Ripping Pages
Authors: Rachel Rae
**Kindle Edition**
Copyright © 2013 Rachel Rae
All Rights Reserved
Cover Design by Robin Harper with
Wicked by Design
Editing by
Rogena Mitchell-Jones
Formatting by
Self Publishing Editing Service
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Corey,
I could have never written about love if I hadn’t
experienced the most wonderful, magical kind with you.
I love you with everything I am.
I thank God every day for giving me you all those years ago.
We’ve been through so much and we’ve grown up together and
I wouldn’t trade a second of the beautiful crazy perfect
chaos of my life with you for the world.
You are truly my happy ever after.
Thank you for loving me, flaws and all.
I love you.
“Every love story is beautiful, but ours is my favorite.”
The magic of first love is our ignorance that it can ever end. ~ Benjamin Disraeli
Sometimes things don’t work out the way you planned or hoped for them to. Sometimes you have to reroute your journey and follow a new path. Sometimes, just sometimes that path can lead you where you were always meant to be. But more often than not, it can lead you to a fork in the road that forces you to make a decision as to which road you want to take.
I put the key into the lock and opened the door.
I just stood there.
My jaw might as well have been on the ground.
His apartment was completely empty. He was gone. I couldn’t move.
I fell to my knees and sobbed uncontrollably.
When I could control myself, I got up, kicked the door closed behind me, and on wobbly knees walked around the vacant area. I just couldn’t believe it. He left me. He actually left without telling me.
What a fucking coward.
I walked down the hall and into the bedroom. The bedroom that held so many memories of James and me. His bedroom. I had given him something I had never given anyone else. I had given him everything, all of me in this space.
I sat down on the worn beige carpet and cried, again. I couldn’t believe he would do this to me. After several minutes of trying to get my bearings, I walked back through and down the hall toward the front door.
When I reached the door, I saw it. It was small, and no one but me would have noticed it unless someone had been looking for it, but I saw it. It was in the small niche next to the door. A small envelope with
Tin
written in James' handwriting. As I took a few short breaths, trying to calm my anxiousness, I grabbed it. Ripping it open, something fell to the floor at my feet. I bent down to pick it up, and tears started pouring as I realized what it was.
A ring.
A gorgeous princess cut diamond ring in a platinum setting.
The ring I jokingly kept showing him online and in the Tiffany's catalog just hinting around.
He bought it.
That mother fucker.
I clasped it in my fist, and opened the small letter I still held in my other hand. There were only four lines. He destroyed everything we had together. All our plans and dreams of forever—gone in just four lines on a small piece of paper.
No reason.
No excuses.
He simply bailed on me.
What the hell.
My knees gave way, and I collapsed to the floor unable to see through the tears pouring from my eyes and onto the floor beneath me.
Tinley,
I'm so sorry, Baby.
Please know that I am not trying to hurt you.
I will love you forever.
I woke up in my very tiny bedroom, in the apartment I shared with my roommate and cousin, Tatum, on Charles Street in Greenwich Village, in the amazing city of New York. I had been there about 3 months, and I was loving it.
I had always dreamed of going to New York. Being an avid movie fanatic, I watched in wonder as film after film romanticized the huge metropolis. I had watched Sex and the City religiously in high school wondering what it would be like to live and breathe the New York air. Now I was finding out. Although I didn’t have a badass job, and I wasn’t sipping cosmos at some swanky new hot spot every night with my equally successful girlfriends. But, I was here, and who knew what the future would hold. I sure didn’t. I thought my future lay in Houston along with my boyfriend of a year and a half. I thought we would finish college together and then buy a house in the suburbs, live happily ever after with our gorgeous 2.5 children and a golden retriever named Lucky. I thought wrong.
I met James in my sophomore year of college at the University of Houston. He was a junior and a mutual friend of my roommate. We met at a party when I accidentally tripped over a trashcan, spilling my wine all over him and myself. He caught me and helped me up laughing with me and at me the entire time. His laugh was contagious. We just hit it off and were inseparable since pretty much the first day we met. He was, and it’s somewhat embarrassing admitting this, but he was my first boyfriend. I didn’t date in high school. I was pretty much awkward and nerdy.
Ok, I’m still awkward and nerdy, but I no longer have braces, and I had finally filled out my curves.
So, back then, I just focused on my studies and threw myself into choir and theater, which I loved and was really good at, thus cementing my dream of Broadway.
