Broken Beauty (#1, Broken Beauty Novellas)

Chapter One

Chapter One

Sirens, shuffling, and the distant sounds of voices interrupt my sleep.

Pain.

I float back towards consciousness. I try to figure out if I left the television on and what I ate that made my belly hurt so much.

Cold.

How could I forget to pull the blankets up before passing out?

Blood.

Have I always had a bed made of concrete that smelled strange, like a combination of trees and something unpleasant? 

Alone.

Just before the voices crystalize, I begin to realize I’m not at home in bed. Amidst all the words that come to me, one shouts.

Darkness.

“Miss? Can you hear me?” A woman’s voice. She pries one of my eyes open. I’m blinded by a light. “We’ve got possible head trauma.”

Head trauma? Is this real?

“Miss! It’s okay! We’re the police!”

Police.

I’m about to slide into darkness when she passes smelling salts beneath my nose. The world bursts into painful clarity. Where the hell am I? My eyes are blurry, but I can make out the shapes of hedges just beyond the police who hover over me. The stone beneath me is cold, and someone has draped a blanket over me. It feels heavy; makes me uncomfortable...like someone is...  

Someone is on top of me. The fireflies nearby light up a face framed by dark hair. His face is blurry. I hear him grunting. He smells like whiskey. He’s holding my hands above my head while I struggle. I feel the pain, tearing me from the inside out, but I can’t move.

This shouldn’t be happening.

I scream and try to escape. Someone subdues me, and the memory clears to show two police officers bent over me.

“You’re safe,” the woman says. “I want to keep you awake ‘til the EMTs check you out.”

I’m starting to remember, but it’s hazy, like a nightmare. Except this one is real, because I’m here in the garden, where the nightmare happened. Pain is settling in, hot and burning, between my legs, across my back. My head.

I start to cry, confused and terrified.

“Oh, god! I’m dying!” I sob.

“You won’t die, honey.”

“I found a blanket in the cabana.” This voice is male. “And her purse.”

“Calm down…Julie?” the woman cop says. She’s reading the driver’s license she pulled from a familiar red snakeskin wristlet, the one I borrowed from my best friend, Ari.

The one I borrowed for tonight’s party at Sven’s. He sent out a text earlier today about the party he was throwing when his ambassador father would be out of town for the weekend. Ari and I are regular attendees in the elite party circuit for kids of the wealthy in DC. She was supposed to come with me tonight…I can’t remember why she didn’t.

God, I hurt!

My tears slow. I’m too tired to cry. I just want to sleep and close my eyes. In the morning, this nightmare will be over.