Wrecked: Destiny Falls, #3

By Shaw Hart

This story starts with a break-in. 

Madelyn Freya has always had things come easy for her. She's outgoing, smart, pretty, comes from a loving family. So why isn't she happy?

She thought that it was just growing pains, a side effect of growing up in a small town and that she would be able to find herself when she went off to college.

Instead, she found Flynn.

He broke into her dorm room one night by mistake and while she should have been terrified, she was drawn to the crazy man.

Now they're graduated and back in her hometown of Destiny Falls. They're closer than ever, living together and things seem perfect.

There's just one problem.

She's in love with him.

When Flynn gets a job offer halfway across the world, will Madelyn be able to work up the courage to tell him how she really feels before it's too late? Or will her admission ruin the friendship that they have?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Shaw Hart
• Release date: Apr 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9798223809876

Book preview

Chapter One

Madelyn

I twirl around in my office chair, counting down the minutes until it’s time to head home. It’s Friday, and that means movie night with Flynn. I would never tell him, but it’s my favorite time of the entire week.

My phone buzzes on my desk and I stop spinning long enough to grab it. My foot pushes off and I go twirling once again as I unlock it and smile at the message he just sent me.

Flynn: T minus twenty-five minutes.

Madelyn: Shouldn’t you be working?

Flynn: Shouldn’t YOU be working?

What movie are we watching tonight? Flynn says as he walks into my office, scaring the crap out of me.

Flynn is tall and naturally thin, something that absolutely drives me insane. With the amount of food that he eats at every meal, he shouldn’t be so fit. It’d be really annoying if he wasn’t such a good guy.

He’s always smiling.

Always.

It’s one of many things to love about Flynn. Though I’ll admit I used to wonder if he was on drugs. Turns out he just has a good sense of humor and is always looking on the bright side.

Flynn has dark-blue eyes and a thick crop of dark-brown hair that always seems to be just a touch too long, even after he gets a haircut. There’s this one section that is always falling across his forehead and it has my fingers twitching to brush it away whenever I see it.

Are you trying to kill me? I ask, my heartbeat racing under my hand.

My fingers curl into my shirt slightly when I see that damn piece of hair hanging down across his left eyebrow.

He’s over here looking like a damn model, and I’m sure that I look like a mess. I can tell my hair has started to fall out of the bun, so half of my red locks are hanging down around my face and shoulders.

I woke up early this morning to head into work so my eyes probably have dark circles under them and my shirt has a stain on it from when I spilled some mustard on it at lunch.

Yes. I have been since the night we met, but for some reason you’re really hard to kill, he deadpans as he collapses into the chair across from my desk.

Maybe you’re just really bad at it, I tease him and he grins.

Flynn and I met five years ago, and it started with a crime.

Well, sort of.

See, our story starts with a break-in.

I was at college, when one night, this dark-haired man practically leapt through my dorm room window. I had been watching a scary movie at the time and he freaked me the hell out.

I opened my mouth to scream when he looked at the television screen, looked at me with those dark-blue eyes, and said, You know that it was all a dream, right?

I stared at him with my mouth open for a solid minute, wondering if he really just ruined the movie for me. Then he stood up, dusted himself off, and introduced himself.

I’m Flynn, by the way. I like your taste in movies.

He towered over me, and I had to crane my neck up to maintain eye contact. I should have been freaked out, but I was still hung up on the fact that he had just blown the ending of the movie, so I must not have been thinking clearly. When he gave me that crooked grin and stuck his hand out, his brown hair curling over his eyes, I shook his hand, even if it was against my better judgment to do so.

Um, I’m Madelyn.

That one meeting was all it took, and we’ve been inseparable ever since. We spent all of college hanging out or studying together. He came home with me for most of our school breaks and holidays. We even shared an apartment together for our sophomore through senior years.

We were so close that he ended up moving back to Destiny Falls with me after graduation. He said that he could work from anywhere and since he wasn’t sure what his next steps would be, he wanted to take some time to think it through.

That was five years ago, and he’s never left. Something that I will always be grateful for. I don’t know what I would do if he moved away, and I didn’t get to see him every day.

He’s been there for me when I was sick or freaking out about taking over the family business. He’s been my cheerleader and held my hand when I needed the extra support, and I will always be grateful for that.

In the meantime, Flynn built up his own graphic design business and helps me out around the house. I inherited it from my parents when they retired and moved to warmer weather. Truthfully, I think they bought it for me as a bit of an apology because they dropped the business on me and ended up leaving town right after.

Still, I suppose I can’t complain. I don’t have to pay a mortgage or rent and it’s a pretty sweet house. It’s a two story that was just remodeled. It has plenty of room and is just off of Main Street with a superb view of the water.

What are we watching tonight? Flynn asks, grabbing one of the chocolates out of the bowl that I keep on my desk and popping it into his mouth.

Do I get to choose? I ask, wondering if he forgot that I picked last week, and it’s his turn.

No, he says as he grabs my water bottle and unscrews the cap.

I roll my eyes at him, helping himself to my things.

So, which romantic comedy am I sitting through tonight, then? I ask as I click around on my computer, saving the work I had been doing and logging off.

I’m thinking something classic.

So, something from the eighties, I deadpan and he smirks at me.

I groan and he laughs, standing up and offering me his hand as I make my way around my desk. My office at the back of the Destiny Falls Market is a bit of a mess, with papers and boxes stacked up everywhere. I’m still working on making this place my own and setting up my own system, so it’s a bit of a disaster. My friend Sutton’s boyfriend, Teller, is a firefighter, and he likes to tell me that it’s a fire hazard. I know he’s probably right, but I do better in chaos.

Or at least that’s what I like to tell myself, since I hate cleaning.

I slip my hand into Flynn’s, doing my absolute best to ignore how it sends shivers down my arm and has my heartbeat running like a thoroughbred after the race bell sounds.

I’ve been in love with Flynn since the night I met him. He ended up sticking around that night and we watched another movie. I think he could tell that I was homesick and more than a little lonely, so he hung out with me for the rest of the night.

We bonded over movies and our mutual dislike for frat parties, and by the time the sun was coming up, I had a new best friend. We’ve been best friends ever since.

I also had a pretty big crush on my brand-new best friend.

It was hard not to. He’s hilarious, a genuinely sweet guy who is always willing to help out a friend, and he’s hotter than all of the guys in a fireman calendar combined.

For five years, I’ve kept my feelings to myself because I know that if I ever told him, it would wreck everything between us.

He once told me that if a guy was into someone, then they would find a way to be with them. That they would ask them out or respond to texts. Actually, scratch that, I think that we were watching He’s Just Not That Into You and it was Justin Long’s character who said that, but Flynn didn’t disagree with it and it seems like solid advice.

Flynn has never told me that he’s into me. He’s never asked me out on a date or made a move. Sure, he always texts me back, but we’re best friends, so that’s normal. Things have always been easy between us, so if I told him how I felt, I know that he would let me down easy and then things would be so awkward between us that we would stop hanging out altogether.

And I can’t have that.

I need him in my life and if the only way that I can have him is as a friend, then I need to live with that.

Flynn’s fingers squeeze around mine as I slip past him and head out of my office, and I don’t dare look back. I can feel my cheeks are hot with a blush and I don’t want him to ask me why. I’m not sure he would believe it’s hot in here when I only started blushing as we were leaving my office.

I’m not that lucky, though.

Flynn gives me a strange look, his finger running over my cheek and I force a smile, praying that he doesn’t say anything.

When he doesn’t, I’m not sure if I should be relieved or let down.

Flynn is my best friend and usually he can read me better than most. That leaves me with two options. Either he can see how I feel about him and doesn’t want to say anything because he doesn’t feel the same way and is hoping to avoid all of the awkwardness, or maybe I really have just gotten better at hiding things and not letting my face say everything that I’m not.

Did you already grab us snacks? I ask him as we head down the short hallway and out into the grocery store.

No, I was waiting to see what you were in the mood for.

I nod, grabbing a shopping basket and heading down the first aisle. Flynn grabs the basket from me easily and I roll my eyes at his chivalry as he follows after me.

I ran into Iris on the way over here, he says as I peruse the chip aisle.

Yeah? Is she still hiding from Arlo?

Yep. Poor guy was unloading beer outside for like an hour and a half just to catch a glimpse of her.

She hid inside her store the whole time? I ask, and he nods.

I sigh. Iris is my oldest friend and my best girl friend. We grew up in Destiny Falls together and stayed in touch when I went away to college. She was ecstatic when I moved back and it’s been amazing getting to see and talk to her every day. She owns the antiques store in town, Blast From The Past, and has always loved old things. Her shop is right down the street from the market and we grab lunch together most days.

Iris and I are complete opposites. She’s quiet and controlled, whereas I can be loud and a bit of a mess sometimes. I’m dramatic and tend to not think things through.

I was the one that nearly got us arrested in high school after we went skinny dipping at the beach. I was the one who convinced Iris to spend an entire summer working on construction sites. The pay was pretty good, and we got a workout in every day! We also got sunburned and came home so sweaty and tired every night that we didn’t end up doing much of anything else that whole summer.

I was always able to talk her into things, or maybe she just went along with it because we were best friends. Either way, without me, Iris would have lived a very dull life. Luckily for her, she has me to pull her into a wild adventure from time to time because she tends to think things through so much that she never actually does it.

Take, for instance, her and Arlo. He’s a bartender at The Fainting Goat pub, the bar in town that is right across from her store. The guy has been crazy about her since we first went there, but she can barely say two words to him.

I know that she likes him and that they would be perfect for each other, but every time I tell her that, she reminds me about my feelings for Flynn. She says that she’ll talk to Arlo when I finally tell Flynn that I love him.

That’s not going to happen, so I guess that we’re both going to die alone. Well, not alone. We’ll have each other.

Maybe she’ll make a move soon, I say and Flynn snorts.

I know what he’s thinking and I smile, correcting my statement.

"Okay, okay, then maybe he’ll make a move soon."

"He’s just as awkward around her as she is around him, so if we’re waiting on him, then it’s going to be a while.