Only One Kiss (Only One Series)

by Natasha Madison

  I finally cave and call Miller, who answers right away. “Yo.”

  “Hey,” I say. “It’s me.”

  “I know. I have caller ID. What’s wrong?” he asks me right away.

  “I was wondering if you had Layla’s number?” I ask him, and he laughs.

  “Of course I have her number. It’s even in my favorites.” He laughs. “But why do you need it?”

  “I’m trying to get in touch with Candace, and I can’t.” I don’t go into the whole story. “I thought she might be with Layla.”

  “I’ll text you her number,” he says, hanging up, and then a text comes in with her number. I don’t even think twice before calling it, and she answers after three rings.

  “Hello,” she says.

  “Layla,” I say her name. “It’s Ralph,” I say, getting up and pacing,

  “What do you want?” she says, and from her tone, I’m going to guess that she knows what happened.

  “Listen—” I start to say, and she snaps.

  “No, you listen,” she says angrily. “You fucked up.”

  “I know that,” I say softly. “I just want to make sure she’s okay.”

  She laughs bitterly this time. “If she’s okay. Oh, she is not okay. What is the opposite of okay?”

  “Is she with you?” I ask, getting ready to go over there to talk to her.

  “Even if she were, I wouldn’t tell you,” she says.

  “I just want to make sure—” I start to say, and she hangs up on me.

  “Fuck,” I say, wanting to throw the phone out the fucking window. I get Ari in the car and drive to her house again but still nothing. The whole night, I stay away, looking outside and wondering where she is. The whole night, I call her name in the darkness, hoping that she answers me.

  The next day and the day after that, she still isn’t home, and now my nerves are shot to shit. I’m on edge, having only slept maybe six hours in three days when I call Becca again. “Hey, did you try to find out where she was?”

  “Yeah,” she says, “but I hate to say it, I have no idea.”

  “This is fucking bullshit!” I shout. “She has to be somewhere.” I sit on the couch and pull the hair on my head. “She has to be somewhere,” I say again, my voice almost a whisper.

  “I don’t know what to tell you, Ralph,” Becca says, and I hang up and toss my phone on the couch. I feel like my whole body is on alert. Bernadette has been coming in every single day, and I leave, but I just go and sit at Candace’s house. Sitting on her porch, I plead for her to come home. Hoping that she walks in the door, and I can see her even for a second.

  I’m rubbing my hands over my face when I hear a car drive into the driveway, and I swear my heart has never beat so fast in my life. “Candace,” I say her name only to see Nico get out of his car.

  “Hey,” I say, surprised to see him. He is wearing aviator glasses, so I can’t see his eyes.

  “Hey,” he says when he gets in front of me.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask, and he takes off his glasses.

  “No.” He shakes his head. “The question is, what are you doing here?”

  “I . . .” I start to say, and I try to come up with a story that I’m waiting for Candace.

  “I got a call today,” he says, and my neck tingles and my shoulders go back. “You can’t be here.”

  “Who called you?” I ask, and he just looks at me. “Who the fuck called you, Nico?”

  “Doesn’t matter.” He avoids my eyes, looking around. “What matters is that you don’t come back here because next time, they won’t be calling me.”

  “Who the fuck is calling you?” I ask, my heart pumping. “Is it Candace?” I wait for him to answer, and when he doesn’t, I ask him another question. “You know where she is?”

  “I need you to promise me that you won’t come back here,” he says, and I answer him without thinking twice.

  “No.” I shake my head. “I need to talk to her.”

  “Ralph,” he says. “She doesn’t want to talk to you.”

  “You know where she is.” I don’t ask him the question now. Instead, I tell him. “Tell me where she is.”

  “It’s over, buddy,” he says, and the pain in my chest starts again. “You need to go home and be with Ariella and just move on.”

  “How?” I ask him. “How do you expect me to move on when just the thought of not seeing her again has my chest hurting so bad that I think I’m having a heart attack? How do you expect me to move on when she’s not with me?” I walk away from him. “You tell Evan that I’m not going anywhere until I talk to her.”

  “You want to start a war with Evan?” he asks, and I shrug.

  “I don’t give a fuck if I have to go through the whole fucking family to get to her.” I walk to my truck. “You tell him that.” I get in the truck and pull out of the driveway. Taking my phone out, I send Justin a message.

  Me: Tell Evan to call me.

  That is all I do as I toss the phone on the side and drive home waiting for the phone call.

  Chapter 33

  Candace

  “Auntie Can.” I hear Zoey as she walks outside. “You crying again. You have boo boo?” She crawls onto the outdoor couch that I’m lying on with a cover over me. The air is still hot, but with the shade, it’s a touch cooler than I thought it would be.

  “Yeah, I have a boo boo.” I kiss her head when she lies beside me, and even though I don’t want the tears to fall, they do. I wrap her into the blanket, and she watches her iPad.

  I’ve been here for over a week, and every single day when I get up, I think the pain will be less. I think that the burning in my stomach is going to go away, but it doesn’t. I hear the dogs bark and look up to see that Zara is coming out of the house carrying two cups of coffee. “You forgot your phone inside.” She smiles as she hands me a cup of coffee and my phone and then sits on the big chair facing the couch.

  “Thank you,” I say, ignoring the phone in my lap. The phone that gets heavier and heavier through the day. “I didn’t even notice.”

  “You were too busy trying to pretend you were okay to your brother to notice that your phone was left on the kitchen table when you escaped outside.” She takes a sip of her coffee.

  “I thought it would get better day by day,” I say. “I mean, is this normal?”

  She looks at me. “The thought of losing your brother would cut me off at the knees. I don’t know how I would go on,” she says and blinks her own tears away. “I know that what he did was horrible.”

  “Horrible.” I laugh bitterly, but the tear rolls down my cheek anyway as I sit up. Zoey’s not even a bit concerned about what is going on around her as she starts dancing back and forth. “He called me Cassie.”

  “Yeah,” Zara says, looking at me. “I know but—”

  I shake my head. “No, there is no excuse. None. And even if there was, I don’t want to hear it. We want different things out of life. I want a family with children. I want to be woken up at five a.m. because my baby is sitting on my bladder. I want to feel my child move in me. I want to give birth to my child, knowing I made this. Knowing that the love that we have together made a miracle. I want that, and I’m not going to sacrifice it for anyone.”

  “And you shouldn’t have to,” she says. “You’ll find someone out there who will give you everything that you want,” she says, and my heart hurts, thinking that this person isn’t going to be Ralph. I close my eyes and see his smile, and just when I’m about to open my eyes, I see Ari smiling at me. “So what are you going to do?”

  “I don’t think I can go back to Dallas,” I say the truth. “I don’t think I can be in the same town as him and not think of what he is doing at that moment. Fuck, I’m in New York, and there hasn’t been an hour that I haven’t thought about him.”

  “Does that mean you are actually going to move here?” she asks me, smiling. “Not going to lie. Evan is going to be over the moon.”

  “Wh
y not?” I say. “There is nothing for me there.” I take a sip of my coffee. “I have to go back and pack up the house.”

  “We can get movers that can do that,” Zara says. “Say the word, and you never have to go back there.”

  I shake my head. “No. I’m going to go back and pack up the house, put it on the market, and say goodbye to Layla. Meet with my clients to tell them what is going on.” I look over and see Evan coming out, and I can tell he’s pissed. The vein in his head is bulging, and I see him charging toward us. “What has gotten into him?” I motion with my head, and Zara turns to watch him, and she must see what I see.

  “Oh, fuck,” she says and smiles, getting up. “Hey there.” He just shakes his head.

  “That did not go well at all,” he says, sitting down in the chair that Zara was sitting in and then pulling her down to sit on his lap.

  “You didn’t say anything you are going to regret, right?” Zara says, and he looks at her.

  “Oh, I said plenty of shit,” he says, looking at me. “But I don’t regret anything. Pussy ass bitch.”

  “Daddy,” Zoey says. “Pussy ass bitch is a bad word, right, Mama?” she asks, and I roll my lips.

  “Honey, let’s go play in the playhouse,” Zara tells her, getting up and holding out her hand for Zoey. “Listen to your brother and remember that he did it because he loves you,” she says, and I tilt my head to the side. “And if it helps in any way, just think, my brother is Matthew.”

  I laugh at her and watch her walk away.

  “What happened?” I ask him.

  “I called Nico,” he says, and my neck starts to get hot. “Sent Ralph a message.”

  “What kind of message did you send him?” I ask him, glaring at him.

  “Just that the next time he went into your house, you’re calling the cops.” He folds his hands over his chest. “It’s creepy as fuck watching him walk into the house and sit on the couch for hours.”

  The day after I got here, I finally opened my phone and saw all the missed calls from Ralph and that my voice mail was full. I was going to listen to the voice mails when my phone alerted me that my garage door was opened. I watched him walk into my house and sit on my couch. The pain in my chest coming out tenfold and it was like someone was stomping my chest with heavy boots. I started to dry heave, and that is how Evan found me and then picked up the phone.

  “You didn’t have to do that.” I look down at my coffee cup. “He would have given up eventually.”

  “Not according to the phone call I just had with him,” Evan says, and I sit up now.

  “You spoke to Ralph?” I ask, and he nods his head. “What? How?”

  “He sent Justin a message that he wanted to talk to me.” He grabs the arms of the chair. “Gotta say the guy has some balls.”

  “I want you to stand down,” I say.

  “Absolutely not. You’re my baby sister,” he says, and I roll my eyes at him. “It’s my duty. Fuck, when I got with Zara, I had Matthew and Max on my dick.” He mentions his two brothers-in-law. “I have to set rules.”

  “Rules?” I look at him. “You are out of your mind. I don’t want you to do anything, please. Just, it’ll fade away.”

  He laughs at me now. “I can tell you right now he’s not going away.” I look at him, and my heart speeds up. “No matter how much—” I hold up my hand.

  “You need to stop.” I wipe the tear away with my thumb that is going to escape thinking about Ralph. “I’m asking you to stop.”

  “Would you choose him?” he asks, and I just look at him. My head is shouting yes, and my heart is telling me that there will be no one else but him. “Answer me, Can. Would you choose him over me?”

  “I choose Ari,” I say, and now I don’t even have time to wipe the tears that come blurring my vision. “I choose Ari, and I would not want to hurt her ever.”

  “You are too good for him,” he says. “But if you ask me, you’re too good for anyone.” His voice goes soft. “He wants me to give you a message.”

  “I don’t want to know,” I say, getting up. “I don’t want to hear. I don’t want to know. It’s over and done with.”

  “Are you sure about that?” he asks me softly.

  “It is what it is. I just don’t want the drama. So I need you to just let it be,” I say.

  “That doesn’t answer my questions, Candace.” He looks at me, waiting.

  “I can’t change the past, and he can’t see the future.” I grab my phone off the table. “I’m moving here,” I say, making it official. He nods his head. “We have space for you here.”

  “I’m not moving in with you,” I say. “I’m going to rent Viktor’s place from him.” Mentioning his brother-in-law who has a place in New York City. “I have to go home and sort my shit.”

  “You think that’s a good idea?” He gets up. “We can come with you.”

  “You have to get back on the ice, Evan. I know that you don’t have time,” I say. “I’m giving myself one week.”

  “It’ll be good to finally have you close,” he says, and I nod my head, ignoring the lump in my throat.

  “I’m going to make a list of things I need to do,” I say, walking away from him and going inside. I walk up to the bedroom that I always use when I’m here and close the door behind me. The drapes are still closed, so the room is dark. I slip under the bed covers and close my eyes. I feel like I haven’t slept in a week, but I know that isn’t the truth since all I have been doing since getting here is sleeping. It’s my way to escape; it’s also my way to see Ralph and Ari. It’s the time I get to laugh and smile and grab his face and kiss him over and over again. It’s the time I get to rock Ari to sleep. I wonder if she misses me? She probably doesn’t even notice; she probably will never know how much I love her.

  The tears don’t stop; in this room, I can cry for however long I want. The door opens softly, and I see Zara stick her head in. “Hey,” she says. “Can I come in?” I nod my head, and she comes in and sits on the bed. “Are you okay?”

  “No,” I say. “Not in the least.”

  “Evan told me . . .” she starts to say, and I just sob.

  “I don’t want to know,” I say. “I don’t want to know because it’s going to hurt me, and I can’t handle the hurt. I can’t handle it. My heart can’t.”

  “I’m going to come with you,” she says. “To help you close up the house.” I shake my head.

  “You have Zoey, and Evan goes back to work,” I say. “It’s okay. It’s okay, it will be fine.”

  “It’s not even going to be close to fine,” she says. “But you are strong.” She gets up.

  “You also need to eat something. Evan hasn’t noticed yet, but you’ve lost a good ten pounds, and you didn’t have ten pounds to spare to begin with.” She walks to the door, closing it softly behind her.

  “Today,” I say to myself. “I give myself today to cry it all out and then tomorrow.” I take a deep breath. “Tomorrow will be better.”

  Chapter 34

  Ralph

  Fourteen days. It’s been fourteen days that I’ve been in this hell. Three hundred and thirty-six hours of hell. Three hundred and thirty-six hours of living the memories over and over again. I call her every hour, and it goes straight to voice mail.

  I step off the ice, sweat pouring down my face as I walk to the locker room. I unsnap my helmet and put it on the shelf with my name on it. I don’t bother showering here. Instead, I change and make my way back home. When I get there, Bernadette is rocking Ari, and I kiss her on her cheek and head for the shower.

  I’m about to step into the shower when my phone rings, and I see it’s Evan.

  “Hello,” I say, hoping it’s Candace instead.

  “Yeah,” he says, his voice low. “I have to ask you something,” he says, and I just wait for it. “Is she it for you?” I think about his question.

  “You think I’m going to tell you how I feel about her before I tell her?” I laugh. “Nice try but
this isn’t fucking high school.” I wait to hear the hang up signal or for him to tell me to fuck off when my voice goes low. “Listen, you don’t have to like me. Not now, not ever. But Candace, she is the only one that matters.”

  I wait for it, wait for anything, and then he shocks me. “I thought you’d like to know that Candace is back in town.” My heart speeds up so fast and so loud I don’t think I heard it properly.

  “What?” I ask him again.

  “Don’t make me regret this,” he says and hangs up the phone. It pretty much sums up the first time we spoke.

  He called me, and it was tense and to the point. Basically, I wasn’t good enough for his sister, and I didn’t even argue that. I know I wasn’t; fuck, I will never be good enough for her. The whole conversation lasted a whole two minutes. I didn’t argue with him. I didn’t tell him my side of things. I wanted one thing and one thing only, and that was for him to tell Candace that we missed her. That I missed her. I wondered every single day if she got the message. Every single night, I would say good night to her, closing my eyes and seeing her smile.

  I shower as fast as I can and slip into shorts and a shirt, and right before I walk out of the house, I go to kiss Ari. “I’m going to try to get our girl back.” I nod at Bernadette who just smiles at me.

  I play my speech over and over in my head. When I finally pull up to her house, my heart almost shatters. The for sale sign is in the middle of her lawn, making it almost official I’ve lost her.

  I get out and look at the house, my heart speeding up faster and faster. The last time I was here, Nico told me never to come back. I want to say I listened, but I didn’t, I would drive by at night with Ari, slowing down just to see if there were any lights on. I walk up and press the doorbell, not knowing if he was lying to me or not, but I couldn’t not take the chance.

  “Come in.” I hear her voice yelling, and I open the door and walk in. My heart speeding up, my hands sweaty, and I suddenly want to fall to my knees and thank whoever for bringing her back to me. I walk in and see the boxes everywhere, and I stop in my tracks. The heart that was beating so hard and so fast now sinks into the pit of my stomach. “Hi.” I turn, and she doesn’t expect that it’s me. The minute her eyes meet mine, she takes a step back.