47 Things Read online

  47 Things

  a standalone novel

  by Lilliana Anderson

  Copyright 2015, Lilliana Anderson

  All rights reserved

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means without the prior written permission of the author of this book.

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead is purely coincidental. Any actual places, products or events mentioned are used in a purely fictitious manner. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various places/products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission and is by no way sponsored by the trademark owners.

  SYNOPSIS

  ***CONTENT WARNING*** New Adult Standalone Romance for ages 18+ due to sex scenes and adult situations.

  "What's your name, sweetheart?"....

  That was the first thing. I wasn't his sweetheart, and he should have already known my name. But, that was the moment I became caught in Tyler Lohan's sight. He was wonderful and complicated, and I'd spent my life trying to hate him for being the golden boy who had everything so easy. However, as with all things, Tyler wasn’t the person he appeared to be from the outside, and once I saw him – the real him – I fell, and I don’t think I ever got back up.

  There would be a total of forty-seven things that sucked me into Tyler's life then forced me away. Forty-seven things that ruined me forever.

  Forty-seven was never going to be enough.

  There was no number great enough...

  47 Things. A standalone new adult romance that follows a couple as they come to terms with falling love in a world they can't control, and the certainty of the inevitable.

  Contents

  Foreward

  Playlist

  Prologue

  SPRING, 2010

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  SUMMER, 2010

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  19

  AUTUMN, 2011

  20

  21

  22

  23

  24

  WINTER, 2011

  25

  26

  27

  28

  SPRING, 2011

  29

  30

  31

  32

  SUMMER, 2011

  33

  34

  35

  36

  Epilogue

  Books by Lilliana Anderson

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  Connect with me

  Foreward

  You will need tissues. I’m not going to lie about that. 47 Things has been one of those stories that has lived in my mind for quite some time. And honestly, I struggled to write it. Firstly, just because it was emotionally taxing for me – I’m one of those writers who enters the heads of her characters and feels what they feel, so it was hard to sit at the computer and live through this with the characters, and it took me over a year of stop-starting to actually get through the first draft. Secondly, I struggled because this isn’t the ‘normal’ kind of book I write, and it’s possible that no one will even want to read something from me that doesn’t involve a love triangle and a troubled past.

  But, the characters in 47 Things were too loud in my head, and I couldn’t ignore them for long. While I’m nervous about how readers are going to react to the story in the following pages, I’m proud of putting together this beautiful story of love when fear could have easily won.

  I hope you enjoy 47 Things.

  Playlist

  A list of the songs to set the tone of 47 Things. Enjoy

  You’re the One That I Want – The Lennings

  Chandelier – Sia

  Do You Remember – Jarryd James

  Young and Beautiful – Lana Del Rey

  Street Spirit (Fade Out) – Radiohead

  Beautiful Hell – Adna

  Turning Page – Sleeping at Last

  Bullet Proof…I Wish I was – S.Carey

  I’m Kissing You – Des’ree

  No Rest – Dry the River

  Hold Back The River – James Bay

  I Lived – OneRepublic

  Listen via Spotify using the following link

  https://open.spotify.com/user/1296930001/playlist/6Obq024Xgs5DG3LrDK4fJ1

  Prologue

  I’d like to tell you a story about two lovers.

  Now, before you go rolling your eyes and say that love stories are for sissies, I want to also tell you that this story is about courage and learning to let go and put others needs ahead of one’s own desires.

  It’s about a boy and a girl who were raised side by side in the country, but didn’t find each other until they were in a big city.

  It’s about coincidence. It’s about fate. It’s about choice and understanding. But most of all, it’s about the power of undying love, and promises of forever; because really, all the best stories are love stories, and all the best stories are about forevers – even when sometimes, forever isn’t particularly long.

  This story has already happened, and there’s no changing its outcome, although, if anyone ever invents a time machine they can sign me up so I can live it over and over again, exactly was it was, because this story is about me and my golden boy who always promised to find a way back to me.

  SPRING, 2010

  1

  HOW WOULD you even write the sound that spitting makes? Pttoohey? Tchoo? I’ve never known. But, it's a sound that’s always caused my throat to constrict and my stomach to sour every time I’ve heard it. So much so, that I’d tend to close my eyes and turn my head as a revolted shudder ran through my body. It's a reaction I’ve always been unable to control, and on this particular day in my life, it was both the worst, and the best reaction I could have had…

  Walking up the university’s pathway, there was a bounce to my step as I clutched my books and folder to my chest, inhaling the warmth of the aromatic October air. Spring had arrived, and I was ready to complete my degree in physiotherapy at Sydney University and embark on the next phase of my life – a phase that would see me helping people heal their bodies, instead of dealing daily with the sports focused jocks who were walking up ahead of me. They only cared about athletes and football stats. And they drove me insane with their noise, and their competitive muscle flexing. Although, I wasn’t going to let them bother me any longer, not when I was so close to donning that cap and gown and skipping off into the sunset to live my awesome life jock free.

  Tchoo!

  I knew it was probably one of the jocks up ahead responsible for that horridly disgusting and unnecessary abomination of a bodily function. Again, I reminded myself that I wasn’t going to let them bother me. But, that dreaded sound turned my smile into a downward curve as the bile rose in my throat. I closed my eyes, trying to control the visceral reaction I was having by focusing on placing one foot in front of the other and pretending I wasn't disgusted to my very core.

  As my foot hit the concrete, a soft squishiness beneath the sole of my favourite pair of ballet flats tilted me off balance, causing me to let out a yelp as I tipped forward. To save myself, my arms shot out, flinging my notes and books in a fluttering snowstorm of papers around me as I stumbled forward, my foot twisting, my shoe remaining stuck to the pavement. I went down like a sack of potatoes and landed
on the hard concrete with a thump.

  “Fucking. Arse!” I growled, as my nerve endings caught on fire where my knees had dragged along the rough ground.

  Trying to right myself, things just got worse as pain radiated up my leg from my ankle. “Fuck my life,” I grumbled to myself, feeling my eyes begin to sting as I sat in the middle of the pathway with grazed knees and hands, a missing shoe and a mess of paper around me. I was a very undignified Cinderella.

  I held back the sob in my throat and ignored the sting still pushing at the back of my eyes, as I tried to rectify my situation by reaching out to at least put my shoe back on. Then things just got worse.

  “You can't be serious!” I moaned, as I lifted my shoe and dragged a long string of green gum along with it. Muttering to myself, I found a piece of blank paper in the mess and did my best to remove the offending goop. “Who the fuck spits gum on the pavement anyway?” I complained, balling up the paper and adding it to the mess beside me.

  “Ah, that would be me. I'm so sorry. It will never happen again. I…I didn’t think,” a male voice said from beside me. I had a pretty good idea who it was and did my best to keep my head down and turned away from him. I’d avoided talking to him for this long. I didn’t want to ruin a perfect four years.

  “Just leave me alone,” I said, hurrying to collect the papers around me so I could get away from him.

  He began to help. “Are you OK?”

  Fighting back tears of anger, frustration and humiliation, I shook my head. “Of course I’m not OK. Just leave – you’ve done enough,” I responded, trying to pull the pages from his obscenely lovely hands. I always hated that about Tyler Lohan. No matter where he was, or what he was doing, he always looked perfect, right down to his lovely fingernails.

  Those long lovely fingers of his pressed into the pages and refused to let go. For a moment, we engaged in a tug of war, and when he wouldn’t let go, I glanced up to meet his eyes. “Let go,” I demanded.

  He grinned, recognition in his ice blue eyes. Although at this point, I didn’t know if it was because I’ve been in the majority of his classes for the last four years, or if he actually remembered me from high school, where we shared classes for a further six years, or primary school...Tyler Lohan had been a part of my life for as long as I could remember. Oddly, I’d never been a part of his. In fact, it’s possible this was the first time we’d ever made eye contact or even spoken to each other. You see, guys like Tyler were the golden boys of this world. They didn’t mix with the awkward girls like me that woke up looking like shit and actually had to work hard to get what they had in life – their looks included. We couldn’t all be born looking like GQ models – the tamed curls I sported to my shoulders came at a price that involved a lot of time and a lot of product. Not that Tyler would even notice…

  “I know you, don’t I?” he asked, tilting his head a little to the side, as his eyes crinkled in his adorable way while his mouth turned up a little at the side. I hated how good-looking he was with his natural golden tan, and fashionably messy golden hair. He could have been next Chris Hemsworth if he gave up sports science for acting.

  “I doubt it,” I responded with little feeling, seizing the opportunity to retrieve my papers from his hand.

  His grip tightened. “No. I do know you. What’s your name, sweetheart?”

  “It’s none of your business, because I’m not your sweetheart.” I tugged on the papers again.

  “Let me help you,” he insisted, his voice soft with a hint of amusement as I rolled my eyes and released the pages into his care. By this point, I just really wanted to get off the ground and get on with my day.

  Quickly, he collected the rest of my papers and handed them to me with a smile. “See, that wasn’t so hard, was it?” he commented, reaching out one of his long fingers to tap one of the lose spiral curls that hung about my face.

  Taking them, I flinched out of his reach and slapped the papers on top of my books before I tucked them under my arm. “You have no idea,” I replied with a roll of my eyes as I planted my feet and forced myself to stand.

  Huge mistake.

  "Holy cra–" I cried out, as a sharp pain sliced through my ankle and sent spots floating through my vision. I stumbled, almost releasing my paper and books again, but managing to maintain my balance thanks to a strong set of hands reaching out to grip my waist.

  "Whoa, steady. Are you badly hurt?" he asked, peering down at me from his great height, a look of concern in his eyes.

  "I’m fine," I lied, putting my weight on my injured foot. I winced again, but managed to grit my teeth and take a few tentative steps away from him.

  “See? I’m just awesome,” I forced out, my voice shaking from the pain I was going through.

  "No. You're not fine. You're limping," he stated. "Besides, you're walking away without your shoe."

  Realising he was right, I stopped hobbling and turned toward him, reaching out to snatch my shoe from his hand.

  "Thank you," I quipped, dropping it onto the pavement and trying to slide my foot into it.

  "It won't fit," he pointed out, moving to crouch in front of me to inspect the elephant’s foot that had decided to attach itself to my leg where my foot should be. "It’s blown up like a balloon. It could be broken."

  "It's fine,” I insisted.

  “No. It’s not. Let me take you to the hospital to get an x-ray.”

  “I have to get to class.”

  He grinned but shook his head. “What you have to do, is quit being so stubborn. I’m taking you to the hospital,” he said before leaning down and scooping me up in his arms.

  I let out my second shriek of the day, and demanded that he put me down, and it surprised me that not one person on that university campus came to my rescue – not even my best friend Janesa, who I saw standing there gawking at me. I didn’t quit complaining the entire way back to the car park where he inserted me into the passenger side of his black Navara, which was almost the size of a truck and could probably fit my Ford Ka in its tray.

  “You’re an arsehole, by the way,” I said, folding my arms across my chest as he carefully guided my injured leg into his fancy looking ute.

  Smiling, he went to close the door before he stopped and looked into my eyes.

  “You’re wrong, you know,” he said.

  “About what? You being an arsehole?”

  He shook his head; that bloody amused smile still quirking up his lips. “No, although the arsehole part is debatable. You’re wrong, because, I do know you. You’re Sarah Kennedy. I’ve known you all my life.”

  2

  IT’S FUNNY how you can go through life, thinking and feeling as though you’re completely invisible to all those around you, and then one thing happens that lets you know that you have, and always will be, completely visible – the invisibility you experienced was entirely in your head.

  That’s how I felt while Tyler drove me the short distance from Sydney Uni to the emergency room at the Royal Prince Alfred. It only took about a minute of actual driving, but finding parking was a whole other story, and in that time, he managed to regale me with a lot of stories from our school years that involved me.

  “I’m surprised you even knew who I was,” I responded after a while.

  He glanced over at me, a frown creasing his brow. “It was a country school, Sarah. Everyone knew everyone. Although, I admit, it wasn’t until today that I realised you were you. I mean, you look kind of different to the Sarah at Moama Grammar.”

  I ran my hand over my thick chocolate brown curls. “That’s because I’m not the same Sarah from Moama Grammar.”

  Tyler and I came from a town called Moama in country New South Wales. It’s about eight hours away from Sydney and sits along the border of our neighbouring state Victoria. We grew up on farms – my parents own a share in one of the large dairy farm conglomerates, and his run cattle, although they personally own a heap of cattle stations all around the country, and were therefore filthy
rich farming royalty – while others struggled, his family laughed counted their bags of money. That’s not saying my family were ever poor, we just weren’t rolling in it and my parents worked hard to make sure they could help me enough at uni so that I wouldn’t have to work and could focus on my studies until I could get a job.

  Growing up in a country town is exactly as you’d imagine – boring – and while Tyler seemed to flourish – he was great at sports and was the most popular boy in school – I didn’t flourish at all.

  I hated every shovel full of manure, and every bucket of feed. I hated going to a school that seemed to celebrate football achievements over academic greatness. Above all, I hated the country mentality. I hated the boredom, and I longed for the life of the big city.

  Really, we were closer to Melbourne than we were to Sydney. It was only a couple of hours to drive down there, so those at our school who did go on to university, generally applied to the big Unis down there.

  But Melbourne wasn’t big enough in my eyes. I wanted to go to the biggest city our country had to offer. That’s why, when it was time to leave high school and apply for university, I listed every one in the Sydney area as my preference.

  When I was accepted into Sydney University, my mother cried, and while I felt bad for upsetting her, inside I was overjoyed. I was finally getting out of there. I was finally going somewhere that I could just be me – just Sarah, instead of my father’s awkward daughter or my brother’s nerdy sister. I was heading into the city to become the best Sarah Kennedy I could be. And that’s what I did. I shed the old Sarah and primped and preened myself until I was a glossy new version of myself that could leave everything about boring old Moama behind.

  The last thing I expected on my first day was to walk in and see Tyler Lohan sitting there, chatting easily with a group of guys he probably only met just then – that was the thing about Tyler, he fit in anywhere without trying. Life was always so damn easy for him. Seeing him there pissed me off. I didn’t want Moama’s golden boy dominating the sunshine in Sydney too. His presence made me feel as though I’d never be free, and that Moama was going to follow me everywhere I went.