Ready to Fall (A Second Chance Bad Boy Next Door Romance)

by Anne Connor

  “Nothing that says you can’t do both,” I say. I move my hips away from Colin to try to shake him off a little, but he just wraps his arm around me tighter. I relent, and lean against him a little. I guess there’s no harm in letting a handsome guy look like he cares about me.

  Dad nods to someone across the room and puts his glass down on a table behind us. “I have to go shake hands with the police chief and tell him what a good job our new hires are doing. Stay out of trouble, Colin, or my daughter will have to lock you up.”

  Colin nods and once my dad is a few feet away, he slides his hand down my waist and onto my hip.

  “You’ll really lock me up?” he bends down, whispering into my ear.

  He’s been nothing but nice to me, but I can’t do this.

  “Colin,” I exhale softly, taking his hand off my hip gently and putting it back onto my waist. “I thought you said we were just here as friends.”

  “We are,” he says. He really is cute, and he’s so nice, and he’s the dictionary definition of good guy. And I could use the distraction, especially this day of all days. I close my eyes and shake my head, struggling to make the events of last year go away. But as much as I try, I can’t get my mind off him...off Travis. I pretend that I can, and I lie to myself, and there are times when I actually almost believe it. But when I stop focusing on forgetting, even for a second, all the memories come crashing back down on me.

  So I just have to keep trying to forget. But not like this. I can’t force my body to forget. Not like this.

  “Colin, I’m sorry.” I place my hands gently on his broad chest, and his brown, hooded eyes shift downward from my eyes to my lips. His mouth stretches out into a hard line as he takes a step back, letting my hands fall away from him. I exhale and let my body become rigid. I grab a glass of champagne off a tray and make my way over to the coat check, grab my stuff, and hurry down the stairs of the hotel onto Fifth Avenue.

  October is colder now than it was a year ago.

  Travis

  They don’t tell you how to act once you’re out. Sure, they tell you how to act when you’re on the inside. When to eat, when to sleep. When you can make calls to your loved ones. But now that I’m out, all I can do is walk away from the place I’ve been for the past year. And there’s only one thing on my mind as I do it.

  The gate buzzes and opens, and there’s Alec with his Mustang and a smile cast down at the gravel beneath his feet. I don’t want him to look at me. I know what I must look like right now.

  The air smells different now. Alec slaps the hood of his car and looks up at me, and he brings me in for a strong embrace as I drop my bag of personal effects on the ground. He looks exactly the same. It still feels like I’m seeing myself out here.

  “Get in,” he says, circling the car and getting into the driver’s seat.

  We hum along through the outskirts of town,past the rolling hills, barren with the beginnings of frost and cold, hard soil; between the roads cut out of the stone of the ground and branches of the trees as make our way closer to home.

  “Anything happen in the past year?” I ask, grabbing Alec’s chrome lighter and pack of Reds off the center console. I haven’t had a cigarette in a few hours. That’s one of the bad habits I’ve let seep into my bones over the past several months. Mom hated it, but once she passed, I was able to stop being sneaky with my bad habit. I inhale sharply and let the nicotine flood my veins, popping the chrome lighter shut. I exhale out the window and flick the ashes off the end of my cigarette.

  “What a fucking question. No.” Alec lets out a light chuckle and grazes his hands easily over the steering wheel. “That douche bag Andy got married to Katie and apparently they live in the city now in some brownstone.”

  “I remember that guy was good at math,” I say, wiping my hand on my knee and checking the time. I take another drag from the cigarette. “Don’t remember much else about him.”

  “Where am I taking you?” he asks. There’s a strain between us, and it hangs thick in the air like rust.

  “My place.”

  We aren’t far out from my house, and when we get there Alec’s tires crush gravel. The driveway’s been cleared of snow, but the blades of the lawn are stabbing up through the white powder.

  “Your handiwork?” I ask, getting out of the car and looking up at the old house. I spent so much time away from it, and it shows.

  “Yeah,” Alec responds, getting out with a hand hooked around the back of his neck. “Sorry I couldn’t do more. The ground’s been covered for the past two weeks. It started early this winter.”

  “I know,” I say, swinging my bag over my shoulder. “We were allowed to go outside.”

  The steps are splintered and swollen with water and heavy leaves, the effect of not being shoveled or swept. Fuck, I don’t think the snow even had time to fully melt between last year and this year.

  Once inside, the place isn’t any better. I flip on the lights in the hallway with Alec behind me. The place smells of old water and mildew. I should torch the place, but I worked too hard to try to save it just to let it go up in flames.

  “You have some money saved up, don’t you?” Alec puts a hand on the banister and rocks himself back and forth. It doesn’t budge; it shouldn’t. It’s old craftsmanship, and it shows. The house is structurally sound. It’s just the shit on the surface that’s turned.

  “Yeah.” I cough, clearing my throat. I check the lights in each of the rooms, throwing the switches up as I make my way through the house. The lights in the back of the house are out, probably an issue with the circuit.

  Alec sits down on the couch with a sigh as I go over to the front door and into the sunroom off to the side. All the lights in Daisy’s house are off. Shit, I don’t even know if it’s her house anymore. She could have up and left in the past year. I never called her. Never wrote. But I thought about her all the time. She kept me going. And I didn’t just do it for Alec. I did it for her. It was my penance. My debt to society. A way to right the wrongs and make me good enough for her. Now that I’ve had time to think about it, I realize how fucked up it really was. If she’s moved on, then I don’t blame her.

  I don’t have any resentment. Not for Alec. Not for myself.

  Fuck, maybe it actually worked. Maybe getting away and paying for all the shit I’ve done in my life has rehabilitated me.

  I might not have been guilty that night, but I’ve done enough bad shit to make up for it.

  I don’t have any smokes. Had my last one in prison, snuck it while I was in the can. It might have been a risk. If I’d been caught, I could have landed my ass in even more trouble. But I didn’t get caught, and my release went smoothly, on the day it was scheduled.

  I glance over my shoulder at Alec. He’s still sitting on the couch, with his hands on his knees. He looks like he’s ready to pounce.

  Coming back through the sunroom, I see a few of the potted plants my mom used to keep here. I should have gotten rid of them last year, but I couldn’t bring myself to do it. They’ve died, but not before they outgrew their vessels. My heart contracts as I go back into the house. It fucking kills me to see the place like this. I can’t bear to look at it anymore.

  “You want to come with me to the gas station? I need a pack of smokes.”

  “Never knew you to be a smoker like me,” he says, getting up and brushing off his knees.

  “I guess it’s my thing now,” I say, squaring up my shoulders and stretching my arms over my head. Shit, my body feels like it’s taken a beating. I head back to the door and hear Alec stop behind me.

  “And what about her?” His question taunts me. Hell, it’s not his fault for asking. He was going to do it some time. But he didn’t have to come out and say it right away.

  I clench and unclench my fists. “Yeah?” I ask. “What about her?”

  “What are you going to do?”

  I look back over my shoulder. He was always an inquisitive fucker. He never just let things be. He
always wanted answers. And he’s a fucking romantic. I should have known this would come up.

  Even still, my heart can’t take it. I look out through the window on the side of the house, over to where Daisy lives. Used to live, still lives, doesn’t matter. I know where she is. She’s in my heart. And I’ll be damned if I don’t find a way to get her back into my life, too.

  Daisy

  I sink into a big front-facing seat on the left side of the train, as far away from the other passengers as possible. I love to watch the Hudson and the trees. It’s nighttime, so I’ll only be able to see the glistening reflection of moonlight and silhouettes, but sometimes that’s even better than the real thing.

  Grabbing my ticket from my purse, I hold the paper in my hand as the train doors beep and close. I barely made the last train out of the city. Three more minutes and I would have missed it.

  I know why I’m off-kilter today, why I couldn’t force myself to smile for too long. Why I couldn’t even try to convince myself that I could see myself with Colin. Resting my head against the cool glass of the window, I close my eyes as the train lurches forward and races into the tunnel under the river. The conductor names the next stop. I could recite the names of these stops in my sleep.

  I just couldn’t stay any longer. I’m relieved I was able to get out of there without causing a scene, but I’m not going to be any happier going home.

  It’s time for Travis to get out. I’ve been tracking his sentence the whole time.

  And the whole time, I’ve waited for him to reach out to me.

  He never did.

  Tears stab behind my eyes as I squeeze them shut before opening them when I hear the ticket-taker click his metal hole-puncher. I smile softly at him as he takes my ticket and slips it into the tab at the front of my seat.

  I haven’t been on this train in so long. I took it to the city when I had an internship during college, and I stopped taking it afterwards. I decided that I liked the country better.

  Travis going away made me question everything. I thought he was with me all night. I could have sworn to it. But he confessed to committing the robbery the night of his mom’s wake. I knew in my heart that he was innocent, but he took the blame and that was that.

  Innocent men never take the fall, my dad had told me, and he had over twenty years of experience. Guilty men either take blame or try to shift it to someone else, my dad said. Innocent men never have anyone else to blame. They don’t need to. And if they’re falsely accused, they’ll say so.

  But my dad’s mind was made up long ago. Years ago.

  Travis’ release date was part of the public record. So I tracked it.

  And it was all an exercise in futility, because what was the point? He shattered my heart, and there’s no way to rationalize what he did.

  He left me all on my own with a ring in my pocket I couldn’t wear.

  I close my eyes again, and all I can see is red. I don’t even know if he’s coming back home after all of this. He’d better not. And if he does, I don’t want to see him. I don’t want him to come near me. I don’t want him to cross that lawn and come to my front door ever again.

  I don’t want him to pull back his curtain and wave to me from his window.

  I don’t want him to say my name into the dark like he used to.

  But I crave it. I still do. Late at night, when I can’t sleep, the feeling he used to give me creeps into the edges of my consciousness. The memory of him still does something to me. It makes me angry and confused, because the memories feel so good. And I search for him inside my mind. I long to touch him, for him to touch me.

  I slide my hand down into the inside zipper compartment of my purse and slip the ring onto my left hand. I can’t stop myself.

  This is messed up.

  I am messed up.

  “Get in, you!” My best friend, Sarah, honks her horn and hangs out her window, both of her hands waving wildly.

  I walk steadily down the ramp away from the train platform and into the parking lot, careful to not fall in my borrowed shoes. I should have packed my sneakers to change into, but my mom would have told me that an oversized tote bag didn’t go with my outfit.

  I wave to Sarah, stepping around a few slushy puddles to get into her car. A smile tugs at the corners of her lips as she pushes her natural blonde hair back and smirks. She bends to grab something from the back seat of the car, closing one of her eyes and sticking her tongue out of the corner of her mouth in concentration, and pulls my gray Converse sneakers out of the back seat.

  “Here,” she says, shoving them onto my lap. “Get out of those shoes and put these on.”

  I sigh and shrug my shoulders, attempting to shake off the day. Sarah knows what day it is, but we haven’t said anything about it to each other yet. It’s been unspoken. That’s what a good friend she is.

  Sarah and I are opposites in some ways, but in the ways that matter, we’re just the same. We became friends when she came to my school on the first day of third grade and sat behind me because our last names are alphabetically adjacent. She started braiding my hair without asking, and we’ve been friends ever since.

  “Thank you,” I say, sliding my feet out of the heels and pulling the sneakers on. “That’s much better.”

  “So was this shindig thing really that bad? A bunch of hunky cops around? Any NYPD?” She throws the car into drive and lurches out of the parking lot. “You know they have good pensions, right?”

  “Ha,” I say mockingly. “That’s exactly what I’m after. A hot guy with a big pension.”

  “And a big something else,” she says, checking her rear view and glancing over at me with a smile. She senses my annoyance. I don’t mean it to, but I roll my eyes. I try to restrain myself, but I can’t help it. “Come on, it was a joke.”

  “For your information, it was that bad.”

  I look out the window, at the familiar roads, houses and shops rolling past. Travis must have seen all of this today, too. It feels eerie that he’s back in town, feeling the same chill and looking at the very same sky as me. But I try to push it all down. I try to put it away.

  “So, what did Colin do now?” Sarah pulls the car over into the parking lot of the bowling alley and cuts the lights. “Huh?” she adds, pulling out her matte dark red lipstick and painting her mouth with it.

  I look through the windshield and see the marquee of the bowling alley glowing down at us. The glass absorbs the reflection of the light, and it’s like I’m seeing double: one welcome sign for right this instant, and one for all my memories. It’s like it’s mocking me.

  “We aren’t staying, are we?” I look down at my dress again, now paired ridiculously with a pair of old beat-up sneakers.

  “Um, yeah,” Sarah says, flipping her mirror visor up and wrapping her coat around her. “This is the only place on the way home to get a drink. And you, my lady, need one.”

  I swallow the hard lump forming in my throat.

  “Why are we really here?” I ask, my hands down in my lap, both of my thumbs gliding over the other nervously. “I don’t want to risk seeing him.”

  “Shit. I know. That’s my bad.” She puts her hands on the steering wheel and turns the engine off. “I guess I just thought...well, I know it’s the day he was getting out. I guess I kind of assumed you were over it, or something. I mean, you didn’t say anything about it.” She shakes her head and turns the engine back on, hits the lights and starts to shift into reverse. “I wasn’t thinking. I’m sorry.”

  “No,” I say. “No. There’s no harm in being here. And you’re right. I could use that drink.”

  This is an opportunity to face my fear. My fear of seeing him. Of not seeing him. I don’t know which one I’m more afraid of.

  I can’t let fear of him dictate my actions. I have to move on with my life. I have to...

  “You sure, honey?” She puts a hand over mine and gives a little squeeze. It feels like it should be reassuring, but I don’t really feel any
better. I look up again at the old, glowing fluorescent lights.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I’m fine. I can do this. Plus, I have to tell you all about Colin.”

  “That’s the spirit,” she says, lightly punching the ceiling of her old Camry. “I need to hear all the disgusting ways that he’s too perfect.”

  And I’ll tell her. I’ll tell her all about what a perfect gentleman he is, and how much my parents love him.

  I just can’t tell her that the ring in my purse is from someone else. From Travis. And how I can’t wear it.

  The scary part is that I still might want to.

  Travis

  “This is good stuff.” Alec settles into an imitation vintage chair beside me at the bar. We’ve picked up our smokes and a six-pack for later, and we’ve settled on the bowling alley bar for a few drinks. I haven’t been back here in a long time, but it’s still the same. It’s old and everything has a melancholy hue to it, even though they’ve replaced the lanes and updated the bar and pub area. The marquee outside is still the same. It must be original to the building, probably from the 70s or early 80s when this town was in better shape.

  Alec takes a long sip of his bourbon rocks and puts it down thoughtfully on the bar in front of us. I catch a glimpse of us in the mirror behind the br, where are the bottles are lined up in rows on heavy wooden shelves.

  And then I see...her. Daisy.

  She was always like a flower growing through the rocks and snow. She was like a spark of life in all the gray.

  She’s walking in from the cold. She’s with someone, but I can’t take my eyes off her.

  Something squeezes around my heart and my fists clench up on the bar as I quickly look down. I don’t want her to see me, but I need to see her.

  I look up again, and she’s gone. A wave of nerves leaps into my chest as the jukebox starts playing a Johnny Cash song. I cast my eyes over my shoulder, careful to not be conspicuous, and I see Daisy walk into the bar in a tight black dress, her hair falling down her shoulders in luxurious waves.