by Rye Hart
Table of Contents
CHAPTER 1EVAN
CHAPTER 2MELANIE
CHAPTER 3EVAN
CHAPTER 4MELANIE
CHAPTER 5EVAN
CHAPTER 6MELANIE
CHAPTER 7EVAN
CHAPTER 8MELANIE
CHAPTER 9EVAN
CHAPTER 10MELANIE
CHAPTER 11EVAN
CHAPTER 12MELANIE
CHAPTER 13EVAN
CHAPTER 14MELANIE
CHAPTER 15EVAN
CHAPTER 16MELANIE
CHAPTER 17EVAN
CHAPTER 18MELANIE
CHAPTER 19EVAN
CHAPTER 20MELANIE
CHAPTER 21EVAN
CHAPTER 22MELANIE
CHAPTER 23EVAN
CHAPTER 24MELANIE
CHAPTER 25EVAN
CHAPTER 26MELANIE
CHAPTER 27EVAN
CHAPTER 28MELANIE
CHAPTER 29EVAN
CHAPTER 30MELANIE
CHAPTER 31EVAN
CHAPTER 32MELANIE
CHAPTER 33EVAN
CHAPTER 34MELANIE
Saving Mel
A Bad Boy Romance
CONTENTS
TITLE PAGE
CHAPTER 1
CHAPTER 2
CHAPTER 3
CHAPTER 4
CHAPTER 5
CHAPTER 6
CHAPTER 7
CHAPTER 8
CHAPTER 9
CHAPTER 10
CHAPTER 11
CHAPTER 12
CHAPTER 13
CHAPTER 14
CHAPTER 15
CHAPTER 16
CHAPTER 17
CHAPTER 18
CHAPTER 19
CHAPTER 20
CHAPTER 21
CHAPTER 22
CHAPTER 23
CHAPTER 24
CHAPTER 25
CHAPTER 26
CHAPTER 27
CHAPTER 28
CHAPTER 29
CHAPTER 30
CHAPTER 31
CHAPTER 32
CHAPTER 33
CHAPTER 34
EPILOGUE
LAYLA’S LOVE STORY
HEART ON FIRE
RYE HART SNEAK PEEKS
COPYRIGHT
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CHAPTER 1
EVAN
“Uncle Evan sing song?”
“What song would you like me to sing, Liam?”
“Alphabet!”
“You want the alphabet song as your bedtime song?” I asked.
“Yeah!”
“Okay. Let me go put your sister down, then I’ll come back and sing you the alphabet song,” I said.
“Okay. Kisses for Hawy?”
“Let me go get her, and you can give Hadley some kisses,” I said.
With my nanny out sick, it was just me and the kids. I thought this situation would’ve gotten easier by now, but it hadn’t even started feeling normal. Going from living a secluded life in the woods to becoming a legal guardian for two very young kids had been bumpy.
I loved my niece and nephew – but these last three years of my life had become a deep-fried pile of bullshit, served up and ready for me on a silver fucking platter.
It seemed that with every passing day, it was getting harder and harder to choke down.
“Come here, Hadley-bear,” I said. “Brother wants to give you a kiss.”
Scooping the seven-month-old up in my arms, she started babbling and blowing bubbles. Every single time I looked at her I saw my sister-in-law.
“Hawy! Hawy!”
“Ready to give your sister kisses?” I asked.
I bent the sleepy little girl down toward Liam, and he pressed a kiss right against her cheek. The sight melted my heart ten times over, and I knew the question that was coming.
“Sleep with Hawy?” Liam asked.
“No, no. Hadley needs her own bed to sleep in. But in the morning after breakfast, we’ll all pile in front of the fireplace. How does that sound?” I asked.
“Fire! Yeah!” Liam exclaimed. “Alphabet song?”
“Let me put Hadley to sleep—”
“Alphabet song!”
Tears were rising in Liam’s eyes, and the last thing I wanted to do was rile him up. Hadley was nestling into my chest and yawning against my shirt. I knew I needed to get her down to bed before she got too tired, or I’d really be in for a ride. Hadley was a wonderful little baby until she became overtired, and then she was hell on wheels.
She was just like her father in that sense. And just like that, the thought of my brother threw me back to that night. The police came knocking down my damn door with their pitiful glances and urgent messages, and I’d been too high on painkillers to even register what the fuck they were saying.
“Alphabet! Alphabet! Alphabet!”
“Okay. But just once,” I said.
“A, B, C, D, E, F, G… H, I, J, K—”
“‘Elenemo pee’!”
“Q, R, S, T, U, V—”
“‘Double doo lex, I, and bees’!”
“Now I know my ABC’s, next time won’t you sing with me?”
Liam clapped his hands while I cradled Hadley close to my chest. I pressed a kiss to his forehead as he hunkered down underneath his blanket, then I started out of his room and down the hallway.
The night my brother and sister-in-law died in that damn car accident had changed my world forever. It not only dropped two kids in my lap, but it also shined a light onto the sad reality of my addiction. In high school, I injured my back playing football. My fucking tackles didn’t know what the hell they were doing, and I got sacked.
But when the guy from the other team hit me, he twisted my torso a little too much.
I came down on the side of my back and hit a damn rock, because the school apparently didn’t check for shit like that. I cracked ribs and ripped muscle to the point that it took three damn surgeries before I was even remotely back to normal.
Back then, though, I was resilient. Back then, I prided myself on not having to take painkillers. The girls in my high school fucking ate up my story, and I slayed more pussy than I ever had up to that point. And they were all on top so they wouldn’t ‘hurt me.’ It was the life.
“Okay, Hadley. It’s time for bed.”
I slipped the tiny girl into her crib before I placed a kiss on her forehead. She was sleeping soundly, with her eyes closed and her lips slightly parted. While she was awake, she looked just like my sister-in-law, but asleep, she was a spitting image of my brother. A stab of pain hit me square in the chest, and for a second, it hurt to breathe.
“Uncle Evan?”
Whipping my head up, I looked over at the doorframe of Hadley’s room. The little boy I’d just bedded down was rubbing his eyes and dragging a blanket behind him. I tucked Hadley in before I left the room, then I shut the door behind me before I turned my sights back to him.
“Liam, what are you doing up?”
“Water?” he asked.
“No more water. You’ve already had a glass. If you have any more, you’ll pee straight through your diaper.”
“But… water.”
His lip began to tremble, and I scooped the two-year old up into my arms. I needed to get his tantrum away from Hadley before he woke her, and I knew it was coming. The tears would start before his legs started to kick, and then he’d escalate to screaming if I still didn’t give him what he wanted.
“Water,” he said, sniffling.
“Not this late,” I said.
“Water, Uncle Evan!” he exclaimed.
“Sorry, buddy, no more water.”
The crying struck up just as I got him into his room, and I shu
t the door behind me to mute it. I slid the boy back into bed just as his legs started flailing, and I did what I could to tuck him back in. Liam’s cries echoed off the corners of the room, and I prayed they didn’t wake Hadley. These were the times I was still out of my element, still in uncharted waters. Every time I thought I had it down with these kids, something changed, and I didn’t know how to react. I felt the stress of the moment overwhelming my body, and my hands began to shake.
It was times like these that I could still taste those pills on my tongue.
“I want water!”
“Nope.”
“Water!”
“This is not how we get things we want, Liam. You know this,” I said.
“Water! Water! Water!”
I heard Hadley’s cry coming from her room. I groaned and looked up at the ceiling, wondering how in the world I was going to get Liam to calm down without losing my shit. I got up from his bed and walked toward the door, letting him simply throw his tantrum while I went and checked on the baby.
And still, my hands were shaking.
My addiction to painkillers hadn’t been instant. In fact, it hadn’t really grabbed me by the throat until I’d gotten my I.T. company off the ground. I started the company with just myself and my right-hand man, Ted. I was the creative mind, while Ted was the coder, and together we tackled the world of technology. What started out as a basic security firm had blossomed into a corporation that designed security software for smart-homes. Over the course of a few years, we grew exponentially, and when the stress of it all became too much, and my long work hours in front of the desk resulted in throbbing pain, I started drinking more than I should have. I quickly realized that I couldn’t keep that up, if I didn’t want it to be obvious. Showing up to the office smelling like a distillery wasn’t exactly practical. Remembering how good painkillers made me feel after my injury, I sought them out again as a way to deal with the stress of my daily life.
It was easy at first. I went into the doctor complaining about my old back injury, and he wrote me a prescription without so much as a second thought. After that, I just had to come up with lie after lie to get the refills. I slept the wrong way, or I overdid it at the gym; whatever would get the doc to sign the script. And if he hesitated, I’d find another doctor. I was balls-deep in my addiction before I knew what was happening. Ted, however, hadn’t been as easily fooled; nor had my former fiancée. Eventually, our relationship was the price I had to pay for my habit.
“Come here, sweet girl. What’s going on?”
I picked Hadley up and held her close to my chest. Already, I could hear Liam winding down, effectively tuckering himself out with his tantrum. I bounced Hadley in my arms while she nestled against my chest, tears flowing down her face. She was now over-tired and pissed, so I started singing her the song I always did whenever she kicked up like this.
“You are my Hadley, my only Hadley. You make me happy when skies are gray. You never know, Hadley, how much I love you. Please don’t take my Hadley away.”
Repeatedly, I sang the song and, the more I sang it, the more she settled down. After pacing with her for a few minutes, she was finally snoozing against my chest. I laid her back down and covered her with her blanket, making sure she wouldn’t get cold tonight. Winter was setting in, and the snow would start dumping soon, which meant I needed to keep the kids warm and bundled at all times.
I peeked into Liam’s room one last time before I shut the door, smiling at the sleeping boy whose leg was hanging off the bed.
I quietly made my way out to the living room and flopped down on the couch. I had an open beer waiting for me.
Hell yes.
I couldn’t wait to feel it pour down my throat. My hands were shaking, and I was taking deep breaths, trying to quell the stress levels rising in my body. A body filled with toxic memoirs of the past.
How can a man like me be fit to parent?
I can’t even fucking care for myself?
Then, as I grabbed the beer and brought it to my lips, my mind rushed back to another moment of torment, in the conference room of the tech company I built from the ground up. It was the same scene I had repeating in my head thousands of times over, like a broken record.
A tiny part of me was ready to move on, to leave the past where it belonged and accept the teachings, but that part was crushed by the fuming alpha inside that refused to give in. He didn’t believe in forgive and forget. He preferred to hold a grudge, even if it would eat him up like a fucking parasite, from the inside out.
That day felt like just yesterday. Ted actively started a smear campaign against me to edge me out of the company. He exposed my addiction to painkillers to the board and used my fiancée against me. All sorts of things came out that day. The fact that Ted and my fiancée were sleeping together, the fact that I was addicted to painkillers, the fact that the company’s earnings were down fifteen percent from last year.
Ted took it upon himself to spin the reason for the company’s lack of growth to my addiction. What he failed to make note of was the fact I designed the company’s structure specifically so it did not need me to survive, by appointing qualified people into the most critical roles. Ultimately it didn’t serve me well, because Ted knew he didn’t need me to grow the company and he was convincing enough to the rest of the stakeholders who were more concerned about their own pockets than getting to the bottom of the loss of revenue.
I watched my bitch of a conniving fiancée cry fake tears of fear for my health or safety or whatever the fuck she was spewing that day.
They made such a convincing argument that the board voted to have me removed.
They tossed me out on my ass and gave me a package of ten million dollars. It was a joke. Ten million dollars to the man who started and grew a fucking four hundred million dollar I.T. company from nothing. It made me fucking sick. I was done with the world after that. I went home, burned all my fiancée’s shit, sold the penthouse condo right out from under her fucking feet, and never looked back.
Now, I was tucked away in the mountains of Montana with my brother’s two kids, living off the interest from my severance.
Sure, it could get lonely from time to time and, before the kids had come along, I would entertain myself with random chicks, screwing them in the bathroom of the one decent bar in town. But even that had gotten old. And now that I had Hadley and Liam to think of, my sex life was in a sad state. Even though I had a nanny who could watch them so I could go out, I still didn’t want to risk a clingy bimbo following me home. Maybe I could manage to be without pussy for a little, at least until I really got my shit together.
I strode over to the fridge and grabbed myself another beer. I’d been clean of my addiction to painkillers for months, but nights like this tested my willpower. My stress levels would mount and my hands would shake violently. My body would crave it and my mind would tell me just to take the edge off. When those two beautiful kids came to live with me, I flushed all the pills down the damn toilet. I blocked and deleted all the numbers of people I’d call to get them from and I told myself that was that.
No more from that point on.
Cold fucking turkey.
I sat on the couch and listened to the quiet around me. Most nights I appreciated the solace, but tonight it just made things worse.
Maybe I did need to get laid.
CHAPTER 2
MELANIE
I sat at the kitchen table poring over the bills and feeling the panic start to rise in my chest. I closed my eyes and took a few deep breaths, trying to calm my nerves. I needed to find a job that paid decent, and fast.
I needed to get my ass in gear.
I graduated from the University of Montana nearly six months ago and had yet to find work. There wasn’t much need for a preschool teacher here in Bozeman and, with my father’s health rapidly declining, I couldn’t exactly leave in search of a job somewhere else.
