Never His: A Second Chance Romance (Second Chances Book 1) Read online

  The house in the picture is small, but not ridiculously cramped, and it seems like it has a good-sized yard.

  For the first time all afternoon, Valerie Vale might have gotten it right.

  Chapter Three

  Addison

  The days at the office roll by like waves crashing over me, person after person surging into my office and going back out with the tide. I recognize about a quarter of them—siblings of people I went to school with, parents, grandparents who narrow their eyes at me and ask if I’m David and Linda’s daughter. “Yes,” I say at least six times between Tuesday and Friday. “Yep, I’m their daughter.” I don’t say that David and Linda have been fighting for at least five years, maybe more, and that their marriage is in imminent danger of collapse. People don’t want to hear about that kind of thing from the city’s assistance liaison.

  I work late four nights a week, and this week is no exception, but there’s not enough time in the day to make all the phone calls I need to make and shepherd people through the application process and hand out the contents of boxes and boxes of tissues.

  Damn, it can be exhausting.

  When 5:00 on Friday comes, I finish one final email and send it out with a click that’s a little more vicious than I intended. I love this job, but it feels so hopeless sometimes. Just an endless sea of people who need help, but there’s not enough help to go around. Jesus, am I really that much of a bleeding heart?

  Yes, but I wanted to be tougher. When I was a teenager I imagined the woman I’d be—self-possessed and sexy and irresistible. And probably married. It’s that same fucking bleeding heart that’s made me waste the last ten years on a series of nice men, clean-cut and handsome, who turn out to be assholes in the end.

  I’m still moping about it like a pathetic idiot when I turn into my driveway at 5:30. “Stop it,” I tell myself as I look at my reflection in the rearview mirror. Jamie was a worthless douchebag who liked to flirt with other women at the bar on his nights off, which were numerous compared to mine, and our three years together meant precisely nothing to him. Which is why it makes no sense that my heart wrenches painfully when his car isn’t in the driveway a month after I came home to find a U-Haul parked at the curb, him loading the last of the boxes of his stuff into the back of it.

  No way. I’m not going to replay that shit show another time. I’m going to go inside, open a bottle of wine, and—

  A blast from a horn directly behind me makes me jump so high that my head almost brushes the ceiling of the car, my heart careening into my throat. I wrench the rearview mirror back into position and narrow my eyes to glare at the unbelievable dick who pulled into my own driveway to honk at me.

  It’s my best friend, one Leah Howard.

  I push the door open and jump out just as Leah elbows the door of her car shut. Her laughter rings out in the early fall air.

  “You scared the shit out of me!”

  “I know,” she says, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. “I saw you jump.”

  My pounding heart slows. Leah’s laughter has been contagious ever since I’ve known her, which at this point is about twenty-three years, give or take—since kindergarten, anyway.

  “You’re kind of a bitch.”

  “You love me.” She leans in to kiss my cheek, then brushes past me, heading for the front door.

  “Where are you going?”

  “To get ready,” she calls back over her shoulder.

  I roll my eyes and hitch my purse up over my shoulder. I don’t know why I carry a purse—I hate the damn thing. Then I hurry after her. Leah has a spare key to my place, and she’s already unlocking the front door when I finally catch up to her. She tosses her curly dark hair and opens the door with a flourish, letting me pass by her to go inside first.

  I go immediately to the couch and flop down, letting my head fall back against the arm. The door shuts with a confident slam, then the cushions next to me depress under Leah’s weight.

  “Get. Up.” She pops the last P like bubblegum and tugs at my arm.

  “No,” I groan. “It’s been a long-ass week, L. I have a date with the couch.”

  She leaps up just as I open my eyes. “Nope.”

  “Yes.”

  “We have a date.”

  “We don’t.”

  “I decided we do.”

  “I have plans.”

  She rummages through her purse and pulls out a top, whipping it at me from across the room. “You’re wearing that.”

  “Leah…”

  “Don’t ‘Leah’ me.” She narrows her eyes, giving me a stern look. “You have been sitting on this couch for the last ten Fridays. You cannot keep sitting here, wallowing over that asshole, until you’re old and decrepit.”

  “It hasn’t been ten Fridays.”

  “Five Fridays, then. It doesn’t matter. It’s been too long. Come on. I’m going to do your makeup.” Leah dangles her second bag—her makeup kit—from one finger.

  I take a deep breath and let it out. She has a point. I’m not doing myself any favors by sitting here until it gets dark, then sitting in the dark with the TV on until my eyes get so heavy that I can’t stand it anymore.

  Jamie isn’t fucking worth it.

  “Fine.” I get up from the couch and hold up the top while I walk to the hallway leading to the bathroom. It’s a boat neck with long sleeves—Leah knows me too well—and I would bet a hundred dollars that she’s going to go right to my dresser, pull out my shortest pair of shorts (“It’s still warm enough out,” she’ll say), and tell me that—

  The sound of my dresser drawer sliding shut confirms my thoughts.

  “Fine,” I repeat, louder, a pleasant buzz of excitement sliding over my skin. “I’ll go out…but only if it’s a girls’ night.”

  “Girls’ night. Absolutely,” calls Leah from the bedroom.

  “I mean it.”

  “You always do.”

  Chapter Four

  Brett

  Friday night, and O’Malley’s is packed. I should have known.

  Ten years ago, O’Malley’s was where everyone went the summer after high school because of the notoriously relaxed bouncer and the fact that it was more dive than bar. Actually getting served a beer was a crapshoot—it depended on which bartender was working, and how long the shift was—but there were better odds here than anywhere else.

  I only came here because I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go. Lockton has filled out since I left, with shiny-ass places springing up on every corner, snuggled right in by all of the four Starbucks. I figured O’Malley’s—which, not coincidentally, is the least Irish place you’ll ever find—would be a dead zone, just like it was when I left town.

  To be fair, though, they had really good burgers.

  The noise was a shock when I pushed open the door. I almost turned around and went right back out again, but it’s five blocks back to the Holiday Inn Express and I’m fucking hungry.

  The only free table is sandwiched between two groups of shrill women in too-tight clothes, so I elbow my way to an empty seat at the corner of the bar.

  The bartender’s been ignoring me ever since. There’s only so many damn times I can pretend to look at the half-assed flyer of a menu—that hasn’t changed much—so I swivel around and scan the crowd. The gaggle of women with deep V shirts leaning up against the pitted cherry bar top can’t order drinks forever. At some point, they’re going to have to actually drink them.

  One of them, a redhead whose hips are on the verge of spilling out of her jeans, sidles up to me, her fingers wrapped around a martini glass. She’s—no fucking joke—sipping at her Cosmo through a straw, her eyes already starting to glaze over at 9:30 at night.

  “Hey.” She smiles at me with the straw in her teeth, and my stomach lurches. This is exactly the kind of woman with whom I’ve spent my free nights—and there haven’t been many—over the past ten years. I don’t know what it is, but I just can’t do it anymore. Nothing about her
appeals to me.

  I give her a polite nod. “Hi.” Then I pick up the menu again, looking over it at the bartender, who’s sliding another round of cocktails across to the group this special lady just detached herself from.

  “Are you here alone?” Her smile widens, and she lets go of the straw to lick her lips.

  “Are you?”

  “Not really.” No shit. I can see her friends whispering to each other over her shoulder, their eyes wide. So she’s the brave one.

  “You should get back to your friends.”

  “But you don’t have any friends. Aren’t you lonely?”

  This woman clearly can’t take a hint.

  Just then, the bartender hurries over—too little, too late—and calls over the bar. “Ma’am? Another drink?”

  “Food,” I say, slapping the menu down onto the bar. “Burger. Fries. And a beer.”

  “Hey, no problem, man!” The bartender smiles like he’s just now seeing me for the first time. His face looks vaguely familiar—maybe the younger brother of someone we went to school with—but I can’t put a name to it. Even if I could, I’d only remember him as Asshole.

  He pulls a pad out of his back pocket, scribbles down the order, and then shoves it across the pass-through to the kitchen, shouting “Order!” above the din before turning back around to the now giggling women clamoring for another round of drinks.

  God, this is a fucking mess. I left here to be somebody, but here I am, back at the same shitty bar, surrounded by shitty people, another nobody at O’Malley’s.

  “We could be friends.” The voice comes from just off my shoulder. It’s the redhead whose Cosmo has clearly stripped her of her ability to read social cues.

  “I don’t want to be friends.”

  She laughs, high and loud, her nose crinkling. “You are too funny.”

  “I’m not kidding.”

  I’m being a total dick, which puts me on about the same level as the bartender, but all I want in the world is for her to go away, back to her damn friends, and leave me the hell alone. But I don’t care. Once I would have cared about the way her face falls and bright pink spots rise to her cheeks, but my heart has been numbed from ten years of clawing my way through college, clawing my way through training, and finally, finally getting into the cockpit of a Thunderbolt.

  All that is behind me now, and it makes me fucking sick. So does this woman, with the straw she keeps rolling across her tongue, her lipstick smearing at the edges.

  After another long moment, she narrows her eyes at me, her mouth half-open. It’s not a good look. “Whatever,” she says, in what she probably imagines is a cutting tone. Then she spins on her heel and goes back to her friends. I don’t have to look to know that they’re all taking turns glaring at me.

  Christ, I need to get the hell out of here before I snap. Where the fuck is my food? My stomach growls when I see the plate slide out toward the bartender, who grabs it with one hand, pushing it across to me.

  “Oh, shit, dude, I forgot your beer.” He reaches for a glass and is halfway through filling it before I decide to get the fuck away from this place right now.

  “Hey,” I call, and he cocks his head toward me while he finishes filling the beer. “Can I get—?”

  There’s a movement at my elbow, and I’m going to fucking lose my shit if it’s that same woman or her friends, come to avenge her, and I turn my head with a curt, dickish remark on my tongue, only to catch sight of a goddamn vision in a black shirt with a square neckline, the fabric hugging every lithe curve beneath it like it was made for her. The shade of the strawberry blonde hair sends a knife of pain straight through my chest and I automatically dismiss it—it’s not here, it’s not here—but then two things happen at once:

  First, I breathe in and catch her scent, which is exactly the same as it was in high school.

  And then she speaks, calling out for the bartender with a confidence I don’t recognize but that seems absolutely right for her in this moment.

  It’s Addison Gray.

  Chapter Five

  Addison

  O’Malley’s is crowded, just like I thought it would be on a Friday night, but Leah charms her way into one of the last free tables and strikes up a conversation with the guys at the next table.

  “Girls’ night?” I say next time she takes a breath.

  “Just collecting drinks.” She winks at me and then turns back to them.

  “Well, in the meantime…” I’m not going to wait for these men to complete their ritual with Leah, hunt down a waitress, order, and then wait another half hour for them to arrive. I may have been recently dumped, but damn it if I’m not an independent woman.

  I push my way through the crowd. Halfway there, a hand on my wrist stops my motion. The touch is so familiar that I think it must be someone I know—maybe from school, maybe just from town—but when I turn and meet his eyes, it’s a complete stranger.

  A vaguely handsome stranger, that’s for sure, but it’s not even 9:45 and he seems pretty wasted.

  “You’re fucking gorgeous,” he says while I shake his hand away from my wrist, smiling a little while I do it because maybe it’ll make him back off.

  “Thanks.”

  I try to turn back toward the bar, but he holds an arm out in front of me. That’s a no.

  “Excuse me.”

  “We should get to know each other. Let me buy you a drink.” His words come out one on top of the other—not slurred, exactly, but close.

  “I’m good.”

  This time, I try to scoot around his side, but he blocks me with his muscled bulk. Something in my chest tightens, and my jaw clenches. “One drink.”

  “Jesus Christ, you really can’t take a hint, can you?” My voice comes out louder than I planned.

  He gives me a dumbass grin and raises both hands in the air. “Persistence pays off.”

  “No, it doesn’t, jackass. Get out of my way.” His drunken, idiotic face strips away all my politeness. It’s been a long week. I just want to get drinks for my girlfriend and go back to our table. Why the hell can’t men just—

  I push my way past him, forceful, and just then one of his buddies comes up and throws an arm across his shoulders, shouting at him to come back to the table, man. A heat rises on the back of my neck. It’s ten feet to the bar, and the entire thing is swarmed by women out on the town in outfits they should have stopped wearing five years ago, and more bros.

  There’s only one gap, off on the left side, and I head for it, my jaw set, eyes on the prize. It doesn’t have to be this hard to buy two beers. It really doesn’t. And normally I’d be able to brush this off. But this week is weighing heavily on my shoulders, along with my empty house, my empty driveway.

  I step up to the bar. The guy behind it tonight is Scott, who’s three years younger than me. His older sister, Kelly, was in our class in high school. She’s somewhere in California now, I think.

  “Scotty! Hey!” I snap my fingers in the air, dragging his attention away from the festival of boobs. His head swivels towards me, and then he smiles, telling the other women he’ll be right back.

  “Addison! What’s up?”

  “I’m at the bar, Scotty. I want drinks.”

  “You’re feisty.”

  “Always have been. Two beers.”

  He grabs two glasses from underneath the counter and steps over to the tap. “Where’s your boo?” I can never tell if Scotty is saying this shit ironically, or if he just genuinely likes to use all the slang from the kids these days.

  I swallow down the sudden lump in my throat. “Moved out.”

  “Shit, sorry,” he says, sliding the beers across to me.

  “He was a dick anyway.”

  “Damn right. You good?” I put a ten down on the counter and he snatches it up.

  “For now. I’ll be back.” He snaps his fingers and points at me, then goes back to the crowd.

  It’s only then that I register the silence coming from the seat
beside me, even though it’s occupied. It’s weird for a guy sitting up at the bar to have said absolutely nothing the entire time I’ve been standing next to him, but not unwelcome. At least he’s not all over me like that jackass on the way over.

  A woman pushes up next to me as I lift the beers off the counter, so I have to turn toward him, holding the glasses carefully above his shoulder. We’re so close that I’m very nearly brushing against the heather gray fabric of his t-shirt, which is fitted close over a gorgeous set of arms. Something about the line of his shoulder is familiar, but there’s no way that—

  He looks up at me as I start to move away, and his green eyes send a shock straight to my core. My heart is instantly hammering against my rib cage, and the breath that I suck in doesn’t seem to get me any air.

  Holy shit, it’s Brett Miller.

  The Brett Miller of four years of charged flirting in high school, of stolen kisses behind the gym, of lying awake thinking about at night, of writing notes to each other in every class we shared. His eyes had been alive with laughter then. I could never get enough of it.

  But we never, never dated.

  It made my chest ache to see him with his girlfriends—wild girls who were damaged in some way, who folded themselves into him at every opportunity. It never lasted.

  We had our one chance the summer after high school and I thought for sure that…

  It hadn’t happened. He’d disappeared in the middle of August, cell phone disconnected, social media profiles deleted or blocked. I kept waiting to hear from him, though I never did, but I’ve thought of him at least once a day, every day, for the last ten years.

  And now here he is, inches away from me at O’Malley’s, living and breathing and way, way hotter than the last time I saw him.

  Chapter Six

  Brett

  Addison’s face goes through a hundred expressions when our eyes meet. At first, her full lips drop open a little and she gulps in a breath, and then her forehead wrinkles, like she’s trying to place me. Then her eyes widen and her gaze flicks down to my t-shirt, running smoothly over my arms. A memory of her at eighteen, naked and smooth and fucking me with total abandon, flickers into my mind and my cock jumps in my jeans. The air around us is so charged that I’m almost sure that if I touch anything with metal in it, we’ll all go up in sparks.