Page 1 of Carter's #Undoing

One

SERENITY

CarterfuckingMadden.

He’s the truest heartbreak I’ve ever known. The cause of the rawest pain I’ve ever felt. A reminder that some may look like they have the perfect life, but beneath the surface lie a series of messed up layers too thick for anyone to take a chance to unpeel.

To still have a hold on my heart while also introducing me to a hate unlike any I’ve experienced before was something even I didn’t understand. He was my kryptonite. My drug of choice. An incurable disease that I caught the minute I first laid eyes on him when we were kids. And for even more torture, for the better part of my life I’d surrounded myself with his closest family. Brothers that looked just like the man who ripped out my heart and stomped all over that shit. A man who proved that my love meant nothing more to him than dog crap stuck at the bottom of a ten-thousand-dollar pair of Louis Vuitton dress shoes.

First love could be a beautiful thing, andalthough I liked to think I always kept a more optimistic mindset, I felt like I was damaged goods. He made me feel that way. He was the reason I knew I would never let another man love me so completely ever again.

I had my life together for the most part, but it wasn’t healthy to have my world revolve around a man I didn’t even know anymore. A man who promised me the world, just to turn around and walk out of my life without a backwards glance.

“Serenity, are you okay?” Avery asked. I wanted to respond to her, but I couldn’t. I was a proud woman and had spent over a decade focused on becoming a better version of myself. Yet, staring across the room into the unaffected eyes of a man I thought I would never see again was almost enough to break me.

But I wouldn’t break. Not in front of him. Not in front of my friends. We’d been enjoying Crayson and Jordyn’s wedding reception when Avery told me that Caden had planned to propose to Cordelia tonight. When we made our way back to our table at the reception, Tyler distracted Cordelia so that Avery and I could meet Caden at his house to see if he needed any assistance to make sure our girl had the best proposal.

The last person I expected to see washim. He didn’t move from the corner where he stood in Caden’s bedroom, and if Caden and Avery weren’t watching me to see my reaction, I’d be questioning why a ghost would haunt my sanity and play such cruel and twisted joke.

He hadn’t said a word, and I could barely make out any physical features in the dim lighting, but I knew it was him. I felt it in every bone in my body and muscle in my clenched jaw. I could also see part of his face. Part of those eyes that might as well belong to a stranger because I didn’t know who he was anymore. The Carter I’d known wouldn’t have done what he did to me. He would have been a man about it when he broke up with me and done it face-to-face. Hell, my Carter wouldn’t have broken up with me at all because we’d been with each other for what felt like every second of every day since we met.

“Want to head downstairs?” Avery suggested.

“Hell no.” My words were chipped. Quick. Took little thought because I wasn’t going anywhere until I knew why he was here. So I asked him.

“Why now?” My voice was firm, yet kind of low. Like I didn’t really want to know the answer. That was so unlike the new me. Young Serenity had been kind of shy and closed off. But grown woman Serenity didn’t let shit shake her.

Take a deep breath,I reminded myself when I felt my hands shaking. And then it hit me. Today marked the exact day when I’d met the Madden triplets. Coincidently, six years to the day after that, had been the last time I laid eyes on Carter Madden. Until now …

“Why now?” I asked again, louder this time. “Why the fuck have you returned home after abandoning everyone and everything you love?” I was yelling, but I didn’t care, and Caden nor Avery made any move to quiet me.

He clenched his jaw and slightly adjusted his stance, the only movement I’d seen him make since Avery and I had happily entered the room. But of course, he’d sucked that joy right out and slapped me across the cheek with it.

Fuck him.

Fuck him for staying gone for more than fifteen years, and fuck me for still loving him with every part of my soul.The bridesmaid dress that I wore was suddenly itchy as hell, and the garment on my shoulders felt like a heavy, weighted robe of anger disguised as a beautiful chiffon shawl of perfection.

But I was far from perfect right now. Losing what little patience I had left, I walked farther into the room and kept going until I was a couple inches from his face, my steps faltering when he moved a little more into the light.

I don’t know why I expected him to back away from me, but he hadn’t. And what I saw before me made my breath catch. He looked so … different. I couldn’t even formulate the words to describe the feeling I had laying my eyes on him after all this time. It only took seconds to conclude that I had no idea how hard life had been for him. There was a point in time when I would have known everything.

I thought it would have been liberating to finally lay eyes on a man who had haunted every dream I’d ever had for over a decade, but it wasn’t. Instead, I felt confused, torn by my unwanted desire to hug him and never let go or curse him out for ever throwing our love away as if it meant nothing.

Just as quickly as he’d stepped into the light, he moved back into the shadows and something about him backing away now, even though I’d prepared myself for it moments before, really pissed me off.

“I came for you, Serenity,” he finally said. “I came foryou.”

He’d told me those exact words before. Voiced them in the same order and evoked similar emotions in me that I was currently feeling. Unlike the first time I heard them, I shot back a firm, “I don’t need you.” And I meant every word of it.

“You will always need me.” His words were cocky and too bold for someone who exited my life without giving me so much as a proper good-bye.

I felt my feet move quickly and my hand travel to smack his face, the next few seconds a blur of years’ worth of agony. I slapped him and I slapped him hard, his rough skin unmoving beneath my palm. I didn’t make it a habit of smacking people, and call me crazy, but I thought he would at least move his head when he saw my hand rise. Instead, I felt like my palm had encountered a wall of steel, causing me to hit him again out of pure frustration.

This time, he grabbed my wrist before a third slap incurred and stepped back into the dim light, his stance even more powerful than before. He let my wrist go immediately, but I felt Caden by my side anyway, the energy in the room even more tense.No wonder he’d stayed in the corner of the room.He was intimidating.

Looking at him now more closely, I had so many questions that I knew he’d never answer. Carter’s height had always been impressive, but now he sported thick muscles and a solid build visible beneath his shirt. His brothers, Crayson and Micah, were the ones who were often mistaken for being NFL players. But Carter? He’d always had more of an NBA player type build like his brothers, Malik, Malakai, and Caden.

His face wasn’t the same either. All his features seemed hardened, so unlike the Carter I remembered. And on the right side of his face was a deep scar that ran from above his eye to his jaw. It looked years old, but still painful to the touch. My fingers ached to ease the pain, but I didn’t move to touch the scar like I wanted to. I bet that scar could tell me secrets that Carter himself wouldn’t even dare to whisper when he thought I was in a deep sleep.

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