Shine Not Burn Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title page

  Copyright

  Other Books by Elle Casey

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Other Books by Elle Casey

  Acknowledgments

  Shine Not Burn

  Elle Casey

  COPYRIGHT NOTICE

  © 2013 Elle Casey, all rights reserved, worldwide. No part of this ebook may be reproduced, uploaded to the Internet, or copied without author permission. The author respectfully asks that you please support artistic expression and help promote anti-piracy efforts by purchasing a copy of this ebook at the author authorized online outlet that serves your country.

  Elle Casey thanks you deeply for your understanding and support.

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  OTHER BOOKS BY ELLE CASEY

  *= Coming Soon

  (New Adult Romance)

  Shine Not Burn

  Rebel*

  Hellion*

  Trouble*

  Trainwreck*

  By Degrees*

  Don’t Make Me Beautiful*

  (YA Paranormal Romance)

  Duality, Volume I (Melancholia)

  Duality, Volume II (Euphoria)

  (YA Urban Fantasy)

  War of the Fae: Book One, The Changelings - FREE!

  War of the Fae: Book Two, Call to Arms

  War of the Fae: Book Three, Darkness & Light

  War of the Fae: Book Four, New World Order

  Clash of the Otherworlds: Book 1, After the Fall

  Clash of the Otherworlds: Book 2, Between the Realms

  Clash of the Otherworlds: Book 3, Portal Guardians

  My Vampire Summer

  My Vampire Fall*

  Aces High (co-written with Jason Brant)

  (YA Post-Apocalyptic)

  Apocalypsis: Book 1, Kahayatle

  Apocalypsis: Book 2, Warpaint

  Apocalypsis: Book 3, Exodus

  Apocalypsis: Book 4, Haven

  (YA Action-Adventure)

  Wrecked

  Reckless

  DEDICATION

  To Mimi Strong.

  An author friend whose name suits her perfectly.

  Chapter One

  THEY CALL ME PARTY GIRL. That’s who the invitation says I am, anyway.

  Yo, Party Girl! We. Need. You. Be at the airport tomorrow at 1pm on the dot at the Delta ticket counter or you will henceforth be known as Mud. We’re not kidding. Don’t let us down. And remember, you have permission to have fun and forget about your bullshit boyfriend PUKE because what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. Over and out. Love, your best friend, Kelly. And no, Candice is not your best friend, I am. Love, Kelly. Your best friend.

  I put the invitation down on my desk. “No way,” I said out loud into my office, “not gonna happen.”

  “What’s not gonna happen?” asked Ruby, my assistant. Really she’s more like a mother, next door neighbor, confessor, and general pain in the butt all rolled into one, but the nameplate on her desk says she’s Ruby. Executive Legal Secretary at Harvey, Grossman, and Cantor, LLP. She came in carrying a piping hot mug of coffee, and like she does every day, earned my undying gratitude for her uncanny ability to know exactly what I needed when I needed it. Nine a.m. and I was ready to mainline the caffeine at this point. Bachelorette party invites do that to me.

  “I’m not going to this stupid thing,” I said, tucking the invitation under my desk blotter. I could already imagine what Luke would have to say about it. That would be Luke with an L and not with a P. My girlfriends weren't fans.

  “For Kelly? Of course you are. She’s your best friend. Do you want me to RSVP for you or are you going to handle it?”

  I frowned at her, not quite snatching the cup out of her hands but letting her know she was making me cranky. “No, miss busybody, I do not want you RSVPing for me.” I put the mug closer to my face so I could smell its contents, wishing the act of snorting coffee steam could get the caffeine to go in deeper or make its effects last longer. “I told you. I’m not going.”

  She pursed her lips at me in her patented Ruby-ain’t-playin’ look. “Mmm-hmm.” Two head bob-n-weaves later and I was folding. She had serious guilt-trip power, and she wasn’t afraid to use it on me regularly.

  “But I don’t want to go,” I whined, getting my pout on and working it with everything I had. “I have two briefs to finish by Tuesday and three hearings this week on motions to dismiss and that’s just the tip of my unholy awful iceberg.” I kicked my desk lightly, wanting to do it harder but loathe to damage my Louboutins. They’d cost me almost a week’s pay.

  “You finished those briefs last week, as you well know, and you can send Bradley to the hearings.” She said Bradley with that tone - the one that conveyed how irritating she found him. She always did. I had to really resist the urge to do it myself. He had this way of getting under a person’s skin. Creepy crawly and seriously, ew. Gorgeous clothes and a pretty face could only do so much for a guy when his personality was so gag-worthy. Think snake crossed with honey badger and you’d be close to understanding his style.

  I rolled my eyes. “You really need to stop snooping around in my computer files, Rubes.”

  “Why? How else am I’m going to keep up with you? If I wait for you to ask me for help I’ll be old and gray before that happens.”

  “You already are old and gray,” I said, smiling behind my mug. The glee I was feeling at this point was totally rude, but that’s how I roll. Rockin the Louboutins while harassing senior citizens. Classy with a capital K.

  She pointed a very long, very polished fingernail at me. “Girl, you are so lucky you’re sitting behind that desk and not out there in that mess of secretaries with me, otherwise …” She wrinkled up her mouth at me and shook her head slowly a few times.

  “Otherwise, what? You’d mess me up? We’d throw down in the copy room?” My grin got bigger.

  “Count on it, baby girl,” she said. She turned to leave the office, her panty-hosed legs making loud swishing sounds like they always did. I swear one day the friction between her thighs was going to start a fire in the office.

  “Who do I send the RSVP to?” she asked without even look
ing back at me. “Candice or Kelly?”

  I sighed heavily, putting the mug down on the desk blotter.

  Ruby wins again. As usual.

  “Kelly,” I sighed out. “Send it to Kelly’s work email.”

  I spun my chair to the side so I could face my computer, clicking on the keys that would take me to my client files. The impending doom of Kelly’s upcoming bachelorette party hung over my head. I was supposed to be figuring out how I was going to work my way around the 4th DCA’s latest ruling, but the words on the document I’d just opened swam in front of my eyes.

  My eyes glazed over and I was fifteen again, in a small back room of my mother’s house with the hulking figure of her boyfriend standing over me, a belt raised above his head.

  It crashed down again and again on my back, head, and shoulders. Nasty, hateful words streamed out of his mouth, dank ugliness that coated my skin.

  I trembled not with fear but with anger. This had gone on for way too long. The bruises were taking longer to heal. I had to get away. With every beating the words had gotten more hateful, and the belt had come down harder. If I didn’t find a way out of this mess I’d be dead and buried in the backyard before I hit eighteen. Wishing my mother would step in and help me was a waste of my time.

  When he left the room that day, I’d drafted the first version of what became known as my lifeplan, the document that laid out the route that would lead me to my goals: independence, safety, and financial success. I couldn’t depend on my weak, co-dependent mother to save me, so I had to save myself.

  I shook my head, pulling it out of the clouds and bringing it back to the present. No. I refuse to let those memories ruin my best friend’s party. I took a deep breath and expelled the ghosts haunting the recesses of my mind. I was twenty-five now and my lifeplan had gotten me this far. Taking a small break to go to Vegas wouldn’t change anything. Taking a little two-day trip to Vegas with my best girlfriends presented zero risk to my lifeplan. I could do this. I would not allow Fear to be my constant companion anymore.

  I clicked my mouse, bringing up the document that had to be finished before I got on the plane.

  Chapter Two

  A CHORUS OF SQUEALS ROSE up as I walked over to the check-in area of Palm Beach International Airport. My best friends from college, Candice and Kelly, were standing near the Delta line.

  “You made it!” yelled Candice, running towards me, paying zero attention to the bystanders staring at her. This was her usual way of making it through life. Oblivious. Loud. Ready to party at a moment’s notice. She came on tiptoes, her shoes making any other type of walking impossible. She is the most lovable airhead I’ve ever known.

  “Ooph.” Her surgically enhanced chest slammed into mine, knocking some of the air out of my lungs. “Miss me?” I asked over her shoulder, my eyes crossing just a little.

  “Oh my god, yes.” She squeezed me hard once and pulled away. “You hibernate in that office of yours all week long, every weekend, and then you spend all your free time with Puke. Of course I miss you.”

  “It’s Luke, and I went to lunch with you just last week.” I stepped back, picking up the overnight bag I’d dropped on the ground by my feet and putting the strap over my shoulder. “You know I have to make partner …”

  “…By the time you’re thirty. I know, I know, I know. It’s going to be engraved on your headstone.” She put her arm through mine, leaning in and sniffing me. She did that all the time, always on the lookout for her next favorite perfume.

  “Headstone? Hopefully, I’ll be partner at the firm by the time I have that little depressing ornament over my head.” I glanced sideways at her, smiling secretly over the fact that her lips looked like they’d been stung by wasps again. Once Candice discovered collagen a few years ago, she’d never gone back. One of her favorite sayings is ‘thin lips sink ships’ which makes complete sense to her; she doesn’t care that it doesn’t to anyone else. I’ve never asked for clarification of the ‘ships’ part of that equation because sometimes her thought processes give me headaches they’re so asinine. But as goofy as she can be, she’s still one-half of my best friend whole. Candice, Kelly, and I were known as the three amigas in college and that hadn’t changed, even though our lives couldn’t be more different now.

  We walked over to the counter to join Kelly. She was having an animated conversation with the wispy-looking male ticket agent, first waving her arms around and then putting her hands in praying position. She looked like a regular church lady with her button down blouse and neatly-pressed khaki pants. Love had mellowed her out since college, but under that conservative, polished veneer was a crazy girl who used to dye her hair purple and do shots of tequila off male-stripper stomachs.

  Candice snorted at the claim I was laying on my future partnership. “I’ve told you a hundred times. You won’t make partner by the time you’re thirty if you don’t get out more. My cousin’s cousin’s husband’s brother died of a heart attack when he was only twenty-eight. Twenty-eight!”

  “You’re cousin’s cousin’s husband’s sister’s … whatever … had a heart defect, and you’ve told me before he got chicken pox so bad he was hospitalized, so I’m pretty sure him not being a female lawyer working a few extra hours a week didn’t contribute to his death.”

  “Just shut up and come with me. Kelly’s trying to get us an upgrade.”

  I followed Candice to the counter and listened with amusement as Kelly tried to charm the obviously gay man into giving us an upgrade she didn’t have the frequent flyer miles for.

  “Please, pleasepleasepleaseplease pleeeeaaase? I swear we’ll be good. We’ll totally behave ourselves and not drink ten mini bottles of vodka on ice.” She grinned like a movie star in a toothpaste commercial. She did have really nice teeth. Having a father as a cosmetic dentist made sure of that.

  He gave her a perfunctory smile in return, which disappeared less than a second after it had appeared. “As much as it pains me to tell you this, I’m afraid I cannot give you the upgrade unless you have the points or the money to pay for it.” He looked at his monitor. “To go from economy class to business class will cost you a total of one thousand two hundred dollars for the three of you. We accept all major credit cards.” His nostrils flared slightly as he stared at her again.

  Kelly’s mouth dropped open. “Are you insane? I could buy a shitty used car for that much money.”

  He smiled without humor. “But you don’t get complimentary drinks in shitty used cars, now do you?” There wasn’t a trace of sarcasm in his voice. Damn, he was good.

  I walked up to the desk and rested my arm on it, giving him my best addressing-the-bench smile. “Hi there, … Samuel. I’m Andrea … Andie.” I put my other hand on Kelly’s arm. “It’s my job to take this poor girl and give her the best two days of her life in Vegas before she ties herself down to a life of servitude and misery. I’m talking marriage here, and it’s bad. It’s really bad.” I lowered my voice. “Her fiancé is a mortician.”

  “You’re kidding me,” he said, looking first at me and then Kelly. His cold expression slipped just a little. We were used to the morbid curiosity when the subject came up, and I wasn’t too proud to use it to our advantage. This was my best friend’s bachelorette party, after all. Sacrifices would need to be made. Buttons would have to be pushed. Pride would have to be swallowed.

  Kelly nodded, her eyes big and if I wasn’t mistaken, a little shiny. Nice touch, I said in my nod at her. Work it hard. The sad thing is, I wasn’t kidding about the mortician thing. She really was planning to marry Matthew Ackerman, otherwise known to us as Matty the mortician. Candice and I have asked her several times what she could possibly see in a man who deals with the dead all the time, and her answer was always the same: nobody’s got good wood like a guy who works with stiffs all day. I’m still not even sure what that’s supposed to mean, but I’m also pretty damn sure I don’t want to know either, so I let it lie.

  “You’re going to marry a ma
n who touches dead bodies every day? Cuts them open?” He leaned forward and spoke in a whisper. “Embalms them?”

  She nodded. “Yes. We deal with death every day, the two of us. It’s all very heart-breaking. This is my one last chance to let my hair down before I have to suck it up and be the wife of a mortician.” She wiped a fake tear from her eye and turned away.

  And the Academy Award for Best Actress in a Non-Movie is … Kelly Foust!

  The agent looked to his left and then his right. His fingers flew over the keys, sometimes just the index finger pressing one key about twenty times. I wondered if he was really even doing anything. It was possible he was just messing with us by seeing how long he could keep us standing there believing we were convincing him to feel sorry for us before he told us to go get bent.

  But then the sound of a dot matrix printer came from under his counter and a few seconds later he was pulling six long boarding cards out with our names on them. “Business class upgrade? Why of course, ladies. We’re happy to accommodate your business needs here at Delta Airlines. Here are your boarding passes for both legs of the flight to Las Vegas.” He put them down on the counter and slid them over to Kelly. She grabbed them and squealed, her heels tapping the floor over and over as she simultaneously hugged Candice and jumped up and down with her. I put my hand on her shoulder to calm her down while giving my full attention to the agent.

  “Thanks so much for helping us out, Samuel. That was really cool.”

  He smiled at me, the first genuine expression I think I’d gotten from him since I’d walked up to his counter. “Just be careful. They say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but sometimes the trouble follows you home. Know what I mean?” He winked.

  I nodded, even though I had no idea what he was talking about. I wasn’t the kind of girl to get into that kind of trouble. I might drink a little wine now and then or a beer maybe, but I always remembered what happened the next day and I never went too far. I was all about self-control now that I was an adult and no longer goofing around in college. “Good tip. Thanks again.”