Busted Steel: An Age Gap Romance Read online

  Copyright © 2021 by MJ Fields

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author’s imaginations. Any resemblance to actual persons, things, living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Cover design by Jersey Girl Designs

  Edited by C&D Editing

  Proofread by Julie Deaton

  Photographer: JW Photography

  Artwork: Ally B

  Contents

  Busted Steel

  Prologue

  Playlist

  To the reader:

  Italy

  Sense Vs. Sensibility

  Plot Twist

  Back to Fifteen

  Not That This Time

  Hydration / Contemplation

  Above My Fucking Pay Grade

  Zinging

  Post Wedding Number Two

  T minus two days and counting…

  Northern Fights

  Norway

  Lysefjord

  Own it

  Take Me To Church

  Going To Hell

  Dinner and an O

  No Going Back Now

  Preacher’s Pulpit

  Buzz

  China

  The Great Wall

  Egypt

  Fuck Sand

  Mozambique

  Fun in the Sun

  Argentina

  Plus Two

  Peru

  Machu FU

  Mexico

  Crushed

  New Jersey

  Home

  Italy

  Post Cards From The Past

  New Jersey

  The Hell-a-daze

  Canada

  Epilogue

  Next In Steel Crew

  Books by MJ Fields

  About the Author

  Thank you

  Busted Steel

  She’s the forbidden fruit, and I’m her dirty fantasy.

  Four years ago, she kissed me. She said she was nineteen. She wasn’t even close. To make it even worse, she’s daddy’s little princess.

  Then, a year ago, I was hired to head a security team for her out-of-control younger sister while on a world tour with the band Foreplay. I vowed to stay away from her, becoming a shadow in the dark whenever she was around.

  Now she’s been hired to photograph her sister’s sixty-day honeymoon, all around the world.

  She’s not a little girl anymore. She makes damn sure I notice that, too. But I’m still the same man.

  Falling is not an option. However, each day, she’s making it harder and harder to avoid.

  I promised myself not to break her heart, yet mine lies in busted pieces all over the world.

  Prologue

  I always loved summer, until the one before my junior year of high school … the summer everything changed. The summer where my life turned upside down and inside out, and I was left feeling as if I were on the outside looking in through a window of a house, a beautiful house that had suddenly become … ugly.

  Mom cried a lot, my younger sister, Tris, yelled a lot, my brother Amias … well, he would have rather been anywhere else, and Dad, my first love, didn’t smile anymore.

  My extended family, once closer than any siblings I have met, were no longer under what was obviously a magical spell, a spell that had clearly been broken.

  I never wished a summer away … until that one.

  Over the next two years, everything changed.

  Everything.

  Playlist

  To the reader:

  This book can be as deep as you allow yourself to “feel.”

  Subjects that could be triggers are very delicately brushed over, but they are mentioned necessarily so that you, my dear readers, can understand certain characters.

  Speaking of characters, there are some you will definitely crave more from, and I promise they are coming. As a matter of fact, they’re already here.

  Can you feel them?

  XOXO

  &

  Forever Steel,

  MJ

  Italy

  Sense Vs. Sensibility

  Brisa

  Eyes closed, I breathe in, counting one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and hold. Exhaling; one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, and nine.

  Opening my eyes, I step out from under the pavilion and am temporarily blinded by the bright, setting sun. I close my eyes and blink several times as they adjust to the light, allowing me to finally take in the beauty of my surroundings. Well, things up close, anyway. I opted to give my eyes a rest today from the contacts I wore for over twenty hours while traveling. I didn’t want to wear glasses because, hello, no need for a glare in pictures. And let’s be honest, I look hotter without them. Thankfully, I’m nearsighted and get to take in the beauty that’s right before me.

  The green, leafy vines are tethered to wooden fence posts on either side of me for a good hundred yards. Slowly, I begin walking down the hard packed brown earth beneath my shoes, making sure to step on the spots that appear to be the hardest so that my heels don’t sink into the dirt and ruin the Sergio Rossi metallic sr1s that my sister, Tris, gave me as a gift.

  I inhale as the wind gently blows the scent of the salty sea air and the vine ripening grapes that mix together with the bouquet of tea roses that I carry in my hands.

  Stalling for a moment, eyes open this time, I do it again—I breathe. But this time, I do it as I walk, using all my senses. I breathe in the beauty with my eyes. I breathe in the sounds of the galls above, the pianist and cellist playing Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” in the distance, and the whispers of the crowd just beyond the vine path. I breathe in the winds gentle touch against my skin, while lifting the flowers, inhaling the scent of the roses. And then I lick the grape flavored gloss from my lips.

  Once again, I am learning to find beauty in everything around me and turning a blind eye to what it is that I can’t change.

  God, I wish I brought my camera. It’s stunning here. Then again, pictures here may not spark great memories, though I’m hopeful things turn out the way they should.

  Breathe, Brisa, just breathe, I tell myself while imagining it’s Marley’s voice I’m hearing in my head.

  Never in a million years would I have thought I would be seeing a shrink on a weekly basis. Yet, for the past two years, that’s exactly what’s been happening.

  I was thrust into therapy when Tris’s breakdown was in full swing and I lost my tits. Like, literally went from a D cup to a B.

  When I realized I dropped fifteen pounds, I hid it by wearing layers. I didn’t say anything to my parents, regardless of how worried I was. I wasn’t going to cause them any more problems than they were already dealing with. In fact, I was sure they were on the brink of a divorce. Instead, I turned to Google for answers.

  Let me tell you, no one should ever travel that path. I was convinced I either had cancer or an intestinal worm eating my body from the inside out. I looked like a twelve-year-old boy from behind and pretty much the same from the side.

  When I overheard my grandmother, aka Momma Joe, informing my father that he best pay some attention to his eldest child, he asked her what the hell was wrong with Amias, my brother.

  It hurt a bit since I was actually the oldest. It felt like they m
ay have forgotten all about me.

  Amias was born ten months to the day as I was. My Irish twin, which is why we were in the same grade all throughout school and just graduated together. Tris was born eleven months after him, so they were considered Irish twins, as well. It should be noted that not one of us were planned, but we were certainly wanted. Except, after hearing that, I was sure that was all a lie.

  I must have ran up the stairs too loudly because, within seconds and mid-scream into my trusty pillow, Dad bounded into my room and told me he was sorry. He informed me that he never had to worry about his Brisa, that I was always the one of us three that he could count on to always do what was right. Then he looked me over and asked me how long I’d had an eating disorder, basically all in one breath. I told him I didn’t. He was pissed, didn’t believe me, grounded me, and threw me into therapy.

  Diagnosis? Secondhand anxiety. I simply wasn’t hungry. So, now, even if I’m not hungry, I have to force myself to drink a damn shake that tastes like chalk. The plus side is my tits are back, which is obvious in this dress. And bonus? I’m finally getting an ass.

  Our therapist, Marley, also asked me if I knew what an empath was. As she explained it to me, I romanticized it in my head. I mean, who wouldn’t want to truly care so deeply for others that they felt what they felt? I repeat, felt what they felt.

  I now have to make a conscious effort to not be that girl, and right now, it’s really fucking difficult.

  Stepping into the clearing, I look at my family sitting on the wooden benches and facing the arbor, and I make myself smile … as genuinely as I can.

  Being a hater of fake smiles, I think about the one truly miraculous thing that’s happening, something that brings me joy … my ass.

  Grinning, I make my way toward my brother and Max, who are also standing up for Tris.

  Once next to Amias, I choose to look over everyone’s head in lieu of making eye contact, because everyone sitting before us, I love with all my heart, and I just can’t afford to absorb their energies right now. I need to focus on being happy for Tris which, in this atmosphere, I liken to swimming in shit and coming out smelling like roses.

  “This feels more like a funeral than a wedding.” Amias tugs at his tie while grumbling under his breath as the pianist begins to play “Bridal Chorus.”

  He’s not wrong, but for the first time since Tris was in fourth grade, she’s smiling genuinely again, Mom isn’t crying—well, not as much—and fingers crossed that Dad will be able to smile again for the first time in about two years. Then, when this is over and done with, we can all go back to the good stuff in life.

  Trying to find an anchor, a focal point, anything to hone into my romantic side, I glance at the sun that is setting just beyond the water fountain where two cherub statues stand facing each other. It’s stunning.

  “She looked happy before we came out. Let’s be happy for her.”

  He sighs heavily. “She’s fucking seventeen, Brisa.”

  “That’s what you’re tripping over?” our cousin, Max, whispers. “Not the fact that her soon-to-be husband is eight years older than her and doesn’t even speak fucking English?”

  “Or that Tris doesn’t speak Spanish,” Amias adds.

  I want it to be okay, but it’s not.

  My sister is seventeen years old.

  Seventeen.

  “Bridal Chorus” stops, and we collectively sigh.

  Longest rehearsal ever, I think.

  Then again, the only other two weddings I’ve been involved in were my cousins’, Bella, which was a surprise wedding that took place at the tattoo shop, and Kiki. Both were very small and intimate, family only, much like most of our parents’ weddings.

  “Love is its own language,” I whisper, trying to convince them, as well as myself, that this is going to be okay.

  She told me she’s in love with him. She told me she never felt this way. And I see it, or what I assume it is, in her eyes.

  I know she was never this at ease when she was around Marcello—her head was always down, a look of almost pain etched in her features. I thought it was just who she was until all hell broke loose the first day that the “Westside Crew,” aka the remainder of our very close circle of friends, moved from our old school to Seashore Academy in Mantoloking. Those next to two years of what I imagine to be much like hell had me drinking the shit out of shakes. But now, it is finally over. Well, for us.

  Max is going into his senior year and will have to deal with all that shit himself, because Tris, who was in the same grade, dropped out to become a pop sensation and is now about to get married.

  I’ve never been able to find that ballet of butterflies kind of connection with any male my age. I half-blame my parents, namely Dad, for having grown up believing that every man looks at his wife like he looks at Mom. Like the fountain cherubs, even though they are stone, seem to be looking at one another. The look that truly epitomizes the phrase: the sun rises and sets beneath her feet.

  Age is a nonissue with me because of the fact that the only man who has made me feel anything close to dancing butterflies in my belly is older than me.

  Wyatt Dalton, aka Ranger, was my first real kiss and also the first man to break my heart. That may seem to be a slight exaggeration, but slight or not, it’s true. Since that day, four years ago, when a man eleven years older than me kissed me and I felt “the swoon,” nothing has compared.

  Marley told me it was because, for empaths to feel their best in an intimate situation, they have to share the physical intimacy with the right person.

  “This when you know you know shit needs to stop,” Amias grumbles.

  “It’s worked out for Momma Joe, our parents, Bell, Kiki, Truth, and Justice,” I say only halfheartedly, because the rest of us … not so much.

  I look to Truth, who’s sitting snuggled up to Tobias. She crosses her eyes to make me laugh, and I cross mine back. She’s the only one I’ve told about the whole empath thing, and she’s also the one who, just last night, talked me into reevaluating going into psychology, and the reason I’m going to take a year off to “reevaluate” with a gap year, which I will be telling my parents about at the end of this two week “vacation.”

  Reality is that one of us is actually okay with this, the person who is the easiest to be around right now—Momma Joe. Mom is doing “okay,” and Dad’s just happy that Mom’s not crying all the time, yet he still hasn’t genuinely smiled in about two years.

  “Didn’t work out for Patrick,” Amias whispers, and we all shift our gazes to the back of the property where Patrick stands.

  I may not be able to see him clearly, but I know by the way he’s standing that it’s him. A man, possibly the owner of this vineyard, is walking toward him.

  None of us really knew he was in love. Suspicious, sure, but we are, or were, “Forever Steel,” and that’s supposed to mean all sorts of things. Apparently, though, it doesn’t include us sharing matters of the heart that don’t pertain to family. Like love, in the way they felt it, the way I was so trying to feel it with Miles up until he graduated.

  Miles suggested we try to have a long-distance relationship, but I talked him into breaking up with me. It’s so much easier to allow someone to think they’re breaking your heart than it is to break theirs. It wasn’t to be shared unless it was shouted to the rooftop, or left your heart battered and bleeding, giving you the inability to keep it all inside. That was the case with Patrick, who still won’t talk about it, and Tris, who apparently had lost her V-card to Marcello Efisto way before Kiki, who is a year older than me, did, or Truth and me.

  What hurts my heart isn’t this marriage; it’s the fact that I’m not sure I ever really knew my own sister. It’s not just that she hid losing her virginity. I didn’t even know Tris loves to sing, let alone the fact that she’s amazing at it, and on stage, until a talent show fundraiser. Amazing as in she put all her anger and heartbreak on full display for the world, but she certainly didn’t talk to
me about it.

  Hurt? Absolutely.

  Bitter? A little bit.

  But more than anything, I’m upset that I didn’t realize how badly he broke her until it was almost too late.

  I suppose it’s why it took so long for me to truly feel what she felt, because I’m pretty sure, at that age, she didn’t even understand her feelings, so I couldn’t feel it. Right now, I truly feel she’s happier than she ever has been.

  Patrick, though, looks like shit. Well, as shitty as a twenty-year-old who should be on fashion ads, millionaire manager of the platinum selling band, Foreplay, can look shitty. He’s refused to stand up because he’s been the one dealing with the unruly lead singer of above-mentioned band—Tris—for the past year, and after this wedding fiasco, he has officially decided to step back and return to college.

  God, she really messed him up. Well, they—both Savvy/Sutton and Tris. Anyone who wants to go back to college instead of adulting is surely a masochist.

  “Well, I’m still gonna rip Efisto’s fucking head off.” Amias’s voice is loud enough that Momma Joe gives him an arched brow, warning him to tone it down, and I elbow him. “He did this shit to her.”