Strung Along, page 1
STRUNG ALONG
CHERRY PEAK
HANNAH COWAN
CONTENTS
Author’s Note
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Epilogue
Extended Epilogue
Untitled
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Portions of this book are works of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblances to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, are entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2024, By Hannah Cowan
All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information, address the publisher.
Cover designed by: Silver @Bittersagedesigns
Edited and proofed by: @oneloveediting
Interior Illustrations by: Jordan Burns @joburns.designs
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Before diving into this book, please know that there will be mention of a parental death. It does not take place on page, but is described in small detail.
Thank you,
Hannah xx
Dedicated to every single one of us who has ever dreamed of being the heroine in a small-town cowboy romance. May Brody Steele and Cherry Peak help fill that void.
1
ANNALISE
There are few things I hate in this world as much as a thong.
Between the string trying to crawl inside of me with every shift of my thighs and the perpetual feeling of having a wedgie, I’m usually stuffing any I’ve been peer pressured into buying into the back of my drawer. Panty lines? I embrace them. They’re better than having my butt cheeks flossed.
If it weren’t for the birthday surprise I suspect Stewart is planning for me tonight, I would have slipped on my favourite pair of 100 percent cotton briefs instead of the red thong with the tag still attached. His favourite dress of mine is a tight, silky thing from one of my favourite boutiques that doesn’t allow for underwear. Not the visible kind. It will be worth the pain, though. I know it will be.
I smooth my hands down my generous hips and dart my eyes to where my phone lies on the bed. For the third time in the past couple of minutes, the screen is dark, no new messages waiting for me. Like every time before, I brush it off. Stewart didn’t have to tell me that he’s planning anything for me to know he is.
We’ve been dating for three years, engaged and living together for just over two of them. He’s always done something grand for my birthday. His giving soul is one of the things I love most about him. The incredibly successful, classically handsome man I met after one of my sister’s animal shelter fundraisers turned a girl against marriage into one who didn’t hesitate to say yes when he dropped to one knee at our special spot—the Oak Bay Marina in Vancouver—and asked me to be his wife.
Every year since, we’ve celebrated my birthday with a big party on his company’s yacht despite the slight chill of October in Vancouver. Last year, he hired a string quartet to play me a collection of my favourite songs. I’ve tried not to let my expectations for this year fly too high, but I’m only human.
With a final brush of my fingers through my pin-straight hair, I nod and spin to grab my phone. A swipe across the screen tells me there still aren’t any new messages. But after a quick look at our shared location, I know he’s at the marina, most likely so busy finalizing everything that he forgot to tell me when I should be there. I figured six o’clock was a safe bet since that’s when the party was last year. My sister’s lack of response to my text asking when she was told to arrive only confirms that she must already be on her way.
It takes half an hour to get to the marina from our high-rise condo, but the drive is easy. The long walk from the parking lot to the docks is the more tedious part, especially in these wedges. My deep red nail-polished toes wink at me when I step out of the car and into the setting sun’s light.
A spark of confusion appears in my mind at the lack of familiar vehicles in the parking lot. My mom’s new Jeep—a gift from her new husband—is hard to miss with its new orange paint job, but it’s nowhere to be seen. Maybe I’m just early.
“Oh my gosh, you shouldn’t have,” I gasp, beginning to practise what I’ll say when I arrive. “This is the sweetest thing ever! An ice sculpture of my perfect figure? You’ve outdone yourself this year.”
My following snort is loud and gross. An ice sculpture would be beyond my expectations, but I’m definitely not opposed to it.
The Band-Aids I stuck to my heels in preparation for the walk to the docks work like a charm when the marina finally comes into view and not a hint of a blister has appeared. The cool ocean breeze sweeps through my hair and over my warm skin, reminding me of why I love it here so much. Seagulls soar through the air above the dock, leading the way to where the yacht waits.
It’s quiet when I approach the back end and step on board, the water softly lapping at the sides, rocking it side to side. Climbing the stairs that lead to the sliding glass door, my stomach rolls, a prickle of doubt nestling into my mind at the continued silence.
The door slides open, unlocked. “Stewart?” I call softly, stepping inside.
Worry pierces my chest. There’s no sign of a party. No sign of anything or anyone besides the open back door.
Each one of my steps clicks on the wood floors as I walk through the open layout of the kitchen and sitting room. I focus on the open door that leads to the first deck. “Stewart?”
Nobody replies. It’s too silent . . . until a high-pitched cry punctures that quiet calm. My pace kicks up into a jog as I rush toward the door, snagging the fire extinguisher from where it sits in the corner of the sitting room on my way. I don’t even know how to use a fire extinguisher—which is a total safety hazard—but I won’t be using it to put out a fire. I’ll smash it into someone’s face if I have to instead.
The sound of flesh slapping against flesh turns my blood cold. A deafening whoosh fills my ears. Each step out the door feels sluggish.
“Stewart?” I call, the name sounding pitifully weak.
It takes all I have not to collapse on the deck as my knees wobble. The scene unfolding in front of me is nothing more than a cruel, cruel joke. I’m having a nightmare, my real body tucked nice and safe and happy in our bed. Our. Bed.
My shaky gasp hits the air like a gunshot. It’s the woman who notices me first, her pale green eyes going wide as her cheeks pale. The red flush that was there a blink ago is gone. But the sweat on her forehead is still there.
She doesn’t look away, and neither do I. Not even when she drops her legs from where they were just wrapped tight around Stewart’s waist, and certainly not when she raises a shaking hand to her swollen lips and then has the decency to at least cover her bare chest with her forearm.
“You said she was gone!” she shrieks at my fiancé.
My stomach threatens to fall to the floor when he whips his head to finally stare at me.
Stewart’s shoulders are bare to match the rest of his body. The scratch marks zigzagging across the expanse of them are new. Lord knows I’ve never felt enough pleasure from sex with him to mark his skin that way. His always perfectly swooped chestnut hair is messy, sticking up every which way. From her fingers, no doubt. Not mine.
Not my fingers. Not my scratches. Not my legs that were just wrapped around him. Not. My. Anything.
The rock on my finger suddenly weighs a million pounds. The silver ring burns my skin like acid.
“Anna—”
“It’s my birthday,” I blurt out, as if that means anything now.
He rubs his eyes, blinking repeatedly, as if he can’t believe this is actually happening. That I’m here. That I spoiled his plans.
“It’s my birthday, and this is what you’re doing.” I will my voice to remain steady, hard. The cold weight in my hands is a reminder that I don’t have an open one to smack him across the face. “Three years wasted on you.”
“Anna, baby. I don’t know what happened—I just—fuck. Time got away from me, and I just forg—”
I release a tight, painful exhale. Each breath feels like I’m swallowing fire. “Time got away from you?” With a shake of my head, I push forward. “How long?”
The strong cheekbones
“It was an accident.”
The woman he’s still inside gapes at his words. She’s beautiful, I realize. Even with her mouth twisted in disgust, she’s beautiful. All long limbs, perfectly placed muscles, and flawless skin. My stomach sinks further.
“Only now it was an accident? What about the first fifty times?” she asks him.
Betrayal morphs into rage. My body overheats with it. “How long has this been going on?” I ask through clenched teeth.
“Months!” the woman screeches. Finally, she shoves him away from her, and I glance at the sky when they separate. “For months, he’s been taking me here!”
“She’s lying,” Stewart blubbers.
With a careful sweep of my eyes, I take him in as he shoves his dick into his pants and frantically zips them up. He leaves them unbuttoned. Those perfectly ironed suit pants he loves so much, now crinkled and dirty.
My palms are slick around the fire extinguisher, but I don’t let it slip from my grasp. When I adjust my hold on it, Stewart glances down.
“Why do you have that? Put it down,” he orders. “Don’t do anything crazy.”
I follow his eyes, focusing on the silver handle that’s tucked beneath my fingers and the pin that remains in place. The woman shuffles where she’s sitting, most likely trying to put her clothes on.
“Crazy?” The laugh I let rip through the space between us is anything but sane.
“Yes, crazy! You’re freaking me out. Relax before you do something stupid.”
“Do something stupid,” I echo, stroking the side of the fire extinguisher. “Like fucking someone who isn’t your fiancée? Who isn’t the woman you’re about to marry in a year? The one who has already bought her dress and told everyone she’s marrying a good man? You don’t get to call me crazy. You don’t get to tell me to relax.”
The nameless woman slinks off the dining table and stands beside him. She doesn’t try to leave despite the way he spoke about her. My chest cracks wide open as I finally register the way she admitted they’ve been together for a while. Often.
My hold on my emotions is faltering. I’ve always been bad at remaining calm when I’m upset, but this . . . this isn’t some small fight or misunderstanding. This is so much more than that.
There’s no going back from this.
It’s that thought that has me pulling the pin on the fire extinguisher and squeezing the lever, dousing the couple in white foam.
2
ANNALISE
I can still feel the extinguisher foam on my fingers the next morning despite how many times I scrubbed my hands. My sister is practically burning the carpet with her frantic pacing, rage lighting her usual soft eyes. They’re a bright blue, so unlike my brown.
She apologizes for what feels like the millionth time, and I tell her to cut it out for the millionth and one.
When I showed up at her rental house last night after nearly tossing my ring into the marina and sobbing in my car for an hour, she took me in without a word needing to have been spoken between us. One look at me and she knew. The apologies came once I told her what happened. Every gut-wrenching detail of it. It took everything in me to convince her to hold off until today to enact our revenge.
We took one step into the condo Stewart and I share—shared, I guess—before she was stalking off to the bedroom to find my luggage. An hour later, all of my clothes and important belongings are tucked away, ready for a new home. I wish I felt the same.
There’s nothing about this condo that expresses who I am, yet it was home. The place I thought I would be coming back to after my wedding. Where we would start our newlywed life together and create a lifetime more memories. Good ones and bad ones, but not like this.
“I should have checked my phone sooner,” she huffs, eyeing the suit jacket on Stewart’s side of the closet. My half is empty. Absolutely empty amongst the expensive suit jackets and golf shirts.
“Knock it off, Braxton. I would much rather you have been taking care of my sick nephew than dealing with my problems,” I chastise her. “Not to mention you were out all day with your in-laws.”
She curls her fingers into fists. “Either way, I want to string that guy up a flagpole by his tiny balls!”
Her husband, Maddox, winces from where he watches us from his position in the doorway. Sympathy is heavy in his stance, and I continue to ignore it. Sure, my heart might ache like a mofo right now, but this is not the end of my world. Stewart doesn’t deserve to have that power over me.
Maybe if I repeat that over and over and over again, it might help take the pain away as well as the bottle of wine did last night.
“Oh, don’t give us that look, Anna. You’ve never turned down the idea of dishing out a healthy dose of revenge.” Braxton tightens her stare on me. “There are ideas in that beautiful head of yours, I know it.”
“Of course there are. I’m just trying to work out what I want to start with.”
Maddox winces. “That’s never a good sign.”
“You know what else wasn’t a good sign?” I pause, waiting for them to guess the answer to my rhetorical question. Anger flushes my cheeks. “That he refused to let me snoop on his phone! Work, work, work, he always said, but I should have known better! Nobody needs to take their phone to the shower in case of a work call! God, I’m naive. A naive idiot who sat back in la-la land while their fiancé was hooking up with a gorgeous woman who was not me,” I rant, a sharp sting attacking the back of my eyes.
Braxton stomps toward me before dropping to a squat, hands on my knees. I hate the way tears drip down my cheeks. Hate that my wounds are still so fresh, my sense of self-worth cracking further and deeper with each reminder of them. Being in this bedroom, a place that was once a happy, safe space . . .
I want to shatter the walls and ruin everything he’s ever loved. But more than that, I want to curl up on the bed, breathe in his cologne, and cry for the foreseeable future. Three years of my life I’ve spent with Stewart. I’ll never get that time back.
“What am I supposed to do now?” I ask her, my voice little more than a whimper.
“I think you need to get all your shit out of here and then start embracing the rage prowling beneath your skin. Once you’ve let it have its moment, you work on healing yourself. You repair the damage he caused while moving on with your life. You’re too strong to allow this man to stop you from accomplishing everything you’ve ever wanted in life. He was never worthy of you.”
Thick black curls fall into my sister’s eyes, and I fight back a weak smile when she lifts a hand to flick them away. I used to always want hair like hers, and she wanted hair like mine. We used to waste our shooting star wishes on somehow swapping styles when we were younger. My sister is my best friend. Nobody has ever been able to compete with her, even when we used to spend too many days picking on one another growing up.
“If he was never worthy of me, then why did you approve of him?” I ask her.
“I never did,” Maddox puts in. The cheeky grin he gives us has my sister flipping him off.
“You’re a no-good suck-up, Maddox. Go do something useful and keep watch for Ewie Stewie.”
I shake my head, the small flicker of humour that had sparked inside of me quickly snuffed out. “He won’t be home for a few hours.”
He came home last night begging and pleading for me to speak to him. To just listen to what I have to say, he said. But after ten minutes of me screaming at him to go loud enough to wake the neighbours, he took off with his tail between his legs and a promise to try and speak with me again after work today. Once I’ve calmed down enough to listen.
“You know what, Anna? Get up,” Braxton orders with a slap to both my knees. After rising to her feet, she goes right back to the closet, beginning to yank hangers off the rod. “Get up and wipe your tears. I’m not allowing you to wallow. Not when you’re still so angry. Rightfully so.”
“What do you want me to do? Throw a tantrum?”
