Second Chance Girl

by Jessica Thorn

  “You alright?” he asks, letting his hands linger on my hips even though I’m now firmly planted on the ground.

  “We’ll see,” I breathe. I’m not so sure.

  Chapter Eleven

  Cameron

  NOTE TO SELF: WHEN you tell a girl to be ready for anything, she’s not going to know that you mean, be ready to potentially, maybe, go on an impromptu fishing trip. Sure, that’s my bad. But now that we’re actually on the boat, and she’s wearing that lacy top and those tight jeans that look like they may as well have been painted on... well, I’m starting to second guess my own plan.

  “So, what’s the plan?” she asks, her voice hesitant but hopeful. I look around at the cooler full of beer and tackle box full of bait next to two fishing poles, and suddenly feel like this was a terrible idea.

  “Okay,” I say, gripping the back of my neck and shaking my head. “Don’t laugh, but I thought we could go fishing.”

  I watch as her eyes widen, and she tries as hard as she possibly can to keep her face straight. She always used to do that when we were together, try her best to spare my feelings, coddle my ego. Despite how much I feel like an idiot, I’m oddly comforted that she’s still trying not to hurt my feelings.

  “Sounds great,” she says, slowly and evenly. She’s trying so hard, and she’s a saint for it. I shake my head and let out a nervous laugh.

  “It was a stupid idea. This is just what I do whenever I’m feeling stressed or overwhelmed, and since you’re feeling stressed and overwhelmed...” Lizzie gives me a sincere if sympathetic smiles, and I drop my eyes to the ground. “See? Stupid idea.”

  “It’s not stupid,” she says. “It’s actually kind of sweet.”

  “I appreciate you saying that, but I promise, my ego can take it. We can do something else.”

  “No,” she says firmly, planting her hands on her hips. I let my gaze follow them, swallowing hard. Damn, she looks good. Why the hell did I think this would be a good idea? “Let’s go fishing. I think that sounds fun.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “I’m sure. Plus, we’re already on the boat.”

  She has a point there.

  I start the boat's engine and untie us from the dock, taking a seat in the console and slowly motoring us out into Cape Cod bay. With a few hours remaining until sunset, the bay is dotted with sailboats, people in kayaks and on paddleboards, and music from the shops and restaurants at the marina carries out onto the water, creating a picture-perfect scene. Farther out into the bay are other fishing boats and a few larger crafts, all enjoying the still waters and clear blue sky. This. This is why I wanted to take her out here, to share this little bit of peace that I so often run to when the days get rough, or the darkness creeps back in. Something about the water always lifts my spirits, and I’m guessing that’s something she doesn’t get enough of back in New York. Rather than sitting down, Lizzie stands next to me, holding onto the back of my seat and staring out at the water, a look of pure excitement on her face. Once we're past the no-wake zone, I turn to face her.

  “Hold on tight,” I tell her, before I gun the throttle of the boat. She lets out a little squeak of surprise, giggling and holding on tight as we bounce over waves and fly across the bay. When we get out by the other fishing boats, to a nice, deep spot that will be good for dropping anchor and casting out a line, I slow to a stop. I get up to drop the anchor while Lizzie looks around at the deep azure water, a huge smile on her face.

  Bingo.

  “I hope you like beer,” I say, opening up the cooler and twisting open a bottle. I hand one to her and she inspects it for a moment, shrugging.

  “I can’t remember the last time I had a beer,” she says, twisting open the cap and taking a sip.

  “Really? What do you typically drink?”

  “Vodka sodas,” she says. “Or martinis.”

  Girly drinks. I could have figured that.

  She takes another sip of her beer, then frowns and takes a seat on the bench at the stern of the boat. My heart sinks instantly. This was such a bad idea.

  “Look, we really don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” I say, taking a seat next to her. “Really, I won’t be offended.”

  “It’s not that,” she says, drawing her legs up onto the bench seat and hugging them against her chest. She looks as though she might cry, and oh shit, I am not equipped to deal with this. The plan was to cheer her up, but clearly all I’ve done is made her feel even worse. I’m not even sure how. I rake a hand through my hair, looking for the right words but coming up empty.

  “Was it something I said?”

  She shakes her head. “No,” she says. “Not directly.”

  “Then what’s wrong?” I ask. She turns to face me, her brows drawn together, a pained look in her eyes.

  “Why are you being so nice to me all of a sudden?” she asks, and the question catches me off guard.

  “What do you mean?”

  “When I first came back into town, you weren’t exactly happy to see me. In fact, you were downright... angry,” she explains. “You were short with me. Cold, even. And as I surprised as I was to see you, your reaction was actually exactly what I would have expected. I hurt you, Cam. You should be... I don’t know, giving me all kinds of Hell. Making me feel jealous. Anything besides being so... nice!”

  I can’t help it, I smirk at her, which only seems to cause her even more anguish.

  “You want me to try to make you jealous?”

  “What? No, I don’t want you to. I’m just saying I deserve it, is all.”

  I shake my head. Sure, I’d been surprised to see her and yeah, maybe I hadn’t reacted the friendliest. But, I have no desire to make her life a living hell. I don’t want to see her jealous. Would it be extremely satisfying for the girl who stomped on my heart to at least feel the teensiest bit of regret? Sure, 100%. But I don’t actively want to cause her pain. Quite the opposite, actually.

  “Plus, there’s the whole Ainsley thing,” she adds, rolling her eyes as she says Ainsley’s name. “I acted like a total idiot at Ryan’s the other night, getting so mad at you. I had no right.”

  No right? “What do you mean by that?” I ask.

  “Well what did I expect? That you would just never move on? Of course you’re going to date, you have every right to date whoever you want. Even...” she scrunches her face in a look of disgust. “Ainsley.”

  “I have to tell you something.”

  The words are out of my mouth before I can stop them, the part of my brain that wants so desperately to make her feel better taking over. I’m probably going to regret it, but I swallow hard and steel my nerves anyway.

  “Okay,” she says, her eyes widening in alarm.

  “I thought dating Ainsley would make me feel better. It doesn’t make a lot of sense, but I thought that if I dated Ainsley, it would be like evening the score, in a way.”

  I watch as she processes what I’ve just said. Speaking the words out loud had made me want to cringe, so I can only imagine what she thought of it. She folds her hands in her lap and sits quietly, her eyes darting back and forth as it sinks in. Because I’m an utter idiot, I keep going.

  “I knew that for whatever reason, Ainsley was always trying to get between us in school. I always told you it was nothing back then, because I only had eyes for you. But I knew to an extent that it was true, and that you both hated each other. Well one day a few months back, I was hanging out at Ryan’s with some guys from work, we’d just finished up a job, and Ainsley walked in. We started talking, somehow got on the topic of high school, and she owned up to it. Admitted everything. She told me she had a crush on me, but I was never available, and she thought it was crazy that the captain of the football team would date a nobody,” I say, adding, “Her words, not mine.”

  Lizzie winces, but doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t look at me. I continue.

  “She even owned up to that day. Told me that you’d begged her not to say anything. She f
elt guilty, Lizzie. She apologized to me. And I don’t know why, but I felt like the universe was playing some cruel fucking joke. You’d moved on, Ainsley had apologized for driving a wedge between us, and there I was, still being a miserable prick that couldn’t get over it. All I could think of, in that moment, was how pissed you’d be if you saw us together in that bar. So I asked her out on a date.”

  Lizzie’s head whips toward me, her eyes wide and slightly glassy. I suck in a breath, not wanting to upset her any further, and wanting her to just say something, anything.

  “So you went out with Ainsley to get back at me?” she asks, her voice just above a whisper.

  “Basically,” I say, finally owning it out loud. It doesn’t help the churning in my stomach, though. Or the fact that I feel like a jerk. “That’s why I broke it off so quickly, it wasn’t fair to Ainsley. It didn’t make me feel any better, either. I realized I had some serious soul-searching to do.”

  “And then I showed up,” she says. I nod my head, the pitiful, pathetic irony making me want to laugh.

  “And then you showed up.”

  She returns her gaze to her lap, where she is wringing her hands together. Her brows are knit together, and I can tell she’s deep in thought. I want so badly to know what she’s thinking, if she’s upset with me, if she’s trying to figure out a way to get off this boat and swim back to shore, get as far away from me as she can. I exhale slowly, feeling the weight of the confession lift off my shoulders. Somehow, though, there’s still a deep twinge of guilt twisting in my gut.

  Lizzie stands up and crosses her arms over her chest, pacing the small deck of the boat. She looks out over the water, her mouth a tight line, and I brace myself for her to demand I take her back to shore.

  Instead, and to my surprise, she just throws her hands in the air, and then picks up one of the fishing poles.

  “Okay, are we going to do this, or what?”

  Chapter Twelve

  Elizabeth

  I’VE NEVER BEEN GREAT at dealing with things head on. In fact, I’m actually much better at avoiding anything uncomfortable and just hoping it will go away. Case in point: the fact that I still haven’t gone into my childhood bedroom for fear of whatever gross, ugly feelings it will bring to the surface.

  Cam’s confession about dating Ainsley to get back at me? Yeah, same deal.

  I did what I do best in these situations and changed the subject, deciding to instead focus on fishing. Fishing. I’ve been fishing maybe once in my life, and I can’t say it’s what I expected Cam’s surprise outing to be. But honestly, I’d rather do anything than deal with the roller coaster of emotions I’ve been feeling ever since he told me about his reason for dating Ainsley. So, I bite the bullet, bait a line, and plop my butt onto the rigid bench seat, proceeding to go fishing for only the second time, ever.

  “This is nice,” I say, crossing my legs and staring out over the open water. The sky is clear and blue, not a single cloud in sight. Except, of course, that cloud of anxiety that’s been hanging over me since we first stepped on this boat.

  I look over at Cam, who is staring at me with wide eyes and knitted brows, clearly still confused by my abrupt change in subject and demeanor. But it’s too late, I made the choice, now I have to commit to it.

  “Honestly, I forgot how great the weather is up here this time of year. And the air quality, so much cleaner and fresher than New York City,” I say, reaching out to jimmy the fishing pole, which is secured into a holder attached to the boat’s railing. I don’t feel any bites yet, save for that nagging, gnawing feeling at my insides.

  “Are you...?” Cam croaks, and I flash him a big smile.

  “Am I what? Enjoying fishing? Absolutely.”

  “I was going to say, ‘are you okay?’ Because you’re acting really fucking weird right now.”

  I gulp, returning my gaze to my lap. Okay, so he’s not going to let this go. Fine. I can be a big girl and talk about this. Inhaling a deep breath, I turn to face him, my heart skipping a little beat at the way he’s looking at me with those dark, dangerous eyes. Like he’s genuinely concerned. Why does he have to be so darn good?

  “Look, I just don’t really want to talk about it. I’m not good at this.”

  “At what? Talking? You’ve been pretty okay at it so far.”

  I roll my eyes dramatically, causing him to snort a laugh. “At dealing with uncomfortable situations.”

  “I’m making you uncomfortable?”

  This damn stubborn man. “No. You’re not making me uncomfortable. The situation is making me uncomfortable.”

  “Fishing?” he asks, this time just a glint of mischief in his eye. Dammit. Damn him. He’s going to make me say it. He hasn’t changed one bit.

  I swallow hard, wringing my hands together. “The thing with Ainsley. The fact that after all this time, you still want to get back at me for breaking up with you. I’m not sure what it means.”

  He doesn’t answer right away, just nods. I’m not sure I want him to answer, or to clarify what it all means, because it will probably just make things more complicated than they already are. As soon as Gran’s house is fixed and on the market, I’m on my way back to New York. I’m playing with fire by letting myself get close to Cam again. The only logical outcome of this is that one or both of us get hurt, but for some reason, I just can’t help myself.

  “It means I still haven’t gotten over it,” Cam says, his voice a low rumble that sends chills down my spine, and goosebumps exploding across my skin. “It means I still haven’t gotten over you.”

  I suck in a breath, not sure what to say. He looks at me intently, waiting for me to respond, but my lungs can’t find any air to speak. Raking my clammy hands through my hair, I stand up and start pacing the deck again. Cam stands up, too, but I need to put some distance between us. I just can’t do this with him, not now. Even though my heart and my body are screaming at me to just let my guard down, my rational, over-thinking brain can’t do it.

  “This isn’t a good idea, Cam. I thought catching up would be good for us, but clearly it’s not going to work.”

  He takes a few steps toward me, closing the distance between us in two long strides. Heat prickles at my skin, my stomach churning as the silence settles around us, magnified by the gentle rocking of the boat beneath us.

  “You’re the one who wanted to catch up in the first place,” Cam points out, and he’s got me there. “I didn’t even want to, until I realized I had that picture of you, that first night in the rain, burned into my brain. I didn’t think I’d ever see you again, but there you were. I started to wonder, maybe we were getting a second chance. Maybe we could move on from the past.”

  A second chance. At what? A future together? I can see it flashing before my eyes, Cam scooping me up into his arms and kissing me until I’m breathless, like he used to before it all fell apart. But what kind of future could we have when both of our lives are so separate? His family and his business are in Rocky Point, and my life is back in New York. How could we possibly make something like that work?

  I shake my head. “It’s too complicated. We’re not who we were back then, Cam.”

  He takes another step toward me, leaving just a few inches between us. He reaches out his hand and his fingers graze mine, heat rippling from my fingertips throughout the rest of my body. His hands feel more calloused than they did before, a result of his years of hard work building his business, literally and figuratively. I wonder what it would feel like to have those rough hands trailing up the exposed skin of my arms, shoulders, neck, the pad of his thumb tracing the line of my jaw. I shiver at the thought, remembering the feeling of his hands on other parts of me, too. And his lips...

  As if he can sense where my mind has wandered, his voice grows husky and pleading. “Maybe we don’t have to be.”

  I could so easily close the last few inches between us and melt into him, uncertain future or complications be damned. Maybe we could just enjoy the time we have
together now, and worry about what comes next later. The thought is enticing. But what if he’s wrong? What if we can’t move on from the past?

  Before I can decide, the boat abruptly jerks to the right, and I almost lose my balance. We both turn to look at the fishing poles, one of which is now bending over the railing out toward the water, the fishing line taught, as if something is pulling on it hard.

  Cam looks me up and down, his mouth twisted into a roguish grin. “To be continued.”

  We run to the fishing poles and I grab mine, which happens to be the one that’s bending over the railing of the boat like it’s hooked Cthulhu or something. The moment I take the pole out of the holster on the boat, I am slammed up against the railing as the tension between me and whatever is on the other end of that fishing line turns into an all-out game of tug of war. I brace a heel on the side of the boat while I try to reel it in, while Cam looks in shock out at the water.

  “Here, let me help,” he says, reaching around me to grab the handle of the fishing pole. I edge him out of the way.

  “I got this,” I say. “No way I’m letting you reel in the first fish I’ve ever caught.”

  “The way that thing is pulling, I’m not so sure it’s a fish. At least, not the kind you want to catch,” he says, his tone suddenly deadly serious. It only makes me more determined. Plus, this is actually a great way to work out the pent-up tension I’d been feeling just a few moments before.

  “If I just... reel it in...”