Intoxicated (42 page)

It never came.

“Blake?” he said finally, his blood running
cold. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I’m okay.” This was clearly a lie, he
could tell it in the way her voice waivered. A million scenarios
played out in his mind of what would have caused this, but none of
them prepared him for the words she said next. “It’s not me; it’s
Lauren. She’s gone.”

First of all, I’d like to thank my own
personal Matthew for allowing me to embark on this crazy
self-publishing journey and believing in me when I couldn’t believe
in myself. He saved this novel from the delete key more than once
and only rolled his eyes a few times when he read over my shoulder
as I wrote. Maybe someday I’ll write that vampire novel he’s
requested, but for now, there’s more story to tell with these
characters. He’s also convinced that I am Lauren in disguise-I’ll
allow him to think what he wants but for me there is no question:
he’s the only one that I’ll ever need.

Thanks also to Angela, Cara, Chrissy, Deb,
Henri, Jen, JoEllen and Nicole who bravely volunteered to read over
this in its rough format. Their words of encouragement and
enthusiasm for the story and characters are greatly
appreciated.

Last but not least, a huge thanks to
Parabelle. Their prolific and profound music helped to bring life
to these characters and emotions to these pages. What started out
as a random mention in my book turned into something on a slightly
bigger scale. Not only are they super talented musicians but also
really awesome people for allowing me to name drop them and being
cool about it. Thanks for the smiley face – I’ll never delete
that.

Alicia Renee Kline has been writing for as
long as she can remember. This hobby has progressed from filling
countless spiral notebooks with bubbly handwriting (and scribbling
out her errors) to the more technologically advanced route of
today. Now armed with her laptop, she can easily hit the delete key
and pretend that she gets everything right the first time.

She resides in Northeastern Indiana with her
husband, two daughters, two cats and two hamsters. When she is not
busy being an author, she works in the insurance industry.

If you enjoyed this novel, please don’t keep
it a secret! Also, please consider writing a review to help others
find their next escape from reality.

To learn more about Alicia and dig deeper
into the world of
Intoxicated
, visit her website at
aliciareneekline.com
or
follow her on Twitter at @readaliciarenee. She loves to hear from
her readers and welcomes your comments and discussions.

So where did Lauren go and what did she
decide? Read on for a preview of
Shattered
, coming
soon….

The drive to Indianapolis had never felt
longer. Of course, it didn’t help that I had been stuck in
bumper-to-bumper traffic for the last five miles. Everybody and
their brother must have had the same idea as I had, at least in
part. But I wasn’t starting the weekend early, heading down to the
state capital on Friday night to party.

I was about to start the rest of my life.

With nothing better to do while I crept
along, I turned the volume up on the radio only to immediately wish
I hadn’t. I’d forgotten that I’d had Parabelle playing on my way to
Matthew’s last night. After our fight and my hasty exit, I’d muted
the volume and it had stayed that way until just now. Sitting here
in traffic allowed me to focus on the lyrics; the feelings they
evoked weren’t pretty. Tears clouded my vision as I related my own
experiences to those in the songs. Perhaps I was reading too much
into things, but it was like they had been written about me. I
eventually conceded defeat and turned the stereo completely off.
No, music wasn’t good for me right now. Maybe never again.

It shouldn’t be like this. I shouldn’t be
relating to sorrow and heartbreak and sacrifice. Just two days
prior, my boyfriend of ten years had proposed. I should be all
rainbows and unicorns and happiness, not looking in my rearview
mirror in hopes to find a black Camry behind me.

Matthew had let me go. Part of me had wanted
to see his car in the parking lot after I came out of work. I had
wanted him to stop me; at least try to talk me out of going down to
see Eric tonight. I wanted him to apologize even though he hadn’t
really been in the wrong. He had a valid point. Kissing him,
expecting anything more from him when I was a heartbeat away from
becoming someone else’s wife was very stupid.

But he hadn’t shown up. After all those weeks
of tension between us, of second guessing every little thing he did
and reading way more meaning into it than was necessary, he had
thrown in the towel. Maybe he hadn’t even been interested in
fighting for me in the first place. Maybe I had just believed the
pictures that everyone around me had painted.

My brief conversation with Blake had told me
what I needed to know. Matthew hadn’t mentioned last night to her,
and I wasn’t about to bring it up. Her brother could remain on the
pedestal she had built for him and she would never be the wiser. I
had respected her wishes and not hurt him. I had, however, impaled
myself in the process.

Come to think of it, Blake had given up
rather easily as well. Granted I had packed up my entire room and
stolen away practically in the middle of the night, but still. I
had expected more from her. Sure she had texted, and even pretended
to be an irate customer with a subpar credit score to reach me at
work, but she had turned around and abruptly exited the arena with
her tail between her legs when I mentioned Eric’s name.

And so here I was, inching along in Indy’s
rush hour traffic, momentarily homeless. All my worldly possessions
fit in the trunk of my car, much the same as they had when I hauled
them away from my studio apartment on the wrong side of town. The
only thing that had changed was they were now stowed in a much
larger, shinier vehicle.

My adult life had always been largely
transient. Leases could be broken – I had just proven that to be
true this morning – and jobs didn’t really, truly, tie you down,
either. I could insert and remove myself from people’s lives on a
whim and they barely noticed. No matter how badly I wanted them
to.

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a black
Toyota change lanes. Instinctively, my breath caught and I turned
slightly in its direction to look at the driver without full-on
staring. My heart sunk when I realized it was a false alarm. I
cursed him for having such a ubiquitous car. I had never really
noticed how many people drove Camrys until I had a reason to look
for one in particular.

It was stupid of me to even imagine him
rushing down here after me. I had told Blake I was going to Indy
for goodness sakes. He didn’t know where Eric lived; he had never
been down here with me before to see where my comfort zone was. He
had no idea where my favorite local haunts were. It wasn’t as
though he would blindly stumble upon me through sheer force of
will. It would be like trying to find a needle in a haystack.

And in order to be found, someone had to be
looking.

I swallowed down the bile in my throat that
came with the realization that he had done just what I had asked.
He had left me alone. That’s what I had screamed at him when I’d
jerked away from his touch and stormed out his door. Except for a
final text message which I’d handily ignored, that had been our
final contact.

Sort of like Blake and Chris and their whole
“rot in hell” moment. Whatever good memories that I could take away
from our brief friendship/massive crush would be clouded forever by
the explosive ending. An ending that I had put into motion all on
my own.

As much as I wanted to blame him for the mess
I had made, I knew I alone had created it. I had practically
ambushed him last night. I’d conducted my own fishing expedition of
sorts trying to gauge his interest in me. I couldn’t be upset that
he had given me an answer I didn’t want to hear.

We couldn’t be anything. The thought of us
being together was stupid. It just wouldn’t work.

Traffic picked up slightly as the
Indianapolis skyline came into view. I sighed or breathed a sigh of
relief; I wasn’t sure which. Whatever the case, I was soon cruising
through downtown, traveling the streets I knew like the back of my
hand. There was a sense of familiarity here that I hadn’t achieved
yet in Fort Wayne. A sense of home that would be hard to recreate
in a place where you had cut yourself off from the only two people
there you really knew.

A momentary panic struck me as I swung my car
into the entrance of Eric’s parking garage. What if he wasn’t here?
He wasn’t expecting me until tomorrow; maybe he had gone out with
the guys to celebrate his last night of assumed bachelorhood. The
butterflies in my stomach subsided when I spied the BMW in its
usual spot only to return again as I parked in mine.

I exited the car, taking only my purse and
the black velvet box that had sat shotgun the entire way down. My
legs felt wobbly as I strode to the elevator. The engagement ring
weighed heavily in my hands as I ascended the nine floors to his
condo. Even though the box itself was tiny, there was no mistaking
the meaning inside it. In just the few short hours it had been in
my possession it had turned my world upside down.

The elevator came to a stop. As the doors
opened to reveal the hallway I told myself the nausea I felt had
everything to do with the enclosed space and nothing to do with my
plan.

It was time to confront the boyfriend.