Free A Broken Us (London Lover Series Book 1) by Amy Daws Page A

anywhere on his profile.
    What I do find are multiple, very recent photos
of Brody with a girl I know extremely well.
    Olivia.
My blood begins to boil.
    Olivia is a friend from my early college days. I use the word friend loosely here because we
don’t speak anymore. She lived on the same floor as me in the dorms, but was
two years ahead of Brody and I.
    Olivia and I became fast friends because she
had this sweet, good-natured way about her that everybody seemed to love. She
was also really cool because she was older and had more connections and friends
at the university. Therefore, she knew where all the great parties were.
Everyone wanted to be friends with Olivia.
    We hung out a lot in the beginning. She got my
obnoxious sense of humor and we had some really fun times in our dorm rooms. We
even went on spring break together.
    Then there was Jake . Jake was a basketball player living in the same apartment
complex we all lived in senior year. He was tall with really dark hair and one
of those classically beautiful faces that made you look at him and want to say, seriously? I was smitten. We became
close over the summer before our final year and then had a class together first
semester. We were hanging out all the time since his apartment was straight
across the parking lot from mine. Seriously, we did everything together. We
went to parties together, ate lunch with each other everyday, watched movies,
and went to the gym to shoot hoops. Jake would call me every night to talk me
to sleep because he knew I had trouble falling asleep.  
    My roommate thought Jake and I would end up
married and have a bunch of babies together. I always laughed at her, but
secretly hoped she was right. Even Jake’s teammates made comments. All my
girlfriends knew I had it bad for
Jake—it was so obvious. But for whatever reason, we never hooked up.
    The beginning of senior year is when everything
changed. We were all out at the bar, dancing and having a great time
celebrating the start of our last year of college. Jake and I were dancing
together, as we always did. He was a great dance partner and I loved having him
with me so random guys wouldn’t try to grind on me. Olivia was there with all
of our friends, and everyone was having a blast. In the craziness of leaving to
go back to the apartment complex for the after party, I got separated from Jake
and Olivia. On a drunken high, I bounded into Jake’s apartment ready to
continue partying and found Olivia. In bed. With Jake. My friend, Olivia. It was the most embarrassing thing I have ever
experienced. I quickly dashed out of the room and sobbed into my girlfriends’
arms as they consoled my drunken, dramatic, sorry ass.
      My
friends were outraged Olivia would cross such an obvious line with a friend.
They banded together and we all completely stopped hanging out with her. Jake
acted like he had no clue what was even going on, but I knew he knew better
because we were never the same after that. We barely spoke in class and only
saw each other at parties. We never hung out privately like we used to. It was hell.
    Then I met Brody, and Jake was completely and
utterly eclipsed from then on. I couldn’t believe I ever pined for a guy like
Jake when Brody was right in front of me the whole time. Seeing me with someone
else must have bothered Jake because he repeatedly tried to get me to talk to
him. It was definitely an area of friction for Brody and me.  
    Needless to say, seeing Olivia’s arms draped
over both of Brody’s shoulders in a slew of pictures on Facebook , makes me physically pulse with anger.
    I slam my laptop shut and snatch my phone up
off the floor.
    “Hello?”
    “Are you fucking kidding me, Cadence?” I
squeal, hardly able to utter the words because I am so revved up.
    “Who is this?” she sings, cheerily in to the
phone.
    “You know exactly who this is! How the hell
could you not tell me?” I boom into the phone.
    “Tell you what, sister?” Cadence sings to