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

by Anne Connor

  Shit, I don’t even know what they’re saying. Maybe they aren’t talking about me at all. But I know what they’re thinking. I know what goes unsaid, and sometimes the words that aren’t said are the ones that hurt the most.

  Daisy’s father is thinking about how I don’t deserve his daughter. He’s thinking about how my family is broken. He thinks I can’t overcome that circle. He doesn’t want to play dice with his daughter’s future. He thinks her being with me would be a risk.

  There’d be a risk I’d be a fucking drunk, like my father was. And there’s a risk I’d walk out like my father did.

  My eyes narrow and my blood heats as my eyes slide over to Colin. He walks through the door with so much confidence, his chest puffed out. I don’t blame him. He should be proud of what he’s accomplished. He’s been able to make himself an exact replica of his father, right down to the way he puts his hands on his hips when he feels insecure. He did this shit in high school too. I remember him from back then. It wasn’t so long ago, but it feels like a fucking world away.

  Colin looks over at me and his eyes lock on my for a moment. He’s the first one to look away.

  I curl up my fists and put them on my armrest, silently shaking my head. I still know what he’s thinking, but I won’t let him see me get angry. I won’t let him get the satisfaction. Even though he’s thinking I’m not worthy of Daisy, it doesn’t really matter what the hell he thinks.

  “I’m here, Mrs. Drayton,” I say. I can’t help but smirk as I look over again to see Colin sink down into his desk. “So you’re saying I’ve already done half the work I need to?”

  She smiles and looks up at me.

  “In some respects, yes.” Her smile is warm and reassuring. I’ve never had much of that. The only older person I’ve ever really had was my mother. “I was looking at your file, Travis. You’ve never been in trouble. Just a few speeding tickets, but that’s it.”

  She pauses and regards me, her lips pursed into a tight, straight line.

  Daisy said something to me like that back when all this shit happened.

  But inherent in Daisy’s words was an unspoken question - why?

  And she wasn’t just asking why I did it. She was asking why I had to leave.

  I clear my throat. I’m frustrated. I just want to get the hell out of here.

  And thankfully, Mrs. Drayton doesn’t press the issue. She could pursue this line and ask why I decided to pull this fucked up stunt after a life of being so fucking good, the golden boy, but she doesn’t.

  My heart thrums a little faster when I see Daisy’s father come over to the office. It seems that he’s about to come in, but instead he glances at me and keeps on walking.

  He doesn’t think of me as the golden boy.

  “What do I have to do to get this all behind me?” I sit up straighter and ask Mrs. Drayton.

  “For starters, we need to get you into a good job.” She reaches across her desk and grabs a few fliers. “There’s a job fair coming up. You just need something stable. And we just need to really keep you out of trouble.”

  “That’ll be fine,” I say. “I can stay out of trouble. That won’t be a problem.”

  We review the schedule for the next three months of our meetings and I put them into the calendar on my phone. I won’t miss a meeting. I won’t do anything to get into trouble. I can’t.

  It’s not for her father, though. He can think whatever the hell he wants about me.

  It’s for her.

  I leave Mrs. Drayton’s office and move through the station, back to where Daisy’s sitting. She has her staff around her and she has her authoritarian voice on. She’s good at it, too. We make eye contact as I leave, but she doesn’t stop what she’s doing.

  And I shouldn’t expect her to. I shouldn’t expect her to drop everything and run off with me. She isn’t crazy. She isn’t fucking insane.

  No sane man would walk into a police station unless he had to.

  And no sane man would ever leave Daisy like I did.

  I must be a little bit insane. A little bit fucked up.

  Daisy

  One of the perks of having interns is that I can tell them what to do. I can push some of the work I have to get done onto their plates instead.

  But I can’t, not really. After Mrs. Drayton gave me the schedule for Travis’ check-ins, I logged them into the calendar to make sure he and the other folks coming in for their parole meetings aren’t double-booked. There was really no reason for it, though. There’s no one else in Riverside on parole right now.

  In terms of the work I had to do, it was another boring day.

  I sigh and start my car. The radio hums to a low rumble and I turn the dial all the way to the left to turn it off.

  Colin’s car is still here in the parking lot, next to mine. I wonder how late he’ll be working, what beat he’s on tonight. He’s probably assigned to patrol the high school and library parking lots.

  Growing up, my mom and dad were proud to raise me in a community, a place where neighbors look out for each other and help to raise each other’s children. It was an insulated place, and it was safe.

  But I realized pretty fast that it was all a facade. It was all a perfectly constructed veneer to cover up what was ugly underneath. Because it’s not all perfect. Behind the Blooms’ front door, everything wasn’t perfect.

  I feel my lips pull into a tight line as I check behind me and pull out of the parking space. There’s no other cars near mine, and I could probably pull out of my space at full speed without looking and have no one ever find out.

  This is the reckless part of me, and I feel it start to bubble up under the surface of my skin. I crave order and control because it’s what I’ve been accustomed to my whole life. It’s what I’ve been trained in.

  But there’s something on the edge of my consciousness, something always threatening to bleed over. It’s always there, and lately, I feel it more and more.

  I kept it sealed away and kept hidden. I always have. Except…

  Except when I let Travis open that part of me. I allowed him to do it because I couldn’t do it myself. He tore back the corner of that hidden, secret place and let all of the frenetic energy inside me flood into my consciousness. It was forbidden and I let him do it.

  The way he touched me...the way he held me. He made me feel sexy and alive and like I could push myself to do anything.

  I swallow thickly and blink away the tears starting to form at the corners of my eyes.

  Travis proved them all right. When I thought he was misunderstood and unfairly judged because of his parents, he went and proved them all right.

  He justified the ire my father felt toward him.

  “Why does he have to be so freaking infuriating?” I say to myself. I shake my head and sigh. Now I’m talking to myself. Great.

  I pull out of the parking lot, and I want to take the long way home, cut a curved path along the outskirts of town, where the airport lights illuminate the sky. If I make my way by following those lights, I can find my way home by driving away from them. I can never become lost. It’s not possible to become lost. All I have to do is stay inside the box I’ve carved out for myself.

  But instead, I go straight home from work. The night chill inside the car is just starting to wane as I pull into my driveway and cut the engine off.

  I stay there for a moment as the cold starts to seep into the car again. My fingers graze along the steering wheel as I peer out of my window cautiously, checking Travis’ window. The light’s off, but I don’t know if he’s home or not. His car is in the driveway, but that doesn’t mean he’s home. He always liked to go for walks - long walks - as much as he liked to go for long drives.

  He used to take me on some of those long drives with him. Sometimes, he didn’t take me. He always drove with so much caution when I was in the passenger’s seat. But I knew he was capable of being reckless.

  I feel something forbidden touch the edge of my thoughts agai
n as I think back to him coming into my house the other night. Coming into my room. Making me question him.

  But he made me question myself, too.

  I gather my purse and get out of my car, starting to pace up the driveway. My parents recently had the landscaping re-done. They said they wanted to improve the home’s curb appeal. I knew what that meant, or at least what I thought it meant. To me, that meant they wanted to sell it. And I didn’t think I was so crazy for assuming they were ready to retire and get a place down south, maybe Florida, away from the cold and harsh winters of New York. But then my dad reassured me they just wanted to live out the rest of their days in a place that looked welcoming and new, instead of welcoming but a little bit worn out.

  The other part, selfishly, was my anxiety over where I would go if they decided to sell the house I grew up in.

  I feel the wind whip through my hair as I make my way around the front of my car. I keep checking over my shoulder to see any sign of Travis, but when I give up and turn my attention toward getting inside my own house, I see him standing on my front porch.

  My heart heats up when I see him. And of course, I feel silly to let him see me spying on his house.

  I was looking for him, and he was right on my front porch the whole time. Just when I was about to become disappointed because he wasn’t where I thought he would be, I saw him...and he was closer than I could have wished.

  He’s also closer than I want him to be. He’s too close.

  Travis scrubs the side of his face with an open palm and bends to grab something from the ground. It’s an oversized paper grocery bag. He slips his hand into his pocket and pulls out his keys, turning away from me to unlock the front door.

  “I think you have the wrong house,” I say casually, though my heart is pounding inside my chest.

  “Do I?” He turns and smiles at me, kicking the door open gently and holding it open for me as I slip past. Being so close to him makes my skin heat, and as I allow my gaze to trail up from his chest to his eyes, he smiles softly and puts his hand on the small of my back to guide me inside.

  He moves through my home like he belongs here, walking through the front hallway and slipping his boots off, tucking them under the bench against the wall. I follow behind him, locking the door behind us as he makes his way into the kitchen. He puts the grocery bag on the counter and starts unpacking the groceries as I hang back, entering my own home cautiously.

  It’s like I don’t completely belong here. Having him inside my house is bringing me to another time. It’s making me think of a time long ago. Or maybe it wasn’t really that long ago after all, when you consider everything. All of the lazy afternoons doing our homework with my dad hovering over our books to point out any mistakes and any successes, with my mom in the kitchen making dinner, the classic oldies station lulling Motown hits through the air. Everything was soft and easy.

  And him being here right now is bringing me back to that place, to that time. It makes me feel out of sync, it makes me feel like I don’t belong here - in my own house, in my own skin.

  And I’m not sure that’s such a bad thing.

  I follow him and sit down at the table, putting my purse down and pulling out my phone. I don’t have anyone I need to talk to, but I check the time and see that it’s earlier than I thought. I don’t know why I got home so quickly. Maybe I was speeding, trying to get here fast. I don’t know if I was trying to get away from Travis, though, or trying to get closer to him.

  “Mrs. Drayton is a nice lady.” Travis pulls a bottle of red wine out of a narrow black bag from the liquor store and moves expertly around the kitchen, pulling two stemless wine glasses from one of the cabinets. I wait for him to say more about her, but he doesn’t. He just opens the wine and pours two generous glasses, handing me one as he pulls a box of pasta and a few cans of crushed tomatoes out of the paper bag.

  “I know,” I say, taking a small sip of my wine. It’s warm and rich, and I feel the liquid hit my lips softly. I recognize the taste, but I’m not a wine drinker. Neither is Travis, in fact. But it still feels familiar. It’s a familiar taste, a familiar smell.

  “She says all I have to do is stay out of trouble and I won’t have any issues with my probation.”

  “That’s right,” I say. I observe as he pulls a big pot out of one of the low cabinets, cradling it into the sink and bumping the faucet with an elbow to start filling it with cool water. His movements are starting to fill me with annoyance, though. He’s acting like nothing’s changed. He’s acting like everything’s normal, when everything is certainly not normal, and not okay.

  I can’t help but laugh. But I’m not smiling. I shake my head and take another sip of my wine, but this sip makes me feel frustrated instead of nostalgic.

  “Did I do something funny, sweetheart?” He pulls the can opener out of the drawer it’s been in for twenty years and easily starts popping open the jars of tomatoes.

  “No,” I sigh. The wine feels suddenly strange on my lips, and I swallow thickly. There’s a lump in my throat as I swallow again. I can’t act like everything's normal. I can’t go along with this charade. I tried. But it’s not working. The lump in my throat and the heat beginning to rise on my skin are making me unable to go along with this.

  I may have given him back the ring, but I can’t go back to pretending he never gave it to me. I can’t pretend this is just another evening where we act like friends and then I let him kiss me, against everything I know is right. This isn’t another night where I can let him hold me and then lie to my parents about how I spent my evening.

  Even more, I can’t lie to myself.

  “You can’t do this,” I sigh, getting up from the table. He turns, folding his arms across his chest and taking a sip of his wine.

  He steps toward me carefully. I’ve never felt this before, having a man look at me like this. Now, he’s all grown up. His strong jaw is covered by stubble that makes me wonder how else he’s changed. He steps closer to me, making the heat inside my belly radiate slowly and smoothly out to the rest of my body. The wine starts to heat up inside my mind as he reaches his fingers out and slips a lock of hair between them, letting it fall softly onto my shoulder.

  “You can’t do this,” I say again. But I’m weaker, now. He looks down at me as both of his strong hands come down on my shoulders.

  “Do what, Daisy?” he growls, his eyes narrowing on mine. There’s so much unsaid inside his gaze. I should push him out of my house, force him to leave.

  “You can’t just come here and act like nothing’s wrong,” I say. My voice is small. I know it’s me saying the words, but it doesn’t feel like me. It doesn’t feel like my voice.

  “I’m not acting like nothing’s wrong, Daisy.” He pulls his hands away from me and he walks past me to the kitchen table. “I’m not acting like anything.”

  He puts his fists down on the table softly. From the clenching of his hands, it looks like he wants to do something else with them. But he’s exhibiting control. He won’t allow himself to lose what little control he has.

  I can see it when he looks up from his hands and his eyes meet mine. He’s stronger than me. I can feel myself unravelling.

  “You are acting,” I say, turning away from him. My blood churns through my veins. “You are pretending.”

  “What do you want me to do?” His voice comes out as barely a whisper. “What can I do to make this right?”

  I feel him get up and stand behind me. His fingers come down softly on my shoulder, his thumb digging into my flesh a little bit harder than the rest of his hand. It’s his way of communicating with me. It’s his way of telling me everything is going to be okay.

  But it isn’t.

  “There’s nothing you can do to make this right,” I whisper. “Do you know how angry my dad would be with me if he knew you were here right now? First I see you at the station, and he knows that’s unavoidable, but then I see you here. This just wouldn’t be acceptable to him.”
r />   “Daisy,” he growls, taking my shoulders and spinning me around to face him. In spite of myself, my fingers come up to his chest, the hard muscle beneath my fingers separating our skin with only the thin t-shirt he has on. “I paid my debt. I’m even now. I’m good.”

  “No,” I whisper. I have no fight left in me. I can’t shout or scream, even though I want to. I want him to tell me what really happened that night. I want him to fight for us instead of just going down in the first round. He gave up. Why did he give up…

  “Why do you give a shit what your father thinks?” his words demand. “Why?”

  “I...I don’t know. Maybe because he’s right.”

  “Right about what, Daisy? Right about me? Right about what a piece of shit I am?”

  I break away from him and walk toward the front door. I can’t believe he is really asking me this. I can’t believe he is really this fucking dense.

  “You know what you did, Travis. You left me. You asked me to be with you, and I said yes, and then you left.”

  “I didn’t mean to leave you like that,” he says frantically, crossing the living room and coming over to me. “I did what I had to do in the moment. I had no choice.”

  “You did have a choice,” I cry out. I feel like I have no fight left in me, but my body is saying otherwise. Adrenaline soars through my veins, taking all of the energy I have and spilling it onto Travis. “You had a choice. You didn’t have to go with Alec that night. You could have stayed. With me.”

  “I am so sorry, Daisy. I am sorry. I will keep telling you that until you believe me. And you have to believe me, because I am telling you the fucking truth.”

  He is inches away from me, and he divides the distance between us with one step, taking me into his arms and pulling me toward him. His hands come up to my cheeks, and I only realize that tears are flowing from my eyes when he begins to wipe them away.

  “Don’t cry,” he growls, kissing my tear-streaked face. “Don’t. It’s not worth it. I’m not worthy of your tears.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?” I say. He makes no sense. Sometimes he makes no sense to me. “You’re the only man I’ve ever cried over. Ever.”