Unbroken by Love (The Basin Lake Series Book 4) Read online

  Unbroken by Love

  Book Four of The Basin Lake Series

  Stephanie Vercier

  Contents

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  CHAPTER THIRTY

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  (Part 2)

  Other Books by Stephanie Vercier

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Unbroken by Love

  A Basin Lake Novel

  Copyright © 2017 by Stephanie Vercier

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  For my beautiful Mother

  * * *

  CHAPTER ONE

  GARRETT

  Minneapolis, Minnesota — Two Years Ago

  “Make yourself comfortable,” the woman said, extending her arm toward a giant tan couch.

  I did as I was told, looking around the office full of houseplants and Native American artwork. My mouth was dry, but I made up for the moisture with my sweaty palms.

  The woman sat directly across from me in a smaller chair, crossed her legs and balanced a notepad on her knee. I noticed only the most generic of her features, graying hair and glasses worn over a round face, dark slacks and a white blouse clinging to a fairly tall frame. If I were to see her outside of this room, I’m not sure I’d even recognize her.

  “I’d like to just reintroduce myself since it’s not uncommon for clients to forget my name between the time they make the appointment and their first visit.” She says this in a firm but kind voice, placing a hand to her chest. “I’m Dr. Elizabeth Barnes, and I’ve been practicing as a psychologist for twenty five—no, make that twenty six years. And you’re Garrett Hevener, correct?”

  I nodded.

  “I don’t follow a lot of sports, Garrett—may I call you Garrett?”

  I nodded again.

  “Good. Well, my husband does, and I’d be lying if I said I didn’t recognize your name and face. You play for the Vikings.”

  Once more, I tilted my head forward in affirmation and hoped she wasn’t going to ask me what it’s like playing in the NFL or how much money do rookies make or, “Must be pretty easy to get laid now, huh?” Not that I thought Dr. Barnes would be interested in that last one, but complete strangers have seen fit to ask far more.

  “What brings you here today, Garrett?”

  I swallowed hard, thankful she moved right along but also unsure of where to begin, unsure of how I was supposed to tell my deepest feelings to a woman who could be my mother. “Uh, I guess I’ve been having trouble sleeping?” is what I settled on.

  “Okay. I imagine there’s a reason for that. Any ideas what it might be?”

  I sighed. It hadn’t been my idea to go to therapy, but I’d been sucking in practice, and one of the assistant coach’s answers to poor performance was a regimen that included seeing a psychologist. I’d pushed through all the extra practices he forced on me, but when he said that wasn’t enough, when he said therapy was pretty much mandatory, I’d finally acquiesced.

  So there I was, sitting across from Dr. Elizabeth Barnes and trying to decide if I was really going to talk about the thing that still troubled me enough to make me lose sleep over it.

  “Garrett?” she prodded when I didn’t say anything.

  “It’s about a girl… and a guy,” I said, looking at the intricately patterned rug below my feet.

  “I see. It always gets slightly more complicated when we’re dealing with more than one thorn in our side, but complicated is what we do here. Please go on.”

  And like I was in one of those confessionals at a Catholic church, I did. I told her how I, along with my childhood best friend, Evan, had met a beautiful girl named Paige Kessel in the fourth grade, a girl who’d moved with her family to our small town of Basin Lake after her father’s death. I could feel the smile spread across my face as I talked about the way in which the three of us became inseparable best friends, how sometimes Paige was just like another boy, except that of course she wasn’t.

  “Then I started noticing looks between her and Evan, like maybe seventh grade?” I continued, feeling my smile begin to fade. “And then Evan told me he liked her more than just a friend, and, without taking a second to think about it, I just blurted out that she didn’t feel the same, that we’d talked about it and she wasn’t into him that way.”

  Dr. Barnes smiled. “And I’m assuming that wasn’t true.”

  I shook my head. “I honestly didn’t know. Paige and I had never once talked about it. I never lied about anything big, but I lied about that.”

  “And do you know why?” she probed.

  “I’m pretty sure it’s because I didn’t want to lose them. I was afraid they’d ditch me if they got together.”

  “Understandable. Did it end there?”

  “No.” I had a difficult time making eye contact with her. I was ashamed. “Evan would bring it up every once in a while, basically wondering out loud if he should just put his head on the chopping block for Paige and at least get his feelings out. But then she was dating this guy pretty seriously, and Paige was stressed out about school and stuff, so I convinced him she didn’t need any extra complications in her life.”

  “So, the three of you continued being friends through that?”

  “I suppose… yeah. It was strained though. We were all dating other people. The older we got, the more it was just seeing one another in bigger groups. And then…” I ground my teeth, thinking back to when I’d made a decision that had eventually ended my friendship with both Paige and Evan.

  “Would you like to continue?” Dr. Barnes asked.

  “I’d fallen in love with Paige,” I said before I could chicken out. “It had taken longer than Evan for me to feel that, but I did, and then it was overpowering.

  “I convinced myself Evan wasn’t good enough for her and that I was the one who deserved to be with Paige, even if it meant fast tracking a breakup with my own girlfriend at the time.”

  She allowed what felt like a very long minute of silence before she spoke. “And why didn’t you think Evan was good enough for Paige?”

  When I would think back to that point in my life, I’d usually find a reason not to discus
s it, to wipe it out of my mind, because the shame I felt in what I’d done ran deep. “He did some dumb teenage guy stuff, basically had a feud going with his parents, so he pretty much purposefully did terrible in school to get them to notice, got himself kicked off the football team, got a girl pregnant. Like I said, mistakes a teenage guy makes, but I decided none of it made him fit for Paige.”

  “But you were… fit for Paige?”

  I laughed at that. “I was a liar. Told Evan she had no interest in him. Told Paige the same. So, when she broke up with her boyfriend, I swooped in. And I thought all of it was worth it because she’d said yes… because I thought she loved me.”

  I knew that when I looked up, I’d see one of those smiles, the kind women gave you when they figured your heart was wounded. But Dr. Barnes didn’t do that. Her smile was different, uplifting.

  “And because you are here, the relationship with Paige obviously didn’t work out.”

  I shook my head, affirming what was already evident to her.

  “Then we have some work to do, Garrett. We need to delve into that period of time you were all friends and then build into the time period after things broke down. And then… well then, we can tie it all up into the present time. I’m going to take a stab here and say that your life hasn’t been without drama in the nearer past.”

  That earned her a laugh because she was so damn right. After everything went so wrong with Paige and Evan, there were days I didn’t even recognize who I was.

  CHAPTER TWO

  KATE

  Basin Lake, Washington — Present Day — September

  It hurts to see her so happy.

  It hurts even worse that I’m not overjoyed for my oldest sister, Paige, and that I have to pretend to be excited that she’s pregnant with the child of the man she has loved for pretty much forever. We’d all expected Paige and Evan to have already gotten married, but they were one of those couples that were so secure in their relationship that they didn’t need a marriage license to validate it. It was the news of this forthcoming child that had finally pushed them into the action of what everyone lovingly refers to as the “shotgun” wedding planned for a week from today.

  Knowing how happy I should have been for them—and wasn’t—I had to leave the combined baby and bridal shower, getting out of the house I’d grown up in, my grandmother’s house before it became all of ours. I didn’t want to bring anyone down with the emotion I was incapable of controlling or the tears that nobody would believe came from joy.

  My escape has led me to the far edge of the backyard, where the grass and the flowering shrubs Mom’s husband, Clark, has so lovingly cared for meet the beginning of the desert scrub. There is the slightest of chills in the air, and I cross my arms over my chest, rubbing my hands up to my shoulders and wishing I’d grabbed a sweater to cover the thin fabric of the flowered dress I’m wearing. But the coolness isn’t enough to make me want to go back in.

  Off into the distance, the late summer sun spreads an orange glow across the irrigated farmland and the houses that dot the landscape. There will be families and tourists and guys and girls not much younger than me at Basin Lake for one of the last swims of the season, their teeth perhaps chattering as they seek a towel or a place by a beach fire to warm them up. The lake is to the north, and if I look really close, I can just make out the scattered groves of trees that dot the south shore, a shore I’d spent a fair amount of time at, but maybe not as much as I would have had my life turned out differently.

  Between good memories and bad ones, I have always loved this town and the terrain that surrounds it. While my two older sisters had always been anxious to leave—Paige with her dream of being a teacher like our mother, and Claire wanting to be a doctor and perhaps help people who suffered from the same disease my father had—Basin Lake was a town I wanted to fall in love in, marry and have children in, to live here all of my life.

  But that had all changed the summer I’d turned fifteen, when Dr. Cramer, Evan’s stepdad, and two specialists in Spokane told me I’d never have kids. Dr. Cramer said it was because of a disorder called Müllerian agenesis while the two specialists called it Mayer Rokitansky Küster Hauser syndrome, different names for the same thing, and thankfully the latter with a much shorter acronym. I was told there were far worse cases of MRKH than the one I had, that while I was missing some internal anatomy, “Your vagina has enough depth to work with,” and, “You should eventually be able to have an entirely normal sex life.” These are the things the doctors said after informing me I had no uterus to carry a child in and no birth canal for it to come out of even if I did.

  At fifteen, I’d never had sex or explored that part of myself on my own, so how was I supposed to know how deep a vagina was even supposed to be? But that took a backseat to the fact I’d never have children, and I wasn’t sure I’d give a shit about a normal sex life if I couldn’t have a baby. Actually, they said I could have kids, but it would require a surrogate and IVF treatments and a bunch of other stuff my teenage brain wasn’t capable of processing at the time. They may as well just have told me I had some horrible, deadly disease and that I wouldn’t make it to my eighteenth birthday. Sometimes I think I would have taken that news better.

  “Hey, you.” I’m startled out of my thoughts by the voice that belongs to Claire, my middle sister, the sister who I love dearly and yet had treated the worst after my diagnosis.

  “You didn’t have to leave the party, you know. I just needed a minute.”

  She stands next to me, Claire who has always been flawlessly put together, who looks like she’s ready for a photo shoot at any given moment. She looks like that today in a light blue dress that fits her perfectly and long brown hair that is curled just right. She could carry the weight of the world on her shoulders and still look this beautiful.

  “It’s been more like fifteen,” she tells me with a raise of one eyebrow. “But even if you’d only been gone for a minute, I’ve barely seen you these last two years, so sue me for wanting to get a little extra time in.”

  I can’t help but to laugh and drop my arms from my chest. “God, I was such a beast to you when you were still home. I’m not sure I even really deserve your attention.”

  She puts her hand on my shoulder, and it’s reassuring. “I tried not to take it personally, plus I knew you’d work your way out of it eventually.”

  I sigh, wrap my arm around her waist and lean my head against her shoulder. “I’m not sure I have worked my way out of it. Paige is in there having her dual baby and bridal shower, and I’m out here feeling sorry for myself. I hate it, Claire. I hate feeling this way.”

  “I know.” There is emotion in her voice, and the last thing I’d have wanted was for Claire to be sad at our oldest sister’s shower. “If I could trade places with you, I’d do it in a heartbeat. And I’ve told you that I’d be happy to carry a child for you once Tyler and I have our own.”

  “No.” I pull away, as if wanting to show her I’m putting my foot down at that offer. “I won’t put you in that situation, not when you’re just going into med school and have years of hard work ahead of you. The last thing I want you thinking about is to someday be having kids for me.”

  “But I’d do it,” she says, pushing some of my long blonde hair behind my ear.

  “Yes, you would. You’d do pretty much anything for me, and that’s why I’m not going to ask. You do have your own life to lead, Claire, and I know Tyler is an amazing, understanding husband, but I’m sure even he has his limits.”

  She lets out what sounds like a tired breath. “Then we have to do something. You’re twenty now, and I don’t want you to spend another year, another month, another minute being unhappy.”

  “You can’t control that,” I tell her, my beloved sister who always tried so hard—who is still trying—to make it better for me. “I have to figure it out on my own, and I will… even if it means I’ll always have a hole in my heart because of it.”

  Claire’s eye
s widen, a look of profound sadness coming over her face before it crumples up, and she whispers, “A hole in your heart… forever?”

  My sister is strong, one of the strongest women I have ever known, only rattled when she’s worried for the people she loves. She cried tears over Tyler, her now husband, and for Margaret, an older woman and a friend to Claire who had died from complications of multiple sclerosis, the same disease that had taken our father when we were children. So when she cries now, I know it’s because she loves me, and I pull her to me, so angry at myself for bringing this out in her, angry at myself for so very many things.

  CHAPTER THREE

  GARRETT

  “This is exactly how things are supposed to be,” my mother says, setting the last platter of food on my parents’ table we’re all gathered at, my father, older sister, brother-in-law and niece and nephew. “All of us together.”

  Everyone looks so happy, and I’m feeling pretty content too. It’s nice to be back home in Basin Lake after seven years of being away, four years at WSU playing college ball and three in the NFL playing for the Minnesota Vikings. But as nice as this homecoming is, something is still missing, some sort of loneliness that’s made more obvious when I look around the table to everyone who’s paired off. Mom has Dad. Skyler, my older sister, has her husband, Matt. Even Charlotte and Wayne, my niece and nephew, have one another. What I have… what I’ve had… are a slew of someones, women who haven’t lasted more than a few months in my life when I was raised to be the kind of man who would put down roots with just one girl.

  “I still can’t believe you came back here after living the high life in the NFL,” Matt says, grinning and shaking his head, the first to pass one of the food platters around after Dad offered a quick prayer. “All that money and fame. You aren’t going to miss it?”