by Nicole Casey
Lost Love
Only Him Series Book 2
Nicole Casey
Lost Love
by Nicole Casey
Copyright © 2017. All Rights Reserved.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored, or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means (electronically, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the proper written permission of the copyright owner, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This book is a work of fiction. People, places, events and situations are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or historical events, is purely coincidental.
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CONTENTS
Lost Love
1. Gio
2. Derek
3. Gio
4. Derek
5. Gio
6. Derek
7. Gio
8. Derek
9. Gio
10. Derek
11. Gio
12. Derek
13. Gio
14. Derek
15. Gio
16. Derek
Read an Excerpt from The Wedding Date (Only Him Series Book 1)
1. Bryant
2. Max
3. Bryant
Bonus Story: Hot Flash
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Bonus Story: Loving Mr. Kale
1. Jon
2. Alex
3. Jon
4. Alex
5. Jon
6. Alex
7. Jon
8. Alex
9. Jon
10. Alex
11. Jon
12. Alex
13. Jon
14. Alex
15. Jon
16. Alex
Author’s Note
Free Book Giveaway
Chapter One
Gio
“So, Bryant is taking me away for a weekend in Paris,” my best friend for as long as I could remember, Max, enthused. “I can’t help but think that he might finally be about to propose.”
“That’s excellent news,” I replied through gritted teeth.
It wasn’t that I didn’t want the best for Max. If anyone deserved true happiness, it was him. I just needed a bit of it for myself, and that was all. It had been forever since I’d found someone to be excited about.
Actually, if I really thought about it, there had only ever been one person that I truly adored, but I tried not to think about him too much these days because it hurt my heart to do so. Still, even after years of being apart, I kept meaning to move on, but it wasn’t quite as simple as that.
“Oh I’m so happy!” Max bounced up and down on my couch like an excitable bunny rabbit. “I’ve wanted this for as long as I can remember.”
“I know.” I nodded slowly as I sipped my coffee. I tried my best to keep my moroseness from my tone. It wasn’t Max’s fault that I felt sad. I didn’t want to put a dampener on his joy, but I wasn’t sure how successfully I managed that. Max didn’t look totally convinced at any rate. “You’re really lucky.”
I glanced my eyes around my apartment, drinking in all the luxuries I’d afforded myself through my awesome career as a marketing executive. I loved my job, and it felt great to have made such a success of my life. In that way, I was lucky, but the thing I was missing was always prodding me in the side, reminding me that it wasn’t all good.
I had everything I wanted, but no one to love, no one to share it with.
“Oh don’t worry, mate.” Max patted my shoulder in what I’m sure he thought was a comforting gesture. He would’ve never wanted to come across as patronizing as he did. “The one for you will come along.”
The one for me had already come along. I’d already been offered that kind of once-in-a-lifetime true love, but it didn’t last. If I couldn’t keep hold of Derek Tricks with all the feelings we had for one another, then I didn’t stand a chance at ever keeping anyone. Maybe that was why I didn’t bother trying.
Ah Derek, with his beautiful olive skin, his warm hazel eyes, his beautiful deep black curls… he was an utter vision of gorgeousness. Sometimes I wondered why it took me so long to pay attention to him.
We were in school together our entire childhood, but we didn’t run in the same circles. He hung out with the jocks, and I was more one of the… academic types, with Max. The nerds, as Derek always called us, but in a sweet, teasing way. We didn’t even speak much, until we reached the final year of high school when hormones and charged emotions began to control us. That was when I started to recognize that what I felt for Derek wasn’t admiration, and he began to really see me too. I was nothing compared to him; awkward, pasty, red-haired and geeky… but somehow Derek managed to fall for me anyway.
We fell easily into one another’s arms, and quickly shared our first kiss. There was no need for us to be scared about the world knowing about our love, because it was so real, so fierce that we could’ve weathered anything. In the end, the kids in our school respected us too much to bother with teasing. It was so easy for us to just be. It was the happiest time of my whole damn life.
Maybe that should’ve been my first clue that I wasn’t going to get the happy ever after I desired. Maybe it was all too simple, and I shouldn’t have been so naïve.
Eventually school ended, and I assumed that with all our newfound freedom that our love would blossom and grow. I thought we’d find a college that suited us both, or maybe a new city in which to build some awesome careers, and that the world would become our oyster.
How wrong I was. While I was happily planning and dreaming about a future with Derek in it, he was making his escape. He just upped and vanished, joined the army apparently, without even saying goodbye. He didn’t even bother to tell me that it was over, he just disappeared in the dead of night, leaving my heart shattered into a million pieces.
The whole thing must’ve meant a whole lot more to me than it did him.
“What happened to that bloke you were dating, Tommy, was it?” Max continued, completely oblivious to my inner flashback into the most heartbreaking moment of my entire life.
Losing Derek crushed me. I wept for weeks, and I never wanted to experience that again. I couldn’t even go to college, or move somewhere else. I simply remained where I was and tried to create a life for myself in another way entirely. “He was cute, right?”
“Boring,” I lied, while pointedly focusing my gaze on my fingernails. “I just didn’t have anything in common with him.”
Max gave me a look, one that could see deep into the parts of me that I never wanted to expose to the rest of the world. I could lie to him all I wanted, but he knew the issue. Tommy was gone because he wasn’t Derek.
No one ever would be.
“Course.” He decided to roll with it, rather than dig me out. My feelings weren’t worth analyzing because there was nothing that could be done about it. “Well, your dream man is just around the corner, I’m sure of it.”
I smiled thinly, but I couldn’t vocalize an agreement with him because I didn’t believe it myself. I worked seventy hours a week, I worked out during all the free time I wasn’t sleeping, and I pushed myself in every way possible just to ensure that I didn’t have to worry too much about the lack of love. I didn’t usually think about it but at moments like this when it felt like I was being left behind, it
was challenging to think about anything else.
Now Max was going to get married, I was sure he was right about the proposal because he and Bryant were the most incredible couple ever. It was the next logical step for them both, and I would surely be dragged into the wedding planning. Love was going to thrust violently into my face for the foreseeable future. It would be difficult to think about anything else.
“Anyway, I have to go and pack. I’ll see you when I get back, alright?” Max cocked his head, giving me a very concerned look. “You will be okay, won’t you?”
“Oh you know me, I’ll be fine.” I waved my hand in a dismissive gesture, but of course my best friend knew me too well. He pulled me in for a much-needed bear hug, which comforted me, if only for a moment. “You have a lovely weekend and I will see you when you get back.”
“I’ll have my phone with me, so you can call me whenever you want.”
“Don’t you worry about me.” I squeezed my friend’s hand, guilt washing over me. I didn’t want to ruin his big moment because I was a pathetic fool. He didn’t deserve this from me. “You promise me you’ll enjoy yourself.”
I had to move on. I needed to find a way to put the past behind me to move on or my future would always be this. I didn’t want to be stuck in limbo forever. It sucked. I was hurting myself more and more every single day.
One thing was for sure, I needed to forget all about Derek Tricks now. I vowed to myself that I would never think about him again.
Chapter Two
Derek
This is weird… it’s so, so weird.
As my feet clomped along the roads that used to be so familiar to me, all I could feel was that odd sense that I really didn’t belong here anymore. It was almost as if I was living inside a dream, like my toes weren’t quite reaching the ground, like I could wake up at any moment and find myself back at the army base, with everything being exactly the way it had been for the last few years.
If it hadn’t been for the fact that I’d carefully planned this trip, that I’d booked the tickets weeks back, that I’d been planning what I was going to say over and over again, having invisible conversations inside my mind, I might just be able to convince myself that it really was all just a construct of my crazy brain.
But nope, it was real. I was home again and willing to face my biggest fear.
When I left here at a meager eighteen years of age with absolutely no life experience and no idea what the big wide world was going to be like, I thought that I was doing the right thing. Sure I snuck off in the middle of the night without telling anyone, but I assumed it was the only choice I had. After the bitter rejection I received from my family solely because the person I chose to be in love with was male, I was too shortsighted to see any other out.
“You are disgusting, a disgrace to the family name.”
“It’s just a phase, we need to get you out of it.”
“I can’t stand for this, what will our friends think?”
Their words still stung, even today, even after all the years that had passed. What made it worse was that they hadn’t spoken to me even when I left. They didn’t care what had happened to me at all. I sent them the odd postcard when I first decided on the only career path I could see before me, just so they wouldn’t worry, but I needn’t have bothered.
They still didn’t care, not even these years later.
After I’d been gone for a year, when I still hadn’t heard anything, I made the vow to myself then. I would never ever come back home. Sure, I was sacrificing a lot of things, including the guy I was head over heels in love with, but I was in such a dark place I assumed that I was doing everyone a favor.
I thought the lovely Gio Albertini would find someone better, and he’d eventually forget I even existed.
With that thought in mind, I threw myself into my new life. I thought that by tossing myself into the deep end and forcing myself to enjoy it, I eventually would. There was no looking back anyway, so it made a lot of sense. I worked hard, got fit, forced myself through the training and eventually found myself in combat. Yes, the battlefield was a scary place and my life was often on the line, but the adrenaline was incredible, and so was the high from knowing that we’d done a good job. I had some amazing friends in my team; we were the sort of people who would give our lives for one another.
The sad thing was, that had been the case on more than one occasion… not that I ever thought about that. I switched my emotions off as much as I could. We all did. It was the only way to stay alive.
Over time I’d worked my way up through the ranks, and now I didn’t have to put myself in the firing line quite so often, which gave me more time for myself. When survival wasn’t the only thing I had to worry about, I could start to look at my life as a whole, and it was obvious that there was one massive thing missing — Love. I still missed Gio, but since I’d blown things with him I needed to find someone new, which was how Benji crashed into my life.
Benji Jones had liked me from afar for ages. He was a little younger than me, but incredibly sweet and a whole lot of fun. I’d kept him at a distance, but realized it was finally time to let him in. We ended up having a very nice relationship, but that was the main problem. It was just nice, there was no fire, no spark, and he didn’t stir me in the same way that Gio did. He was lovely, but we couldn’t last. I broke his heart, and I hated myself for that but I figured it was best to let him down early before he got even more invested.
Then came along Harry. He was older than me, hot as all hell, and had a sex drive like no other. The passion we shared was incredible and through the roof. I found him exciting, thrilling, too much fun… but eventually I started to recognize that there was still something missing. We had all the passion, but none of the substance. It was a physical thing only.
Things with Harry ended explosively when I caught him cheating on me, but to be honest it was a bit of a relief. If we’d stayed together we would’ve ended up in a toxic cycle, so really he did me a massive favor.
The only problem was with the absence of Harry, I couldn’t help but wonder why I kept going for men that I had no real future with. I wasn’t a player. I had no desire to sow any wild oats; I just wanted to find someone to share my life with. So why wasn’t that happening?
I didn’t want to accept my answer, but it kept circling my brain anyway until I felt compelled to show it some attention. The reason I couldn’t move on was because I hadn’t even truly let go of the past. If I really examined it in a way that left me uncomfortable, it was obvious that I felt a lot of resentment for having to let him go in such a horrible way.
Neither of us did anything wrong. We didn’t want to end it, we were planning a very beautiful future, and that got tore away from us by my parents and their ridiculous overreaction.
I couldn’t let go of Gio, because in my memories he was perfect. I couldn’t recall a single thing about him. I loved his gorgeous red hair, his sparkling eyes, and his soft pale skin… He made me laugh and smile, and he could always anticipate my moods without me even having to tell him.
All I could see was him and me and the happiness we shared, which left no one else with even a chance. How could anyone compare to such a wonderful memory? He was being viewed with rose tinted glasses, and there was only one way to dispel that.
I would have to take the bull by the horns and face him head on.
It took me a while to act on that revelation. I couldn’t even bear to look Gio up online for a while. I was scared to see where his life had gone, what he looked like now, who he’d become. I needed to know everything about him so I could finally recall what wasn’t so great about him. I wanted him to become a real human so someone else could finally compete and I could get the happiness I so desperately needed.
But I was afraid.
What if he was married now? Or what if my disappearance had sent him into a tailspin and he was now a drug addict or something? What if he never wanted to see me again even to help me? I would
n’t be able to blame him for that! I had to, but I was terrified.
To be honest it was a big shock to know that he still lived in the same place, that he hadn’t gone out exploring the world a bit more, but who was I to judge? Sure I’d spread my wings, but that was only because I’d been forced to. My reasons weren’t the best, and actually, if I thought about it hard enough, it made my visit seem a lot less pressured. I could easily be back seeing the people from my past, not just him, if he slammed the door in my face. It didn’t have to be such a huge deal…
Even though it was.
I checked the crumpled piece of paper in my hand to confirm the address while my eyes widened in surprise. Gio had a lot going for him, he was smart as all hell so it shouldn’t have been shocking that he’d clearly made himself some money, but it did throw me off a little bit. I knew he wasn’t going to be the same person I knew all those years ago, after all I’d changed a lot too, but it was just really hitting me now how stark that difference might be.
I paused for a moment, recalling the first time he ever really spoke to me back in high school. We’d chatted before a little, but not really. Little did I know at that moment, the conversation we’d had would change my life forever.
“Hey, Derek, I absolutely love your tee shirt.”
I flicked my hair out of my eyes in the pretentious way I did back when I had curls. Of course now that was all gone, it was cropped closely to my head, but back then my hair was the one thing I really cared about.
“Oh thanks, yeah I bought it with money from my weekend job.”
It was the first time I’d ever really felt a bit wrong footed and nervous about speaking to anyone. I was confident, well known for being cool, adored for my sports stuff, but Gio had me totally off balance and I liked it.
“Oh yeah, you work at the cinema, don’t you? I really want to see that new robot film…”
“Come with me?” I asked on impulse, just knowing that I wanted to speak to this boy more, one and one. I needed to be alone with him to work out what this feeling really was. I didn’t know then that I was gay, or maybe I did but I didn’t want to accept it because I knew how my family would react. I just knew that he made me feel really good about myself.
