The Last Second Chance: A Small Town Love Story (Blue Moon Book 3)

by Lucy Score

  Wordlessly, he plucked a cherry out of the bowl and with his gaze never leaving Joey’s face, popped it into his mouth. One bite and the sweet juice tickled his taste buds. But there was something even sweeter he wanted to taste.

  Her.

  As if reading his mind, Joey leisurely fished a cherry out of the bowl.

  “You’d better hurry up, Joey,” Mrs. Penskee from the animal rescue warned from the middle of the bar.

  “I’m giving him a handicap since he can’t keep up,” she said with a wink, inciting another round of “Ooohs.”

  Joey brought the cherry to her lips, parting them just enough that Jax and every other man in the bar leaned forward in anticipation. Jax briefly forgot what he was doing with the cherry stem and nearly choked on it.

  She knew exactly what she was doing, but that did nothing to slow the southern migration of his blood.

  Holding the stem, Joey popped the cherry into her mouth and Jax felt his cock turn to stone.

  She gave him a feline grin. “Get ready.”

  If he were any readier, he’d drag her down to the beer-soaked floor and tear off her clothes.

  Joey popped the stem into her mouth, reminding Jax that his tongue had its own business besides panting after her. He’d just bent the stem in a V when Joey hooted triumphantly. One end of the stem poked through her lips.

  “No freaking way,” Jax challenged.

  “Bet me,” she said, the tip of the stem moving hypnotically between her full, pink lips.

  “A hundred bucks,” he heard himself say, knowing he’d already lost.

  “Deal.”

  “C’mon and show us,” Jax said, gesturing at the crowd.

  Someone started a drumroll and others joined in.

  “Come see for yourself.” It was a taunt and he took advantage of it. Jax closed the gap between them, but rather than using his fingers to pluck the stem from her lips, he used something more fun.

  His open mouth settled on her full, ripe lips for just a second. Long enough for the crowd to erupt and his dick to get impossibly harder.

  His teeth scraped her lips as they closed over the stem and drew it out of her mouth, a perfect knot intact.

  He didn’t hear the hoots and hollers of his neighbors and friends. Didn’t see the cellphones recording the moment or the looks of interest that passed between customers.

  All he saw was the fire in Joey’s eyes. Unpredictable, that fire was. He stayed close so she couldn’t swing hard with her fist should she decide to react that way.

  But she didn’t hit him. She held out her hand, palm up. Cocky as a quarterback after a game-winning touchdown.

  “I believe you owe me a hundred bucks.”

  He owed her more than that. Jax took the cherry stem out of his mouth and fished out his wallet. He made a show of counting out the bills to the delight of the crowd.

  He dropped the money into her waiting hand and watched her count it. Satisfied, she held up the cash. “Next round’s on Jax,” she called, sauntering away to applause. God, she was something. The girl of his dreams, the source of his torment. She was everything he wanted in this lifetime.

  “Ooh! A cherry stem tying contest? Let me try.”

  His mother’s voice had the effect on his fantasies of the arm of a record player yanked off of vinyl.

  “Geez, Mom. When did you get here?”

  Phoebe wore a chunky knit poncho the color of persimmons over dark, slim jeans She winked at him. “I’ve been here about an hour. I took over hosting duties and you’re paying me in wine,” she said wiggling an empty wine glass and heading toward Joey.

  Franklin bustled in from the dining room a tub full of dirty dishes in his hands and a cheerful grin on his face. “Good crowd tonight, Jax,” he said as he headed into the kitchen.

  “Where do you want us, Hollywood?”

  Beckett slapped him on his shoulder. Carter was behind him, directing Summer to a table of Gia’s yoga students with strict instructions to sit her ass down and relax. Gia was answering the phone at the host stand while Evan and Aurora wiped down menus.

  “Hi, Jazz!” Aurora waved cheerfully.

  “What are you guys doing here?” Jax asked.

  “We’re here for dinner,” Carter grinned.

  “You might be waiting until breakfast to get it.”

  Carter tossed an arm over his shoulders. “Just look at this place.”

  They did. Dozens of Mooners spending their Friday night in a place they built, enjoying themselves with beers they brewed. Lila dashed past a notebook full of new orders and Joey called out a greeting to customers coming through the door behind them. Phoebe, wine glass refilled, was turning over tables like it was her super power.

  He felt a little tickle in his throat. This was home and heart. People he’d known his whole life showing up just to support his family. And his family showing up without needing to be asked to lend a hand, break a sweat, and make sure that someone’s dream came true.

  In this moment he loved them all, fiercely.

  This is where he was supposed to be.

  “Maybe this wasn’t the shittiest idea in the world,” Beckett said, pride evident on his face.

  “This might actually work,” Jax agreed.

  “I’ll table touch,” Beckett volunteered.

  “I’ll expo,” Carter decided.

  “I’ll bar back,” Jax said with a slow grin. And the three went their separate ways to make it all work.

  15

  It was an hour before his brothers and their families could eat and another half an hour after that before Phoebe dragged him out of the kitchen and threw a bowl of chili in front of him.

  “Take a break. Eat,” she ordered.

  Wearily, Jax sank down on the chair. A beer appeared at his elbow, dropped off by a smiling Sunny. “Making bank tonight,” she winked, patting her tip stash through the apron pocket.

  Phoebe took the seat across from him and smiled expectantly.

  Jax picked up the soup spoon and dug in. “What?”

  “What the hell are you doing, Jax?”

  The bite of chili lodged in his throat and he coughed until he could breathe again. “I’m trying to eat chili, Mom.”

  “You know what I mean. Don’t play dumb with me.”

  “You’re going to have to be more specific.”

  “How about I tell you what I see with my all-seeing mother’s eyes and then you tell me what’s really going on?” Phoebe suggested. “I see you pushing yourself to exhaustion between the farm, this place, and your writing. Not to mention chasing that lovely young woman behind the bar. You’re putting down roots but you’re digging them so fast and deep you’re running yourself ragged. So I ask myself, what are you trying to prove and to who?” She frowned. “Whom? Damn it.”

  Jax twirled his glass on the table.

  “Did Dad ever feel like he wasn’t good enough?”

  Phoebe blinked and then laughed. “Every damn day.”

  “Be serious now,” Jax sighed.

  “I am being serious. Your father always wondered if he was doing the best he could as a farmer, a father, heck, even a husband some days.”

  Jax shook his head. “That’s ridiculous. He was the best at everything.”

  “Kiddo, that’s part of being an adult. Holding up a mirror to yourself and seeing those glorious flaws.”

  “Dad didn’t have flaws.”

  Phoebe shot him a look. “I think you meant to say, ‘My stunningly beautiful genius of a mother doesn’t have flaws.’”

  Jax cracked a grin. “That’s definitely what I meant to say. Even though you are a deeply, beautifully flawed human being.”

  “Takes one to know one.” She stuck her tongue out at him, her nose scrunching behind her glasses, and he loved her just a little bit more because of it.

  “Very mature, Mother.”

  She laughed and took his hand.

  “I just want to be as good as Dad,” he admitted quietly. “
I don’t want to be a screw-up anymore.”

  “Sweetie, you’ve never been a screw-up. Mule-headed, sure. Too adventurous for your own good, absolutely. But your father and I never, ever looked at you like a screw-up.”

  “Come on, Mom. What about after the accident?”

  “Which accident? The one where Carter backed your grandfather’s truck through the garage door? Or the time Beckett’s car ended up buried in Carson’s cornfield because he tried to spin a donut in the snow to impress Moon Beam Parker?”

  “The accident, Mom. The Joey’s-in-the-hospital-unconscious accident.”

  “It was a deer, you idiot,” Phoebe squeezed his hand. “Don’t carry that around with you because one of God’s creatures decided to a cross a road that you happened to be using. And don’t try to turn that into some kind of martyrdom where you don’t deserve to be happy until you’ve accomplished this or made up for that.”

  Jax stirred the chili.

  Phoebe laid a hand on his arm. “If we waited to go for something until we feel worthy, no one would ever do anything.”

  “But if I can make a go of this place—”

  “If you can, you can. If you can’t, you’ll do something else. That’s what life is all about. Living. Trying. Loving.”

  His gaze darted to Joey behind the bar, working the taps and the crowd like a pro.

  “You’re good enough as is. And I don’t care if someone ever told you different,” Phoebe said stubbornly.

  Jax eyed up his mother. She couldn’t know, could she? After all these years, could she have known the reason he left?

  “You’re good enough just by being born. So stop trying to prove yourself by working yourself into exhaustion trying to be eight different people and work twenty hours a day. Do what you want to do, not what you think you have to do.”

  “Do you think Dad would be proud of me now?”

  His mother looked legitimately shocked. “What in blue heaven would ever make you think he wasn’t?”

  “I write words on a screen. What’s so great about that? Dad fed people and rescued animals. He raised a family. He was always there whenever anyone needed him. I ran away.”

  “Being sent away is different than running away.”

  She did know. Son of a bitch, all these years he thought it was a secret between him and his father. “I still had the choice and I made it.”

  Phoebe’s smile was a little sad. “Oh, kiddo, you’re a lot more like him than you know.” She pulled a large yellow envelope out of a purse big enough to hold groceries and slid it across the table to him.

  “What’s this?”

  “Something of your father’s that I found while I was packing and organizing. It’s yours now.” She pushed her chair back from the table and stood. “You take a little break and I’m going to go find my handsome fiancé and talk him into splitting a piece of that Irish cream cheesecake with me.”

  She dropped a kiss on his head. “Don’t ever let anyone make you feel less than, and that includes yourself,” she ordered before heading off in search of Franklin.

  Jax stared at the worn and battered envelope. A red string closure kept its secrets secure.

  He carefully unwound the string and pulled out a thick stack of papers.

  Jax held his breath, paging through the top of the stack. Dozens of short stories written by his father. A man he’d never seen turn on the family computer, much less sit down to type something out.

  There were stories about the farm, his brothers, his mother. One in particular caught his eye.

  A Mid-Summer Night’s Splash

  By John Pierce

  July in Blue Moon Bend means painting the landscape with humidity thick as a wet blanket. The sun cracks the earth, sending shimmers of mirages dancing along the horizon. It means the kids are already a month into summer vacation and singing a chorus of “I’m boreds” and “Do I have tos?” To the farmer, it means we spend the month holding our collective breath for rain, in the right amounts and the right times.

  It was a hard July. We were slipping past the “It would be nice to have a good rain” conversations into desperate times. Another week without a good, soaking rain and we’d all start to lose crops.

  I’d spent the day in the fields with varying degrees of participation from the boys as we coaxed, cajoled, and then threatened the irrigation into working order. The days were all long, sweltering, and edging toward hopeless.

  All the work of the spring could be dried up and murdered at the whim of Mother Nature. One storm can change the entire growing season. Now, I’m not a worrier by design. I’ve found if you’ve done your job as well as you can, when it’s time to hand over your work to the next person, the next stage, there’s no room for worrying about the outcome.

  But this afternoon, my back against the oak overlooking the trickle that used to be a creek, I felt the tiniest parade of What Ifs arise.

  What if the rain never came? What if we lost all the crops? What if the farm failed?

  Who would I be if not a farmer?

  The buzz of the locusts and the waterfall of sweat between my shoulder blades brought me back and I shook it off. I returned to the fields like a soldier marching into battle. No time for worry. There was only room for work.

  The boys had disappeared under the pretense of a drink break, but it wasn’t long before I heard the shrieks and threats and the unmistakable sound of a garden hose wielded as a weapon.

  For a moment, the thing I wanted most in the world was to join in their water war. But the work was calling. The responsibility of an uncertain future needed to be fed my best effort.

  I worked late, taking a sandwich in the barn for dinner while I greased the sprayer for the next day. Phoebe had put the boys to work weeding in the garden for an hour before letting them scatter to their summer night childhoods. Freedom of the best kind.

  I was pretending to read in bed after midnight while cursing myself for telling Phoebe air conditioning in the house could wait until next summer when I heard the suspicious sound of silence. It was followed by the more suspicious sound of bedroom doors shutting quietly and footsteps avoiding the squeaky floorboards.

  I waited until I heard the front door open before getting up.

  Through the open, breezeless window I spied my sons, congratulating themselves on a stealthy exit. They moved as a haphazard pack, jogging and stopping, hurrying and meandering.

  I knew where they were going. The only place that three boys with six years between them would agree upon on a steamy July night.

  I could have hollered, sent them back to bed. Probably should have. It’s what my father would have done. But I didn’t. I wanted the break as much as they did. A break from the heat and responsibility. A break from adulthood.

  I wandered down after them, fighting the battle between parent and human being. I wanted to stop them, teach them how to sneak out of the house effectively. Jax especially who considers a stomp near silence. What would I feel in a few years when he’s sneaking out to meet his Joey, I wondered.

  Considering this, and Phoebe’s reaction to a father teaching his impressionable sons how to sneak out, I decided it was a lesson that could wait a few years.

  I found the three of them in the pond, splashing and laughing like the loons. They didn’t even know I was there until I raced down the dock and jumped over their heads. Beckett told me later that the water level in the pond lost a foot from that cannonball.

  We won that night. Defeating the stifling night swelter with brisk, black pond water under a full moon. It didn’t matter that we’d track mud all the way back and through the house or that Phoebe would murder all of us when she found out that we’d helped ourselves to two boxes of cereal on the porch afterwards.

  What did matter is we took a moment, a slice of a day, and did with it exactly as we wished. A lesson I could never iterate in a father’s lecture, but one so essential to the way a man lives. Find your slice and live it.

  I’l
l carry that memory with me, take it out to examine it in the years to come, and remember that one perfect night when the crickets sang and the boys laughed. And the rains finally came as we sat together on the midnight porch.

  Jax felt his throat tighten at the memories that leapt off the page. It was as if his father had just pulled up a chair next to him to recount that night. The tone and flow of the words, Jax could hear his father’s voice rolling over each syllable. His easy, unhurried speech so familiar to Jax’s ear even after all these years. A little on the soft-spoken side, always with half a smile.

  John Pierce the writer.

  Jax had never known that they shared a similar passion for storytelling. His dad was clearly a natural and Jax felt a rush of pride. A connection he hadn’t realized was suddenly there, bonding them together through time. He held in his hands an actual, tangible piece of his father.

  Jax reverently tucked the stories back into the envelope. He held the envelope in his hands and for just a moment imagined his hands as his father’s, strong and callused with a purpose. A destiny.

  He glanced up, around the barn that his father had begun to restore before his death, spotted his brothers kicked back at a table with their wives and the kids taking their slice of time together. They all deserved to know this piece of the man they’d loved. He’d share this with them, soon. But for now, he’d keep it to himself. And he’d take his slice, too.

  * * *

  Jax bided his time through the rest of the late dinner crowd, keeping an eye on the front of the house. And when he saw Joey duck into the supply closet, he made his move.

  She had a bottle of Chardonnay in one hand and a fistful of towels in the other. And she brandished them like weapons when she realized he had her trapped.

  “Out of the way, boss. I’ve got some thirsty ladies out there.”

  “Cards on the table, Jojo,” Jax said, crossing his arms to keep from grabbing her.

  Joey Greer didn’t scare easily, but if she knew the dark fantasies that were running through his mind, she’d probably break his nose with that left hook of hers.