The Final Goodbye Read online

  The Final Goodbye

  Brittney Sahin

  EmKo Media

  The Final Goodbye

  By: Brittney Sahin

  Published by: EmKo Media, LLC

  Copyright © 2018 EmKo Media, LLC

  Extract, My Every Breath Copyright © 2018 EmKo Media, LLC

  This book is an original publication of Brittney Sahin.

  In accordance with the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976, the scanning, uploading, and electronic sharing of any part of this book without permission of the publisher constitute unlawful piracy and theft of the author’s intellectual property. If you would like to use material from the book (other than for review purposes), prior written permission must be obtained by contacting [email protected]. Thank you for your support of the author’s rights.

  * * *

  Editor: Carole, WordsRU

  Proofreader: Anja, HourGlass Editing

  Proofreader: Judy, Judy’s Proofreading

  Cover Design by: Romantic Book Affairs / Images licensed through Shutterstock & Deposit

  * * *

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Ebook ISBN: 9781947717022

  Print ISBN: 9781947717053

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  Created with Vellum

  For our men and women in uniform.

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Epilogue

  After the Epilogue—Bonus Scene

  Bonus Scenes, Continued- Emails

  Connect

  Prologue

  Orange rocks jutted into the sky, some jagged, others smooth. They rose from the ground as if the earth had split open and given birth to the magnificent beasts. You’d almost think you were on Mars if it weren’t for the greenery that dotted the landscape.

  The Garden of the Gods: what an appropriate name for the towering rock formations in Colorado Springs.

  But all Ben could think about was the way the porous, fragile sandstone felt beneath his palms.

  He added more powder to his hands, shifted to the right, and reached for the next ledge.

  “You good, buddy?” his best friend, Nate, asked from above.

  “You’re the idiot without a rope. Are you good?” Of course, Ben free climbed all the time but never at the Garden of the Gods—he was superstitious. Something about climbing there made him think the heavens might open and suck his soul straight up.

  His mom despised when he climbed here. Hell, she hated when he climbed, period. But every year she gave in and bought him new carabiners, ropes, and everything else he needed.

  They lived in Alabama, but ever since his fifteenth birthday he spent a few weeks each summer out west. And this year was no different.

  In the fall, he’d be attending college on a baseball scholarship, and he wasn’t sure if this would be his last summer climbing, for a while at least.

  “Shit! There’s a raptor nest up here. We need to reroute,” Nate shouted.

  “Everything okay?” Riley hollered from below.

  Ben glanced down to look at his other best friend—the beautiful one.

  She held her hand like a visor over her eyes as she peered up at them.

  Nate, Ben, and Riley had been the three amigos since they were in diapers. When Nate and Riley started dating earlier that year, it had been a little rough. But Riley—or Ri, as Ben liked to call her, had refused to let her relationship with Nate sour her friendship with Ben.

  “Did you hear that?” Ben called out to Riley, who was belaying him. Too afraid of heights, she rarely went up on the cliffs, but she’d learned enough to keep her guys safe.

  “Yeah,” she answered.

  Ben’s calves started to burn, and he craned his neck up to check Nate’s position. It was prohibited to climb near raptor nesting sites, and if they were spotted they’d get booted or fined.

  Ben asked Nate, “You ready to get your ass on a rope—”

  The words died on his lips as his heart stopped.

  Everything stopped at that moment. The moment Nate fell.

  Time.

  Stood.

  Still.

  Silence wrapped Ben up in a tight cocoon where nothing was real.

  The years he and Nate had spent together chasing girls, rock climbing in the summers, ice climbing in the winters . . .

  Kodak moments of the past shot through his mind, and he was stuck in a cyclone of memories.

  His friend couldn’t have fallen.

  No damn way.

  Nate’s eyes had been closed, and he hadn’t said anything when he’d dropped past Ben as if in slow motion like in the movies.

  But this was real life, and there was no pause. No rewind.

  Riley’s scream shattered the sudden silence of Ben’s mind. He scrambled to make sense of what had happened.

  “No!” Ben’s voice was raw, his eyes blurry.

  It was too late.

  Too damn late.

  He couldn’t save him.

  His best friend was dead.

  Chapter One

  Fourteen years later

  * * *

  “I had one rule.” Ben held up his finger and made a tsk noise. “One damn rule. Don’t screw the client.”

  “Shit, she threw herself at me. What was I supposed to do?” Peter shrugged his massive shoulders. Too much bodybuilding was screwing with his head.

  “You were supposed to keep your dick in your pants! You were paid to protect her, not to have sex with her.” Ben tossed a file on the desk and straightened in the chair, irritation crawling through his body as he glared at his soon-to-be ex-employee.

  “Come on, bro. I need this job.” He folded his arms across his chest and stood in front of the desk. His green eyes narrowed as he waited for Ben to respond, and when he didn’t Peter asked, “You’re telling me you’ve never hooked up with a client?”

  Ben scratched at his full beard. “First of all, my name is on the building. So, what I do is my own business. And second of all, you didn’t just sleep with a client—your picture is all over the internet.” He snatched his phone from his pocket and opened the Instagram app. “You’re trending. There’s a hashtag that says #PeterhasabigPeter. If you’re going to screw a famous pop singer at least do it behind closed doors so every teenager with a phone doesn’t catch you in the act!”

  Peter grinned as if impressed by himself and rubbed the dark stubble on his jaw. “Could be worse.”

  And this was why Ben should never have hired him last year. Too damn arrogant, and not in the ways that mattered.

  Ben grunted in disgust. “How could it possibly
be worse? You guys work undercover for me half the time. How the hell do you expect me to keep you on the payroll when your face—among other things”—he rolled his eyes—“is all over the place?”

  “Well, at least they got a good shot of me. I mean, what if they had edited the pics and said I had a small one? Now that’d be some shit.”

  “Get out of my office.” Ben shoved away from his desk, the chair wheels grinding down the already frayed carpet worn from years of stress.

  “Man, you’re supposed to be chill. What is wrong with you?”

  “I am chill,” he bit out, annoyed. “But when it comes to work, I don’t screw around. Pick up your last check from Lindsay, and good luck. I hope the sex was worth it.”

  His firm, Logan Securities, wouldn’t get paid by the pop star because of this incident, so Peter really didn’t deserve that money. Hell, the singer wanted to sue the company because of the scandal.

  Peter opened his mouth, but Ben held a palm in the air, demanding his silence.

  “Go.” He couldn’t deal with talking to him anymore. “I need time to cool off.”

  Peter grumbled, turned on his heels, and strode across the room, slamming the door behind him so hard it rattled the framed pictures on the nearby walls.

  Ben’s head dropped back, and he closed his eyes.

  Nothing had been the same lately.

  The PI jobs, the bodyguard assignments—his adrenaline had remained tightly bottled up inside of him and hadn’t been unleashed in months.

  Protecting a bunch of bigwigs with money was . . . boring.

  He missed the man he used to be. The Marine.

  After eight years in the military, he never should’ve abandoned his career to pursue a childhood dream of playing pro ball. A dream that was short-lived after blowing out his shoulder.

  Maybe he needed to shut down the company and go back into the service. Was that possible?

  Probably not, but he still thought about it all the time.

  A knock on the door had him opening his eyes. “Come in.” He hoped to hell it wasn’t Peter returning with his tail between his legs, begging for another chance.

  It was his admin, thank God.

  She shielded her eyes by staring down at her short black pumps as she walked his way.

  He expected to see an I-told-you-so look on her face since she’d been against giving Peter a third chance last month, but he straightened in his seat when her hazel irises found his face.

  A dark look overshadowed Lindsay’s normally bright gaze, and her hand fanned against her collarbone.

  Silence filled the room like a bubble that was growing too large and was about to pop. He knew in his gut there was only one reason why his chatty admin looked like she’d just read a Stephen King novel.

  His abdominal muscles tightened, and he rose to his feet. Knuckled fists pressed to the desk as his head bowed. “Who died?”

  It wasn’t the first time he’d asked that question.

  And each time, the same familiar sharp throb pulsed inside of him like he’d been punched too many times in the ribs.

  “Your mom called.”

  It was enough to make his head fly up.

  Dad?

  Please, God, no.

  “She, um, said Ralph Chandler died.”

  Ralph Chandler. Shit.

  Lindsay was one of the few people who knew of Ralph, but it had taken a bottle of tequila on his birthday last year for him to spill the ugly truth about what had happened fourteen years ago.

  Ralph had been like a second father to him. A man he hadn’t seen since his son, Nate, died.

  Ben’s eyes flashed shut as memories hurtled to the forefront of his mind.

  He’d send a card and flowers. That’s what he’d do. And Ralph would understand.

  It was a shit move, but he still didn’t trust himself to go anywhere near Riley, even after all these years.

  “He, um, he didn’t just die.”

  “How does someone not ‘just die’?” What the hell was she talking about?

  “He was murdered.”

  Chapter Two

  “It’s only been three weeks, and I told you on day one that I wouldn’t prescribe medicine for you if I didn’t feel it would be beneficial. Nothing has changed.” Riley shifted back in her worn black chair and set her ballpoint pen on her closed notebook, maintaining eye contact with Jeremy Stanton with each movement.

  Every Tuesday and Friday morning, the man made her skin crawl and her body a little shaky.

  She’d worked with some tough people, and she’d always done her best to help rehabilitate them—no judgment. A fresh start. But lately, some of her patients had been rubbing her the wrong way, this one included.

  “All I’m asking for is a little Valium.” A bead of sweat started to appear at his hairline, where his thin brown hair was slicked back with gel. His fingers tapped his knee like a child counting, one-two-three-four, forcefully repeating the numbers over and over again, never making it to five.

  Riley preferred to sit directly in front of her patients, but when it came to Jeremy, she needed space. An entire room of space.

  Her gaze darted to the polished wood of the desk, and her nerves tickled her throat as she thought about the panic button she’d installed.

  When one of her patients had wrapped his hands around her neck and tried to strangle her three months ago, she opted for extra security.

  She wondered if she’d need to file a restraining order against Jeremy. It’d be her third in the last twelve months.

  Was something in the Alabama water lately? The town had gone mad.

  He stopped drumming his long, skinny fingers, leaving the index one pointed her way. He angled his head and chewed on his bottom lip. His eyes narrowed, the pupils so dilated you could barely see the dark green. “Tell me, Riley, do you take pleasure in seeing your patients suffer?”

  “It’s Dr. Carpenter, please.” Her hand slipped under the desk, resting on the small button as Jeremy stood and approached. “I think we’re done for the day.” The words edged from her lips as if snapped by a mousetrap, and it was painful to say them.

  She never did this. She never ended a session early because things got too intense for her. Well, except that one throat-throttling time.

  She was a fighter.

  She hated giving up unless absolutely necessary, and if she hit the button, it would signify a failure in her ability to treat Jeremy. So, she raised her hand back up onto the desk and maintained her confidence.

  “If you don’t get me that Valium when I see you next, I’ll have Grandad pull that big fat check he sends you. I’ll find someone else who cares about helping me.” His nicotine-stained teeth flashed her way, and his yellowish-tinged skin tightened on his forehead as he, honest to God, snarled at her.

  “There is no one else. Remember?” She crossed her arms. “If you don’t see me, you violate the conditions of your parole.”

  Jeremy’s rich grandfather had already sent him to every psychiatrist within a thirty-mile radius before sending him to her.

  She’d been his last choice because she’d made it clear eight weeks prior she wasn’t a pill-pushing psychiatrist. She mostly used talk therapy for her patients, and only when the situation was absolutely necessary did she prescribe pills.

  She believed a healthy diet and the elimination of chemically processed food could do wonders for mental health. Of course, she was nicknamed the “Hippy Doc” and ridiculed by most of her peers, but hey—her methods were proven to work. People from the nearby cities had even trekked out to her small practice to get results.

  “Do you want this to be our last visit?” She rose to her feet, refusing to remain sitting with Jeremy looking down at her with those glaring and sinister eyes. “No other doctor will see you, which is why you’re here. So”—she shrugged—“you make the call.”

  He turned his back and started for the door. “Be back Friday.”

  Once he was gone, she released
the breath she’d been holding and fell back into her chair.

  Some days were definitely harder than others.

  There was a quick tap on the frame of her already open door.

  “You okay?” her friend Mandy asked, remaining standing in the doorframe.

  “I don’t know if I can keep doing this.”

  “I, uh, don’t blame you. That’s why I became a surgeon.”

  Riley glanced at her watch. “Shouldn’t you be saving a life right now?” A smile found her lips but quickly disintegrated when she noticed a slight puffiness beneath Mandy’s eyes.

  She’d been crying.

  Riley stood and rushed to her friend as fast as her black heels would carry her.

  Mandy’s hand went to her mouth as tears started trickling down her face. Her green eyes disappeared beneath her lids, and her long lashes splayed against her Alabama sun-kissed skin.

  “Did you lose someone?” Riley placed a hand on her back.

  Leading her by the elbow, she walked Mandy over to the couch near the window, where sunlight filtered through the partially open blinds.

  “Daniel and I did.”

  “My Daniel?” She cursed under her breath. “I mean, my ex?” She sat next to her and reached for her arm.

  “He was our patient. We were in the middle of performing an appendectomy, and things went sideways. He was my age. Only thirty-seven. Just had two babies.”

  Oh, shit. “Not Phillip Sanderson?” This was one reason why Riley had never gone into surgery. She couldn’t handle a loss like that.