Just One Accident (Book 3 In The Just Once Series)

Chapter One

Dedicated to a dear reader who is beginning to feel more like a friend

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Summer's POV:

My life has been an endless cycle of the same thing. To love means to be used. My parents love me when I'm useful, give attention to me when I can give them something they want.

As a young girl, I'd do just about anything for my parents, give until I had nothing left. I'd be showered in presents, in clothes and toys and as I got older, the gifts got more expensive.

But all I every really wanted, was them.

I wanted them to love me, to spend time with me. To just sit and ask me if I was ok, to kiss me and say goodnight, to hear them say they loved me.

But the harsh reality was, they didn't. They never did. By the time I was sixteen I'd accepted that truth. Began to understand that their attention, as far as the term 'attention' went when it came to me, was limited to one thing. They wanted something.

They wanted me to make friends with the girl in my class. They wanted me to go to that party or introduce them to so and so's daughter because that would be a good connection. They thought I should date that boy because his father was someone my father wanted an in with.

My sixteenth birthday party was held in a five-star hotel, full of more than 300 people I didn't know.

Every friend I had up until I left home, was a connection for my parents. They wanted me to study law, follow in my father's footsteps. Marry a man that would open doors, raise my own children the same way I'd been raised.

But that person they wanted, it wasn't me.

At eighteen I left. I packed my bags whilst my mother screamed at me, walked out the front door to my father cutting up the credit cards he thought I'd need to survive.

I'd thrown my car keys onto the floor at his feet as I left.

Alex had driven me down to the university I'd been accepted to, Rhys helped me find my feet. Jamie was my first real friend. Talin like a sister.

But those years of freedom had been hard. Money was tight, working full time and studying full time was exhausting and then had come the danger, the killer who had taken Jamie's life, who had hurt Rhys, went after Talin and Cole, who had even had me in his sights.

There's only so much pain a person can take before they break. I thought that I broke after Jamie was murdered. I'd been wrong.

Seeing Rhys laying in that hospital bed, so still and silent. Something inside of me ripped apart.

I thought I was losing him. I thought I'd never hear his laugh again, never be able to talk to him, feel my skin burn whenever he accidently touched me. All the pain of losing Jamie had been multiplied at the thought of going through that pain with Rhys.

I sat in that hospital room and I realised a very real true.

I was in love with Rhys Duvall.

I was terrified. Because love meant to be hurt, to be used up until they didn't need you anymore. Love meant pain.

"Are you listening to me?" Rhys says, ripping me from my wandering thoughts.

I look up from the English textbook that I've been staring blankly at for the last half an hour. "What did you say?" I ask, pushing my hair out of my face and closing the book. My mind far from where it needs to be in order to study for my essay.