Dangerous Games: A Standalone Second Chance Romance

by T. K. Leigh

  She holds me while my cell continues vibrating with a mixture of calls and messages, each one causing my heart to crack even more until all that’s left are millions of pieces.

  “Come on, Iz.” An arm wrapped around me, Chloe brings me into the apartment, closing the door behind us.

  When Lincoln sees us, he gets up from the couch, a questioning look on his face. Chloe shakes her head, silently telling him not to press the subject. Thankfully he doesn’t, excusing himself to his office, giving us some privacy. I probably shouldn’t have come here, considering Lincoln and Asher were college friends and still stay in touch. I know Chloe, though. She’ll make sure Lincoln doesn’t say anything if Asher were to reach out to him.

  She leads me to the couch, and we sit in silence, staring blankly at the black screen of the TV, tears steadily falling down my cheeks. Finally, Chloe’s voice cuts through.

  “You look like you could use a drink.”

  I laugh through my sobs. “I absolutely could.”

  She squeezes my thigh. “You got it.” Standing, she heads into the kitchen just as my phone pings yet again.

  I chance one last look at the screen, my heart shattering when I see the anguish in Asher’s last text. It doesn’t matter it’s just words typed out. I can feel his desperation.

  Please, Isabella. Don’t do this. I’m begging you. It’s not supposed to end this way. You’re my heart. I can’t go on without my heart. I love you.

  With a trembling hand, I bring up Asher’s contact in my cell, staring at it. “Ditto,” I choke out. Then I block his number.

  I wish I could have given him a clean break, but we both knew there would never be anything clean about this. It’s better I make him hate me before we get in too deep. Before we hurt someone we both care about. This is the right path. It has to be.

  Because if it’s not, what did I just do?

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  “Earth to Izzy.”

  Chloe’s voice registers in my brain, snapping me out of my daze. I rip my eyes away from the TV in the corner of Lincoln’s home office, returning my attention to the papers spread across the table in front of us.

  Over the past few months as we’ve worked on discovering who my birth mother was, we’ve turned this into a war room, so to speak. Evie and Chloe had hoped to put the puzzle pieces together and find my birth mother before publishing the article on the JFK baby. That didn’t happen. As expected, they hit dead end after dead end. Even enlisting Lincoln’s help, who recruited some of the top investigative reporters at the paper, hadn’t uncovered anything. It’s like my mother vanished.

  Feeling like we were out of options, we went ahead and ran a public interest piece three weeks ago. The JFK Baby — Thirty Years Later. We’d hoped by plastering it all over the internet, it might encourage people with information to message an email address the magazine set up. Unfortunately, most of those tips turned out to be baseless, just someone looking for their fifteen minutes of fame.

  “Are you okay?” Chloe narrows her gaze on me before floating her eyes to the television.

  I can’t help but look at it again, watching Asher perform on one of the afternoon talk shows. With the release of his album last month, his star grew bigger and bigger. Now I can barely go a day without hearing or reading his name somewhere. His music is everywhere, as it should be. It doesn’t make it any easier, though. Doesn’t make me reconsider whether I made the right decision in walking away. Doesn’t stop me from imagining what my life would look like had I stayed in the bar that night.

  “Fine. Great. Perfect,” I answer quickly, grabbing a bunch of papers and pretending to read them, although all the words seem to blur together. I sip on my coffee, hoping it will help clear my mind, but nothing seems to. It hasn’t in months. Despite this focus on finding my birth mother, as well as my new job at an outpatient cancer clinic here in the city, Asher still consumes most of my thoughts.

  Will it always be this way?

  “You know, you can come tomorrow.”

  Coffee spews out of my nose and I cough several times before flinging my wide eyes to Chloe. “What are you talking about?” I choke out.

  “Tomorrow night. His concert. You should come with us. It’s the start of the tour. You deserve to be there. He wouldn’t have had an album to tour if it weren’t for you.”

  I avoid her eyes, grabbing a napkin and dabbing coffee off the papers. “He would have eventually.”

  “You don’t know that.”

  “Just like I don’t know he wouldn’t have. It’s okay. It’s better this way.”

  “For whom? Asher? Or you?”

  This is the first time Chloe has pushed the topic of Asher since the night I appeared at her door a crying mess. In the months that followed, he’d attempted to reach out to me through email. When that turned futile, he’d sought Lincoln’s help, who’d remained neutral, not wanting to get involved. If Asher knew where I lived, he probably would have shown up at my apartment. Thankfully, it never came to that. I surmise he must have accepted that I didn’t want to talk to him, the calls to Lincoln and emails to me having dwindled, becoming nonexistent once his album dropped.

  “For Asher,” I argue with a hushed tone so my voice doesn’t carry into the hallway and throughout the apartment. “I did what was necessary for Asher.”

  “Mmm-hmm.”

  “What? I did.”

  “If that’s what you need to tell yourself, Iz.”

  “Do you think I wanted to walk away from him again? There had to be a reason he asked me to meet him in that bar where I’d run into a man who’d been through the same thing we were about to do to Jessie. It put everything into perspective. Made it all too real. And Asher would eventually realize it wouldn’t work. He’d go on with his life, enjoying fame and fortune, while I struggled to put the pieces of my life back together. I can’t do that to myself again.”

  “And there it is.” Her tone is laced with a hint of superiority.

  “What?” I cock a brow, staring intently at her.

  “Your real reason for walking away.”

  “I told you. It was so Asher wouldn’t make a decision he’d come to regret.”

  Chloe shakes her head, angling toward me, eyes on fire. “You can’t bullshit a bullshitter. Don’t forget. I went through the same thing with Lincoln, convinced myself I did what I had to in order to protect him. But you know the real reason I pushed him away?”

  “Because your feelings for him scared you shitless. You worried when all the obstacles to your relationship were removed, it wouldn’t be the same. That he’d no longer want you.”

  Chloe places her hand on my bicep, and I raise my gaze to hers. “More or less.” She smiles before her expression turns serious once more. “But trust me. You have nothing to worry about. I saw the way he looked at you in Vegas.”

  “That was over a year ago.”

  “I also saw the way he looked at you while you dated his brother. Jessie certainly never looked at you that way.”

  “It doesn’t matter. He can look at me like his heart physically can’t beat without me—”

  “And he does.”

  “That doesn’t change anything. I will always be his brother’s fiancée. Not ex. But fiancée. I can’t change that. I can’t go back and rewind the clock. If I could, you know damn well I would. Maybe I would have grown some cojones and walked up to the hot lead singer I couldn’t get enough of. But I didn’t. I stayed in my corner and worshiped him from afar. I tried to be happy with Jessie, although I knew something was missing.”

  “Then why don’t you go after that something missing? Tell him you made a mistake? That you’re finally ready for whatever this is? That you’re ready to take a risk?”

  I consider her question. Why don’t I go to him? Jessie did send me passes to the concert tomorrow night. I could very easily go, talk to Asher. But I’m not sure that’s how our story is supposed to go, not with everything that’s at stake. I need some sort of a
ssurance or divine intervention telling me this thing with Asher is worth the eventual destruction we’ll cause.

  “I need a sign,” I explain.

  She gives me a questioning look, eyes scrunched together. “A sign?” Then she blows out a laugh. “You’ve been spending too much time with Nora.”

  “We only got together in Vegas because of chance. And chance brought us back together a few months ago. Granted, it was in the shape of Jessie, or Grams, but still. Had they not intervened, we never would have seen each other again. And I walked away because of chance, because of the strange coincidence of meeting a man whose ex was about to marry his brother. I could be wrong, but with everything that’s at stake, I need a sign we’re meant to be together.”

  “If we all left everything up to chance, we’d never live. Sometimes you have to take the wheel and go the direction you want to go.”

  “That may be true.” A smile curves my lips, my eyes shining with nostalgia. “But do you know what Grams said my first night at the lake house this winter?”

  “What’s that?”

  “That true love is like a boomerang. You can run, but it will find you. Maybe that’s what I need in order to know this is real, that it’s worth the risk. I need the boomerang to come back.”

  Chloe expels an exasperated sigh. “Sometimes I wish you weren’t so goddamn stubborn. If it were me and there was amazing sex on the line, I’d be lacing up my running shoes and waiting for them to fire that dang starting pistol.”

  I shake my head, grateful for the break in tension. “And that’s a big deal for you. You hate running.”

  “Good sex is worth it.” She winks.

  “Worth what?”

  A deep voice cuts through, and we look up to see Lincoln hovering in the doorway. His tall frame fills the space as he leans against the doorjamb, his arms crossed. He wears his usual jeans and blazer, his dark hair well-groomed, as it usually is, his jaw sporting a bit of scruff.

  “Torturing myself with a run.” She cranes her head back as he approaches, treating her to a sweet kiss.

  “That’s certainly saying something. You hate running.”

  “That’s what I said,” I offer.

  “Hopefully that good sex isn’t with some other man. I’m not sure I’m cut out for prison.”

  “No way, baby. You keep me more than satisfied.” Her eyes skate over him, a devilish glint within.

  “On that note…” I start to push out of my chair. “I’m going to head out.”

  “You don’t have to,” Chloe protests.

  “It’s fine. I need to run by the store anyway.”

  “Actually, if you have a minute, there’s something I’d like to show you,” Lincoln interjects.

  “What is it?” I lower myself back into my chair, his serious tone giving me pause.

  “One of our reporters sat down with a body language expert on an unrelated story. Decided to show her the video footage from that day at the airport to see what she could pick up from your birth mother.”

  “An expert in body language? Is there such a thing?”

  “There’s an expert in almost everything these days.”

  He sits in the chair beside me and pulls his laptop out of his messenger bag, setting it on the table. Chloe scoots out of her chair, heading around and peering over Lincoln’s shoulder. He brings up a video file and hits the space bar.

  “You’ve seen this before,” he states as surveillance footage displays the busy terminal at JFK.

  This was part of the problem investigators ran into when they’d originally tried to figure out what happened. The sheer number of people prevented anyone from getting a clear picture.

  “The first thing our expert noticed was how anxious your birth mother was.” He points to the screen, and I watch a woman sit in a chair in a gate area. “Look how she repeatedly bounces her leg. She keeps her head lowered and the hood of her sweatshirt pulled up, but you can still notice her head constantly moving, as if keeping tabs on her surroundings.”

  “Probably to make sure no one would notice when she dumped me.”

  Lincoln pauses the video, blowing out a breath as he lifts his gaze to mine. “I don’t think that’s it. I don’t think she had a choice but to leave you behind.”

  I furrow my brow. “I don’t—”

  “Look at this.”

  He hits play again. We watch a few more seconds, then Lincoln freezes the video again. Instead of sitting in a slumped position as she had been, her spine is straight. “Right there.”

  “She saw something,” I murmur.

  “Our expert thought so, too.”

  Lincoln continues the video. I can almost feel my mother’s eyes darting around, although I can’t make out any of her facial features with the hood pulled over her head.

  “Now, watch this.”

  I squint, observing my birth mother remaining completely still, apart from her shoulders.

  “Our expert opined she was taking several deep breaths to calm herself before making her move right…about…now.”

  At that instant, she gingerly raises herself from the chair, her motions slow, as if not to draw any attention. She places a hand on my head where it stuck out from the baby carrier attached to her body, then bent over to pick up a black duffel bag.

  She maneuvered through the gate area, glancing over her shoulder briefly before continuing in the opposite direction. The camera angle changes to a different view.

  “So she went to the ladies’ room. We knew that.”

  “Yes, but look at this.”

  I refocus my eyes on the screen as she disappears into the bathroom. Only a few seconds go by before two men dressed in black approach. They appear as if they’re about to stroll right in when a member of airport security walks up to them, directing them to the men’s room instead, assuming they were looking for the bathroom, not someone inside the bathroom. They appear to thank him, then head in the direction he pointed.

  “I’ve seen all this before,” I argue.

  “I know,” Lincoln says, “but stay with me on this. Trust me.”

  I nod, returning my attention to the screen, watching the timecode tick by. Then a figure emerges from the bathroom, the hood still hiding her face.

  “We didn’t pick up on this before because of how grainy the video was.”

  “It’s still pretty grainy,” Chloe comments.

  “Yes, but it’s a lot cleaner than it was. Watch.” He points to the woman as she seems to draw in more deep breaths, as evidenced by the substantial rise and fall of her shoulders. Then she turns toward the water fountain, bending down to take a sip. “Right here.” He slams down the space bar, pausing the video.

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  “She’s not holding your head. Before, when she had to bend to pick up that duffel bag, she made sure to support your head, even though the angle was slight. But here.” He uses his finger to circle my birth mother bent over the water fountain. “She’s bent even more, yet not holding on at all. And look what’s missing.”

  “The duffel bag. That’s what I was found in. Wrapped in blankets with my head peeking out. This doesn’t prove anything. It could have been part of her plan all along. Maybe she stuffed a baby doll into the duffel bag to make sure I’d fit when she ditched me,” I argue, although I’m less and less confident of my original belief.

  “I can see why you’d think that, but keep watching.” Lincoln hits the space bar again and the video resumes.

  I watch as she walks away from the bathroom. When she’s almost out of view, I notice her stop. I squint, seeing the two men who’d tried to walk into the bathroom approach her. She doesn’t fight. Doesn’t resist. Nothing. Instead, she places her hand on what I can only assume to be a doll’s head, bouncing and soothing it.

  “She’s pretending I’m still in there,” I murmur.

  “It appears that way.”

  “So? She still dumped me in the bathroom. We’re still no closer to
figuring out who she was.”

  “No. But I think we’re closer to finding out why. She was trying to keep you safe, Iz.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Our body language expert agreed. I think your mother was on the run, as evidenced by her obvious anxiety as she sat in the gate area. We were able to track down flight schedules for Christmas of that year. The flight leaving from that gate was headed to Toronto, Canada. It was delayed by over an hour. I think she was running from someone. Maybe an abusive boyfriend.” He narrows his gaze. “Maybe something much worse. I think she prepared for the possibility of getting caught, which was why she had that doll in her bag. Once she ditched you, it was only a matter of time until someone would alert the authorities to an abandoned baby. She had a very short window of opportunity to get herself and those two men out of the airport. Which was why she didn’t fight. In fact, our expert thinks she intentionally let them approach, then proceeded out of the terminal with them. As you know, after that, the trail goes cold.”

  My brain spins as I process this story, toiling it over in my mind. “I just… It seems like a stretch. Doesn’t it?” I glance over my shoulder at Chloe, who is typically the cynical one.

  “Actually, he might be right. And I’m not just saying that because I’m married to him. If your birth mother didn’t want you, why would she have gone through all the trouble of wrapping you in blankets? And why ditch you in an airport?”

  “But the flight manifest… If Lincoln’s theory is right, there should have been someone on it who forfeited her seat when she didn’t board on time. That didn’t happen. We’ve combed through the police interviews of everyone on that manifest, including those who missed the flight and forfeited their seat. Every single one checked out.”

  Chloe shakes her head. “It could have been tampered with.”

  “Would someone really do that?”

  “You’d be surprised what some people would do to cover up the truth.”

  “But what truth?”

  “That’s what we’re trying to find out.” Lincoln squeezes my hand, giving me a reassuring look. “Trust me. There’s a story here. And I won’t stop until we get to the bottom of it.”