Forged by Fire: A Small Town Second Chance Romance

by Cleveland, Eddie

  “It’s not for me. It’s Karen’s favorite.”

  “So, I take it I won’t be driving you home, then?” Even in the dark, I can see the twinkle in his eyes.

  “If that’s okay?”

  “Yeah, it’s more than okay, Luke. Like I said, I’m proud of the man you’re becoming. You go be with Karen. I’m sure she’s still pretty shaken up about tonight.” Dad’s lips twist into a wry smile.

  “Ugh. Don’t remind me,” I groan.

  “Yeah, well, imagine how she feels. Anyway, I’m heading out.” He claps his hand on my shoulder and leads me to the door. I stand by his side as he locks up.

  The air has a distinct chill in it now, warning us about the waning time left in summer. The summer I should have told my father was our last together. I push the thought away. He understands. He told me he does. I need to let this go.

  “Okay, well, I’ll be home later,” I promise.

  “Or not.” He winks. Luckily it’s too dark outside for him to see me turn red. This is the first man-to-man conversation we’ve ever shared, so joking about the sex I still haven’t had yet is still enough to make me squirm.

  “See ya.” I start to take off and Dad walks toward our car.

  “Yep. Oh, and, Luke?”

  “Uh-huh?” I turn and watch a full grin break out on his face.

  “Use protection, okay?”

  I don’t answer him. Instead, I take off into the night. As I disappear from his sight into the darkness I can hear his lighthearted laugh before the car door slams and he drives off home.

  6

  Karen

  The bedroom door opens with a groan and the lights flick on. This little self-made cocoon of blankets and pillows I’ve been hiding under is infiltrated by my sister’s voice.

  “Is it true?”

  I refuse to pop my head out from under this little fort. Unlike the ones we used to make from scrap, it’s warm and cozy. There are no jagged edges to worry about being sliced by. There is no tetanus shots or lock-jaw to worry about.

  “What?” I mumble, refusing to push one of many pillows off my head.

  Rebecca leaps onto her twin bed across the room. Twin beds for the twin girls. Well, that’s what everyone called us growing up. It’s funny how all you need to do is dress similar and have the same hair and everyone will try to insist you’re twins. It doesn’t matter that your birth certificates show different. Or that you know better. Or that your birthdays are during different parts of the year. If you’re both wearing ruffle-cut dresses from the same home-sewn pattern, you’re twins to the older generation and that’s that.

  The fact is, Rebecca is two years older than me and about a million times braver than me.

  Of course, once we got older and my hair stayed blond and hers went dark, that was all it took for the twin thing to die.

  “That Dad and the guys all showed up for a call and you and Luke were having sex on the roof?”

  I don’t need to see her face. Her high-pitched tone is one she only uses when she’s dishing the dirtiest of dirt.

  “No!” I fumble through the blankets and pillows until I breach out like a whale pushing its head above water for a gasp of fresh air.

  “Oh, I figured.” Her face droops as the disappointment she can’t hide takes over. I swear my sister lives for drama like anyone else on this earth lives for water and food.

  “They showed up before we had the chance to actually, you know…”

  “So they weren’t lying?” She practically glows as gossip refuels her.

  “What did they say?”

  “That you two were fucking, completely naked, and they showed up.”

  “Okay so, no to fucking. Yes to completely naked.”

  “Really?” she squeaks.

  “Really.”

  Rebecca shoots up in her bed and tosses her legs over the side. She leans in. “Tell me everything.” She watches me.

  “There’s not much to tell.” I fall back into my pillows. Like that same whale, I’ve filled up on the air and now I’m ready to disappear beneath the safety of the ocean’s surface again.

  “No, you don’t! Don’t you dare hide from me. Not after I told you every excruciating detail about Atticus and me,” she demands.

  I sit back up like Frankenstein being struck by lightning. “I didn’t want to know!” I protest. “The only thing I asked you about any of that was how you could possibly, with any self-respect, fuck a guy named Atticus.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Well, I didn’t hear you complaining when I shared. Now it’s your turn. Spill.” Rebecca tosses her pillow at me and I pull it onto my lap, adding it to the fortress I’ve built.

  I don’t know what to say. Part of me wants to tell my sister every single detail. There’s no one on this earth I’ve been closer to. Well, besides Luke, of course. On the other hand, tonight was so humiliating, I honestly feel like if I was given a choice to relive the embarrassment or die, I might choose death.

  And I’m heading to New York City in less than a month! I have everything to live for.

  Still …

  “Okay.” I sigh so deeply my lungs rattle. “First, tell me what they’re saying.”

  “It was crazy. Dad stormed in and was so mad he was spitting. The guys were split on it. Like Todd is acting like he’s some bigshot going on about how he’s going to teach Luke to mess with a Baker girl and all that shit.” She rolls her eyes in a way I’ve always wished I could perfect.

  As with everything, Rebecca has always had a way of making what she thinks known. Where I’ve spent my life feeling like the scum on the Baker pond, she’s been the agitator, sending ripples through the water, keeping everything alive. She’s never been one to back down from our brothers or our father, and that’s saying something. In school, when I was sitting in the corner of the cafeteria crying about some slight I’d suffered that day, Rebecca would be in the middle of a brawl, kicking the shit out of any girl who dared to try to make her feel “less than.”

  I’ve always wished I had half the guts she has.

  “Kirk and Joshua seemed like they just thought everyone needed to let it go. Kirk kept saying how you’re not a baby anymore, and Josh, well, he mostly kept shrugging,” she continues.

  “What’s Mama doing? Is she pissed?” I wring my hands, silently praying that, somehow, I’m still going to wake up and this is all going to be a vivid, but stupid dream. Like those ones where you have to give a speech at school and you’re inexplicably naked.

  Naked.

  On the roof of the firehouse.

  And your entire fucking family shows up.

  “Nah”—Rebecca waves her hand—“she just keeps telling Dad to calm down. Oh, and she reminded him he had sex with her when she was only sixteen.” She pretends to gag on her finger emphatically. I don’t need to pretend. Nausea waves hit me at the very idea.

  I don’t know if it’s just desperation to get the thought of my underage parents having sex out of my mind, or if I’m in need of a sounding board, but I open my mouth and the painful details start pouring out.

  “We were on the roof and we go there all the time. Well, every month, for the spaghetti meal,” I begin.

  “Really? How long have you been boinking on the roof? And here I had you pegged for some sweet, innocent type.” She laughs.

  “For years,” I try to explain.

  “Are you shitting me?” She tosses her last pillow across the room at my head.

  I easily catch it and add it to the collection. “No! Listen, will ya? Before tonight we only ever looked at the stars …”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Seriously, and held hands and made out a bit.”

  I ignore her scoffing and eye rolling. I don’t even know why I’m spilling this now. I think it’s for me, not her. “Anyway, tonight was supposed to be the night.”

  “The night?” Her long brown hair cascades over her shoulders as she leans back in.

  “That’s the one.” My throat drie
s up. Too dry to even force a laugh. It would be funny, if it happened to literally anyone else.

  “Shit. So, nothing then? No deep dive? Not even just the tip?” She tilts her head.

  “No. He got the condom on and everyone showed up.”

  “Noooo! That’s brutal!” Rebecca throws herself across her bed like she just got a shock from a cattle prod.

  “Yeah, well, obviously it got worse.”

  My sister sits back up and lets her theatrics finally subside, for once. She looks at me sincerely, her eyebrows knit together and her lips are downturned. “I’m sorry it went like that. For real. That sucks.”

  “Thanks.”

  Tap-tappity-tappity-tap.

  My eyes laser in on the glass. I know that secret code. Luke is on the other side. I don’t even need to look around the curtains to see him.

  Rebecca’s eyebrows shoot upward, and she leaps over to the window, tossing the fabric aside to reveal Luke’s apologetic face.

  “You guys are so dumb.” She shakes her head.

  “Rebecca, please.” My throat hurts from how much I’m begging her to just let us be right now.

  Outside, Luke triumphantly holds up a muffin in his hand.

  My sister opens the window and gives me a long stare. “Okay, so I’m going to go downstairs for a while. If anyone tries to come up here, I’ll run interference, m-kay?”

  “Thank you.” I sigh.

  “Here, let me play a little something before I go.” She scoots over to her desk and searches on her computer as Luke shimmies inside our room.

  “Hey.” He holds out his orange cranberry muffin out like a white flag. “I got this for you.”

  “Thanks.” I can’t help but smile. “You know what I always say. ’There aren’t many wrongs an orange cranberry muffin can’t right.’” I hold out my hands and he crosses the room, dropping the deliciousness inside.

  “Here we go,” Rebecca interrupts with a double-click of her mouse. All of a sudden, the classic Marvin Gaye song oozes out of her speakers. “Let’s Get It On.”

  “Have fun, kids.” She grins over her shoulder and scurries out of our room. I toss a pillow at her, but it hits the door as she closes it behind her.

  With Rebecca gone and the rest of my family downstairs discussing whether or not they should be defending the honor I’m no longer interested in keeping, it’s just Luke and me up here.

  “Thanks for the muffin.” I pick off a couple cranberries but have no real appetite right now. Placing it down on my end table, I look up at Luke, my heart beating out of my chest.

  “It’s nothing.” He eases down beside me on the bed, arranging pillows and blankets until he’s inside my fort. In my cocoon. Until he’s pressed against me.

  Again.

  “Did you tell your dad?” I tilt my head, hoping we might finally have one less thing hanging over our heads.

  “I did.” He stiffens. And not the part of him that dove under the covers already stiff.

  “And?” I can’t help but kiss his neck. I’m so full of confusion tonight, being next to him is a relief from all this craziness.

  “And, he gets it. He says he’s happy for us. And the thing is, I believe him.” Luke smirks against my neck and then kisses a trail across it to my lips.

  Our tongues tangle in a dance that turns to our bodies grinding and twisting against each other. Tonight was meant to happen. It’s meant to be. There’s no denying this passion. These feelings. This need. This ache.

  So, I give in. We fumble around under my blankets, the light in the room making us both shy about stripping down. I kick my pants and underwear down into a little ball at the end of the bed and toss my bra and shirt over the edge. It’s amazing to feel his skin against mine. This is the first time I’ve felt every inch of his naked body pressed against every inch of mine. He’s so warm. The hair on his legs is scratchy. The hair on his chest is sexy. I’m lost in just letting my hands roam free over his muscles. He seems lost in doing the same thing with my breasts and ass.

  Luke licks his fingers and presses them into my pussy. He slowly slicks my juices over my clit and rubs tiny circles over my nub. The awkwardness of our inexperience slips away as I sink into the mattress and close my eyes. His mouth surrounds my nipple, his tongue circling it at the same pace as his fingers on my clit. I run my hands through his hair, silently wishing to feel his mouth on other parts of me, but I’m too shy to make requests.

  A thrill builds up in me, faint at first but then stronger. I surprise myself when he tries to pull his hand away and I grab it, keeping it in place, I grind up against his fingertips, wordlessly begging for more. Luke knows me well, he doesn’t need to hear me say it, he just knows to keep going. His fingers bring a buzz of bliss that feels magical. I’ve done this to myself hundreds of times, but this is so much more exciting. My heart races and I hold my breath as the orgasm crests over me.

  When the moment passes, I finally breathe in and open my eyes. Luke is smiling down at me and I grin up at him.

  “What?”

  “Nothing.” He smirks.

  “Then why are you looking at me like that?”

  “You just look so sexy when I make you cum.” He’s clearly very proud of himself.

  “Well, let’s see how you look when I make you cum.” I walk my fingers up his chest and stretch up to give him a kiss.

  “No argument here,” he murmurs and rolls between my open legs. His cock brushes my pussy and my thighs clench as my body craves more. “Except … damn it,” he hisses.

  “Now what?” I instinctively lift my head and look over at the bedroom door. After the night we’ve had, I’m expecting half the town to somehow be there to interrupt our first time. Of course they’re not. We’re still shrouded in privacy. Still safe in our cocoon.

  “I had to toss that condom from before and I don’t have any on me.” His lips turn down and he looks at me like someone who was just told they can’t eat their favorite dessert.

  “That’s okay, I’ve got more.” I slide over to the edge of my bed and grab the backpack I brought out earlier. In seconds, I pull out another foil wrapper.

  “Wow.” He looks down at the crinkly package I place in his hand.

  “What?”

  “Nothing, I mean, you just must have had some pretty big plans for tonight. How many of these did you bring?”

  “I don’t know,” heat rises up my entire body, “a few,” I purr.

  “Well then, I better get started, huh? I don’t want to disappoint,” he jokes, but I can hear the tension behind his words.

  “You could never disappoint me.” I soothe his ego.

  Luke rips open the condom and unrolls it down his shaft. Part of me feels like I shouldn’t watch, but it doesn’t stop me from staring. Under the light, I can see every detail of his cock. The flared head, the veins on his shaft, the thick base.

  I lick my lips, yearning to feel every inch of that dick in my mouth. There’s so much more we can explore together after tonight. And I’m looking forward to us teaching each other and learning what we like, what we love, and exactly how we want it all.

  Luke positions himself back at my entrance. He stares down into my eyes, concern crossing his face. “Are you ready?”

  I nod. “I am.”

  “I’ll go slow,” he promises.

  At first, I’m struck by how warm and full he makes me feel. It’s sweet and slow as he eases inside. I gasp in a sharp breath when that sweetness turns to a strong pinch as he pushes farther inside me.

  “Do you want me to stop?” Luke waits for me to answer, not just thrusting into me and ignoring my pain.

  “No, just keep going.” I grit my teeth and wrap my arms around him, pulling him close.

  He looks at me solemnly but doesn’t argue. Luke slides his cock inside me fully and the sting eventually gives way to the heavy breathing, to pleasure, to muffled moaning and then to my unexpected climax.

  I give in and I give myself. To him. To m
y desires. We become one. And it’s everything I dreamed of and nothing I could ever regret.

  7

  Luke

  With the condom carefully buried in Karen’s trash can, I jump back into her bed. Pulling her against me, we wiggle down under the blankets and lie back against all the pillows circling us. I think we just gave a whole new meaning to the words …

  “Welcome to my love nest.” She smiles and kisses my lips quickly.

  “That’s so funny, I was just thinking that.”

  “What?”

  “That we turned this into a love nest.”

  She nuzzles her head under my chin, resting her ear onto my chest. “Maybe that’s how it happens,” she muses. Her fingertips gently twist up in the sparse hair on my chest.

  “How what happens?” My eyelids get heavy. I want to listen to her, but this night has been so draining.

  “You know how when a couple has been together a long time they always finish each other’s...” She lifts her head and waits for me to play fill-in-the-blank.

  “Desserts?” I tease her. Karen gives my shoulder a soft push and giggles. “’Cause I am all about you sharing all of your desserts with me from now on. That’s a great deal.”

  “The answer was ‘sentences,’ genius.” She shakes her head and her long gold hair tickles my arm. “I always thought girls were exaggerating when they said you guys think with these things, but now I’m starting to wonder.” She grazes her hand over my dick. Even though we just finished having sex, I can feel it trying to spring back to life.

  “Aww, c’mon”—I roll toward her so our foreheads are touching—“just think of the dessert thing like a tax. Like, from now on I’ll get the last few bites of your cakes or pudding or whatever and you’ll get all of this.” I wave my hands down over my body in a flurry as Karen laughs.

  “Wow, what a deal.” She smirks. “There’s only one problem with that. You forget I’m gonna be a poor student in one of the most expensive cities in the country. So, I won’t have any money. Not for taxes and not for desserts.”