Happily Ever After: A Contemporary Romance Boxed Set

by Piper Rayne

  “Ahh, there you are,” she says once I’m almost next to her. “Did you have a good time last night?”

  I can’t help but smile very widely.

  “The best in a long time,” I say and sit down next to her, making the wooden step creak ominously.

  “That’s good to hear,” she says and taps my knee. “I’m glad.”

  Her sadness is contagious. It seeps right through the pores of my happiness and elation and makes it all dull and non-consequential.

  I also don’t know if I should be worried. She’s not being herself. My mom’s always been a fighter. A stubborn, relentless one. She never backed down from anything.

  This last year has been very hard on her. And I’m afraid this change that gradually came over her is permanent. She’s given up. The woman who raised me all alone, provided a good home for me and put me through college has given up.

  Panic is not an emotion I usually feel. Over anything. But I’ve been growing more and more panicked over seeing these changes in my mom, and my inability to help her.

  “So, are you and Axle getting back together?” she asks, acting maybe a little more like herself, but not much.

  “That’s a very good question,” I say. And the one I can’t even begin to answer, despite the promise I made. The promise I meant wholeheartedly. “It wouldn’t be easy, that’s for sure.”

  She nods pensively. “Seems we’re both faced with some big and tall problems. At least yours is also a very good-looking man.”

  She chuckles at her own joke, but it’s a brittle, dark sound. I laugh too anyway and stand up.

  “How about we just take the day off from our problems and go to the beach?” I say. “The SUV won’t be ready until tomorrow at the soonest and we’ve finished most of the packing.”

  “I don’t know, hun,” she says. ‘I’m afraid I won’t be the best company today.”

  “Nonsense,” I say and extend my hand to help her rise. “I’ll just go change and you go grab your bathing suit. Find one for me too. I didn’t bring mine.”

  She takes my hand and I help her stand up.

  “It’s not good to run away from your problems, you know?” she says with a sad little smile.

  I shrug and smile wide. “We’re not running. We’re just hiding for a little while. All the problems will still be here when we get back, don’t you worry.”

  She laughs and I laugh with her.

  “Can’t argue with that,” she concedes.

  And less than half an hour later we’re merging onto the highway that will take us to the quaint little town of Bedrock that I haven’t visited in a decade or more. I hope it’s still the same as I remember it.

  I also hope the day away will give me clarity, and an answer. How do I keep my promise without throwing away everything I’ve worked so hard for these last twenty years?

  The sun is starting to set, coloring the sky a perfect orange as me and my mom pull up on Main Street. It was a wonderful day at the beach, and Mom lost her vacant look about two hours into our trip. She’s laughing at the joke I just made regarding the fact that all those fancy shops, vegan and whatnot shops and yoga studios going up everywhere in Pleasantville will soon make it too expensive for even the yuppies to be here, tears stream down her face.

  The seaside town we just came from has hardly changed. It was always a very bohemian, laid back place full of former and new-age hippies, most of whom make their living selling homemade goods and growing their own food. I found the perfect necklace made of silver and leather, wound together in such a whimsical, intricate way I just kept looking at it for half the day before finally putting it on. It’s not for the courtroom, but it’s definitely something the old Mia would wear. Definitely something for riding on the back of a Harley. I got a similar bracelet for Axle. He used to wear bracelets, but doesn’t anymore. Maybe he’ll start now.

  My hair is a mess, hard and full of sea salt, from my long, relaxing dip in the sea. I just floated on the soft, warm waves for an hour at least. No answers came to me. But the questions did lose their sting. I only got this one life to live. There’s no reason to make it harder than it needs to be.

  I probably should go home and shower and change, but I don’t want to miss the rest of this sunset and I want to see it with Axle. And that’s as simple as life needs to be right now.

  “I won’t wait up for you, then,” my mom says, smiling, as she pulls up to the curb in front of the Three Stars Garage.

  I smile back. “Well, you’d be in for a long wait if you did.”

  She laughs and I exit the car and hurry to the door by the closed metal gate. I don’t ring this time, just walk right through.

  The lot is considerably more empty than it was the first time I was here, and my SUV has pride of place, gleaming silver in the last rays of the sun.

  No one’s in sight and the interior of the garage is dark, but I hear clanking coming from somewhere in the back and head towards it.

  I’m just beyond the corner of the building when a pair of strong arms grab me from behind. I almost scream out in fright, my heart racing, but then I recognize his touch, and a split second later, his smell.

  “You nearly gave me a heart attack,” I chide, as he twirls me around.

  He’s got a smudge of black grease on the side of his nose, but is otherwise wearing a clean pair of blue jeans and a washed out black t-shirt. His hair is wet and slicked back and he smells like he just took a shower.

  He chuckles and pulls me closer. “That was the idea.”

  He leans in and kisses me, our lips and tongues molding and dancing together in that perfect way, which puts even the most glorious sunset to shame.

  “I fixed your car,” he says later, as we stop kissing and he’s just gazing into my eyes. We still haven’t moved from the spot where he grabbed me and I feel no need to. This is exactly where I want to be. “I got lucky and found the spare part in the next town over. The rental company will never know the difference. Wanna see?”

  I want to tell him that I trust him, and that he should kiss me some more instead, but I know how he likes to show off his work on cars.

  “Yes,” I say and rub the smudge of grease off his nose. “Show me.”

  He takes me by the hand and leads me to the SUV.

  “See?” he asks.

  I peer closer at the replaced mirror, then let go of his hand to walk to the other side of the car.

  “They look identical,” I say, truly impressed. “How’d you do it?”

  “I have my ways,” he says, stooping down to brush his hand across the door. “And see here, no sign of the scratch is left. Not even a hint.”

  He’s not exaggerating. “You really are a master at this.”

  He grins in a very self-satisfied way.

  “You can take it now, if you want,” he says.

  I walk closer and run my hand down his cheek, then wrap my palm around his neck. Or rather, around about a third of it, since he has a wonderfully thick neck.

  “I was thinking we could go for a ride instead,” I say. “It’s been years for me.”

  Actually, it’s been since the last time the two of us went for a ride. Which was a couple of days before we broke up.

  His eyes lose focus as though he’s remembering that ride too. And once they regain it, it’s no longer the soft, loving look he was giving me before.

  “Come on, Axle,” I say, not even sure what I’m urging him to do. He can’t erase the past twenty years any more than I can.

  “You’ll need a helmet,” he says. “I think your old one is still around here somewhere.”

  He walks away towards the garage and I follow, a little unsure of whether I should at all. And a little afraid of what I’ll find. I hope it isn’t some shrine to my memory. Why would he keep my old helmet all these years?

  Once I enter the empty, nearly dark garage, I follow the noise of shifting boxes and his grunts to the storage room in the back.

  Dust motes are dan
cing in the light cast by the fluorescent bulbs along the ceiling, and he’s almost completely concealed by a stack of boxes in the far right corner of the space. No shrine, then. Thank God.

  But what he does bring out is almost worse.

  “This is all the stuff you left here and at my house,” he says, carrying a large, dusty cardboard box that used to be brown, but is now a dull grey from age. Judging from the way his biceps are bulging from the weight of it, I left a lot of things behind.

  “Your helmet should be in here too,” he says, placing the box at my feet.

  I make no move to open the box. “We’re really going to have to talk about all this, aren’t we?”

  He shakes his head and rolls his eyes. “I have no need for that, do you?”

  I shrug. “I shouldn’t have made you collect all these things of mine and keep them, while I… while I didn’t so much as call.”

  He cups my chin and makes me look at him. “Not gonna say it was easy, but what we really should talk about is where we go from here. The past is past.”

  I nod. And keep nodding, because I have no idea what to say.

  “We could… we…” I start bravely anyway, hoping that maybe some answer will come to me while I speak. Most often it works that way for me. I get my best ideas while talking things out.

  “We don’t have to figure anything out right now, Mia,” he says and squats down to search the box for my helmet.

  A couple of seconds later, he hands it to me. The sight of it takes my breath. It’s exactly like I remember it, only dustier. Black and covered with stickers, which mark just about every milestone in our relationship. The most faded are the red and yellow wings of fire along the sides it originally came with when he first gave it to me.

  He’s right, no amount of talking will change the past.

  I take the helmet and wipe the dust away with my palm. “Let’s go. We’re missing the sunset.”

  He grins at me and takes my hand, and as we walk across the garage floor to his bike, we’re not just covering distance, we’re traversing years. The ones we lost. But they’re not really lost. They’re here now, still before us. And we have a second chance of making the most of them.

  19

  Mia

  All that’s left of the sunset is a glorious dusky pink sky covering the land for as far as I can see. My whole body is still thrumming from the bike ride up to this observation point, where we sat on the wooden bench of one of the picnic tables and watched the last of the sunset. My soul is thrumming too, because the missing string has finally been added to the braid of my life, making it complete in a way I never thought it could be.

  His strong arm is wrapped around my shoulder, and I’m leaning against him, his hardness and the solidness the perfect antidote for my loneliness. As I hope my softness is for him. But the braid we’ve woven is tentative at best. It could still unravel.

  I fish the pouch with his bracelet from my pocket and smile up at him. “I got something for you today.”

  He looks at me quizzically, his eyes kind of unfocused from staring off into the distance. He takes the pouch and takes out the bracelet, squeezing me tighter in the process since he has to use both hands.

  “Very nice,” he says, smiling at it. “It matches your necklace.”

  “It does,” I say and take it from his hands. “Want me to put help you put it on?”

  He chuckles and extends his right wrist. “I do.”

  Odd choice of words, but I think they’re deliberate. Especially after he chuckles at my pause.

  I affix it to his wrist, glad I got the sizing right.

  “You know,” he says, admiring it. “If rent is the only thing holding your mom back from just changing locations, I can help.”

  I gasp and look at him, my mouth hanging open, but he just keeps looking down at the bracelet I got him, seeming for all intents and purposes like he hadn’t spoken at all.

  “What do you mean?” I ask.

  He finally stops his scrutiny of my gift and looks at me. “I don’t know if you remember, but my father was into investing in real estate around here. He really got into it after you left, and by the time he died, he owned something like twenty percent of the properties in Pleasantville. He got them for cheap, since no else wanted them, but I made a killing selling them off to these new developers.”

  “I never knew that,” I say. I didn’t even know his father had died soon after we broke up until a couple of years ago.

  “You wouldn’t,” he says, and chuckles. “I purposefully avoided anything and everything to do with you for years after you left.”

  I wrap my arm tighter around his waist because I don’t know what to say.

  “Anyway, I stopped selling the land and buildings to them after I realized they were using them to rip the soul of out of the town,” he continues. “I still own one near the strip mall.”

  Something clicks in my brain. “The boarded up place by the juice shop?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one,” he says. “I still get daily offers for it. I can let your mom have it for cheap. That way, she’ll only have to move, what, like a couple hundred yards?”

  I’m still staring at him with eyes wide and mouth open wider, my heart thumping in my chest.

  “How are you always the solution?” I ask breathlessly, kind of unconsciously, but not really.

  He chuckles wryly. “Yeah, sure.”

  I take his hand and lace my fingers with his. “Thank you. I think this is exactly what my mom needs. But are you sure? You could probably make triple what my mom can afford on that place.”

  “Money isn’t everything,” he says. “And it’s the least I can do after what I caused that street to become. It’d be nice to see a familiar storefront there.”

  “It would,” I agree.

  “Plus, a friend of mine’s daughter just got a job there a couple of months ago,” he says. “It was the fresh start she needed, and she’s been real down about the place closing.”

  “Honey?” I ask. “Yeah, my mom’s really worried about her and what she’ll do now.”

  “Talk to your mom,” he says. “Ask her.”

  “I will.”

  I don’t add that she might not say yes.

  “But even without that, we’ll make it work, you and I,” I do add. “If you’re willing to try.”

  He looks at me like I’ve lost my marbles, his face awash in the orange roadside light that just came on. There used to be no lights, or picnic tables, in this spot when we were young and would come here to be alone. Most often we were alone, since no one else seemed to know about it. Which was always fine by me. Just Axle and me against the world. Not so much against all odds, as it turned out, but we can fix that now.

  “No?” I ask, since he’s not responding.

  “Yes,” he says, and chuckles. “It’s always been yes, and always will be, it seems. For me, at least.”

  “For me too,” I say and nestle closer to him. He’s always so hot—hot enough to keep us both warm.

  “I’m just a lot better at lying to myself than you ever were,” I add. “I’m sorry.”

  He kisses the top of my head and holds me tighter. “I know.”

  “And I’m afraid I’m also still very much in love with you,” I say and look up at him with a smile. He returns in before leaning down to kiss me in a way that seals all open wounds seamlessly, answers all questions, makes light of all the darkness.

  Everything is so simple when he’s holding me tight, keeping me warm, letting me lean against him. Always was. Always will be.

  20

  Axle

  The sky outside my bedroom window is a light gray as Mia’s kisses wake me. This is the first time in a long time I’ve slept until daybreak, slept the whole night. Or, more like, what was left of it after neither me nor Mia could go on kissing and fucking and making up for lost time.

  My cock’s rock hard again now, grows even harder as she climbs on top of me under the covers. Her
skin is always so wonderfully cool and smooth, like porcelain. I love just running my hands over her silky curves. Or watching her. Or making her moan as I squeeze her ass and boobs and play with her clit.

  She’s nowhere near as delicate as she looks. And I love that most of all.

  I’m all hers right now though, as she kisses my lips and my neck, my pecs and up again. She rubs her wet pussy over my throbbing cock, letting me know what she wants. I grab her ass and grind into her. And she rising off me by pushing against my chest, taking the covers with her as she straddles my hips.

  “Good morning,” she says, and I just grin at her, opening my eyes a fraction more. Everything’s out of focus, except her face. Her beautiful face.

  She guides my cock into her, gasping and shuddering as she always does when I enter her. She keeps a tight grip on my chest as she finds her rhythm, taking my cock just how she likes it, slowly at first until she gets closer and closer. Her boobs are bouncing above me, harder and harder, as her gyrating hips move faster and faster. Her moans are like little snatches of an old favorite song.

  My cock fits into her like hand in glove, and her soft warmth is enough to make any man lose it. Me most of all. Her moan rises in pitch and doesn’t end as she shudders, her pussy gripping my cock like a vice. I love watching her come. Her face is devoid of all worry and tightness then, and she looks years younger, as she lets go of everything holding her reigned in so tight she can go for months, years even, without letting herself have what she wants, what she craves.