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

by Anne Connor

  “Right,” I say, breathing into my drink. Only Alec and I really know what happened that night, but I’m not about to tell the truth. I need to take the truth on this to my fucking grave. There’s no do-overs with this.

  Alec chuckles and hooks a hand around the back of his neck, peering out the window at the sway of headlights coming down the road, narrowing and spreading out as a car speeds past the front of the house without slowing down.

  “He was looking out for the common man, lets just say.” Alec looks over at me and pinches his brows together in a pained expression.

  “And Daisy?” Thompson asks, cocking his head to the side and cracking his knuckles. I don’t know if he’s trying to seem like a neandertal on purpose. Her name flows over me like lava, and suddenly I feel all the air escape from the room.

  “What about her?” I ask, staring down the bottom of my plastic cup. I take another shot of the dark amber liquid into my flimsy plastic cup and toss it back. The lights on the ceiling are seeming more and more fucking ridiculous by the second.

  “I thought she was with that guy Colin, this douche bag cop who works the traffic beat.”

  My heart contorts in my chest at the thought that Daisy could have given me the ring back because there’s another guy in the picture. The idea that she could have been holding it and not wearing it for the past year because of someone else makes me feel sick to my stomach.

  Let her give it back to me because of me. Because I have to work to get her back. Because I have to prove my worth to her.

  I’ll never stop proving myself to her. I’ll never stop trying.

  “I don’t know,” I say, feeling a grimace cross my face. “I only saw her for a few minutes.”

  “I don’t think you have to worry about Colin,” Thompson says. “He’s a fucking traffic cop. He goes around writing tickets. And he’s her old man’s partner’s son. It’s probably an obligation fuck.”

  But I know my Daisy hasn’t been with him, not like that. I know it. I knew it from the look in her eyes when she saw me. That momentary glimmer. She’s still mine. I just have to make her see it

  “No, man,” I say, the warmth inside my chest from the liquor growing down to my belly. “I’m not worried about him. Not one fucking bit.”

  And it’s true. It’s the absolute truth. There’s nothing that can stand between me and her. Not now. Not anymore.

  Daisy

  I don’t know what I was thinking when I agreed to go out with Colin again.

  Not that I really ever did go out with him. Agreeing to be his date for the gala wasn’t actually a date at all. We were there as friends. Just as friends.

  The curling iron on my dressing table hisses and I lift it up gently by the handle, regarding my reflection in the mirror.

  But I can’t keep my eyes on myself. I’m afraid I’ll get lost in my own thoughts. I’m afraid I’ll let myself get lost thinking of Travis.

  My eyes glide easily over to my bedroom window. Right next door, his window taunts me. The lights are off, though, and I don’t know where he is. I know he’s not home, and that’s all that matters. There’s nothing drawing me to his house. Nothing making me peek over, hoping to catch him in his room, reading or strumming on his guitar or sneaking a cigarette out the open window.

  There’s nothing making me smile at him. There’s nothing making me grimace, either, except for my own thoughts.

  I section off my hair and clip the top part to the crown of my head, letting the rest fall down around my shoulders. Goosebumps plump up on my forearm as I take a lock of limp hair and wrap it around the barrel of the curler, my skin and my body remembering how Travis used to tug at my hair a little when he kissed me. He tugged at the lock of hair just behind my ear, and it drove me crazy when his warm lips came down on mine.

  I exhale uneasily and allow the curl to fall down my shoulder. I continue working on sections, but I’m barely paying attention. Even though I’m trying to not think of Travis, all I can think about is that night. The night he proposed to me, the night I couldn’t protect him.

  Should I have lied for him? I couldn’t have. It wouldn’t have been right.

  And the messed up part is that I don’t know whether he was telling the truth about what happened that night. That’s the worst part. Even though I told the truth, I don’t know if it was a lie or the truth that locked him up.

  I continue doing my hair and applying my makeup for my date with Colin, and my stomach churns with regret. He thinks I’ve been sick, so I could just tell him I can’t make it.

  As I’m applying my mascara, my phone buzzes across the room on my dresser. I pad over in my pajamas, hoping it’s Colin cancelling on me.

  But someone else’s name lights up the screen.

  It’s Travis.

  I’m coming over. We need to talk.

  My heart flutters into my stomach. He always talked to me like that. He knew what he wanted. He was decisive. Which is why it hurt that much more when he took everything away from me.

  But still, I can’t help it when my stomach flips over and my guts churn with a forbidden desire. I can’t want him. I can’t have him. I won’t allow myself to.

  Where are you? I shoot back.

  I walk tentatively over to my window and peek outside. All of the lights inside his house are off. I don’t think he’s home. He can’t know that I’m home. He can’t know he can just come by and I’ll be here.

  He doesn’t respond, and instead I see him come out of his house. I shake my head and put my hands down on my window sill. It hurts to know that he was inside his house with all the lights off. It hurts to think that he wants to talk to me and I won’t let him.

  Travis doesn’t bother locking his front door behind him. When he gets halfway between our houses, he looks up into my window and waves, a bright smile illuminated in the soft twilight moon. I swallow thickly and my heart clenches, but adrenaline and excitement flood my body.

  No, I say to myself, stepping away from the window. I know he saw me, but I won’t let him in.

  I won’t let him in again.

  I’m busy, I text him. I’m getting ready to go out.

  “I have a key to your house,” he calls up to my window.

  I don’t know how I could have forgotten. My parents gave his dad a key years and years ago. It’s what neighbors do. And that’s what he is now, and that’s all he is. Even though my dad never fully trusted Travis, he knew that he was a good neighbor. He always shoveled snow for the elderly people on our street, helped out where he could. So Dad was okay with Mr. Bloom having a key to our house. In fact, he was happy about it, in case of an emergency. Even cops need good neighbors, I suppose.

  I pad back over to the window and peer down. He looks so much better than I remember. I guess I didn’t get a chance to really look at him when I saw him at the bowling alley. His hair is pushed away from his face like it always was, and he’s wearing a t-shirt that looks as though it could tear right off his body if he flexes his muscles hard enough.

  And his smile. That boyish smile that used to make me feel warm inside. Now he’s all grown up. He isn’t the boy I used to catch lightening bugs with anymore. My breath catches in my throat. He looks even more grown up than he did a year ago.

  “That key is for emergencies only,” I shout down to him through the open window.

  “That’s not a no,” he teases, but there’s gravity in his voice. “If you tell me to go, I’ll go back home. But if you don’t say anything else, I’m coming in.”

  I duck behind the wall and press my back against it as my fingers come to my lips. I know what I want to say. I want to tell him that he hurt me, that I needed him a year ago, that nothing can make up for the hurt he caused me. That I don’t understand why he did this to me.

  And more importantly, I don’t understand why he did this to himself.

  But I can’t speak. My body is filled with want for him, with a desire I can’t push away.

  Because he�
�s right. We do need to talk. Even though, right now, I can’t say a single word.

  Travis

  She didn’t tell me to go away, so I’m not going away. I’m going into her room and I’m telling her I need her. Because I do.

  I get into her house easily. God, I haven’t been here in so long. When we were kids, back when our parents were friends, we would do our homework together at her kitchen table on Sunday afternoons while our fathers watched football and the orange and red leaves fell down around the house. That was before my dad left, before the rumors and the innuendos started. Back when everything was simple.

  And not just between me and Daisy. Simple between our families. Back when there was simplicity all around us, everywhere.

  I feel the soft carpet under my boots as I make my way past the kitchen and living room and up the stairs. I know her house almost as well as I know my own.

  I knew no one else was home because there were no cars in the driveway. That, and the only light on in the whole house was in her room. I couldn’t see her through the window because she kept moving too fast. I was laying on my bed in the dark, just missing her. Missing how good it felt and how safe I felt to be in her arms.

  She left her bedroom door open for me. I see the splinter of light from her room flood a strip of floor in the hallway. That’s one of the most beautiful sights in the world to me.

  This isn’t the first time she left her door open for me. But this is the first time I don’t know if she really wants me. But it doesn’t matter. I know what I need to do.

  I need to talk to her. I need to let everything be said, for everything to be out in the open. But I can’t tell her the details of what happened. She can never know the details of what went down that night.

  Getting to her door, I brace myself and shoulder through.

  God, she’s just as beautiful in this room as she ever was. And she knows she still makes me hard as a fucking rock. One look at her, and it’s like I lose all reason, all sense. All I can see is her, and all I can remember is that we were made for each other.

  She sits down on the corner of the bed and crosses one leg over the other, pushing a lock of wavy hair behind her ear. It’s like she’s tempting me to taste her. She’s asking me to claim her. Her eyes trail down my body to the floor, and then up to my eyes as she bites down on the corner of her bottom lip.

  “I came over to talk,” I say, standing by the doorway. “I’m not here for anything else.”

  But I want to be here for all of it. Everything I wanted to say to her over the past year, and every night that I couldn’t kiss and ravage every inch of her gorgeous body.

  I swear I see a spark of disappointment in her eye when I say I’m only here to talk, but she gets up and paces over to her window, crossing her arms and looking down at the lawn between our houses.

  “What do you have to say?” she asks in a small, distant voice. “What could you possibly have to say to me?”

  I curl my fists up and unclench them quickly. “I have to tell you how sorry I am for what happened that night.” I start to cross the room to her, but she holds her hands out to stop me.

  “I don’t even know what the hell happened,” she says. She doesn’t look at me. Her eyes stay trained down at the space between our houses. “You can say you’re sorry, but for what? What the hell happened?”

  I swallow hard, my mind thrumming with a swirl of emotions. I just want to kiss her, to make all her questions stop, because I don’t know how to answer. I want to kiss her and hold her and claim her, because her questions will just lead to disappointment. I don’t know if I regret what I did that night. I don’t know if it was the right choice. But the pain she’s feeling is tearing me apart on the inside.

  “I’m sorry for hurting you,” I say. “I am so sorry.”

  “Just for hurting me, huh?” She puts her arms across her chest again and sits down at her dressing table. Her curling iron is on, and she bends down to unplug it, but as she comes back up, her hand passes over it and she lets out a little yelp.

  “Damn!” she says, shaking her hand in the air.

  I start toward her to comfort her and check to make sure she isn’t burned badly, but again she puts her hands out to me. There’s a dark edge to her motions. She isn’t playing around.

  “Why don’t you tell me the truth about what happened that night?” she asks, shaking her head. “Because whatever happened, I know that’s not the real you. It can’t be.”

  She looks down at the palm of her hand as tears begin to form in the corners of her eyes. I can’t see her like this. My heart can’t take her being in pain.

  “Sweetheart, let me see.” I walk over to her and she looks up at me, but says nothing. I kneel down on the floor next to her, bringing back a flood of emotion. This isn’t the first time I’ve gotten down on one knee for her, but she doesn’t have the ring anymore.

  She blinks her eyes, trying to make her tears go away, but instead they force themselves out of her eyes and down her cheeks. I take her hand and open up her palm and she softens a little under my touch.

  “You’ll be okay,” I say. I stroke the fleshy skin in her palm with my thumb, tracing lightly over the red spot where she burned herself. “It’s not bad.”

  I look up into her eyes, the redness stinging at the pure, pale blue.

  “I don’t know if I’ll be okay,” she says, averting her eyes from mine.

  The idea that I did this to her makes me sick. But I had to pay for what I’ve done.

  I’ve lived with guilt for so long. And no one was there to make things right. No one was there to punish me for the sins I committed. So I had to take matters into my own hands. That’s the only way I could ever be good enough for her.

  Her father didn’t like me before, and I know he fucking hates me now, but I don’t care about that. I just want to be good enough for her.

  But I never wanted to hurt her to make it happen.

  “You will be okay,” I say, putting my hand behind her neck, stroking my thumb behind her ear. Her soft hair falls in waves across my arm, and her head turns up slightly, though her eyes are still cast down. “I am going to make sure of it.”

  “Why did you leave?” Her words come out as a choke. They fucking hurt me. She wipes her cheeks with the back of her hands.

  “I had to pay for what I did,” I say, my words pleading with her. “I had to.”

  “But what the fuck did you do to deserve to go to jail?” She swallows hard and looks up into my eyes. “I know you didn’t rob that guy’s house. I know it.”

  I can’t tell her the truth. Not now. Maybe later, but not now. It’s not that I don’t trust her. I can’t risk it getting back to her old man, and I know that she’d never say anything if I asked her not to, but...I can’t bring myself to admit that I left her by choice.

  It was my choice to leave.

  It was my choice to leave her.

  “You don’t know that,” I say, taking her face in my hands, my eyes searching her face for forgiveness. “I wasn’t with you the whole night. You don’t know what happened that night.”

  “Then tell me!” she chokes out, tears streaming down her cheeks. “Don’t make me go on thinking I could have saved you from going to prison and didn’t.”

  She thinks she could have saved me?

  “I made my choices, “ I say. “It doesn’t matter what the truth is, does it? You told the truth about what you know. That’s all that matters. Just forget about what I did or didn’t do. It’s over now.”

  “No,” she says, shaking her head. “It’s not over. It’s still very much real for me. I doubted myself. I didn’t know what was real. I questioned myself.”

  “I know, baby.”

  She gets up from her dressing table and walks over to her window. She looks so different now - a fully grown woman, somehow, in the one year since I’ve seen her. But she’s still the same, too. Her body’s filled out in a way I couldn’t have imagined it would have, because I
couldn’t have imagined her ever being more beautiful than she was when I left her. But somehow, she is.

  “I went over that night in my head,” she says. Her eyes are cast down at the grass between our houses. She shouldn’t be looking outside. She should be letting me make her feel good.

  I came over to talk, but I don’t know what else I can say.

  Daisy sighs deeply and brings her fingertips to the edge of the curtain her mom made for her. I remember when she put them up; I’d helped her. I came over and bolted the metal frame above the window and she draped the curtains. Everything was perfect, and they filtered the sunlight into her room. She looked so gorgeous that afternoon with the sun filtered in a pattern on her skin. I wanted to tell her how I felt about her. I wanted to tell her there was more between us than friendship. I knew she’d felt it.

  “Let me take you somewhere,” I say, sitting down on the edge of her bed. “Let’s go for a drive.”

  “Now?” Her voice is small as she tips her chin over her shoulder, looking back toward me. But her eyes don’t meet mine. She keeps them lowered, and she glances back out the window quickly.

  “If you want to,” I say. “Yes. Let’s just get out of here. Like we used to.”

  She inhales deeply, her fingers tracing along her collarbone. She pulls her robe around her tighter, but there’s no chill in the room. It’s perfect and cozy, warm almost. She’s hiding from me.

  “Not right now,” she says slowly. “Not now.”

  When? I want to say. When can I make this right? I just need a chance. I can make everything good again. I can make it right.

  “Daisy,” I say, crossing the room. She doesn’t turn around. “I came to talk. So please talk to me. Don’t shut me out.”

  “I’m not ready,” she says in a small voice.

  I step closer to her and put my hands on her shoulders, letting my thumbs graze over her skin as her robe slips down so slowly.

  It’s like the first time again, the first time I saw her perfect, untouched flesh. Her curves were enrapturing, and once I had her, I knew I’d never want another girl again. Ever. I could have a life longer than anyone, I could live on any continent, and I knew I would never find another girl like her.