Never His: A Second Chance Romance (Second Chances Book 1)

by Amelia Wilde

  I’m finally the one to break the silence, our own little pocket of space in the middle of all the noise of the bar.

  “Hey, Addison.” It’s on the tip of my tongue to call her Addi, like I used to, but it’s been ten years. Probably nobody calls her that anymore. All of my muscles tense while I wait for her next reaction.

  The first thing she does is reach back over and set the beer glasses back down on the bar top, her hands shaking just slightly.

  “Brett?”

  “It’s me.” I open my hands in front of me. It’s a lame fucking attempt at making light of the fact that I walked away from her ten years ago and never looked back.

  At least, that’s probably how it looks to her.

  Her eyes search my face again. “What are you doing here?”

  I look around me like I’ve just now realized where I’m sitting. “This is O’Malley’s, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah. But you haven’t been here for ten years.”

  “How would you know? Maybe I’ve been here every night you’re not.”

  “I would have heard about it.”

  I give her a half smile and color rises to her cheeks. “Maybe. Maybe not.”

  She swallows hard. “How long have you been back?”

  This is a loaded question, I can feel it, even though the unfinished business between us is really only technical. We never had an official relationship, so we never had an official breakup. I think we both know that doesn’t matter.

  “A few days.”

  She nods, and I wonder if she’s forgiving me for not having looked her up. To be fucking fair, I had no idea she was still living here until this moment. My chest is so tight I can’t tell if I’m relieved or terrified. All I know is that I want my hands on her waist, around her waist, pulling her into me so I can breathe her in. It hurts not to touch her.

  I have so much to say to her. I open my mouth to tell her all of it, like we’re standing behind the gym with all the time in the world, but the noise from the bar cuts back into my consciousness. Now isn’t really the time, but what if I never get another chance? I’ll fucking lose it if I let her walk away without at least…at least…

  I don’t have a damn clue. The sight of her has turned me into an eighteen-year-old in a man’s body. If I’m going to come off as cool and confident, I’m going to have to fake the hell out of it.

  She glances back out at the crowd again. Time is slipping away from me. My shot is slipping away.

  “Can I buy you a drink?”

  Her smile lights up her face, and when she laughs it sends a bolt of warmth straight through my chest and down my spine. She cuts her eyes at the two beers already sitting on the counter.

  “I think I’m all set. In fact—” Addison looks out over the bar and scans the crowd. “I should probably get back. My friend’s waiting on me.”

  It’s like my stomach has been plunged into ice—fuck me, she’s here on a date. It’s not fucking likely, given that she just told the bartender that her boyfriend or fiancé or whoever moved out, but maybe she’s the kind of woman who gets right back into the game. Maybe she was over him a long time ago. I have no way of knowing, and not for the first time, the fact that I don’t know—can’t know—pricks the back of my mind like a needle.

  But then Addison continues. “Leah’s busy trying to convince a table full of guys to buy her drinks. I’m going to beat them to the punch.”

  “Leah Conway?” In high school, Leah was almost always Addison’s best friend. Somehow it’s comforting to know that they still like each other. If they can still get along, then maybe…

  But she’s turned me down for a drink.

  Here, at least.

  “Yeah. Same Leah.”

  She’s looking across at me, our faces at about the same level since I’m sitting on the barstool, and when she bites her lip, I know.

  I know that she’s at least thinking about it.

  About the way we were back in the day.

  Now, when I look back, it seems rosy as fuck—all the times I took her behind the gym and wrapped her in my arms and kissed her like there was no tomorrow. We did more than that the summer after we graduated, driving up to the secluded campsites on the bluff and making a wreck of the backseat of one of our cars. It seems like we never fought, but I know we did—even if it was mostly in weighted silences, her waiting for me to change my mind about something and me not wanting to budge. Does any of it matter, now that I’ve left her behind, only to show up in town like a ghost of high school relationships past?

  I’ve got about three seconds until she reaches for the beers on the counter and leaves, and if she does that, I don’t know that my heart will ever recover from the missed opportunity. Which sounds prissy as fuck, but it’s true.

  So I try one more time.

  “How have you been, Addi?”

  Chapter Seven

  Addison

  There’s something different about Brett.

  Back in high school, he was edgy—literally on the edges of different groups, a bridge between lots of different people. He played on the football team, but he was never first string. He had a vicious tackle, but he wasn’t bloodthirsty. There was just something about him that made me think that if he really wanted something, he’d go after it.

  I badly wanted that something to be me.

  And we flirted around that line year after year, kiss after kiss, but a full-blown relationship never materialized. I thought there was a chance, that summer after high school, when we were driving up to the bluff four nights a week and going at each other, no limits, but…

  That’s what makes me wary of him, even now, when my body is practically crying out with the need to fold myself back into his arms. Every breath I take in is laced with his scent—something woodsy and spicy and all man, a grownup version of the way he used to smell—and I want to kiss the side of his neck, nibble at his earlobe, put my hands on either side of his face and kiss him like I’ll never get another chance.

  The way he went off the radar in the middle of August, though…it still makes my chest knot in a sharp, pulsing ache to think of the way I waited for his call for a week, then got up the courage to dial his number, only to be greeted with that toneless voice. The number you have dialed has been disconnected.

  Yet I’m standing here right now, looking into his blazing green eyes, and I’m finding it difficult to reconcile this man with the boy who disappeared from my life ten years ago. There’s something in his expression, in the way he’s holding himself—it makes me think he’s spent the last ten years learning incredible self-control, but he’s on the verge of letting it all go, right in this moment.

  I know that feeling so damn well.

  He swallows hard, and something flashes in his eyes. The silence hangs between us, growing deeper, stretching out, and I’m about to reach for the beers when he says it.

  “How have you been, Addi?”

  His tone has shifted and changed, less sharp, less gruff, and the voice that speaks to me now is the voice of the Brett that used to know me. Intimately. He calls me Addi. Only the people closest to me in my life have ever called me that, and he was one of them.

  He has to be using it strategically. He has to be. And I almost don’t care.

  I want to say—I’ve been lonely. I’ve been missing you, wondering where you’ve been. I’ve been dating every man trying to find you, and none of them have ever completely measured up.

  “I’ve been all right.”

  His eyes shine a little bit in the bar light, but as quickly as the dampness appears, it’s gone again. When he speaks again, his shoulders have dropped a fraction of an inch. Is he that relieved?

  “Just all right?”

  “Yeah. You know, it’s been a long ten years.” And I just got dumped. And my boyfriend moved out. And my job is a constant uphill climb, even if I do love it. And, and, and.

  Brett straightens up, and there’s a new intensity in his eyes. His hand rises
from the bar, like he’s going to put it on my arm, but then he lowers it back down again. My breath hitches in my lungs. I want him to reach for me. We’re so close together that the air between us is practically combusting, but we haven’t touched yet, and Jesus, do I want to.

  “Same here.”

  “Where have you been?” The question bursts out of me before I can stop it, and I instantly wish I could shove the words back into my mouth. My voice went high and plaintive, like I’m begging him for the whole story, and I hate myself for it. I’m not the same girl who pined after him for years. Not anymore.

  If I am, it’s only a little.

  I clear my throat. “I mean, I didn’t hear from you after…that summer.”

  The corners of his mouth turn down, and he glances into his lap, rubbing his hands on his jeans. “Maybe this isn’t the best place.”

  “For what?”

  A half smile flies across his face, and I know we’re both thinking of all the things this bar isn’t the right place for. I’d like to sink my nails into the skin of his shoulders and…

  “To talk.”

  “Right.”

  “Is your phone number still the same?”

  “Yes,” I say, with a little nod, my mouth watering at the thought of climbing into bed with him and my head screaming at me that it would be a big mistake to get involved.

  This is not the sweet, funny teenager I used to know. This is a man who has been through things. I can see it in his eyes, in the set of his jaw. And even if there are flickers of who he used to be, what’s to say he won’t just walk out on me again? He did it once, when everything was hopeful and fresh, at the very beginning of freedom, and he could do it again.

  But damn it, I want to hear what he has to say. I’m dying to know what he’s been doing for ten years. And I desperately want to know what his body looks like underneath the heather gray t-shirt, under the jeans that hug every curve of his muscular legs. I can tell that they’re a good fit even though he’s sitting on the bar stool.

  “Can I call?”

  My breath is coming fast and short, and I’m a second away from leaning down and pressing my lips against his. “Text me. I don’t do phone calls.”

  I snatch the beers from the counter so fast that I leave a few droplets behind, then turn around and head back toward the crowd, my heart in my throat. I feel Brett’s eyes on me as I go.

  Chapter Eight

  Brett

  Addison Gray shakes me to my very fucking core, just like she did the summer after high school. Even before that, really, but my head is flooded with memories of her in the back of a car, stretching her hands above her head to press her palms on the roof while she rocks back and forth on my cock, then leaning down to kiss me so hard my lips feel bruised for days afterward.

  The instinct to follow Addison back into the crowd and sweep her into my arms and take her far away from this shithole of a bar is so strong that my hands bunch into fists.

  “Hey!”

  My voice booms across the bar and heads swivel toward me, but I don’t give a shit. I’m still starving, but I have to get out of this place before I make a damn fool of myself. Scott the Bartender scuttles over, his eyes wide, a smile playing across his lips.

  “Man, I recognize you now. Brett Miller. How have you been?”

  “Box. Get me a box.”

  “No problem.” Scott bends and resurfaces with a cardboard carryout container, and I scrape the burger and fries off the plate into it with one hand and crush it shut with my other hand. I wrestle my wallet out of my pocket and throw a twenty down on the counter—fuck waiting for the change—and then I press back into the crowd, fighting my way between dancing couples and drunk assholes until I burst out through the front door into the fall air.

  Getting a breath of the cool breeze is like a drink of water in the middle of the desert, and I start walking without thinking, just sucking in gulp after gulp of the air, the electric sensation of being so close to Addison—I never thought it would happen again, never, never—making goose bumps run up and down my arms. It’s two blocks before I see Marciano’s, the pizza place. Shit. This isn’t the way back to the Holiday Inn Express.

  I take a left, going down one more block so that I don’t have to walk by O’Malley’s on the way back to the hotel. Addison could be coming out just as I’m going by, and if I see her again, I’m not going to be able to walk away.

  My stomach twists and then growls. I didn’t even eat any of the fries at O’Malley’s before Addison showed up. Now’s the time, I guess.

  I pop the box open and shovel the food into my mouth while I walk. I probably look like I’m starving to death and this burger is all that can bring me back from the brink, but there’s nobody here to see me. Outside of the bars, Lockton is dead on a Friday night. It’s always been that way.

  I can’t stop thinking about her. I can’t stop thinking of her face, of her eyes locked on mine, of the curves of her body beneath that black shirt, the sleeves covering the delicate skin of her arms. I wonder if she has any tattoos. Knowing Addi, probably not. She always said she would never get one in case she decided one day she didn’t like it.

  I press the last bite of burger into my mouth and swallow. It was good, I think, but it’s hard to say. The fries are salty, at least, but they disappear as quickly as the burger did.

  That’s when the ache begins.

  It hasn’t been more than twenty minutes and I want to text her. I can live without seeing her again this instant if I know we’re going to meet up again. Or if her phone number is actually still the same. Still connected.

  I smash the empty container into the next trash bin I see—they’re a recent addition, big and round and green and absolutely everywhere—and pull my phone out of my pocket, coming to a dead stop half a block from the Holiday Inn Express. Its lights are blazing in all the windows of the unoccupied rooms. It’s like a fucking beacon in the night, but I’m absolutely certain that if I go inside, I’ll lose my nerve, spend the rest of the night trying to figure out what to text her.

  No, that’s bullshit. I’m not going to lose my nerve. I just want to send her a message, and so I’m fucking going to, consequences be damned.

  I open the text message app, my thumb hovering over the strip on the screen where I’m going to type her phone number. The same since high school, she said. She hasn’t changed it, not in all these years.

  Is that a sign?

  I shake my head, trying to clear it of that ridiculous fucking thought. There is no possible way that she kept her phone number the same on the off chance that I would call her one day. My heart jumps and twists painfully in my chest. I never did that.

  Now is my chance to make up for all that.

  At least, it could be.

  Her number comes to me like I never stopped calling, and I tap out the digits carefully, my thumbs gentle against the screen. If you’re not careful with these things, you can crush the life out of them. I should know. I’ve done it once or twice.

  What the fuck should I say?

  The empty window is half taunt, half opportunity.

  I start to type out some long-winded bullshit about how happy I am to have seen her and how I hope we can get together to talk, and then I delete the entire thing. Instead, I write, Do you like breakfast?

  I send it with a stab of my thumb against the screen before I can think about it anymore. Addi loves breakfast—or at least she did when we were…not together, but spending time.

  The reply takes less than a minute, and it fills me with hope.

  Only if the waffles are good

  Meet me tomorrow at ten?

  This answer takes longer.

  Okay. Where?

  Dockside?

  I’ll be there.

  She’ll be there.

  Chapter Nine

  Addison

  I’m so nervous about breakfast that I get there fifteen minutes early and have to take a walk around the block so I’m not si
tting in the Dockside Diner tearing straw wrappers into shreds and drinking my third cup of coffee when Brett arrives. I climb out of my car and casually scan the inside of the tiny restaurant without turning my head—Jesus, I must look so stupid—but there’s only a table full of old men inside. They look like they’re arguing over something in the newspaper. Perfect.

  Tourist season has already been winding down for a few weeks in Lockton—people come for the lakes and stay for—well, I don’t know what. But there’s no fall festival scheduled for this weekend, so the Dockside, which happens to be my favorite breakfast place, isn’t busy. It’s not prissy like some of the newer restaurants that cycle in and out of the downtown area every couple of years.

  Brett and I used to go here all the time that summer, only earlier, before we both had to go to work. He worked at one of the marinas on the lakeshore, and I worked in a candy shop. The owners retired about four years ago. I still get a pang in my heart when I see the empty storefront.

  The main thing is, Brett’s not inside already, waiting for me. I have to find something to do with myself.

  The morning air is brisk but sunny, and I tilt my face up into the light while I go up two blocks, right one block, and make my way back to the Dockside. Spikes of adrenaline surge into my chest like I’m about to run for my life.

  It’s only Brett Miller, I tell myself sternly. It doesn’t help. I spend the last block taking in long, cleansing breaths until I’ve got myself under a semblance of control. I forced myself not to agonize over my outfit—yoga pants and a purple hoodie—and only wore the minimum amount of makeup. It’s pathetic how much I want him to think I’m amazing and beautiful, but I also don’t want him to think I put in too much effort. You’d think, at twenty-eight years old, I’d be over that shit, but no…