Falling for Fate Read Online Free PDF Page A

watching the sun sink in the sky.
    An understanding of the emptiness, the vast bleakness, and hopelessness her mother must’ve have felt the times her relationships had crumbled to dust settled onto her shoulders. She’d never understood her mother, how she could let the same thing happen over and over. How she could be stupid enough to trust again after someone had made her feel this way.
    But in a way, she got it. Because anything would feel better than this.
    Fate wished she’d worked out more. She’d only made it a little over a mile down the beach when she had to slow down or risk passing out.
    Melissa and Trevor. Trevor and Melissa. Fucking.
    And it hadn’t looked like an awkward first time to her. It had looked like they were well versed in pleasuring each other.
    “That was the last time,” Trevor had said.
    A pained cry escaped her. The last time—as in the alleged end of an ongoing affair.
    A cool ocean breeze washed over her, and as much as Fate hated to admit it—even silently—the thought was there.
    She could walk out into the black water and disappear. Leave behind the nightmare she’d just lived through, the questions, and the aftermath. God, the looks on all of their faces was enough to make her seriously contemplate it.
    It would be so easy to just give up. Fate wondered what she’d done to deserve this. Without Trevor, she had next to nothing. Her car was gone. The apartment she was going to live in was his. The family that made dinner and celebrated together on the holidays, all of it—that was all gone.
    But Fate still had her mom, and imagining the look on her mom’s face when and if Fate’s lifeless body washed up was enough to make her take a step back.
    But if you don’t forgive him, he won’t pay for her medical care, and next time, she might actually be dead on that couch.
    She didn’t know whose voice it was announcing the painful reminder in her head, but it was right.
    Trevor had taken everything away. He’d stripped her bare of the person she’d once been and recreated her as a young woman who followed the rules of high-class society. Once upon a time, she’d been a girl who followed her heart.
    Acrimonious indignation replaced her grief, and Fate threw the black Manolos she held straight into the ocean. A scream carried away by the wind escaped her, and she dropped onto the sand and pulled her knees to her chest. A sob threatened, but she held it back. If she started crying now, there would be no stopping.
    During her escape, Fate had passed several luxury beach houses. Lights were on, music spilling out of them. People going on with their lives. People whose lives continued on down the tracks they were meant to. Fate felt as if her train had seriously derailed.
    What am I going to do?
    As she tried to take stock of her life, another cry of despair broke across her shoulders when she came up with nothing substantial. The ocean called to her once more.
    She threw up a desperate, silent prayer to whoever was listening.
    Please, please send me a sign. Just something so I know that I am still alive and my life is not over.

“C ome out to get some fresh air, handsome?” the redhead drawled as she stepped through the open patio doorway.
    Shannon? Sherry? Shelly? He couldn’t remember.
    “Something like that.” Dean took a swig of his Michelob. Whatever her name was, she’d do. For tonight anyway.
    He let his eyes skim over her body. The snug, green dress she was wearing was tight in all the right places. He suspected that parts of her had been manufactured overseas, but he didn’t really care either way.
    “It’s crazy in there. Keaton said a ‘few friends’ were stopping by.” She laughed loudly. “So whose friend are you?”
    Oh, how to answer. He was no one’s “friend.” This was his beach house—well, his and his dad’s. Keaton was his college roommate and the soon-to-be assistant financial advisor at his father’s company. The one Dean was about to be