Secrets Beyond Best Friends - The Complete Series Contemporary Romance

Third Cousins, Dana Collins

Description

Sophie never needed anybody but Louisa. So when Louisa leaves her, she finds herself with no one to turn to and certainly no one to talk to. When the world starts turning gray around her, her mom suggests seeing a doctor. But can a doctor really do anything to mend her broken heart?

Sujets

• Contemporary romance
• Contemporary

Informations

• Publié par: Speedy Publishing LLC
• Date de parution: 15 février 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781681854939
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

Table of Contents
Title Page
Discover More Books By Third Cousins
Secrets Beyond Best Friends
A Synopsis...
Inspiring Words
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
A Synopsis...
Inspiring Words
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
A Synopsis...
Inspiring Words
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Copyright
Secrets Beyond Best Friends
The Complete Series
Boxed Set
Contemporary Romance
By: - Dana Collins & Third Cousins
DISCOVER MORE BOOKS BY THIRD COUSINS
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Secrets Beyond Best Friends
Cherry Blossoms
Book 1
Contemporary Romance
By: - Dana Collins & Third Cousins
A SYNOPSIS...
The truth has come out, and now Sophie must face the consequences. With no parents to turn to and no money in the bank to pay for college, what will she do?
INSPIRING WORDS
“Without reflection, we go blindly on our way, creating more unintended consequences, and failing to achieve anything useful.”
- Margaret J. Wheatley
CHAPTER 1

My mom’s face went whiter than I’d ever seen it before. I wasn’t sure whether she going to pass out or explode. Her chest was rising and falling with the slow, subtle pattern of controlled anger.
“I want her to leave.” She was looking at me, but she was talking about Louisa. “I want her gone from your brother’s wedding and I don’t want to hear about this again.”
“Maybe that’s for the best,” Louisa agreed. I could see her taking a step forward towards the doors which would take into the rest of the building. I pushed my arm out quickly, so that it held her back.
“Louisa isn’t going anywhere. I want her to be here,” I said calmly to my mom. The calmness in my voice was surprising. I wasn’t sure how I was keeping it all together. The worst had happened. My mom had no only found out about my secret, but she’d found out in such a graphic way. This was only going to get worse, before it got better. I could feel the storm clouds brewing around us, even the sky above was nothing, but unbroken blue.
“Get her out of this wedding.” My mom’s teeth were clenched, but I could understand her perfectly well. “I will not have our family embarrassed like this.”
“If Louisa leaves then so do I.” I held my mom’s eyes with my own. I didn’t want her to think that I was bluffing. I didn’t want her to think that this was somehow Louisa’s fault. She had to know it was coming from me.
She did know. She could see it in my eyes. She could see my fierce unwillingness to back down.
“You have a date in there,” she hissed at me. “What am I supposed to tell him? What am I supposed to tell his mom when she asks?”
I shrugged. “You tell his mom that her son tried to attack me. You tell her that he led me down a dark street and he tried to do, well I don’t know what he would have done,” I cried out in frustration. “I managed to stop him before he had the chance.”
“Sophie, this is serious enough without adding lies to the equation.”
Could she look more furious? She looked like I’d just spat in her face. The white of her cheeks had been exchanged for a blotchy, burned red.
“Is that true?” Louisa asked me. I felt her hand reach out and wrap around my shoulder. My mom’s eyes were glued to the small gesture. She looked as though Louisa had taken her hand and slapped her across the face with it.
I nodded. “It’s not a big deal. I sorted it.”
“It’s not a big deal?” Louisa sounded outraged. She looked it, too. I let my eyes glance over to her face and I found the storm that the clouds had been gathering for.
She pointed at my mom. “You let this happen to her. You set her up with a rapist.”
“You won’t take that tone with me,” my mom said, trying to take control of the situation. “Who do you think you are?”
“I think I’m the only person standing out here who cares about your daughter,” Louisa spat back.
It was awkward. I didn’t know where to look. My mom and Louisa were tearing at each other and it was all because of me.
“You think that I don’t care about my daughter?”
“You don’t even know her,” Louisa laughed. “She’s been living in fear of you finding out about her sexuality for years. She’s made herself sick trying to be the person that you wanted her to be, and when she finally does something for herself, when she finally accepts who she is, you come out with your big mouth and ruin everything.”
My mom looked like she wanted to say something back. Her mouth dropped half open, but then she pulled it back closed again. Her lips had pursed into the centre of her face. Her face looked sharp and unlike the face of the mom that I knew.
“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said finally with her eyes flitting between Louisa and me. “You don’t know anything about what my daughter wants. Who do you think you are, trying to shame me like that?”
“I’m her friend,” Louisa said. “I’m her friend and I know her better than you ever will.”
My mom turned her glare to me. “Is this what you want?” she asked. She gave me time to answer, even though I had the answer ready at the tip of my tongue. “Do you really want to turn your back on your family for her?”
“Only if I can’t have both,” I said quietly. “I don’t want to lose my family, but I won’t lose Louisa. Not again.”
“And, you realize what you’re saying?” she asked, as though perhaps I was drunk or I’d hit my head on something. “You realize that if you pick her, your father, your brother and I will no longer be able to associate with you?”
“It doesn’t have to be like that, Mom.”
I wanted to reach out. I wanted her to pull me into her arms and hug me and tell me that she accepted me. That’s what I wanted. I wanted to be accepted by my family. I wanted the people who should have been there for me to actually be there for me. “You could talk to dad, you could talk to my brother, and you could make them see that I’m still me.”
She shook her head slowly.
“Why not? Why can’t you do that for me? You’ve saw what I was like when Louisa went away. You saw how that affected me, and yet you’re not willing to help me?”
“That wasn’t heartbreak,” my mom snapped quickly. “You were depressed. That’s why the doctor gave you those pills, so that you could get over it.”
“I was depressed because Louisa had left,” I said honestly.
It felt weird being honest with her, because it was making everything worse, but I was feeling better in the process. I could see all of the horror and judgement in my mom’s eyes that I’d always feared, but I felt lighter because it was there. I felt less like a fake, a fraud and a phoney.
CHAPTER 2

I left the wedding. It was clear that my mom was going to need more time to process what she’d just found out. Louisa and I walked out of the front door together. I didn’t bother saying goodbye to my brother. I figured my mom would fill him in when he asked where I was. If he asked.
The weather outside was great. It was the perfect summer’s day. “What am I going to do?” I asked Louisa when we’d reached the bottom of the street.
“What do you mean?” her eyes were pressed half closed with the sun.
I stopped walking and ran my hands through my hair. “This has messed up everything,” I could feel a thousand thoughts a second rushing through my head. “Where am I going to live? How am I going to pay for college?”
“You need to calm down,” Louisa told me calmly. “I know that everything seems like a mess right now, but you’ve got to take it one step at a time. Today’s a day to celebrate.”
“What exactly should we be celebrating?”
“You came out,” she grinned at me. “You don’t have to lie about who you are any more.” She grabbed hold of my shoulders and shook them gently. “Don’t you see what a great thing that is?”
I wanted to. I wanted to rejoice in the weight that had been lifted from my shoulders, but I couldn’t. My mom hated me. My brother and father would, when they found out the truth. I had no home, no hopes of paying for college, I had nothing but the fact that the truth had come out.
I shook my head a little. “It’s just really bad timing, I guess.”
“It was always going to be a bad time.” Louisa forced my eyes to meet hers. “This is a good thing,” she told me with fierceness that I didn’t dare challenge. “I know that it seems like everything is messed up right now, but believe me, thi