by R. S. Lively
Not Over You
R.S. Lively
Copyright © 2018 by R.S. Lively
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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Contents
1. Fiona
2. Cade
3. Fiona
4. Cade
5. Fiona
6. Cade
7. Cade
8. Fiona
9. Cade
10. Cade
11. Fiona
12. Fiona
13. Cade
14. Fiona
15. Cade
16. Fiona
17. Fiona
18. Cade
Epilogue
Keeping Up With R.S. Lively
Sneak Peek: Hate To Love
Also by R.S. Lively
About the Author
Not Over You
Fiona was my first love and my best friend.
Ten years ago, I left without a word.
I never told her why. And I never got over her.
Now that we’re thrown together under the same roof,
Will I finally have a chance to make things right?
Fiona
Damn it.
I never would have opened the door if I knew he was waiting on the other side.
Cade Sawyer.
Sexy as ever. All muscles and raw power.
Our history runs deep.
Childhood friends. My first kiss... and heartbreak.
It crushed me when he disappeared ten years ago.
Now he’s back... and my new roommate. Great.
Turns out, Cade has a lot of secrets.
First, that he’s a billionaire.
Oh, and basically a recluse.
Then, he saves me from a mad man.
He's not the teenage boy I knew... He's a f*cking alpha protector.
It feels so good when he keeps me safe in his big, tattooed arms…
A second chance may seem impossible for the two of us...
Can we keep playing house?
Or will our past keep me running?
1
Fiona
"I'd vote for her in a heartbeat. I mean, she has all the qualifications."
"How?"
"She's compassionate. Driven. She's independent but isn't afraid to commit to her relationship. She isn't intimidated by men, at all. She has everything this country needs."
Esme walks up to the breakroom table where Robert and I are sitting, settling into the chair beside me and popping open her plastic salad container.
"Who are we talking about? Oprah? Because that's a woman I could get behind."
"Barbie."
Her hand drops to the table, a piece of spinach impaled on the end of her fork. Her coffee-colored eyes are impatient and full of disbelief.
"Barbie?"
"Yes," I say emphatically. "Barbie. The world needs her now more than ever. She's always positive. Her eyeliner game is on point. And what school did homegirl go to? She can do everything. She can pilot a plane while teaching algebra, grooming your poodle, and making you a crepe." I take a bite of my apple. "In heels."
Later that evening…
"I don't know, Grammie," I reply as I hold my phone between my shoulder and ear while performing my evening duel between my keys and the lock to my apartment. "I just feel like something's off lately."
"What do you mean 'off'?" my grandmother asks.
The lock finally gives in for the night, and the door opens. I let out a sigh of relief as the chilled air inside cuts through the dense heat around me, instantly cooling the sweat on my skin. This is the moment I look forward to all day – and the reason I schedule my air conditioner to resume operating at Arctic temperatures the second I get home from work. My electric bill sometimes means that I have to forsake good toilet paper to stick to the budget I impose on myself, but it's worth these few moments of sheer pleasure when I first walk in from the blistering summer heat.
"I'm not sure," I say as I close the door behind me. "I feel like I'm not connecting with anything. Nothing excites me anymore." I pry off my heels and carry them toward my bedroom. "Someone asked me the other day what I do for a living. And you know what I said? I said… 'work.' Just like that. Just…'work.' Who says that?"
She chuckles on the other end of the line. "You, apparently."
I resume holding my phone in place with my shoulder, so I can unzip my skirt and shimmy out of it. The pantyhose, which I hate with a fiery, burning passion, but wouldn't be caught dead in the office without, are next. Finally, I'm in nothing but my blouse and feeling awkward standing half-naked in the middle of my bedroom. At least I'm not hot anymore.
"I just wish I could find that spark that made me leave home four years ago. When I did that, I had so much... hope. I was sure there was something out there for me, waiting to give me the incredible, glamorous life I always envisioned."
"I'm still not sure why you thought you would find glamour in an insurance firm. I know when I think about a glitzy and sparkly life, my mind doesn't go straight to insurance adjuster."
"I think that's it, though. Working at the firm was supposed to be a band-aid job."
"A band-aid job?"
"Yeah. You know, a bridge. It was something that was available, and that I had the qualifications to do. Starting as a secretary meant I didn't need a lot of training or education, and I could earn money while looking for whatever was going to give my life that sparkle. Then it turned out I was actually good at my job."
"Damn it," Grammie groans in solidarity.
"I know," I say. "Then they offered me a promotion. Who says no to that? And the little bit of time I planned on staying at the firm became a little bit longer, and then another promotion came along, and I pushed it back even longer. And now, four years later, I'm spinning around in my swivel desk chair, bored out of my wits, trying to figure out why a man called to discuss the specifics of purchasing life insurance policies for all nine of his Rottweiler puppies. The worst part is – it was only after I explained to him, in painstaking detail, that our company doesn't offer that type of insurance, that he mentioned his wife needed a policy, too."
"That's kind of glamorous."
I've managed to unbutton my blouse and wriggle out of it, and now I'm trying to replace my work clothes with a pair of black cotton shorts and a comfy tank.
"That's not glamorous. That's weird. Not even close to the same thing."
"So, what are you thinking about doing?"
"I don't know," I say, dropping down to sit on the edge of my bed.
I bounce and nearly slip off the luxury Italian comforter I thought fit my vision of a trendy urban lifestyle. Buying this bedding was supposed to be a way to will that lifestyle into reality. It is also one of the reasons I put myself on a budget.
"Well, you obviously can't keep going like this. You sound miserable."
I immediately feel guilty for saying anything at all. I know Grammie has been worried about me since the day I left the home where she and my grandfather raised me and set out to make a life for myself. Since then, I've done everything I can to reassure her that I made the right choice, and that I've been doing well. Not my best decision. Now I'm making her worry about me because my joyful façade has started to crack, and my unhappiness is seeping through.
"I wouldn't say I'm miserable." Because that would definitely upset you. "I'm just not finding as much… fulfillment in my
life as I thought I would at this point."
"You should have listened to me when I told you not to go off chasing some man and changing your life for him."
"I didn't go off chasing some man," I argue as I cross to the refrigerator to pull out the half a salad I shoved in there last night. "I didn't meet Ellis until a year after I moved out here."
"Well, at least you didn't marry him. That would have been a disaster."
I sigh and squeeze far too much Thousand Island dressing into the middle of the somewhat wilted pile of spring mix, cucumbers, and tomatoes.
"As you've made sure I'm aware of every day since I told you I was engaged."
"You weren't engaged. You didn't even have a ring."
"He asked me to marry him. I said yes. I was engaged. And I did have a ring."
"You had a piece of copper wire he braided and shoved a piece of charcoal into. That doesn't count."
"He made that," I say. "It was meaningful and poetic. At least he dipped the charcoal in acrylic."
"Nothing screams bridal like a ring you could use to roast a hot dog."
"I really don’t want to talk about Ellis right now. It's over. It's behind me. I honestly don't think that has anything to do with how I'm feeling."
No one has ever made a scrapbook page about how much they enjoyed their spring vacation breaking up with their fiancé, but the end of my engagement was particularly messy. Fortunately, watching Ellis grip the edge of a bridge and sob that I had ripped out his soul and fed it to the crocodiles, so he was going to sacrifice the rest of himself to them, too, had been enough to nip my sadness right in the bud. I certainly hadn't mourned myself into this funk. It's something more than that.
"You can always come home, you know," she says. "Your room is still here."
"Well, I would hope it is. I didn't think you were going to slice it off the back of the house when I left."
"Well, it’s not in the back of the house. Not anymore."
I pause. I'm not sure what that means, but it sounds vaguely ominous.
"What?"
"Your room. It's not in the back of the house."
I visualize the house I grew up in. In my mind, I walk through the front door, pass the living room and the den, turn down the hallway, and end up in my bedroom – located in the back corner of the house.
"I mean, I know it's been a few years, but I remember where my room is."
I stand and make my way toward my apartment kitchen. Opening the freezer, I pull out the last remaining serving of lasagna I froze on one of my more domestic days, and set the oven to preheat.
"That's the city house."
Oh. I see what she’s trying to do here. Grammie has something she needs to tell me, and rather than just saying it outright, she wants me to discover it for myself – like some sad, forgotten plastic Easter egg you step on when running around the yard during your Fourth of July cookout.
"You're at the country house?"
That term is far less of a misnomer than 'city house', which Grammie insists on using to describe the little rancher in the suburbs where we lived the vast majority of my childhood. The other parts were spent out in the middle of nowhere at the looming country house owned for generations by my grandfather's family. Even though it’s only a forty-minute drive from the rancher, it always felt a world away. I imagine the house was once an impressive home, but even in my earliest memories of it, it was dark and cavernous. It was the only place where my grandparents would show off a bit of their money, but it was mostly full of strange collectibles and antiques Gramps inherited from the generations before him. The summers and occasional winter holiday breaks I spent there felt isolated. It wasn't until I was eleven that I started looking at it differently.
I shake my head. I don't want to think about that. Not now. Not ever. I haven't been to the country house since I was eighteen, and I'm not interested in dwelling on it now.
"I moved out here for good about three months ago," Grammie explains. "I decided I wanted to be back where your Gramps and I first started. It makes me feel closer to him."
"And you never thought to mention it to me?" I ask.
My heart aches a little thinking about my grandfather and how much my grandmother has missed him in the years since he passed, but I'm also a touch miffed she decided to up and leave the house I had always known without saying a word.
"I was going to, but I didn't think it would matter much to you," Grammie says.
"Why would you think that? I might have come by to visit or sent you a Christmas card or something."
"You don't send Christmas cards, even though I taught you to. And you never come home to visit. You always make me come out there to you, and you know I'm in my twilight years now. That's starting to be a hard journey for me."
"It's two hours away, and you are not in your twilight years. Not even close. It's not like you're falling all over the place."
One week later…
The call finally connects. Thank god.
"She fucking fell, Esme."
I haul my empty suitcase up onto my bed and start stuffing it with the stacks of clothes I have lined up along my bed.
"What? What happened?"
Esme sounds exhausted on the other end. Since it's barely four in the morning, she has good reason.
"My grandmother. She fell. She was walking down the stairs or up the stairs or something having to do with stairs, and she fell."
"Oh, no. That's awful. Is she alright?"
I have to give it to my best friend. It's still dark out, and I woke her up in her last hour of sleep before getting up and ready for work, and yet she can still find it in her heart to worry about my grandmother.
"I'm not sure. Her ankle is broken. Apparently, she’s hurt badly enough that she needs me to come all the way out to the fucking country to take care of her for a while."
"You don't sound terribly sympathetic about the whole situation."
And she's also awake enough to guilt me about being snippy. Esme sure knows how to balance herself.
I shove another handful of socks into the suitcase, wondering if I've completely lost control of the packing procedure and even have everything I need. Pausing, I let out a sigh.
"I know," I say. "I feel bad. I really do. I'm really worried about her. She's just never seemed old to me, you know? She's always been so strong and independent. Even when Gramps was alive, and she was completely wrapped up in him, she was always up to something. Did I ever tell you about when she went to Mexico?"
"No," Esme says. She's starting to sound a little more awake, and I can hear her muffled footsteps. She apparently gave up the thought of getting any more rest and has gotten up. "When did she go to Mexico?"
“It was a long time ago,” I say. “I was about sixteen. She and Gramps had gone to the country house for the summer, but I had gotten my first job and wanted to stay at the city house. It was the first time in a few summers I didn't want to go to the house, but that summer," I pause thinking about the sparkling eyes I knew would be absent from the house that summer, and how much that made me not want to go, "I just didn't feel like I needed to. My aunt was still alive at the time and lived next door, so they said I could stay at home as long as I went to her house at least once a day to check in, and spent the weekends I was off at the country house. The first morning I was supposed to go, though, Gramps called me to tell me I didn't have to come because Grammie was in Mexico. Not that she was going to Mexico. That she was in Mexico, and he was on his way to get her."
"She just up and went to Mexico without telling anybody?"
Esme's voice is garbled, and I realize she's brushing her teeth.
"Apparently, she woke up the morning before, got a craving for a taco, and just decided to go find a street food vendor. He hadn't heard from her all day and was rightfully getting a bit worried when he finally got a call from her. She was at her hotel, and just couldn't understand why he was so upset. She left him a note."
"Wh
at did the note say?"
"Went to get a taco."
Esme laughs.
"Well, she gave him all the information."
"That's what she thought. I guess she figured they been married so long he would just automatically know that meant 'I got on the first flight I could find to Mexico, and I'm waiting for you here'. He packed a bag and was on his way to the airport when he called me. I didn't hear from them again for a couple of weeks. When I got to the house on my next weekend off, they had a stack of pictures to show me. Mostly Grammie trying to sprint up the steps of some of the ruins."
"Sprint?"
"Yeah. She likes to do things the hard way, just to prove people wrong. Everybody else just walks up through it. They take their time. They rest. They acknowledge they are far too old and have never had this type of physical activity in their life, and are woefully unprepared for the steepness of the stairs in front of them. You know, normal. Well, Grammie decided that just wasn't an option. She wanted a more authentic experience."
"Why am I afraid to find out what that means?"
"Probably because you've heard enough stories about my grandmother. This time she was pretending an ancient tribe was coming after her to turn her into a human sacrifice, and she was trying to escape from them. She started running about thirty feet from the base of the steps and sprinted as far as she could up them."
"Wow, that's both culturally insensitive and historically inaccurate. I'm actually impressed."
"So were most of the people trying to get up steps around her."
