by Lexi Ryan
Ebook formatted by: E.M. Tippetts Book Designs
New Hope Series
Unbreak Me
Wish I May
Hot Contemporary Romance
Text Appeal
Accidental Sex Goddess
Stiletto Girls Novels
Stilettos, Inc.
Flirting with Fate
Decadence Creek Stories and Novellas
Just One Night
Just the Way You Are
For my big sisters, Kim and Deb.
I grew up wishing on stars.
My father taught me to believe…in destiny, in magic, in happily ever after. Dreams were my scripture and the starry night sky was my temple. Then Mom stopped believing, left him, and took us with her. At the age of sixteen, I cashed in my dreams to pay the rent, pawned my destiny to keep my sisters together.
Now, seven years later, I’m returning home, grieving the death of my mother, and settling my sisters back into the life Mom threw away. I never intended to stay. I don’t want to deal with my father, who is so invested in the spiritual world he forgets the physical. I don’t want to face William Bailey, whose eyes remind me of the girl I was, the things I’ve done, and the future I lost.
This would all be easier if Will hated me. As it is, I have to hold my secrets close so they won’t hurt him more than they’ve already hurt me. But he wants to be in my life. He wants what I can’t bring myself to confess I sold. He wants me.
I find myself looking to my stars again...wondering if I dare one more wish.
Seven Years Ago
CALLY TILTS her face to the starless night sky as if waiting for its kiss. “I can’t see the stars.” She squints, trying to make them out through the thick storm clouds hanging over us.
I turn her face to mine and trail whisper-soft kisses beneath her ear and along her jaw until she relaxes in my arms. “We don’t need them tonight,” I promise, though I know it’s only true for me. Cally always needed the reassurance of wishes and destiny—a byproduct of a combination of shitty home life and odd-duck father. Tonight, she needs all that more than ever.
“She’s being so selfish, taking us away from our life here. Taking me away from you.”
We’ve had this conversation a hundred times since her mom announced their move last month. I know where she’s headed with it, and I won’t let her go there. Not tonight. “Don’t give up on us.” My voice is hard and I have to concentrate on not holding her too tightly, but I already feel her slipping away. “She can make you move, but she can’t take you away from me. You’re mine. In New Hope, in Nevada, in Timbuktu, you’ll always be mine.”
Rolling over her, I support myself on my elbows and cup her face in my hands. I rub my thumb over the pale skin of her jaw, the flush of her cheek, the rosy pink of her kiss-swollen lips. She threads her fingers through my hair and pulls me down so she can run kisses along my jaw.
“Can we really survive a long-distance relationship?” she whispers.
“It’ll only be long-distance when we’re apart. You’ll be back for prom. We’ll see each other this summer.”
“Prom.”
I run my hand up her side and brush the underside of her breast with my thumb. “Prom. Just like we planned. Then when school starts, you can visit me at the dorms.”
“You deserve better,” she says.
Under me, she parts her legs until my knee slides between them. She moans into my neck. “There’s nothing better than you.” I flick my tongue against her ear.
When I pull back, tears glisten in her eyes. “I don’t want to wait for prom night. I’m ready now.”
For a year, we’ve been together and held off on sex because Cally wasn’t ready. She feared having sex too young would make her like her mother. Even if the fear wasn’t entirely rational, I understood. “Are you sure?”
She shifts under me and wraps her legs around my waist so only our clothes are between us. Adrenaline and arousal pump through me at the thought of making love to her. Then a tear rolls down her cheek, and I know I can’t.
“Not tonight,” I whisper. “Not while you’re so sad.”
She lifts her eyes to the clouds again. “So this is what goodbye feels like.”
“No,” I growl. The apology in her eyes breaks my heart.
“We have to say goodbye,” she whispers. “I leave in a few hours.”
I wipe away the tears on her cheeks. “We aren’t going to say goodbye because this isn’t the end of us. It’s only the beginning.”
She squeezes her eyes shut and more tears roll down into her hair, and I can’t do anything but press kisses to the path they left behind. I hate how helpless I feel.
“If we don’t say goodbye, then what do we say?”
“Look at me.” I don’t speak again until her big brown eyes are locked on mine. “This isn’t goodbye.”
“We can’t pretend that everything is going to be the same.”
“Hello, Cally.”
“William—”
“It doesn’t need to be the same. I love you, and I’m telling you hello.” My chest burns with this tightness, but I reign in my emotions, knowing I have to hold us both together. “Hello, Cally.”
She wraps her arms around me and pulls me close again. A tear that isn’t hers splashes onto her cheek. I bury my face in her neck to hide my own fear, and she whispers, “Hello.”
“IN ONE hundred feet, turn left onto Dreyer Avenue,” my GPS instructs.
I inch forward, peering out my windshield and scanning the manicured lawn to the left for any sign of a road where there is nothing but grass.
“Recalculating,” the computerized voice tells me. Her tone suggests frustration with my inability to follow simple instructions. “In one hundred feet, take a U-turn, then turn right on Dreyer Avenue.”
“There is no Dreyer effing Avenue.” I pound on my steering wheel. This is the fifth time since I returned to Middle-of-Lots-of-Cornfields Indiana that the fucker has tried to turn me into someone’s yard. Thirty minutes ago, she repeatedly directed me to drive right into the damn river. Good thing I decided to drop the girls off at the hotel when we got to town, lest they see their big sister go homicidal on an electronic gadget.
Yanking at the wheel with unnecessary force, I pull the car over and throw it into park. My chest is tight and my eyes burn with tears I swore I wouldn’t shed today. I made it through the last month without crying. I won’t cry now.
It’s bad enough that I’ve been reduced to this. Bad enough that I have to rely on my estranged father at all. Bad enough that I have to track his hippie ass down since he’s too goddamned paranoid to carry a cell phone. But here I am.
“You shouldn’t hate him so much,” my mom told me six months ago. “He hasn’t had an easy life.”
“I don’t hate him. I’m ambivalent.”
But that was before Mom’s “heart attack” (code for drug overdose that may or may not fool my sisters). That was before the funeral and the grief and the bills. That was before my life disintegrated around me, as if it were built of nothing but dust.
I’m exhausted, one sister hates me and the other isn’t speaking, and my ass is sore from being stuck in this car.
Fresh air. That’s all I need. Then I’ll follow the road back toward the highway and ask a gas station attendant for help.
I unbuckle and step out onto the paved street. God, it feels good to stretch.
I can’t get over how green everything is. It’s as if I’ve forgotten the color can exist in nature. The scent of cut grass is almost as rejuvenating as a solid night’s sleep for my state of mind. The air is warm and sticky, and children are playing in the sprinkler on a front lawn down the street.
I remember doing that
as a kid. Before the move. Before the end of our world as we knew it. Is it too late to give my sisters a chance at that childhood?
Doubt lodges like a soggy lump in my throat.
“Can I help you?”
I snap my head up, startled. “No, I’m good. I—” My eyes connect with the owner of the voice, and I lose my capacity for speech.
“Holy shit.” The Adonis from my past narrows his eyes. “Cally?”
The sound of my name on his tongue catapults me back in time and suddenly I’m sixteen again, his cool cotton sheets sliding against my skin as his fingertips trace the line of my jaw, the hollow of my neck, the curve of my hip. I’m sixteen again and licking sweet strawberry wine from his lips.
Time has been kind to William Bailey. Bare-chested and glistening with sweat, he has an iPod strapped around his thick biceps and a T-shirt tucked into the side of his running shorts. He’s bigger than he was at eighteen, more built, which is saying something since he was New Hope High School’s star football player back then. My gaze drifts south but gets snagged at the ripple of his abs and the trail of blond hair disappearing into the band of his shorts.
Sweet Jesus.
The sound of him clearing his throat has me yanking my eyes back up to meet his.
“Look at you. You’re all grown up.” He grins, and my knees go a little weak. How could I have forgotten the effect this man’s smile has on my knees?
“I could say the same for you.” I bite my lip. Hopefully no drool has escaped.
That knee-killing grin grows wider. I’m toast.
This isn’t what I expected. Not that I expected anything from William. I hoped to make it through my few days in town without seeing him, but of course not. Here he is. Looking for all the world like he’s actually glad to see me when he should hate me.
“You live here? I mean around—” Shit. How am I supposed to construct a coherent sentence while looking at his bare chest? And that’s not even taking into account the memories flooding my mind at the sight of him. I may have never had sex with him, but I have enough memories of doing everything else to rival even the most creative fantasies.
Shifting my gaze to those deep blue eyes is no better. A girl doesn’t forget those eyes watching her as their owner slides his hand between her legs for the first time.
I study the ground and wave a hand to indicate the spot where Dreyer Avenue definitely is not. “I’m looking for my dad.”
“You’re in the wrong neighborhood.” His voice has that low, delicious treble that makes my insides shimmy.
When I sneak a peek up at him through my lashes, I catch him studying me with his own assessing gaze.
I can imagine what he sees. We’ve been on the road for two days, pulling off only for gas and restroom breaks. We stopped in Kansas last night so I could get a few hours of sleep, and then it was back in the car at four a.m. for another full day today.
I would categorize my ensemble as “road trip chic.” My snug-fitting black yoga pants end just below my knees, and I’m wearing a T-shirt that says Peanut butter jelly time! The outfit is topped off with bright orange flip-flops and the ponytail I threw my hair into this morning.
So, you know, the exact outfit I wouldn’t have chosen to be wearing for a reunion with my first love.
I lean into my car for the scrap of paper with Dad’s address and shove it into William’s hand. “Can you help me find this?”
He doesn’t look at the paper but frowns at me. “Seriously? You’re lost?” He pauses a beat. “In New Hope?” His tone suggests that I’ve gotten myself lost in a paper bag. And, okay, New Hope is pretty damn small, but I haven’t lived here in seven years, and it’s changed a lot. The good areas are all run down now, the factories are closed, and the vast expanses of open land by the river have been developed into fancy neighborhoods with yuppy McMansions so ostentatious I can practically smell their oversized mortgages.
“My GPS keeps trying to get me to drive into the river.”
At least that wipes the scowl off his face. “Yeah, GPS systems haven’t kept up with the developments around here real well.” He rubs the back of his neck, and the movement sends the muscles in his arm and shoulder flexing. Between his sweaty muscles and my memories, I’m pretty sure my panties have all but disintegrated.
I clear my throat and resort to asphalt-gazing again. How hard is it to put on a shirt? “If you can point me in the right direction, I’ll get out of your hair. I’m sure I’m the last person you wanted to see today.”
His grunt has me looking up at him again. Those blue eyes, those crazy blond curls. That mouth. “Cally…”
I sink my teeth into my bottom lip as our gazes tangle. He takes a step toward me, and he’s so close, I have to lift my chin to keep my eyes on his, have to curl my fingers into my fists to keep from touching him. He’s sweaty and solid and so damn gorgeous.
I wait—for him to tell me how horrible I am for what I did to him, for him to ask me why I did what I did. I don’t know what I’d say. It’s hard to imagine that, once, leaving New Hope—leaving William—seemed like the worst thing that could happen to me. I was so wrong.
But he doesn’t ask and he doesn’t move away from me. His gaze dips to my lips for the briefest moment, and the way my body responds to his nearness, even all these years later, even after…everything…it only confirms what I suspected.
After seven years. After the lamest breakup in the history of breakups. After breaking his heart and dismissing my own, I’m still very much his.
Cally.
I can hardly breathe. My brain doesn’t have time for something as trivial as oxygen when it’s so busy cataloguing her features, memorizing the exact shade of her mocha eyes, warring with the anger and regret that have sprung to life as if they never left me to begin with.
I never thought I’d see her again. I didn’t think I wanted to.
The moment I step closer, I realize my mistake. Being near her is like a sip of water to desert-parched lips. It whips something through me—memories, lust, first love. Heartbreak. She tilts her lips up to mine, and I actually think for one goddamned ridiculous minute that I might kiss her, that I want to. That I would swallow all my pride and forgive her for just one taste.
I step back before I can give in to the impulse, and her cheeks blaze to life, her blush as cute as the rest of her. That’s the word for her: cute. Sweet smile and peppy ponytail, she exudes cuteness.
Except her ass. Her ass doesn’t even land in the same stratosphere as cute, and those tight little pants do nothing to hide its soft, round curves. And her breasts. There’s definitely nothing cute about the way her T-shirt stretches across their fullness. Or her go-for-miles legs. Not to mention the narrow strip of skin exposed between the hem of her shirt and waistband of her pants. Just looking at the single inch of flesh below her navel, and I practically taste strawberry wine.
Moonlight. Her warm skin under my tongue. The sound of her moan as my mouth dips lower.
The memory grabs hold of my senses and won’t let go.
Fuck. I can’t even lie to myself. Nothing about her says cute. Everything about her says sex. And mine.
“Directions?” she asks. “To my father’s house?”
“Do you want me to walk you there? It’s close.”
I immediately regret the impulsive suggestion. I should be giving her directions, putting her in the car, and sending her back out of my life. But I want to be close to her for a minute, to prove to myself that I’m bigger than a seven-year-old shit breakup.
Or I want to prove to myself she’s more than just a dream.
She worries that plump bottom lip between her teeth because, obviously, she’s trying to torture me. How can I want her so much when I thought I hated her?
“I don’t bite, Cally.”
She mutters something I can’t quite make out. It kind of sounds like “Damn shame,” but I can’t be sure because she’s grabbing her purse and avoiding my eyes.
“Are you staying long?” I ask as we start walking. My voice sounds too damn hopeful and I hate that, but what are the chances she’d show up here again, let alone find herself lost right in front of my house?
She’s here to see her dad, I remind myself. That shouldn’t come as a surprise, but as far as I know this is the only time she’s been back since she moved away.
“No. Not too long. Maybe a couple of days. I…my mom died, and I need to get my sisters settled in with my dad.”
I stop walking and turn to face her, all my bitterness and aggravation falling away.
She’s looking at the ground, those worry lines making an appearance again. I grab her hand and squeeze. “I’m sorry.” I don’t ask what happened. Having lost both of my parents when I was a kid, I know how quickly that question gets old.
“Me too.”
We both know there’s not much else to say, so we walk instead. She follows me, and we cut through my yard to the paved path down by the river. I resist the urge to point out my house, to show her how well I’ve done for myself. It would be mostly a lie anyway.
“So you still live here in New Hope?” she asks softly.
“I came back after undergrad.”
“Anybody else stick around?”
I narrow my eyes at her. Does she already know my screwed-up history with the Thompson family, or is the question sincere? “Some of the guys from the team—Max, Sam, Grant. And all the Thompson girls except Krystal. She just moved to Florida with her boyfriend last month.”
The mention of her old friends brings a smile to her lips and lights up her face, making her look like her old self. “Lizzy and Hanna are in town?”
“You should see if you can hook up with them before you leave. They’d love to see you.”
She doesn’t reply, but there’s something about the way her face changes that tells me she’s not going to seek them out. I wish I didn’t need so badly to understand why. Cally didn’t want to leave when her mom moved her away. She didn’t want to leave her friends or her family. Didn’t want to leave the life she had here. She was determined to keep in touch with us all, even talked about coming back here for college. She hadn’t been gone but a couple of months when all that changed, and suddenly she would have nothing to do with any of us. Even me.
