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Authors: Addison Moore

Beautiful Oblivion

BOOK: Beautiful Oblivion
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Beautiful Oblivion

 

 

 

ADDISON MOORE

 

 

Edited by: Sarah Freese

Cover Design and Photograph by: Regina Wamba of
www.MaeIDesign.com

Interior design and formatting by: Amy Eye of
www.theeyesforediting.com

 

Copyright © 2013 by Addison Moore

http://addisonmoorewrites.blogspot.com/

 

 

This novel is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to peoples either living or deceased is purely coincidental. Names, places, and characters are figments of the author’s imagination. The author holds all rights to this work. It is illegal to reproduce this novel without written expressed consent from the author herself.

All Rights Reserved.

 

Books by Addison Moore

 

New Adult Romance:

 

Someone to Love (Someone to Love 1)

Someone Like You (January 2014)

3:AM Kisses (3:AM Kisses 1)

Winter Kisses (3:AM Kisses 2)

The Solitude of Passion

Beautiful Oblivion

 

Young Adult Romance:

 

Ethereal (Celestra Series Book 1)

Tremble (Celestra Series Book 2)

Burn (Celestra Series Book 3)

Wicked (Celestra Series Book 4)

Vex (Celestra Series Book 5)

Expel (Celestra Series Book 6)

Toxic Part One (Celestra Series Book 7)

Toxic Part Two (Celestra Series Book 7.5)

Elysian (Celestra Series Book 8)

Ephemeral (The Countenance Trilogy 1)

Evanescent (The Countenance Trilogy 2)

Ethereal Knights (Celestra Knights)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

ADDISON MOORE

 

 

Prologue

 

 

 

 

 

My mother once wrote me a poem. It spanned many letters, some of which I’ve yet to receive. She wrote them on her deathbed, and I get one delivered each year on my birthday.

Sometimes, in the early morning hours, I think the world is still the same, and I’ll find her in the room down the hall, cuddled in my father’s arms. Then the callous sun magnifies the day, it startles my senses enough to let me know it was just a waking dream—that my mother is dead, and the cruel day has dawned without her.

When I was younger, hardly thirteen, I fell in love with an older boy with the biggest blue eyes—the exact shade of the night sky. Ace Waterman was a god that I venerated for as long as I can remember. His sister, Neva, and I would sneak into his bedroom, she out of spite and me out of sheer idol worship. An inexplicable joy speared through me as I bumped my fingers over his things, his books, his trophies, his glassy marbles stored neat in a jar.

“Hey, kid, whatcha doing?” His dimples invert, and my stomach sinks clear to my knees as if the rollercoaster of life just took a dip. Neva is in the bathroom, so here I am, caught red-handed, alone.

“They’re so pretty.” I run my fingers over the jar of marbles.

“So are you.” He rumples my hair before dropping his book bag. A pinch of grief crosses his face as he reverts his attention back to me. “I’m really sorry about your mom, Reese.” A moment thumps by with our eyes locked, immovable as stone as if they were having their own private conversation. Then he does the unthinkable. Ace pulls me in and wraps his arms around me tight, holding me like that a little longer than I could have hoped for.

It was in that moment I knew I would always want Ace Waterman to hold me—to never let me go.

People—relationships—scatter like birds, leaving you with dusty memories, empty beds, bones in a casket. We don’t get to choose who stays and goes on the planet. We can’t control who stays in our life and under what conditions. Seasons come and go—time presses on. It was this way the summer I was twenty, when I put my heart on a platter to see if the only boy I’ve ever loved would take it—but, first, it seemed logical, and perhaps a bit more safe, to offer up my body.

“What’s the blanket for?” I step into Ace, my eyes never wavering from his immaculate features, his strong arms that might as well be hewn from granite.

“I thought you might get cold.” He shrugs off his efforts like they were no big deal when we both know they were—candles, flowers, and bedding aren’t things typical guys would remember to bring along on a date. Not that what we’re doing is officially dating. Hell, I wish I knew exactly what we were doing.

I run my fingers through his hair in one clean sweep and take in how stunningly gorgeous he is. His chiseled face, those high cut cheeks, the dimples that don’t know when to quit, and his demanding eyes that lay over me like hungry blue flames.

“Why would I get cold, Ace?” I bat my lashes into him, hoping he comes up with the right answer.

“Because tonight you’re going to take off all your clothes.”

Right answer indeed.

 

 

 

1

 

Leafless in Loveless

Reese

 

“Heads, we play Monopoly. Tails, we skinny dip.” Ace gives a dirty grin that I wish I could bury the most intimate part of me in. He’s been grazing over my body all night with those navy eyes, the exact shade of the deepest end of the ocean, and my insides have long since melted to cinder.

Skinny dip? I try to hide the smile threatening to bloom on my face.

I’m addicted to Ace. No really, I am. In fact I think they should have rehab and group therapy for girls like me who’ve spent far too long worshiping from afar. Of course, then I’d be forced to confess the constant pornographic reel I have streaming 24-7 about his rock hard body and that dimpled grin that steals a piece of my soul each time it ignites.

“I’m in,” I say in spite of the fact I shouldn’t be anywhere near Ace Waterman, let alone perched on a boulder overlooking the lake. His brand of handsome is dangerous for a girl like me who’s just aching to be devoured.

The lights across the way at my father’s house catch my attention. Kennedy, my stepsister, is hosting a let’s-get-the-hell-wasted ‘welcome to summer party,’ and it seems like all of Yeats University showed up to get boozed and used. Warren is there—and he’s the exact reason I’m not. It’s actually an eighties theme party which would explain the gallon of Aqua Net holding my hair in a skyscraper position and my day-glow blue eye shadow. But I’m not too concerned about embarrassing myself in front of Ace. We’ve known each other forever, growing up on the lake you know just about everybody through all of their ages and stages no matter how embarrassing they might be.

Ace flips the quarter in the air. We watch as it rises to the sky and flirts with the stars pressed against the velvet expanse. It slams back to the boulder we’re sitting on and rolls off unceremoniously, falling into a crevice. In the distance, the water glistens, black as an oil slick, while whispering its secrets into the night. I can feel my own secrets bubbling to my lips like a brook ready and willing to over flow. A part of me wants to blurt out my feelings for him, drop them at his feet like a shattered vase, and watch as he tries to pick up the pieces.

“Tails.” Ace pushes out a killer grin before returning to his serious demeanor. He’s got that come-hither look, those I’m-going-to-teach-you-a-lesson dark, thick brows that drive me insane, and his eyes are a shade that can only be described as an orgasm in blue. Ace has been extra playful all night. The banter between us is a little more sexual than I ever remember—sizzling and electric. Ace has my juices flowing in all the right places.

“Tails never fails.” I can hardly believe the words as they come from my mouth, they float like a dream into the sky, all the way up to heaven, to my mother. I wonder how she would feel if she knew I was contemplating taking off all my clothes and jumping in the lake with a boy she dubbed the Lord of the Ladies.

I always think of my mother in the summer for two reasons: One, she died under a Cheshire cat moon much like this, and two, my father gifts me a letter from her each July on my birthday. She penned those notes during her final days on this spinning blue rock, and I treasure each one, even though I’ve just received five so far.

Ace cuts a glance across the lake at the flickering lights of the party.

“Reese.” His lids hood over, and if I didn’t know better, I’d think he were bedroom eyeing me. “You really want to do this?” He runs his tongue over his full lips, and I let out a breath at the masterpiece that Ace Waterman has become—the one he’s always been. “You think Warren will mind?” He pulls his cheek back as if he were teasing, and I’m more than surprised he went there.

I give a little laugh. “Get real, you couldn’t care less if Warren McCarthy told you to stay the hell away from me or he’d rip your balls off. I’m pretty sure you’re not too worried what he might think of our midnight endeavors.”

A smile cinches up his cheek, and his dimple digs in deep. “You would be wrong.” He breaks out into a full-blown grin, and my stomach bottoms out. “I do care what he thinks because pissing him off is my new favorite hobby. He cut me off on the lake this morning. Only assholes do that.”

Ace and Warren have rowed competitively ever since we were kids running rampant along the powder-white shores of Loveless. I miss those days when Ace was just like everybody else because we didn’t hold everything to the light of the almighty dollar, especially not people.

“Well then”—I lean into him, inching my lips toward his—“Warren definitely fits the description.”

“So, you dating him?” he asks, lower than a whisper. His shoulder bumps into mine, playfully, as if this were all a game. But, deep down, I wish he cared.

BOOK: Beautiful Oblivion
10.52Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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