Broken Angels Read Online Free PDF

“Is that why you walked out on me? Because you didn’t want to be married to a basket case?” she asked instead.
    His jaw clenched. A muscle twitched below his cheekbone. “After all these months you still don’t get it.” He shook his head as if he were the injured party instead of her. “If it makes you happy to think of me as a coward and a quitter, go right ahead. I’m too tired to argue.”
    She wanted to tell him that it didn’t make her happy. She hadn’t been happy in years. Happiness was as tangible as air, as evasive as water. Whenever she tried to close her fingers around it, it melted from her grasp. Maybe people weren’t really meant to hold on to it. Maybe it was simply a promise, hovering just beyond their reach, tempting and seducing them with the possibilities it offered. Just another way to keep them forging ahead, as tantalizing and as deceptive as hope.
    She stood and walked to the window. The sun gilded all it touched, made the water spraying from the fountain glow silver and gold. Above, white-winged clouds floated across a yawning blue sky. “There’s nothing left to argue about,” she finally said. “Sometimes things just end. There’s no going back.”
    The problem was, she still didn’t know how to move forward. For as long as she could remember, Zach had been a part of her life. She’d met Lindsay in middle school, and from that day forward Zach had been there—the embodiment of all her desires wrapped in a most seductive package.
    Over time she’d grown to love him, hate him and eventually lose him. Now he was back in her life again, and she didn’t know what to do with him, didn’t know where he fit anymore. They could never be lovers again, but with any luck maybe they could learn to be friends again. They had no choice. Three kids depended on them.
    The chair scraped the linoleum floor as he rose. “I think I’ll take you up on your offer.” He refused to meet her gaze. “I could use a shower. I still smell like puke.”
    She watched him leave, happy to have some time to herself. Zach’s presence unsettled her. Something about him slipped past her carefully erected defenses and filled her with bitterness, a weakening sense of loss and, worst of all, the one feeling she’d sworn she’d never allow into her heart again—hope.

Chapter Four
    Rebecca pulled out her laptop, tapped into the WiFi network and began searching the Web. With any luck her efforts would trigger an idea for her next story. She worked for a magazine called Women Today , and once a month she submitted an article dealing with issues the modern woman faced—career, family, health and so forth. She didn’t have much to say about family, but career and health she could usually gush about for pages upon pages.
    Writing her last article, however, had been an ordeal. As much as she’d tried, her mind had kept drifting to Lindsay, to the unspeakable circumstances of her death. She found it no less difficult to concentrate here in her home, where reminders of her best friend were everywhere. The watercolor she’d painted back in high school hung in the hallway. Wedding pictures of her and Liam, with Rebecca and Zach standing vigil on either side of them, adorned end tables and bookcases. A small pewter frame boasted the image of Lindsay holding a newborn Noah in her arms. Rebecca hadn’t been able to bring herself to look at that photograph in years.
    It sat on the kitchen counter now. Sunlight poured through the window in white sheets to kiss the brushed silver. The glare of the glass taunted her, constantly pried her gaze from her computer screen until she felt compelled to stand up and walk toward it. She reached out, closed her fingers around the cold metal.
    For the first time she forced herself to really look at the snapshot. She noted the exhaustion on her friend’s face, the limpness of her hair, her widened hips and bloated belly. In all the years Rebecca had known her, Lindsay had never