Dangerous Games: A Standalone Second Chance Romance

by T. K. Leigh

  I arch a brow. “Meditation exercises?”

  “Yes. No use starting the day unless I’m in tune with myself and the celestial beings.” She presses her hands together in front of her and bows. “Namaste, Isabella.”

  I chuckle, wondering how many people get in tune with the celestial beings wearing a shirt with a giant tongue on it. This woman is certainly one of a kind. “Namaste, Grams.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  A wall of frigid air assaults me the second I step outside, a shiver rolling through me. I consider heading back into the house to put on a coat, or at least something other than my thin slippers. But it took me long enough to work up the courage to come out here and talk to Asher. If I go back to my room, I’ll probably convince myself not to do this.

  I trek through the snow and toward the dock, keeping my head lowered to fight off the wind that whips sporadically. I try to remain as quiet as possible, but when Asher hears the groan of the wood under my feet upon my approach, he glances over his shoulder, his expression blank. There was once a time he’d greet me with a warm smile. That was before we muddied the waters.

  “Figured you could use some coffee.” I hold up the steaming mug, the aroma inviting.

  After yesterday, I fully expect him to tell me he’s fine, that he just wants to be alone. To my surprise, he nods, albeit subtly.

  I slowly make my way to where he sits on the edge of the dock, extending one of the mugs toward him. He takes it, shifting to his left, an unspoken invitation for me to join him. I lower myself, place my mug beside me, and reach into my pocket, retrieving the origami dove I’d made before heading out here.

  When I toss it onto his lap, he flashes his gaze to it, then hangs his head.

  “I’m the one who should be apologizing, Iz.”

  “What do you possibly have to apologize for? I mean, other than you being a bit of a prick last night.” This elicits a slight laugh and I smile. “But I can’t fault you for that. I probably would have acted ten times worse if the shoe were on the other foot. If you’d shown up out of the blue and I learned we were spending the weekend under the same roof.”

  “Trust me. I have plenty of other things I should be sorry about. Especially when it comes to you.”

  He locks eyes with me before returning them to the frozen lake, snow-capped hills visible in the distance. In the summer, this view would be of fish circling in the muddy water, the occasional duck waddling about, and turtles sunning themselves on the rocky shoreline. Now everything is desolate, the normal inhabitants gone.

  “Do you remember the first time you came up here?” he asks, breaking the stark silence.

  A small smile tugs on my lips as I nod. “It was the weekend before Thanksgiving, but your family was celebrating early because your parents were heading to their Florida house for the winter. They wanted to be gone before the snowstorm hit.”

  “They love the fall foliage, but the second they hear the word snow, they book the first flight out they can get. Or they used to before Grams got older.”

  “I remember.”

  “Jessie had told me about you before you even agreed to that first date.” He laughs slightly, then takes another sip of his coffee. I grab mine and do the same, holding my mug between my bare hands. “I’d never seen him so…happy. So when he said he’d invited you up here for our early Thanksgiving celebration, I couldn’t wait to meet the girl who finally made my brother smile again. I knew she had to be someone special.”

  He pulls his lips between his teeth, his expression strained. “When he walked into the house and I saw the woman at his side was the same girl I’d been checking out the past several weeks at a bunch of my gigs, the same girl who served as the inspiration for so many of the songs I’d written, my heart sank.”

  “Asher…,” I barely manage to say through the lump building in my throat.

  “You want to know the funny part?” His voice is pained, the vein in his neck throbbing with tension.

  “What’s that?” I ask timidly, not sure I want to torture myself any further with this story.

  “I actually told him about you. Told him all about this amazing, beautiful woman who had these killer hips I couldn’t stop watching whenever she danced.”

  The wind picks up, almost howling through the barren trees, and I pull my cardigan tighter into my body. The cold doesn’t seem to faze Asher, even though he’s dressed in only a pair of jeans and long-sleeved black t-shirt, work boots on his feet. The sole warm item of clothing he wears is a gray beanie, his dark hair jutting out from underneath it in all directions.

  “I’ve always done well with the ladies.” He blows out a nervous laugh. “Unfortunately, all they saw was a guy with a guitar. They weren’t interested in anything serious. I was getting tired of the random hookups. I wanted more.” The corners of his mouth quirk up. Something about the way he peers at me makes me think he’s been wanting to tell me this for a long time. Maybe since that very first Thanksgiving celebration. “I wanted you.”

  “Then why didn’t you ask me out when you first saw me?” I can’t help but think all this heartache could have been avoided if he’d approached me sooner. If he’d asked me out before Jessie. Then again, there’s no way of knowing for certain. We probably would have found another way to torture ourselves. We seem to excel at that.

  “I can’t explain it, but from the instant I noticed you, I knew you were different. Knew you wouldn’t be the least bit impressed by some random guy approaching you at a club. I’d only get one opportunity with you. I needed to make sure the timing was right. So I waited. But, unfortunately, I waited too long.” His expression falls. “I guess that’s why I acted the way I did yesterday. Walking into the living room to greet Jessie and seeing you beside him brought me back to the moment I had to swallow the hard truth that the woman I’d begun to fall for could never be mine. I knew there was a chance you’d have a boyfriend. But I convinced myself if that were the case, you wouldn’t hit the local music scene as often as you did without him there.”

  “Jessie wasn’t exactly a night owl.”

  “The second I saw you with him, I knew why you wouldn’t be together at the bar or club.” He chuckles, a momentary break in the tense atmosphere. “He probably told you the same thing he told me whenever I asked if he wanted to come to one of our gigs.”

  “I actually never invited him. He was understanding of my time with my friends. It wasn’t until…” I trail off, lowering my eyes as I continue. “It wasn’t until we were engaged that it seemed to become an issue. Or maybe it wasn’t until we were engaged that I realized we weren’t all that compatible. That we were two parallel lines. We could get close, but we’d never truly intersect. Not like we needed to in order to survive.”

  “Kind of like us.” He lifts his somber eyes to mine. “We’ll never intersect, either. Not like I wish we could.”

  Seeing the way his shoulders slump forward makes me want to wrap my arms around him, tell him that maybe we could. But we’ve been in this place before. I already know how this story ends.

  “You probably don’t remember, but during that first dinner, he asked me how things were going with that girl I’d told him about.”

  My mind rewinds to that day. I never thought much about the conversation between Jessie and Asher. Simply thought it was two brothers helping each other out, something I admired and respected. Now that I know the truth, I see it through a different lens.

  “And you told him you found out she had a boyfriend,” I reply in a distant voice.

  “Funny thing is, I had every intention of finally asking you out the next time I saw you. Had this whole speech planned. I didn’t know anything about you, but I knew whatever I said to you had to be good. Had to be well thought out. Something about you made me think you wouldn’t be easily persuaded by some cheesy pickup line. You deserved more.” His Adam’s apple bobs up and down in a hard swallow. “At least more than I could ever give you.” He briefly closes his eyes,
drawing in a long breath. “You were right.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “That morning in Vegas. When Jessie showed up and burst our bubble. Remember what we argued about?”

  My lips form a tight line as I nod. “About the night I broke off our engagement. Officially.”

  “And do you remember what you accused me of?” His voice cracks.

  A ball of dread forms in my stomach at where this conversation is going. “That you knew Jessie had been fooling around with Candace. You denied it.”

  He hangs his head. “And do you remember what you told me earlier that day when I met you and gave you the keys to the house? Before he brought Candace home and you saw them?”

  I slowly nod. “That I wasn’t sure what I would do. That I needed to look into his eyes before I made that decision. That I’d know the answer then.”

  “And how did you say you’d know the answer?”

  “Because I’d see a piece of myself staring back at me.”

  “And do you want to know what I did?”

  “I—”

  “I went to the gig I had that night and hoped…fuck, prayed you didn’t see a piece of yourself in Jessie.” He floats his wild gaze to mine. “Do you want to know why?”

  I swallow hard, no words coming.

  “Because I wanted you to see that when you looked at me.”

  “Asher…,” I breathe, on the brink of telling him I did, that the reason I ended the engagement was because I realized I loved him, but he continues before I can get another word in.

  “After Jessie landed, he stopped at the bar where my band was playing. I’d never seen him look so damn depressed, all because he still hadn’t heard from you. I could have told him right then and there that you were waiting at the house, that it might not be over, but I didn’t. We started our set, and the next thing I knew, I saw Candace sitting on the barstool next to him, licking his proverbial battle wounds. I watched them leave together. I could have warned him, since it was more than apparent they were going somewhere more private. Yet I kept my mouth shut. Didn’t warn my brother he was about to bring a girl back to the same house where the love of his fucking life was waiting for him. All because I wanted you to leave him.

  “So I’m sorry, Iz. I’m sorry I didn’t try to talk some sense into Jessie. I’m sorry I didn’t warn you. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you the truth earlier. And I’m sorry I didn’t grow a set of balls and approach you before my brother did. But you know what I’m not sorry about?”

  I shake my head. I couldn’t guess even if I wanted to, everything Asher’s saying completely unexpected.

  “I’m not sorry you broke up. I’m not sorry I slept with you in Vegas. And I’m not sorry for all the times I’ve thought of you since then. I’ll never apologize for that, for how I feel about you.”

  He stands, his long strides taking him down the dock and toward the house.

  “Asher, wait!” I shout, jumping to my feet and chasing after him, leaving our coffee mugs. He doesn’t stop until my hand wraps around his bicep, forcing him to face me.

  Our chests heave as we stand in the snow, my slippers no protection against the wet and cold. “During that same argument, you let it slip that you tried to prevent me from enduring any heartache. What were you talking about?”

  His face blanches.

  “I know it’s not that night. It couldn’t be. You just confessed you didn’t try to stop Jessie. I get the feeling you wanted me to think it was so you didn’t have to tell me what you were actually referring to.”

  He stares at me for what feels like an eternity, then exhales. “We hung out lot once you started dating Jessie. Sometimes we spent more time together than Jessie and you did.”

  I nod in agreement.

  “All those hours spent together confirmed what I felt in my heart before I’d even spoken a single word to you. So I decided to finally come clean, tell you I noticed you in the club, that I was going to ask you out… That I loved you. That I wanted you to choose me. Had it all planned out. We were all up here for the Fourth of July. I decided that night, after everyone went to sleep and we were hanging out, I’d let it all ride.” He shrugs as a sad smile builds on his mouth. “But right before Jessie went to bed, he pulled me aside and showed me the ring, told me he was going to propose the following day.

  “So I kept my true feelings locked inside to prevent you from enduring any heartache over having to make a choice. Because despite the fact you were with him, I knew once I told you, it would change things. So in order to protect your heart, I broke mine.” He turns from me, continuing back up toward the house.

  “What would you have said?” I call out. He pauses and slowly faces me. I take a few steps toward him. “That night before Jessie proposed, what would you have said?”

  His features soften as his gaze skates over my face. His mouth curves in the corners, and I see the Asher I once watched pluck away at the strings of his guitar for hours.

  “I would have spoken from the heart.” He closes the distance between us, stopping an inch from me, separated by an invisible line both of us are too scared to cross. “That the instant my eyes first locked on yours from across that club, I felt something. Something I’d written about in songs but didn’t think was real.”

  “What was that?”

  “A spark. There was this electricity that zapped my heart.” He chuckles. “It sounds crazy, but I’ve always believed in love at first sight. And when I first saw you, I knew.”

  “Knew what?”

  He leans down. I crane my head back, still as drawn to him as I’ve always been. His lips inch closer, his warm breath dancing on my mouth causing my insides to coil.

  “That you would be the last woman I’d ever love. That even if you turned me down, nothing would stop that. That I may date other women, but they would never be you. My heart would never beat like it does for you.” Licking his lips, he starts to erase the last bit of space between us.

  I place my hand on his chest before he can seal his declaration with a kiss. “Asher, I—”

  “Please don’t. Don’t push me away. Not yet. Just let me stay in this place where I can taste the promise of your kiss on my lips. Where you haven’t turned me down.” He swallows hard as he finishes in a choked voice. “Where I still have hope for what we almost had.”

  I sigh, closing my eyes. “You’ll always be my favorite almost.”

  “You’ll always be my favorite almost, too, Iz.” His cold fingers trace the curve of my face, along my cheek, settling on my bottom lip.

  I expect him to keep going, as he so often did when brushing the pad of his thumb along my lip, but he freezes. I open my eyes and am met with an Asher deep in thought.

  “My favorite almost…,” he repeats, his eyes glassed over. I watch as he bobs his head, almost like he hears a song in his mind. Then his expression brightens. “That’s it!”

  Before I know what’s happening, he links his fingers with mine and tugs me back toward the house, my legs struggling to keep up with his excited strides. Dozens of questions swirl in my head about what’s going on, but none of that matters.

  Not when I can finally savor in the sensation of his skin on mine once more.

  Chapter Fourteen

  Asher hurries into the basement, not stopping until he’s seated at the piano in the music room. I’m still confused about what’s going on, about what epiphany my simple statement caused, but when his fingers slide over the keys as he experiments with a bluesy beat, I know.

  He’s found his song.

  There’s a frenzied air about him, focused and intense. It brings back memories of spending those long nights with him, sometimes in this very room, as he toiled over various melodies and lyrics. Not much has changed since then. The walls are still padded with egg crate foam to soundproof it as much as possible. A piano sits against one wall, various guitars on stands spread throughout the rest of the room. Cables and microphones fill a crate off to the side, put
to use when Asher needs to record something.

  His low voice fills the space, his brain pulling lyrics out of thin air. Then again, that’s probably not entirely true. They’ve always been in his mind. In his heart. In his soul. They just needed a little urging to come out. A little inspiration.

  As he plays the melody, I can almost hear the full band arrangement in my head. The beat is driving, the lower notes maintaining a steady rhythm under the lyrics about a woman and man stealing moments together. A kiss here. A touch there. All culminating in what you’d think would be an explosive encounter, but the story stops just shy of that.

  “I’ve waited years to kiss you goodnight.

  I’ve waited years, and we’ve come so close.

  I’ve waited years to make you mine.

  Instead, you’ll forever be my favorite almost.”

  Time stands still as I watch him work, repeating the same melody as he susses out the right notes and lyrics. I bob my head in time with the addictive beat, a smile tugging on my lips as I lose myself in the energy he exudes. I’ve always felt drawn to this man and the music he creates. Even more so now, knowing I inspired this song. Then again, he just admitted I inspired him to write a lot of his songs, probably all of his songs.

  He belts out the chorus he appears to have settled on, his raspy voice touching parts of my body that haven’t felt anything in a long time now. A quiver rolls over me, every last nerve ending tingling. When he plays the final note, I expect him to start from the beginning again. Instead, I feel the heat of his stare on me as I sit beside him, his heavy breathing echoing in the stillness.

  I face him, swallowing hard at the fervor in his gaze. His chest heaves. His nostrils flare. His jaw clenches. Desire pools in his dark eyes as they trace over my features. He cups my cheeks, his grip harsh, fingers burrowing into my skin. It’s so warm against my chilled flesh. My breathing increases, the roughness of his calloused hands lighting a fire that’s lain dormant for a year now. But with this one touch, that match is struck. This time, I don’t want anything to extinguish it.