Broken Butterfly: MMF Bisexual Romance (Mundane Magic Book 1) Read online

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  Broken Butterfly

  Mundane Magic Book 1

  Maxene Novak

  Important information…

  “Broken Butterfly” is the first book in the Mundane Magic Series. However, this book and every other book in the series (more books coming soon!) can be read as a stand-alone. Thus, it is not required to read the first book to understand the second (as so on). Each book can be read by itself.

  Contents

  Important information…

  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

  The story may be over but

  FREE BOOK: Au Pair

  Chapter One

  Belle thought she’d run out of tears. She couldn’t imagine that she had enough water left in the whole of her body to work up a good cry, not after this last week. But as Michael Crawford’s smoothly terrifying vocals wound out of the speakers, she had to pull over. She sobbed, heartbroken, as he urged her to feel it. She should have chosen a different opera for driving music.

  Close your eyes, start a journey through a strange new world….

  She’d started her journey, and she couldn’t bear the heartbreak. As she cried, she rubbed the swollen, scarred misshapen lump under her pants: all that remained of her left knee. The tiny ballet slippers hanging from her rearview mirror sparkled in the sunlight, mocking her. Enraged, she ripped them from the mirror and tossed them out the window, where they were promptly smashed to bits by a passing eighteen wheeler. She sniffed and scrubbed her face with her hands. She was nearly there.

  Get it together, Belle, she ordered.

  She was going to change her name, she decided. Her name was like a slap in the face every time she heard it. Belle, beauty, her mother’s favorite ballet. She was glad her mother hadn’t been alive to see her fail, even as she desperately wished her mother was there now to tell her what to do.

  She switched her music to her heavy metal playlist and eased back onto the highway. She’d had enough wallowing for one day. Hell, she’d had enough wallowing for a lifetime, but that didn’t mean she wouldn’t need to continue to wallow once she’d reached her destination. She checked her gas gauge. Almost there.

  She didn’t have a real destination in mind. She’d given herself a direction and two tanks of gas; that was all she needed. Options increase exponentially when you aren’t running to anything, and Belle was very deliberately running away from everything. She was creeping up on the last eighth of her last tank. Her little red second-hand station wagon ate up miles as it sipped on the gas, so she had maybe another ten miles before she’d have to stop. That was fine with her. She’d just entered a hilly, disjointed area; she suspected it used to be coal country, back before coal mining was shut down on a global scale.

  She pulled off the highway eight miles later. The sign told her that she was entering Anderson, population 1,028. She hoped it was big enough to get lost in. At the very least, it was small enough that maybe no one would recognize her. Maybe. The internet made it difficult to find safe spaces these days.

  She remembered her father telling stories about how he could just get in his car and go, find places and people who were completely alien to him. Culture had homogenized since his wild teen years. A podunk backwater town could have just as much culture and education as a big city. She prayed that this particular town was at least somewhat out of touch. Ballet had a narrower audience than most art forms, so her chances were good.

  Then again… She cringed, remembering how the video of her destruction had gone viral. She and Ramone had earned fame by pushing the boundaries of physics, leaping and bounding above and beyond the rules of the dance. They’d incorporated moves from disciplines so far outside the boundaries of classical ballet that many purists had hated their work and protested the bastardization of the art online; which of course brought them more attention. People craved novelty, and they were novel.

  But they’d gone too far. She’d been nervous about it, but Ramone had teased her. Dared her. She never had been able to resist a good dare. So she did it; they set up the yoga trapeze, the sunken trampoline, the vertical pole. They were going to put on the most daring performance of their career, and it was going to take them international. Ramone had been so sure of it.

  Ramone had been right, too; he’d earned himself a place on the New York City Ballet even as Belle went under the knife to repair her crippled leg. Repair was a stretch; she’d never be able to use the damn thing again, not like she used to. She’d be lucky if she could walk straight six months from now, luckier still if she could ever get up on her toes again.

  Her toes would thank her for that, she was sure. Her spirit, however… She honestly couldn’t believe she hadn’t keeled over and died, succumbing to heartbreak, the moment the surgeon told her she wouldn’t dance again. He’d tried to be sympathetic, but she knew he didn’t understand.

  “You’re a smart girl, I’m sure there are other jobs you can do. Something that’ll last your whole life. Ballet is sort of a short-term thing anyway, isn’t it?”

  She hadn’t corrected him. She’d just stared at him, unfeeling, until he’d left the room. She’d been in shock. Short-term? There were videos of her, barely six months old, holding onto the coffee table as she copied the movements of the ballerinas on TV. Her mother had been so proud she couldn’t stop crying. Belle had enrolled in formal training at the age of two. This wasn’t a short-term job, a phase, or a hobby. Ballet was her whole life. It always had been.

  Now it was gone. Because she’d listened to Ramone. Because she was cocky enough to believe that she could fly if she wanted to badly enough. Because the stage they performed on was just six inches wider than their practice space, and the crew arranged their props for the best visual performance. Because all of that meant the pole was just an inch or two off, and she couldn’t adjust in time. Because she hadn’t noticed the discrepancy until it was too late.

  She could still feel that moment. That shock in her bones when she realized she wasn’t going to make it. The moment of hesitation before the twist, just in case she could stretch a little farther and save the trick. The sheer terror as her right leg slid through the space between the trampoline and the floor. The sickening crack that vibrated through her body as her kneecap ripped from its home, as her ankle compressed and twisted around to point behind her, as her hip ripped away from her pelvis.

  Her bones were broken in three places, but she could have come back from that. What she couldn’t come back from was the utter destruction of her joints. What she couldn’t do was dance with metal plates and pins stiffening her leg. In that instant, before she’d lost consciousness, she’d known that her lif
e was over. Her final thought had been a wish for death.

  Ramone had been acceptably apologetic when he visited her in the hospital after her surgery. He’d already been offered spots with a multitude of ballet companies and wanted her advice on which to pick. She’d told him to pirouette off a pier. She still felt guilty about that. He’d looked so hurt, so confused. These things happen, he told her. All we can do is move on. And he had, quickly and productively. He had a new partner now. A tiny little redhead whose fiery personality had earned her a big name in New York. She had to admit they looked good together.

  Belle pulled into the gas station and shook away the cobwebs of reminiscence. Seether was telling her to fake it, so she did. She plastered a friendly smile on her face and carefully scooched out of the car, gripping the door and steering wheel for leverage. She carefully bent over to grab her purse, and pain shot through her from the small of her back clear down to her toes. She fought back the tears and straightened quickly. Too quickly. She lost her balance and began to topple over.

  “Whoa, there! You okay?”

  Strong arms held her. She vaguely registered that they felt nice around her, even as her head buzzed in embarrassment. She looked up at her rescuer and that didn’t help her buzzing head any. He was stunningly attractive. Not in the traditional, underwear model kind of way; his eyebrows were too low and thick, his forehead too high, his dark eyes too big. His nose was crooked, as though it had been broken a time or three, and his soft-looking lips were top-heavy and framed by a few days’ worth of stubble.

  Her heart fluttered as she struggled to find her voice.

  “Yes, I’m… I’m okay. Thank you.”

  She pushed off of him and supported herself on the roof of her car.

  “Can I do anything for you? You don’t look like you should be walking,” he said, worry etched on his face.

  She blew her blonde hair out of her face and stood tall, defiantly ignoring the pain shooting through her body.

  “I can walk,” she said fiercely. Hell, three months ago I could fly, she thought bitterly.

  “Okay,” he said doubtfully. “Can I at least help you inside?”

  She looked over at the pump. No outside card reader. She sighed, defeated.

  “Yeah okay,” she conceded. She took the arm he offered, and gripped it tight. The wind blew a cold blast that cut through her soft, fuzzy pants and matching sweater. She wished she’d grabbed her coat. She flinched against the cold and nearly cried out when her contracting muscles pulled against her makeshift tendons. She gritted her teeth and swallowed the sound, unwilling to show any more weakness in front of the strong, earthy man. She stumbled in spite of herself, and he wrapped an arm firmly around her tiny waist, holding her hand with his other arm.

  “Should you even be out of bed?” he asked her.

  “I should be dancing,” she said bitterly.

  “Right, and I should be wrestling alligators,” he shot back. “What are you doing out here, anyway?”

  “Getting gas,” she snapped.

  “Uh-huh. Why aren’t you at home in bed?”

  “Because I don’t have either of those things. Just get the damn door, would you?”

  He opened his mouth to speak, and she shot him a devastating glare. He snapped his mouth shut and pulled the door open, practically carrying her inside. He helped her hobble to the counter.

  “Hi, yeah, can I get thirty on… oh, dammit.”

  “Four. Thirty on four,” the man finished for her.

  The cashier punched buttons on the register. “Anything else?” he asked, bored.

  Screw it, she thought.

  “Yeah, a pack of menthols. And do you have any local classifieds or rental magazines or anything?”

  The man grabbed the cigarettes and a magazine and punched some more buttons. He told her the total and shoved her purchases at her. He sighed heavily as she struggled with the card reader. She couldn’t wait to get out of there.

  Her rescuer walked her back to the car in the same manner that he’d brought her inside.

  “Sit,” he ordered. “I’m pumping the gas.”

  “I can do it!” she snapped, but the heat was forced. She was in excruciating pain and wanted nothing more than to sit down.

  “Look lady, I’m not doubting that you could. But if a man rolled up here looking as bad as you do, I’d tell him to sit his ass down too. Chill out.”

  Belle sank into the car. She hated feeling this helpless. She opened the magazine and flipped through it while he filled her tank. An advertisement for a shared cottage caught her eye; it was cheap enough that she’d have ample time to find an alternative source of income before her money ran out, it was girls only so she wouldn’t have to deal with male roommates again, and it would force her to be social. She knew if she were given the opportunity she would hide in a hole and never, ever crawl out again. It’s what she wanted to do. She couldn’t give into that desire, not right now. If she did, she would never come back from it. The ad told her there were four rooms available in the five-bedroom house.

  “Well, at least I’ll have to be a little sociable,” she mumbled to herself.

  Maybe the other rooms would fill up. Either way, she’d go see the place. It was two stories, which could be a problem if there wasn’t a downstairs bedroom available. She couldn’t bear the thought of fighting with stairs for god knows how long.

  The clack of the gas cap snapped her back to reality.

  “All set,” the guy said, leaning down to talk to her through the window.

  “Thanks,” she said tiredly. “Hey, do you know where Maple Street is?”

  “Yeah, right down the street. Second left, third cross street. You looking at the cottage?”

  Small town, she reminded herself. “Yeah… why? Is it horrible?”

  “Nah.” He grinned, and it stirred something in her belly. “It’s a decent house. Six-month lease to start, though.”

  “Yeah, I saw that,” she said.

  “So you’re gonna stick around a while, then?”

  “That’s the plan,” she said neutrally.

  “Awesome. I’m Colt,” he told her, sticking his hand through the window.

  “Colt. Like the gun?”

  “No,” he laughed. “Like the baby horse. I was born in a stable.”

  “You were not.”

  “Was too. What’s your name, then, princess?”

  “Belle,” she said, blushing.

  “Like the Disney character?”

  “No, like the ballet,” she said haughtily. “But, yeah, same character.” She grinned, taking the sting out of her previous tone.

  “So you were born in ballet shoes?”

  “Practically,” she sighed.

  A horn honked behind them.

  “I better get out of the way. Thanks, Colt.”

  “Any time. You’ll see me around.”

  He shot her a friendly salute, and she pulled away.

  Chapter Two

  Belle found the house relatively quickly. Cottage was a stylistic term only, she realized. The house itself looked huge from the outside, as if a dollhouse had exploded. She loved the curved front door; she’d never seen one outside of storybook illustrations. It was painted red, and tucked snugly under a sharply sloped awning. The front yard carried the storybook theme; fruit trees and rose bushes dotted the yard, and brown, sleeping vines crawled over an archway leading to the wide, shallow cobblestone front steps. She liked it immediately.

  She opened the magazine to the ad and found the phone number. She waited as the phone rang, and checked the time. Three forty-five. Whoever was running the joint should still be in the office. Or wherever they did their business.

  “Hello?”

  No standard business greeting, no “how can I help you?” She double checked the number.

  “Hello?” the man said again, irritated.

  “Oh, sorry, hello. Um… are you renting out the cottage? I’m afraid I might have dialed wrong—
”

  “Yes, that’s me,” the man said, sounding suddenly professional.

  “Oh! Great. Well, um… I’m here in town, in front of the house actually. It looks good from here, ah… could I see it sometime soon?”

  “If you’d like to see it today I could be there in five minutes. Should I bring a lease?”

  Belle took another look at the dormant rose garden. “Yes,” she said decisively.

  “Great. See you in five. Oh, I’m Ruger, by the way. And you are…?”

  “Belle,” she told him. “Is everybody named after guns out here?”

  He laughed and ended the call. Belle shrugged. She remembered her coat this time, pulling it on before she hobbled out of the car. If she was going to tumble, she wanted to do it and recover before another breathtakingly handsome man was around to rescue her. Not that she was particularly expecting Ruger to be breathtaking, but in case he was… She’d had enough of playing the helpless female for one day.

  She caught herself before she fell this time, but nearly slammed herself in the door in the process. She caught her breath and reached in for her purse. The pain was dizzying, but she gritted her teeth against it. She was a strong, independent female, dammit, and no catastrophic injury was going to keep her down for long.

  She decided that the addition of the word catastrophic probably rendered her argument moot, but she ignored it. The longer she faked it, the better she would be. At least that’s what she told herself. At twenty-four, she was too young to resolve herself to a lifetime of gimpiness. She was too stubborn to entertain the idea that she might not ever be able to walk or run or dance without pain ever again.

  She slammed the car door with more force than necessary, causing a flash of pain to rip down her side. She took a deep breath and began the arduous journey to the sidewalk. She had just made it over the shallow curb, gasping in pain, when a man turned the corner and walked toward her. She’d been right to worry. He was gorgeous. Tall and slim, very fair, with a shock of white-blonde hair sticking haphazardly out from under his hood. His brilliant blue eyes took her breath away.