by McLean, Jay
“You faked your death?”
“You gave me the idea.”
She doesn’t respond to this. She’s too busy taking me in, her breaths sharp, shallow.
I add, “Technically, I did die, but—”
“You did?” She’s pouting, and it might just be the cutest fucking thing I’ve ever seen.
“I missed you, Bai.”
“Oh god, Nathaniel. You have no idea…” She presses her forehead to mine, barely an inch separating our mouths. I close my eyes, my nose brushing hers, and then I kiss her. I kiss her the way I’ve dreamt about kissing her, and there’s no hesitation from her. No resistance. “Nate,” she says, pulling away—just her mouth, everything else is as close as we can get it. “I’m sorry I never told you—”
“I love you.” I beat her to it.
She kisses me again. Just once. And the words she says finally, finally, set my heart at ease. “Ti amo, mio bellissimo ragazzo spezzato.” I love you, my beautifully broken boy.
* * *
I spend the rest of her workday with her, which only lasts an hour or so before the majority of her customers leave to pick up their kids from school. According to her, the other food trucks stay open late, making the most of the dinner crowd. I help her pack up the tables and chairs and lock them away, along with the flowers she has laid out. It’s clear she’s been doing this a while because her closing routine is swift. Once everything’s packed, there’s barely any room in the truck, which is fine by me. Gives me more opportunities to touch her, to hold her close. I stand, my back to the counter with her between my legs, my hand on her jaw, and I just stare at her. I take in every little detail of her face, especially her eyes, her lips. And I kiss her. I can’t stop fucking kissing her. Her mouth, her neck, her jaw. And I can’t stop touching her, either, my hands hungry to re-memorize every curve, every inch.
“Nate,” she says, her head thrown back while I taste the spot on her neck where her pulse beats against her skin. She grasps the strands of my hair, and I moan in response. “I left my past behind.”
I’m quick to pull away, the heated lust burning inside me fizzling away. “Oh.”
“No.” She shakes her head. “I don’t mean you. I mean, what happened to us, and to me… I left it all behind, but…” Her gaze drops. “I never thought of you as my past. I only ever saw you as my future.”
* * *
When the sun begins to set, Bailey takes my hand, shows me the ladder that leads to the roof of the truck. I stare as she makes her way up, and with a smirk, I say, “I could watch you do that all damn day.”
“Shut up,” she laughs out, waiting at the top for me. Once I’ve joined her, she sits down, facing the view of the sun setting. I sit behind her, my legs outstretched on either side, my arms around her waist. “I come up here most nights to watch it set,” she says, adjusting so she’s sitting across my lap, her arm loose around my neck.
“I bet it’s beautiful.”
We don’t watch the sunset, though; we watch each other, and we talk. She has questions, and I have all the answers she needs. She doesn’t ask why I chose to do what I did, or about anything that happened afterward. She asks if I came for her, and I tell her the truth—that I came for Tiny. She laughs at that and mentions it was lucky they live next door to each other. That way it would be easy to share me. Apparently, Tiny has been a pillar of strength for her whenever she’s been down. It was his idea to buy the lot we’re on and open up the space for food trucks and the like, and it was her choice to do a coffee/flower shop. It was a good distraction and one she definitely needed. “I owe a lot to Tiny,” she says.
“I hear you. I feel the same.”
She tells me about Tiny’s girlfriend, a petite little thing similar to Ashton. She’s quiet as a mouse and the complete opposite of Tiny, but they work, and Bailey’s loved watching their love grow from a distance.
We spend hours up on that roof, well after the sun’s set, talking about anything and everything. On top of the world, we hold on to each other, our eyes never breaking contact, our lips never straying far. And our hearts… our hearts finally connecting. As one. “This,” she whispers, her palm against my heart. “This is loving freely.”
Excerpt From Heartache and Hope
By Jay McLean
Prologue
One minute you’re sipping on your first beer at your first bonfire party, wearing a hoodie provided by a boy you’ve been crushing on for months. He slips his hand around your waist, pulls you closer to him. Then he dips his head, whispers into your neck, “You’re beautiful, Ava.”
It’s your fifteenth birthday, and you have the world at your feet, and you watch the fire blaze in front of you, watch the embers rise, float to a new existence, and you think to yourself, This is life.
Your phone rings, and you pull it out of your back pocket, see your stepfather’s name flashing on the screen, and you end the call, pocket the phone again.
The boy kisses your neck, and you take another sip, your eyes drifting shut at the feel of his lips against your skin.
Your phone rings again.
And again.
And you ignore it every time.
Every single time.
You move to the bed of a truck, your hands in his hair, his hands on your breasts, and you’re so drunk on desire it makes you high on this life.
This life.
This perfect life.
It’s 3:00 a.m. when you stumble home, drunk and delusional. Your stepfather is slouched on the couch in the living room, a single lamp casting the only shadows of the night. “I’ve been calling you,” he says, and you’re too out of it to care. “It’s your mother.”
At fifteen and one day, you sit with your stepfather in the same living room where he waited all night for you. Night has turned to day, and unlike him, you don’t look at the door, waiting. No. You look at the phone.
Waiting.
At fifteen and two days, the call comes through, and neither you nor your stepdad has slept a wink. Your stepbrother is on his way home from Texas, and you wring your hands together.
Waiting.
At fifteen and three days, you find out that the situation is so bad, they’re bypassing Germany and bringing your mother right home. To you. To her family.
At fifteen and four days, your stepbrother comes home, and you look to him for courage, find it in his eyes, in the way he holds your hand while you can do nothing but wait.
At fifteen and five days, you fly to DC, and see your mother for the first time in five months. The last words she said to you were “Be careful.” She smiled at you the way mothers smile at their children, and you hid the pain and fear in your chest, replaced weakness for courage, and offered her a smile of your own.
At fifteen and six days, you try to search for that smile on her face while you sit by her hospital bed, but you don’t find it. Can’t find it. Because half of her face is gone. Half of her arm is, too.
A grenade, they told you.
At fifteen and seven days, you say to yourself, “This is life.” And it only took seven days for you to realize how imperfect it is.
Start the Heartache Duet Now
Also by Jay McLean
More Than Series
More Than This
More Than Her
More Than Him
More Than Forever
More Than Enough
Preston Brothers Novel
Lucas
Logan
The Road Series
Where the Road Takes Me
Kick Push
Coast
Combative Trilogy
Combative
Redemptive
Destructive
Darkness Matters
Darkness Matters
The Heartache Duet
Heartache and Hope
First and Forever
About the Author
Jay McLean is an international best-selling author and full-time reader, writer o
f New Adult and Young Adult romance, and skilled procrastinator. When she’s not doing any of those things, she can be found running after her three little boys, investing way too much time on True Crime Documentaries and binge-watching reality TV.
She writes what she loves to read, which are books that can make her laugh, make her hurt and make her feel.
Jay lives in the suburbs of Melbourne, Australia, in her dream home where music is loud and laughter is louder.
For publishing rights (Foreign & Domestic) Film or television, please contact her agent Erica Spellman-Silverman, at Trident Media Group.