Wanted you more, p.1
Wanted You More, page 1
© Copyright 2023 B. Celeste
EPUB Edition
All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Cover by Cassie at Opulent Designs
Editing by Marla at Proofing Style
OTHER BOOKS BY B. CELESTE
The Truth about Heartbreak
The Truth about Tomorrow
The Truth about Us
Underneath the Sycamore Tree
All the Shattered Pieces
Where the Little Birds Go
Where the Little Birds Are
Into the Clear Water
Color Me Pretty
Tell Me When It’s Over
Tell Me Why It’s Wrong
Dare You to Hate Me
Beg You to Trust Me
Make You Miss Me
When It Rains
Here’s to 2023
B is back
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Cover
Title Page
Copyright Page
Other Books by B. Celeste
Dedication
Playlist
Trigger Warning
Prologue
SUMMER 2022
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
FALL 2022
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
WINTER 2022
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
SUMMER 2023
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
FALL 2023
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
WINTER 2023
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Chapter Thirty-Seven
SPRING 2024
Chapter Thirty-Eight
Chapter Thirty-Nine
Chapter Forty
Chapter Forty-One
Chapter Forty-Two
Chapter Forty-Three
Chapter Forty-Four
SUMMER 2023
Chapter Forty-Five
Chapter Forty-Six
Chapter Forty-Seven
FALL 2024
Chapter Forty-Eight
Chapter Forty-Nine
WINTER 2024
Chapter Fifty
Chapter Fifty-One
SPRING 2025
Chapter Fifty-Two
Epilogue
About the Author
PLAYLIST
“I Miss the Misery” – Halestorm
“I Wish I Didn’t Give a Shit” – Atlus
“Drunk Texts” – Kode
“Wanted You More” – Lady A
“Not Like I’m In Love With You” – Lauren Weintraub
“Heavy” – Linkin Park ft. Kiiara
“This Love (Taylor’s Version)” – Taylor Swift
“Bad Decisions” – Ariana Grande
“Falling” – Harry Styles
“My Mind & Me” – Selena Gomez
TRIGGER WARNING
This book deals with the aftermath of a public shooting. While nothing is detailed graphically, in this novel, it could be triggering to some.
PROLOGUE
Summer 2012
I was eight years old when I experienced the threat of oblivion for the first time, and it started with all of my favorite things. Slightly charred hotdogs covered in bittersweet ketchup, sour pink lemonade, and my family.
The start of the end began with the firework display.
Bright.
Loud.
Beautiful.
Reds. Whites. Blues.
Until the noisy cheer of the packed crowd in Shakespeare Park turned into noisy chaos as everybody started to scatter.
I looked to my left, where my mother had disappeared to the bathroom with my little brother, Wolfe, then to my right to search for my father’s familiar face, where he’d been talking to a family friend about golf. Instead of my family, I saw a mass of others running toward me with fear-stricken faces.
“Mommy?” I call out, dodging the people grabbing their kids from the foldable lawn chairs spread along the grass.
The fireworks are getting louder.
Closer.
I don’t know when the park stopped smelling like the yummy grilled food from the barbecues or food trucks, but soon a pungent odor took over the space that became too thick and suffocating to bear.
I stumble when someone smacks into me from the side, then nearly fall when somebody else runs into me from the other side. “Daddy? Where are you?”
Suddenly, hands grab me from under the arms and pick me up despite my wild protest. When I look over my shoulder, the blurry image of the older man who delivers our mail is who I see. “We need to run, kid.”
“But Mommy and Daddy—”
“We’ll meet them,” the red-faced man whose name I can’t remember tells me, although he doesn’t sound like he’s telling the truth. He’s winded and breathing funny as he’s keeping pace with the others running, and the bang, bang, bang gets louder and louder.
Red, white, and blues light up the sky.
They don’t seem very pretty anymore.
When I try searching around us, the mailman’s grip tightens around me as one of those large hands that delivers all of Mom’s Amazon packages blocks my eyes. “Don’t look, Austen.”
His voice is hoarse, making my weird name sound stranger coming from him. My parents are both English professors, which is why they named me after Jane Austen and my little brother after Virginia Woolf.
“When we get to the parking lot,” he says, struggling for air as he hauls me closer to his chest, “I’m going to put you down and you need to run to safe—” His directions get cut off by a horrible, gargling sound before we drop to the ground in a tangled heap that makes it hard to breathe from the weight of his body on my back.
Something wet seeps into my pretty new shirt that has a glitter heart in the middle with stripes like the American flag. I begged Mom to buy it for me even though she hates glitter. When I see her, I’ll tell her I’ll get rid of it. I’ll get rid of whatever she wants. There’s a Barbie that melted in the hot sun a few years ago that freaks her out, but I’ve been too attached to get rid of it. I’d let her throw that out too.
My eyes get heavy as I think about all the things I’d change for her. She can cut my long hair like she’s been wanting to and style it however she wants. I’ll wear pigtails again like I did when I was little.
No matter how much I try to wiggle from under the crushing weight above me, I can’t seem to break free.
Energy draining the longer I fight for air, I feel myself falling asleep, wondering when Mom, Dad, and Wolfe will find me.
That’s when the fireworks finally fade into the distance, and things slowly get quieter. My ears ringing is the only sound I hear until my eyelids finally close.
SUMMER 2022
CHAPTER ONE
The wind whips away the plume of smoke I blow out the bottom of the window that I cracked open. I’m reaching for the lavender air freshener spray when I hear, “You’re not supposed to do that.”
Spraying the can around me as I lean back on the cushioned pillow seat, I give my little brother a quick once-over to see the disapproval molded across his face. Even behind his thick blue glasses with a glare in the lens and the long brown hair covering most of his forehead, I can see his furrowed brows pinched with judgment. He acts older than most fifteen-year-old boys but looks a lot younger.
“What are you going to do? Tattle?”
Wolfe frowns, walking into my room and closing the door behind him. He stays by the door awkwardly. “Dad is doing the best he can. Why isn’t that ever good enough for you?”
I take another puff of the joint before leaning forward to exhale it out the window. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
He walks over, nose scrunching, when he locks eyes on the item between my fingers. “He asked you to stop smoking months ago. And this was Mom’s favorite room. Can’t you stop for her if you can’t for him?”
Wolfe isn’t the type of boy to do anything malicious, so I know he’s not intentionally playing unfairly. He’s closer with Dad than I am, so he wants me to stop doing the exact opposite of what our father always tells me.
Like smoking.
And drinking.
And having sex. Not that he knows I’m doing that. I’m just going to assume he wouldn’t be ok
Nose twitching, I scratch it before glancing around the room. Everything in here is white. Too white. White walls save the accent wall with a blue floral pattern on it. White bedding with fuzzy blue pillows. Hardwood floors with a white rug that Wolfe and I used to drag our feet across to create static to zap each other with. All the furniture is white with gold handles and colorful accents covering them because Mom loved pops of bright colors.
“The room will be fine,” is all I tell him, toying with the rolled joint. “It’s not like cigarette smoke that can ruin white walls. Plus, it takes a long time before it stains stuff anyway. Mom’s room won’t be tainted by me.”
This time, my little brother is silent. It doesn’t stop me from seeing the pain on his face when I do turn toward him.
Closing my eyes for a second, I reach outside and press the end of the joint against the ashtray I keep on the windowsill. Leaving it out there, I carefully close the window and spray the freshener again to get rid of the strong smell.
“Happy?” I grumble, pushing off the cushion and walking over to where my phone is plugged in on the nightstand. Next to my phone is a picture frame I can’t force myself to move, no matter how haunting the image inside it is.
Unlike Wolfe, who has Mom’s chocolate brown hair, big green eyes, and bright, toothy smile just like the one in the image immortalized by my bed, the only thing I got from her is my button nose, pointy chin, and leggy stature. My ash blond hair makes me look washed out, which isn’t hard to do because of my pale, pinkish-toned skin that never gets much color, no matter how long I’m in the sun. I get my hair, and haunted brown eyes, from my father.
Sometimes it’s hard to look at Wolfe because he’s practically Mom’s twin. Everybody around Cherry Cove has said so. I used to be a little jealous because Mom was effortlessly beautiful. She’d been in the Miss America pageant once, and even though she didn’t win, she might as well have. People still say she was cheated by coming in third place.
When I notice my brother still staring, I flop down onto my mattress and pat the empty spot beside me. He doesn’t hesitate to take the invitation. We used to do this all the time growing up. When he’d have bad dreams, I’d sneak into his room and tell him random stories about Mom until he fell asleep.
Wolfe lies beside me, staring at the ceiling just like me. We’re silent for what feels like forever before he asks, “Does it hurt?”
It. I try not moving my hand to the spot just below my right collarbone that he’s referencing. My arm hasn’t been the same since that day. The doctor I saw for it when the pain got unbearable said it was probably fibromyalgia—which was a cop-out response when they couldn’t find an actual reason for the sudden chronic pain. Nothing came up in blood work or image screenings, so they said it was a trauma response from the “traumatic event” I’d experienced.
Rolling that shoulder before settling further into the bed, I murmur, “No. Not as much as it did anyway.”
I guess it’s not a total lie. There are good days and bad, but I get why he asked. When he first caught me smoking pot, I’d told him it helped with the pain. That was the truth. Mostly. Now, I’ve just gotten used to how weed makes me feel.
Turning onto my side to face him, I use my bent arm as a pillow and rest my cheek against it while I study my brother’s profile. The acne cream I bought him is working because his skin has cleared up. He’d been complaining about his breakouts for weeks, so I’d done a ton of research and found the perfect stuff that one of our local pharmacies carried. I’d left it on his dresser with a note on instructions that the pharmacist suggested. That night, he’d knocked on my bedroom door to say thank you, and instead of me sneaking out like I normally would, we stayed in to watch cheesy horror movies.
“Why are you staring at me like that?” he mumbles, turning his head to face me and pushing his glasses up his nose.
My lips curl downward. “I’m sorry for being such a bitch all the time.”
He blinks after a second. “You’re not a bitch, Austen. You just try really hard to make people think you are.”
His words strike me deep in the chest, but like always, I don’t let him see it. Making sure my metaphorical mask is firmly in place, I flop back onto my back and say, “You should think about contacts. Those glasses hide too much of your face.”
A snort of amusement comes from him before he replies with, “Your breath stinks. Go brush your teeth.”
CHAPTER TWO
No conversation that begins with “So, I was thinking,” ever ends well when it comes from the mouth of Marybelle Lanette Stratus. The last time my best friend of three years uttered those exact words, we wound up in the back of a cop car wrapped in nothing but thin towels while being threatened with indecent exposure charges. Turns out, skinny dipping in the lake with two random boys who were in town for the tourist season wasn’t the best idea. They stole our clothes, money, and dignity, and bolted, never to be seen again.
“You thinking is scary,” I remark, snickering when she shoots me a look from across the counter of Sips, our one and only smoothie shop in Cherry Cove, New York. Despite having classes together on and off throughout middle school, it wasn’t until we both got hired here that we became friends. She didn’t care about who I was or what my past was before my family moved here permanently. Enough of the town knew us from our summers spent at the house we only used to occupy during a couple months out of the year, but everyone knew the reason we sold our other house an hour away after the news broke about that horrible Fourth of July weekend.
Dad couldn’t afford two houses after Mom’s death, and he felt it was best for all of our sanity to leave Limepeak and all the bad memories the small town held. It’s almost ironic in a sad way. The one July Fourth we decided to spend in Limepeak with friends and family, and it scarred us forever. I remember asking why we couldn’t stay in Cherry Cove like we did every Independence Day, and Mom said it was because giving new traditions a chance was worth a shot.
Marybelle didn’t pay attention to any of that stuff. I wasn’t the girl who survived a mass shooting, or the girl whose mother—along with other innocent victims—didn’t. I was simply Austen Magnolia Cole. The girl whose craziness equaled her own, much to my father’s dismay. Although sometimes I think he tends to look the other way is because he’s glad I have a friend.
For a long time, I had nobody.
At least, that’s what it felt like.
“Har har,” Marybelle says vacantly, watching the last customers leave before turning to me with a giddy smile on her face. “So, I was thinking about that party over by the marina. The country club is closed for a private party, and guess who rented it?”
As if I’d ever get the answer right. Cherry Cove is full of rich people who can afford to do something like that. Who needs an entire country club for a party anyway?
Marybelle answers her own question with a mischievous grin. “Cheyanne.” The name instantly sours my stomach, and the second she sees my face, she doesn’t let me get a word of dismissal in. “Before you say no, think about it. That bitch ruined your last two birthdays, and let’s not forget the ridiculous locker incident. She hasn’t forgiven you since the Conner thing, and that mess was his fault to begin with.”
The “Conner thing” happened almost three years ago. Marybelle and I went to some school party where I met a blond boy with a boy-next-door kind of face—cute and innocent. We’d gone from dancing and drinking warm beer to making out on the couch in the packed living room. What I quickly learned was that he was certainly not innocent. He was dating Cheyanne Kraus, the host of the party and one of the it girls at school. Captain of the debate team, organizer of the school’s newest Green Earth club, where they save whales or something, and a member of the community service commission, where they apparently do good somehow. These days, nerd is the new sexy, which means the nerdier you are, the more popular you are.
I made out with Cheyanne’s boyfriend; she found out, and she’s made my life a living hell since. I’ll give her credit—she doesn’t tiptoe around my feelings like everybody else. Unfortunately, that also means she has no boundaries for the shit she likes to pull. Like on my fifteenth birthday, when she called the bakery to switch my cake from chocolate to carrot, which is the one flavor I hate, and the design from a basic “happy birthday” message to “sorry you were born” with red, white, and blue flowers bordering the white frosting.
