by Peter Styles
Table of Contents
Epilogue
End of Book 2 – Please Read This
Get Your FREE Peter Styles’ Book
Important information…
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
Acknowledgments
A New Beginning
A New Beginning
Love Games: Book 2
Peter Styles
Contents
Get Your FREE Peter Styles’ Book
Important information…
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
Epilogue
End of Book 2 – Please Read This
Acknowledgments
A New Beginning
Get Your FREE Peter Styles’ Book
Get your free prequel to the Love Games Series sent straight to your email inbox. Just click here.
Important information…
This book, “A New Beginning” is the Second book in the Love Games Series. However, this book and every other book in the series can be read as a stand-alone. Thus, it is not required to read the first book to understand the second (as so on). Each book can be read by itself.
1
It’s one o’clock in the morning and Stephen’s drinking his way through a bottle of whiskey. The bartender doesn’t even bat an eye at him anymore—it’s some guy who always seems to be behind the bar; Stephen thinks he may be the only full-time employee and possibly even the owner, but he can’t be sure because there are always younger kids waiting tables and helping out. He doesn’t remember any of their names because most of them are just between jobs, working part-time while going to the community college or saving up to skip town. The typical wide-eyed innocent.
Stephen is far from innocent. He may have begun his life here in the charming little town of Oriole, but he got out as soon as he could. He has traveled his way across several states, and a few counties, bare change in his pocket. His street smarts were the only thing going for him most times. He came back home after only four years of school, a wife at his side and kid between them. It wasn’t long before that fell apart, like most things that required his responsibility and presence. He’s just lucky his daughter is still part of his life, that she even wants to see him. He gets the feeling that’s rapidly falling away from him too.
“Mind if I join you?”
The speaker is a woman. A lot like his ex-wife, he thinks she has that same beauty and boldness except this woman probably doesn’t have kids or a deadbeat ex. She looks like she’s spent her life getting by on people buying her drinks. Not that he’s judging—he does it too, when he can.
“Free bar,” Stephen grunts, eyes sliding away to focus on the television set on the far wall, just above the bottles. The woman doesn’t let up.
“Going hard, aren’t you? Isn’t it late for an old man like you?” Her tone is coy. He’s not playing the game, though. He’s far from being a complete human being, much less entering any kind of relationship with another person. He’s definitely not looking for a repeat of his past mistakes.
“I can hold my liquor,” Stephen says drily, resisting the temptation to roll his eyes. He’s not in high school anymore, that’s for damn sure. “Unlike some of you kids.”
The woman laughs, probably pleased at his unintentional compliment. She flutters her eyelashes in his direction and he knows well enough from experience that she’s going to start coming on strong. He’s not excited. He still has at least an hour and a half until last call, which the bartender always lets him stay a little bit after. Stephen usually ends up wobbling home at two-thirty, somehow so far drunk that he’s almost sober again. He can never bring himself to shower before sleeping so his sheets are always unfriendly and sweaty, collapsing under his weight like everything else he’s ever tried to be careful with.
“So, old man…what are you drinking?”
“Whiskey,” he eventually says, unable to control the sneer that forms on his lips.
“Hmm. I’m a woman of hard liquor myself,” she smiles, blonde hair pushed away from her neck as she tilts her head at an extreme angle.
He’s seen this play before. Knows how it goes. At this junction, the man offers the woman a drink. They spend maybe twenty minutes more at the bar before they go to the woman’s place and have messy, short sex. The man leaves just before dawn, crawling home as the disapproving sun peeks over the horizon.
Except he’s not that kind of man. He may drink too much and hang out in dirty places but he’s not about to have casual sex. He’s too old for that, both emotionally and physically. He’s barely able to convince himself to get out of his own bed and go to work, much less peel himself off some stranger’s bed to get back to his own.
“That’s great.”
The first flicker of irritation enters her expression. He would feel bad for her but something tells him she’s stronger than most people have a right to be. Oriole, he thinks, small town and big women. And one mess of a man by the name of Stephen Worth.
“Well. I’ll leave you and your bottle alone,” the woman says airily, waving him away as if he’s the one pestering her. She slides from her barstool with utter grace, seeming to find no reason to stay any longer, and slinks out the door.
He stays until two and decides to be good, for once, and leave before two-thirty. The bartender doesn’t bat an eye, taking the wad of cash he shoves next to his empty glass.
He walks home alone, the cool night air breezing against his scruffy face. He isn’t sure when he last shaved, but given that it’s Saturday night—or, rather, Sunday morning—he thinks it’s been at least three days. He’s far past drunk, half of what he drank already gone from his system and the other half sitting in his veins like thick oil. He doesn’t even have to press crosswalk buttons as he makes his way back to his tiny townhouse; there’s no one out. No one but him, of course. And the other no-good drunks in the town.
His sheets smell lived-in, as usual, and he doesn’t bother to take his socks off. He drops onto the bed with his denim jacket still on, blinking tiredly at his hand where it lays a few inches away. The tiny star tattoo in the inner corner of his thumb and finger stares back at him. He falls asleep staring at it, imagining it winks like the ones in the night sky outside.
2
It’s Rowan’s day off. His first day off in years, and he only has off because his boss closed the office for Friday, since they’re between projects. He can’t even work on anything at home. There’s no reason to. The last video game his studio worked on is finished, wrapped, complete. There is literally nothing he can do.
Except sleep.
It’s fantastic.
He wakes up at eight and is surprised at how easy it is to hit snooze and fall back asleep. Usually he’d pull himself from the warm sheets, ready to face the day and get down to work, but he just turns over and drifts back into a pleasantly dreamless sleep. Or maybe it isn’t dreamless—he always has a hard time remembering when he wakes up.
Ten o’clock rolls around and he opens his eyes, immediately wide awake and lazily sated. He glances at hi
s phone, the time bright on the screen. Go back to sleep, he tells himself, and the voice sounds suspiciously like Lina. Relax. You work too much. It’s your day off.
He grumbles because of course his inner voice sounds like his friend. His co-worker, too. Lina’s always been around and she’s not afraid to face his “perpetually grumpy” demeanor to tell him he’s being ridiculous. Or at least, that’s what she says. Rowan thinks he has a good work ethic.
“I can’t go back to sleep,” he tells the ceiling, staring. He sighs but stays put anyway, thinking at least he’s lying down. He starts to scroll through the portfolio app on his phone, checking connections and comments and thinking about how to improve his résumé by taking on freelance work. He decides to ask another coworker about it—Austin, maybe—and starts a new memo on his phone.
Somehow, within half an hour, he falls asleep again. He’s rudely awoken by his phone buzzing insistently. He squints, groaning, and throws a hand out to answer it. This time he feels like he’s been run over by a semi.
“Hello?” He blinks, rubbing at his eyes as he tries to gather the threads of his attention.
“Ro?”
The voice is familiar. He doesn’t have to check the caller ID to know it; his cousin’s voice is engraved in his mind. He could pick her out of a crowd of a thousand.
“Yeah. Jen? What—”
“Were you… asleep?” The way she asks makes it sound like she’s asking if he was doing drugs. He rolls his eyes, letting his body fall back onto the bed because his arm is getting sore from propping him up.
“Yeah. Humans do that. Sleep. What—why are you calling? Not that I don’t appreciate it,” he tacks on, scrunching his nose. It’s just weird.
“Um…Dad had an…accident.”
That wakes him up. He sits back up in bed, briefly dizzy, pressing his back against the headboard. Worry starts to grip his insides, cold fingers coiling around his chest. He forces himself to clear his mind, thinking it can’t be bad if she’s not crying. His uncle—Jennifer’s father and the man who raised him—is one of the most important people in his life. He talks to the man as often as he can, even if it’s not enough. He can’t bring himself to think about something happening to him.
“What happened?”
“Oh, you know, typical Dad trying to do something stupid. He was working on the house and he fell from a ladder. Broke his leg pretty badly.”
As much as he hates to set the bar at dying, he breathes a sigh of relief. Just a broken leg. He’s almost angry for Jennifer at making it sound like something worse but he knows it was just his imagination running wild.
“Okay. Well, that’ll teach him to do renovations without a helper. What did the doctors say?”
“One month minimum resting. He’s older, so they’re just concerned about bone density and re-injury, I think. Anyway, it’ll kill him to have to sit still, but he doesn’t have a choice.”
“Yeah, well, it’ll be good for him,” Rowan smirks, repeating the words he’s heard Lina say to him so many times, “Learning how to live without being in charge of everything.”
There’s a pause on the other end of the line. Rowan swings his legs out of bed, rubbing the back of his neck to work out a crick as he looks in his closet. He may be sleeping in and being lazy, but he’s not a slob.
“Hm. Funny you should say that,” his cousin mutters, barely audible. Suspicious. “By the way, why were you in bed? Shouldn’t you be at the company?”
“Day off,” Rowan says, carrying his things into the bathroom. “Anyway, why does it matter?”
“No reason.”
“Okay. Well…I’m probably going to get groceries and stuff today. Do some cleaning up. Keep me updated, okay?”
“Oh, um, actually...” Jen starts, sounding mildly panicked, and he stares at his reflection with narrowed eyes.
I knew it, he thinks. She wants something. Not that he’s worried or mad about her asking for things, it’s just, usually, when she takes longer than three sentences to ask, it’s something he generally doesn’t want to give.
“What do you really want, Jen?”
“I…need your help. I can’t hire someone else immediately for a month; it would take way too long to train them. You know everything Dad did. He taught you too, when we were kids.”
It’s worse than he could have imagined. Her words ring in his ears. Go away? For a month? He’s almost angry—no, he is angry that she would suggest it. They’re family and he loves her, sure, but it’s an enormous risk to take, especially since he already has a job in his industry. A stable, well-paying job.
And she helps her father run a café and bakery. He feels like an elitist prick for even thinking it, but they aren’t quite the same.
“Why don’t you have the other workers fill in his spots? It can’t be that difficult.”
“They’re mostly college kids,” Jen says, “And there are times he works shifts that no one else can fill. Just—listen. It’s only a month and a week or so; I’m not asking you to stay forever. I just really can’t afford to cut business hours or lose customers—we’ve been doing so much lately and I can’t just stop.”
He wants to say, yes, you can, but he feels a prick of guilt. It was all Jennifer had talked about when they were kids—working in a bakery, becoming famous, making cupcakes for Leonardo DiCaprio. They had planned it together. They’d grown up with her father, side by side, making eclairs and profiteroles. It had been an everyday challenge to make the best dessert, serving them to Jennifer’s mother for final tasting tests.
They loved it. He had been so ready to join Jen, too, practicing his techniques and making recipe books. The memories remind him of his promises. What he said he’d do. He sighs, leaning against his bathroom sink, shaking his head at his feet as if they’re forcing him to walk away from his job and towards his cousin.
“I have way too much vacation time and we’re between projects. I’ll talk to Dean; maybe I can get time away. It can’t be for long, though,” he warns, “I need to be back for the next big project.”
“Mais oui,” Jen says cheerily, French as impeccable as ever, “We’ll sort things out once you get here. I’ll comp you for the airfare—or gas—so keep receipts.”
“Yeah, yeah,” Rowan grumbles, more fond than his crabby tone would suggest. He promises to send Jen a text and information once he finds out when he can leave.
He spends his shower thinking—or rather, worrying—about how he’s going to talk to Dean.
The thing is, Dean may be his boss, but they’re also friends. Relatively good friends. They knew each other in high school and had a steady friendship for years; after college, Dean kept in touch and offered Rowan a job a year after starting his company. They relearned things about one another and to Rowan, it always just felt like two buddies getting back together and taking on the professional world.
Still, Dean’s technically his boss, and all of his internship years during college and the year after graduation have made him very rigorously dedicated to business rules. He knows that, typically, it would be better to give Dean sufficient time and options for being gone over a month. He just doesn’t have those luxuries.
He ends up calling Dean, deciding it can’t wait until the next work day, and he fidgets the entire time the phone rings.
“Hey. What’s up? Did you forget the office was closed and try to get in?”
It’s not mean. He says it in a pleasantly joking tone. Rowan can almost see the man reclining on a chair in his living room, facing the beach and eating frozen grapes. The picture of relaxation.
“I, um, wanted to ask you about our next project,” Rowan says, stuttering on his words and immediately regretting what he says. He berates himself for wimping out. “I mean—”
“You’re supposed to be relaxing,” Dean says in an amused tone, “but if it helps, we’re just taking on overflow from big companies for the next couple of weeks. No big projects yet. I figure you all earned it, too, since we
had two at once for the last few weeks.”
“Oh. Okay. I just…I know I have some time off,” Rowan says, hesitant. He feels strangely guilty for even asking. His usual business-professional demeanor is slipping.
“Of course. Don’t tell me you’re actually drawing from the well? Rowan, going on vacation? And the skies looked so clear.”
The joke puts him at ease and he lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding. Suddenly, going back home doesn’t seem so risky. He’s still going to be strict about getting back, though.
“Well, it’s not vacation. I’m going to help Jen out.”
“Jen? Wow, it’s been ages. You gotta bring back some cupcakes,” Dean laughs. His voice is serious then, careful as he asks, “Is something wrong?”
“No. Just...my uncle broke his leg and there’s not enough help around the bakery. It’s only for a month at most, maybe a week over. I just thought I should help her out.”
It says a lot about Dean that the man is concerned. It reminds Rowan that Dean, no matter how suit-and-tie, is still his friend. Even besides that, he cares. He’d probably give a newbie a month’s leave if they had a family emergency.
“Oh. Well, I hope he heals well. I’ll keep you updated with our weekly schedule; don’t rush getting back. And say hi to Jen for me, huh?”
“I will,” Rowan smiles, shaking his head, “And thank you.”
His anxiety dissipates after he hangs up. Now that he knows he can spend time away, there’s nothing holding him back. He realizes he’s actually excited. It’s been ages since he’s been back to Oriole; he knows the city is bustling and thriving, if Jen’s accounts are true. He can remember every detail of the downtown area where the bakery is—the tiny streets, brick storefronts and street parking. He knows the sense of nostalgia there is powerful. Even the family home—or homes, rather—are pleasant ghosts in his memory. He’s only been back to Oriole once, after his college graduation and before he left to start a new life in a new state. He remembers the forest by the edge of the backyard and the greenness.
