes in the wind, and I wasn’t sure what strength I had left to stand on.

  You have a strength you have yet to realize.

  I winced as the sharpest slice of pain I’d felt yet cut through my head.