Breaking All the Rules

  Copyright © 2018 by, Kristen Flowers

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the author. Reviewers may quote brief passages in reviews. This is a work of fiction and any resemblance to persons, living or dead, or business establishments, events or locals is coincidental

  By Kristen Flowers

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  Table of Contents

  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

  Epilogue

  Chapter One

  Jenny

  I heaved a sigh as I slightly loosened the hair tie that held my bob during the workday. I pushed the elevator button to go up and waited patiently. My eyes felt like they were going to close at any moment. There was no reason I felt extra tired that evening compared to any other, but that didn’t stop me from wanting to crawl into bed and sleep until the morning. Of course, I knew that wasn’t going to happen. I had to finish work before even thinking about going to bed.

  Work didn’t stop when I left the office. It was the story of my life, that feeling of a never-ending list of things to do. Even in high school, I was never done studying; even after all my assignments were completed.

  I shifted my purse on my shoulder and gripped my briefcase as I climbed onto the elevator. My mind focused on the humming of the elevator as it raced up. I lived on one of the top floors of a luxury condominium building. And there wasn’t a day that went by that I didn’t curse myself for living so high up. I thought I would have liked the view, and the view was awesome. But I was practically never home. By the time I got to my building, I always wanted to topple over in exhaustion inside the long elevator ride.

  I know, first world problems.

  There was a ding and the doors slid open. It wasn’t until I was halfway down the hallway to my apartment that I saw a man standing in the middle of it. He was staring at me, waiting. I gave a tight-lipped smile as I approached him.

  “Good evening, Scott,” I said as cordially as I could, despite the tiredness evident in my voice.

  “Jenny! Hello! How was your day? I hope it was a good one. You’re home a little earlier than usual, or is it that I’m here earlier? We’re rarely getting back at the same time. Work at the hospital is never ending and all consuming. I think you still remember a little something of what that was like.”

  I looked at him and gave a measured response, “Yes, I remember very well. Private practice doesn’t grant much free time either, at least not in my experience.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t implying… I know how hard you work. There’s no doubt about that. You’ve always been so bright, applied and extremely dedicated. Not many can say they have a private practice at your age! Anyhow, it’s always something at the hospital. I’m always getting pulled into emergent surgeries. You know, that’s just how it goes when you’re the only one that’s dependable. Not that I mind. Of course, it’s a huge compliment that my colleagues admire me, and they all want me in their O.R.s! Plus, the more people I help and lives I save, the better. Today was calm as far as hospitals go and I’m actually not on call for once.”

  I watched Scott’s lips continue to move as he went on and on about his day, but I only caught snippets of what he was saying. It was more of the same. His conversations never really varied and, being particularly tired, I just wanted to get inside my place. I wanted to shower, finish up my work, and finally unwind. Scott could talk for years about school, work, and how awesome he was at everything. He only knew how to talk about his career, things that happened at work to him, and how oh so important he was as the head orthopedic surgeon at Johns Hopkins.

  “Oh, that’s good,” I said listlessly. I was trying to appease him long enough to say a polite goodbye and walk inside my door. But with Scott, things were never easy.

  “It was so different in medical school, wasn’t it? We had such great times back then, Jenny. Obviously, we were inundated with work, but our study parties and the jokes really helped get us through long nights. I still remember the time…”

  My mind wandered to a flashback of medical school. I remembered it all and I remembered it well. I never had long nights; I mainly had sleepless nights. For the most part, I was locked up in my room. I couldn’t help but wonder where the so-called fun ever came in. I worked hard all the time and studied every second I could; all to be at the top of my class.

  I had to be at the top. If I was going to make my family proud then the only way to go was to be the absolute best. You didn’t get to be the best by having study parties filled with laughs and jokes. It wasn’t until Scott coughed into his hand that I realized he was still droning on. I zoned back into the conversation as best as I could, but I had no idea what to say. I hadn’t paid attention to most of what he was going on about and none of it was worth replying to.

  Still, I couldn’t just stand in front of him in complete silence looking dumbfounded. I didn’t want to be rude. Being rude was high up on the list of one of the worst things a person could be. This was instilled in me as young as I could remember. My parents told me to always be polite.

  “Medical school,” I murmured.

  I wanted to say more. Well, I didn’t want to, but I felt like I had to. Unfortunately, there was nothing I could think of to say. Even still, a smile crossed Scott’s face. He took my indifference as some sort of agreement to everything he was saying.

  “I know,” Scott said quietly, taking a step closer to me.

  I woke up enough to come to my senses, “I’m really tired. Been a long day and I still have some things to take care of.” I took a step to the side, but Scott didn’t budge. I stared at him and wondered what it would take for him to leave me alone so I could get inside and shower. I thought of the warm water running over my tense, aching muscles.

  The tiredness I felt increased tenfold.

  “Ever think we’ll get so used to being tired all the time? I mean, it is sort of the life we signed up for. I think I’m getting a little more accustomed to it, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t mornings I don’t resent the sound of my alarm clock!” Scott laughed and looked at me expectantly.

  I just gave him a weak smile. He hadn’t said anything even remotely funny, but he was practically red in the face from laughing at his own ‘jokes’. I just wanted him to stop and move out of my way. Still, there was something deep inside me that forced me to be somewhat polite. My niceness had gotten me far in life, but I couldn’t shake the fact that it felt like a curse sometimes.

  I imagined the look of horror on my mother’s face if I were to be rude to Scott. And cutting him off to go inside would definitely be considered rude. At least by my parent’s standards.

  “I suppose I’m used to it, too. When I say I’m tired it’s just more than the usual.”

  “Makes sense. Makes a lot of sense, actually,” he nodded, “You’re really a force of nature, you know that, Jenny? I still
remember back in medical school how…”

  Once again, the words “medical school” made me zone out. Scott could drone on for hours about back when we met and everything he did at the hospital now. I finally let my dark brown hair loose and ran my fingers through it. My golden eyes drooped slightly from the exhaustion of the day, coupled with running into Scott. He was by far the most exhausting aspect of my day and I had only been talking to him for five minutes.

  “Goodness, look at me just going on and you haven’t even gotten a word in edgewise about your day or anything!”

  “Oh,” I said with a faint smile, “It was just another day, I suppose. I do have some paperwork I need to finish before tomorrow morning.”

  “Right,” he said, looking a bit crestfallen.

  “I don’t want to fall behind,” I explained with a reassuring tone of voice.

  Even though I didn’t want to stand in the hallway with him another second, I felt a tug of guilt when I saw his disappointed face.

  “I understand. Well, have a good night!” He said before finally stepping back into his condo.

  I leaned back against the wall and sighed. I took a moment to shut my eyes before quickly straightening up and walking into my apartment. It didn’t matter how tired I was, there were priorities I needed to take care of. I walked straight to my desk inside my home office and got to work finishing up notes for the last couple of patients I saw that day. It wasn’t until I was struggling to keep my eyes open that I finally stood up and went to the kitchen to make a cup of coffee.

  As the scent of the brew tickled the back of my nose, the tension in my shoulders felt worse. It wasn’t a foreign feeling. Actually, relaxed shoulders would have been strange to me. I couldn’t remember a time in my life where I didn’t carry so much stress in my upper back. I was always trying to meet extremely high expectations.

  I thought of Scott going on and on about medical school and how frivolous it seemed to waste time making that kind of conversation in the hallway. I never had time for “fun” in medical school. All I ever had time for was studying and then doing extra reading and practice to make sure I came out on top.

  My priority had always been to impress my family. Everything about my life was focusing on becoming a success and I had an excruciatingly narrow definition of what that was– my family’s definition of it. Yet Scott didn’t seem to realize any of this. He always just thought I was hardworking and talked about how much he admired me.

  As I poured my coffee I thought of the way he looked at me when singing my praises. I let out a heavy sigh as I looked down at the dark, hot liquid swirling around in my cup.

  He was clueless.

  Chapter Two

  Johnny

  “Ah, fuck,” I muttered, rolling off her as soon as I finished.

  “Are you, I mean, are we done?” She asked as she watched me grab a loose cigarette off my otherwise barren bedside table.

  I shrugged and lit my smoke. I didn’t offer her the sheet that had fallen on the floor or tissue to clean up. I didn’t even look at her. My eyes were focused on the cigarette smoke swirling in front of me. If I had so much as glanced sideways at her I would have seen the grimace on her face.

  “Um, maybe you were done but I certainly didn’t–”

  I rolled my eyes and finally turned to face her, “I think it’s time for you to get out of here. I’ve got things to do.”

  She scoffed and looked around at the bedroom. It wasn’t necessarily dingy, but it had that feel to it. She climbed off the bed and turned to look over me, arms crossed. My eyes remained focused on the swirls of cigarette smoke.

  “You’re an asshole.”

  “Whatever.”

  She picked the sheet up and threw it at me, knocking the cigarette out of my mouth and onto the floor. I cursed and hurriedly picked it up. I looked at it and then opened the window to toss it out before turning to glare at her.

  “Most assholes can at least satisfy a woman. You don’t even have that going…” she muttered under her breath as she slipped her dress back on with an angry tug.

  She walked out of the bedroom without so much as a glance back. I rolled my eyes and reached for another cigarette. The sound of scratching a match on the back of the box and lighting the “little cancer stick” was something I had really missed. I took a long, slow drag of the cigarette to really savor it. Although it wasn’t as good as sex, the feeling of smoke trickling into my body and then letting it out in one, smoky gust was incredibly satisfying.

  It felt good to have my first fuck since getting out of jail this time. There was no denying that. And she had been a hot one, too. She was almost a ten and, even though I always pulled hot women, it wasn’t often that I so quickly snagged one like her. It usually took me a few weeks out of jail to get back in to the swing of things.

  I hung my arm out the open window and let the cigarette embers fall out onto the street. I didn’t even stop to think about where they could land. I leaned back and shut my eyes. It was nice to be on a comfortable bed, a real bed. It was even better to be in a place of my own. No guards running batons across steel bars or irritating wannabes on the same cellblock. Being arrested for possession of stolen property meant I hadn’t been placed with the hardcore criminals, but some of them wanted to pretend they were. Those were the guys I hated the most. It was those guys that made me pump iron like crazy or else I’d be forced to use my fists. I always preferred deterrence.

  It paid off though. I got out of jail even more built than before and that meant all the women were practically drooling over me … not that I wasn’t used to that already. What really paid off was having a damn good lawyer. Others described the attorney as a scumbag, but he was brilliant at his job. He actually convinced the judge that all I needed was a little rehab, along with counseling and ‘life skills’ programs. He argued the theft wasn’t pure malice or an easy way to get money. The crime was a cry for help.

  And that argument won.

  The bedroom door creaked, and my eyes shot open. I was ready to have to find a harsher way to kick this bimbo out, but it was just my friend Marlow. He had an ice-cold beer in his hand.

  He took a swig before a huge smirk stretched across his face, “Aren’t you ever worried your dick is gonna fall off from fucking all those…”

  “All those whores? Nah.”

  “I wasn’t going to say, whores, Johnny, but whatever. I forget you don’t worry about things.”

  “Are you going to start riding me already? It’s hard to take you seriously with that beer in your hand. Besides, I just got done riding so I’m good for a while.”

  Marlow rolled his eyes and shook his head, “It was a comment. Don’t act like it’s not true.”

  “Never said it wasn’t. But I just got done serving time where I dealt with plenty of bullshit so-”

  “I’m not giving you bullshit, damn. Anyway, saw her leave. She was hot. She’s probably a lot nicer when she wasn’t just treated like shit.”

  I shrugged, “How else am I gonna get my rocks off? Getting married and fucking the same girl every night? That shit isn’t going to work for me. It doesn’t work for anyone.”

  “I know, I know. That’s where you get your ‘everyone cheats’ theory.”

  “I missed the sex and smokes,” I admitted.

  “You have to get right, John.”

  “John? The fuck, man, don’t even start with that. I was in jail following rules way too long and listening to jackasses call me ‘John’ all day long.”

  “More of a reason to stay out of jail,” he murmured over the rim of his beer bottle.

  “What kind of life would I have, then? Fuck that. I don’t want some boring shit. No point in living that way.”

  Marlow shook his head, “You know, that is what most people do. After all, everyone can’t be a criminal forever. Not everyone’s interested in spending the rest of their lives paying attorneys to keep them out of jail. Not everyone wants to treat women like noth-”<
br />
  I scoffed. I waved him off and turned to look out the window. I was done with that conversation. Marlow knew just as well as I did that things weren’t about to change. There was no point in it.

  “You come in here for a reason?” I asked, speaking to him almost as dismissively as I had to the woman that had just left.

  “Apart from asking if your dick was going to fall off? Yeah,” he laughed, “I was going to ask if you wanted some food. There are some leftovers in the fridge.”

  “Nah.”

  “All right, more for me,” he shrugged before turning and walking away.

  I flicked the cigarette out the window and ruffled my black hair. I needed to get something done to it. I was too good looking and in too good of shape to let my hair look like shit. I smirked smugly. Even with my hair looking like shit I pulled a sexy girl. I practically patted myself on the back before laying down and stretching.