by Melinda Minx
Stay
A Second Chance Badboy Romance
Melinda Minx
Darkstar Press
Contents
1. Mason
2. Sophie
3. Mason
4. Sophie
5. Sophie
6. Mason
7. Mason
8. Sophie
9. Mason
10. Sophie
11. Sophie
12. Mason
13. Sophie
14. Mason
15. Mason
16. Mason
17. Sophie
18. Mason
19. Sophie
20. Sophie
21. Mason
22. Mason
23. Sophie
24. Mason
25. Sophie
26. Mason
Preview of Jacked: A Secret Baby Romance
1. Jack
2. Elisabeth
3. Jack
4. Elisabeth
5. Jack
6. Elisabeth
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Also by Melinda Minx
Also by Melinda Minx
About the Author
1
Mason
I pop the bottle and take a long swig. The cold German beer flows down my throat like a fucking elixir. All the sand from Syria is washed away by the Bavarian brew. I down nearly the whole bottle before I slam it down onto the bar.
“Shit,” I whisper. “Almost home…”
“How long has it been?” the guy across from me asks. He looks fresh. He’s got that soft baby face of a man who’s never had to kill. This German army base is a staging area for war. It’s a place where people who have never fought touch shoulders with guys like me. I’m on the way out, he’s on the way in.
“Fifteen years since I stepped foot on U.S. soil,” I say.
I rotate the beer in my hands, looking it over. It’s so cold it doesn’t feel real.
“Shit, man,” he hisses. “Fifteen years? You didn’t get to take any leave?”
I let out a dry laugh and shake my head.
I look up at him, and I lock eyes with him. “You got something to keep you anchored?”
“My wife,” he says,
“You getting shipped off?”
He nods. “Yeah, Syria.”
“You always think you’ll want to go back as soon as you get the chance,” I say. “But sometimes the things that you most wanted to see again keep you away. Don’t be a dipshit like me. Don’t be a fucking coward, remember why you want to go home, and go home. Fight for it.”
He looks at me and holds his glass out to me. I clank my bottle against his glass. “Prost.”
“Prost, man,” he says. “I’ll listen to your advice. It sounds like it’s coming from real experience.”
I nod and chug down the rest of my beer.
The only reason I’m going home now is because they’re making me. Each time I decided not to go back, it felt like “one more time,” but then each time it got harder to go back, until it was fucking impossible.
I couldn’t protect Eric. It wasn’t like an IED snatched him away from me, it was my own fucking fault. He got cut down right beside me. If I had kept a better lookout, if I had been more on point, I could have saved him. I’d have brought him home to Mom and Dad.
He got shot right next to me—the bullet could just as easily have hit me—and I dragged him to cover, then watched him bleed out in my arms. I couldn’t even stop the blood flow. I was fucking worthless.
I pop open another bottle and stare into it before taking a swig.
And then I stopped writing to Sophie. I stopped even opening her fucking letters. If I couldn’t protect Eric, then what good was I to her? I shake my head. Bullshit logic. Coward logic. Maybe I was punishing myself, or maybe I felt that I just didn’t deserve anything good after fucking up everything so bad.
All I know is I threw it away. I threw my life away. I traded the woman of my dreams away for a decade and a half of scars and ink. I was strong before, but now I’m hard. Each scar is an experience, a trial, and I passed all of them.
I’ve been stabbed half a dozen times, I’ve been shot, I’ve taken shrapnel in my shin—but still I’ve been too fucking chicken-shit to go back home? To visit my parents’ graves? What am I really afraid of?
“Nothing,” I mutter to myself.
“What’s that?” the bartender asks.
“Nothing,” I say. “I didn’t say anything.”
He walks off.
I’m not afraid of anything now. I’ve been through enough shit, it’s time to grab life by the balls. To go for what I want, even if I don’t deserve it anymore. Even if I don’t deserve her anymore.
I’m tired of running.
I’m tired of hiding.
After fighting in three wars in three countries, I never would have thought the hardest battle I’d fight would be back in Tuckett Bay.
2
Sophie
“Sophie,” Dad says. “Did you see Pfizer is opening a new lab in Boston?”
I let out a deep sigh. “No, Dad, I didn’t see that.”
He sips his coffee and folds the newspaper over. “Just saying.”
“You’re not just saying,” I say. “You’re telling me I should apply for a job there. You’re telling me to get my ass out of Tuckett Bay.”
He gets a pen out and starts on the crossword puzzle, annoyingly not responding to me. Because he knows I’m right.
I flip the eggs over before they overcook. “Where’s the salt?”
“It’s not in the thing?” Dad mumbles, not looking up.
I look over and see the saltshaker sitting on the table, right in front of him. I grab it and shake a stingy pinch onto the eggs.
“More,” Dad says.
“Oh, now you can talk?”
He laughs. “Eggs have no taste without salt. Salt is the whole reason you eat an egg!”
“The cholesterol is bad enough, Dad, I’m not going to spike your sodium, too.”
“You treat me like an old man, Sophie.”
I shrug. He is an old man. It’s about time he realized that.
“They’re hiring for over two hundred research positions,” Dad says, “and if you’ve got a lot of good publications, they’ve got openings for project leads.”
“Cool,” I say. “Pfizer, famous for boner medicine. I could make a real difference working there. Give all the old men of the world nice, big, stiff boners.”
Dad shouts, “I’ll be an old man someday, Sophie! I may need that advanced boner medicine if I want to keep feeling young. And don’t you think making boner medicine is a better use of your Ph.D. than being a waitress at the Crab Shack?”
After Mason dumped me—which feels like forever ago—I went straight to college. Pre-med. I shifted gears to pharmacology, and I never took a break. Not a single vacation. By the time I was in my late twenties, I had become one of the most respected and well-published researchers in my field.
And then I burnt out. Hard. I’d been dating a colleague. Both of us were too busy with our work to really be busy with each other. We’d talked about marriage for years, saying we’d do it one day. But somehow, we never found the time. Or maybe we just lacked the will.
When he finally came up for air after finishing a big project, he was suddenly serious about marrying me. And I got cold feet. Freezing cold.
I came back to Tuckett Bay to unravel. To get away. I called it my “gap year,” just because I never took anything of the sort after high school, or after undergrad, or after my Masters—or ever.
I’m over fifteen months into my gap year now. I’ve save
d up enough money that—if I really wanted and was frugal—I could go a decade or so without working. The waitress job is just to keep me doing something, and to make the drain on my savings hit a little less hard. Dad says it’s to give me an excuse to stay.
I plate the eggs and pat the bacon dry. “One piece, Dad.”
“Apply for the job, Sophie,” he grunts. “If you’re gone too long, no one will ever hire you again.”
I put the plate down. “Veggies tomorrow, okay?”
He grumbles and bites into his single strip of reduced-fat bacon. “Apply.”
“You just want me gone so you can eat garbage again.”
“I don’t want you gone, Sophie,” he says. “It’s a joy to have you here again, but I know this isn’t what you want out of your life. You’re too smart for Tuckett Bay.”
We work on the crossword puzzle together, and then I go to work.
3
Mason
“Shit, man,” Marv says. “That really you? Mason fucking Steel? I heard you died.”
“I look dead to you?” I punch his arm.
“Ouch!” he yelps. “Okay, so you aren’t dead. And you look pretty fucking strong.”
“So you got a job for me?”
He looks me up and down. “You’ve got a lot of fucking ink, but that’s no fisherman ink.”
“Special forces,” I say. “I’ve been in dry fucking deserts for the last decade, Marv, get me on a boat. I want to get elbow-deep in fish stink. I want the salt water stinging my wounds.”
He narrows his eyes at the big knife scar on my forearm. “I haven’t left Tuckett Bay since high school, I’d give anything to get the fuck out of here. And you been gone over fifteen years—you could go anywhere in the country, man—and you come back here?”
“Let me fish.”
“Alright,” Marv says. “You know your way around a fishing boat, I know that, and if we get attacked by pirates, I bet you can kill every last one of ‘em with your bare hands, huh?”
“There’s no pirates off the coast of fucking Massachusetts, man.”
“It’s a joke. You don’t got jokes in the special forces?”
I find myself staring a thousand miles past him, past the pier and out into the sea. The abandoned lighthouse looms on the shore, like a reminder that this whole industry and town is dying. A dead end. “We got jokes,” I mumble. “You just wouldn’t think any of ‘em are funny.”
“I can give you thirty an hour to start,” Marv says. “That’s a bit better than standard rate, since we go back and all, and if you stick around a whole season, I can talk about cutting you in as a partner and what not. I need someone solid to help me manage some of the fuck-ups I got working for me.”
“Nah,” I say, shaking my head. “I’m not doing this for the money. Living in hell had a low cost of living. I don’t want any responsibility, Marv, I just want to do a good job fishing. Keep myself awake and alive, you know?”
He nods, but I can tell he doesn’t really know what the hell I’m talking about.
I get on his boat, and the rest of his crew straggles in over the next twenty minutes. There’s one guy, John, who I vaguely recall from high school, but the other two, Ashton and Samuel, are too young for me to have known them back when I was growing up here.
“You’re Eric’s brother?” John asks me, looking me up and down.
“I was, yeah,” I say.
My tone tells him not to go there. By the way he bites his lip, I can tell he won’t bring Eric up again. Good.
We set out to sea and suit up. The big orange suit and hood covers all of my scars and tattoos, and I forget for a few moments at a time about everything that happened over the last fifteen years. That feels good. To forget.
Though I’m not really back here to forget.
I work the nets, and the salty foam crashes against the bow, churning up onto the deck. Fishing isn’t as dangerous as hunting the Taliban or ISIS, but if you aren’t careful, it still can kill you.
The smell of the sea and the salt in my beard brings me right back to high school. Fishing with Eric after school. He told me he never wanted to have to stay in Tuckett Bay. He never wanted to be one of those guys like Marv who is still here in his thirties, doing the same shit he was doing in high school.
I shake my head. “This one’s for you, bro,” I say, my muscles bulging as I pull a trap filled with cod out of the water and back up over the bow. I throw it down onto the deck, and I watch the big cod squirming.
I feel a big hand slap my back. Marv shouts over the water into my ear. “Time to eat. Free food at the Crab Shack.”
4
Sophie
I get to work a little bit late, but no one really cares. Business is mostly slow until the fishing crews come in. I saw Marv’s boat pulling into harbor on the drive over, but it will take them a while to unload their haul and head over here.
The Crab Shack lets fishing crews eat for free in exchange for some of their fresh catch. They still have to tip the waitresses, of course, so it’s all good for me. During tourist season, seeing all the fishing crews come in to eat makes the Shack a big draw for tourists. If the fishermen all eat here, it must be good, right?
It is good, I admit. It was my favorite place to eat growing up here, and it was the first place I always came back to eat when I visited Dad. Now that I’ve worked here for months, though, I’d rather get a steak on my days off.
“Sophie,” Melanie says, smiling as I step in.
“Hey, Mel,” I say. “Sorry I’m late.”
“No biggie,” she says.
Melanie became owner of the Crab Shack after her parents both died. Neither of us ever spoke again of that time she blocked me in the chemistry room because I ruined the curve. She was a bitch in high school, but she turned out to be a good person. High school, I realized years after the fact, often brings out the worst in everyone.
I also never told Melanie that—if it wasn’t for her—I probably never would have met Mason the way I did. I never would have lost my virginity to him...and he never would have abandoned me.
I don’t blame Melanie for the last part, but I feel at least somewhat thankful to her for the first parts. I don’t think I’ll ever forgive Mason for abandoning me, but it’s so fucking long ago now that I mostly remember the good parts of being with him. Mostly. And aside from that, how can someone forgive a ghost? He didn’t even come back for his parents’ funeral. At least I’m not the only one he abandoned.
An older couple from out of town comes in, and I head over to take their order.
“You guys got crab?” the guy asks. “Fresh crab?”
I smile. It’s called the Crab Shack.
“Fresh crab,” I say. “Of course, we’ve got some really fresh Dungeness in this morning.”
“Yeah,” he says. “It’s not frozen? Not imitation?”
This has become more and more of a theme lately, as the fishing industry in New England dries up, more and more places that used to feature fresh seafood are filling their freezers up with frozen fish from all over the country or imported from overseas.
“Never frozen,” I say, grinning. “And the fries are fresh-cut from real potatoes. I’d definitely recommend a basket with your crab.”
“Easy on the salt,” his wife says, poking him. “Crab for both of us. One basket of fries.”
I smile. “Light salt,” I say. “Got it. Oh, I forgot to take your drink orders.”
“Water’s fine,” his wife says. “Jason shouldn’t drink.”
“I shouldn’t live life,” he mutters.
“I’m not getting a cola!” she says. “We both have to give up something!”
The man, Jason, looks up at me with pleading eyes. I know he wants me to “forget” to go light on the salt—though he knows I can’t help him out with the beer. He reminds me of my dad, but I’m taking his wife’s side. I know how hard it is to force old men into healthier habits.
I go into the kitchen with
the order and say hi to all the kitchen crew.
“Marv and Derek’s crew is coming in for sure,” Will says. “I don’t think Dyer went out today, though.”
“Ah,” I say. “No grouper?”
“Nope,” Will says. “I saw Winston’s boat go out late, so he’ll be in late.”
I nod. “Dungeness, order of fries.”
Will grabs a basket and loads the potatoes into it.
When I get back to the front, Derek’s crew is all piling in. Most still have their overalls and suits on, since they’re going to go back out again after lunch. They nod and wave as they pile in. Derek takes a big crate of fish straight through to the back.
Melanie and I scramble to take orders—the advantage of coming to the Crab Shack is that they don’t have to just order the same thing they brought in. Otherwise Derek’s crew would get real tired of eating the same thing every day.
I get two tables’ worth of drink orders and scurry to the back for a tray. Just as I am disappearing into the kitchen, I see Marv’s crew start to pile in.
“Getting busy fast,” I say, smiling.
Something about a lunch-hour rush as a waitress is really fulfilling to me. It’s a big surge of work, and it’s demanding, and then it’s done. I can have a solid feeling of having gotten a lot done, and it doesn’t come home with me. It’s the opposite of research.
I step back out into the front with the tray of drinks, and I see a fucking ghost.
I nearly drop the tray, but I manage to catch my balance and set the tray down on an empty table, turn my back, and run white-faced back into the kitchen.
When I get into the kitchen, my heart is pounding against my chest, and I can feel the blood rushing through my ears. Holy shit. That looked like Mason Steel. A much harder, tattooed, and bearded Mason Steel. But Mason all the same.
Melanie comes through the swinging doors. “Sophie? You left the drinks on the table? You okay?”
