One More Time_A Second Chance Romance

by Rye Hart

  Then, I made my way to the casino.

  It was the last place I could think where a man on this ship would go. I stood at the entrance, my palms sweating as I drew in a deep breath. The last time I had been in this part of the ship, Luke had been hunting me, stalking me like a piece of meat he thought he could own. My eyes darted around all the lights and sounds, taking in all the colors and people. But finally, I drew up the courage to step in.

  It didn’t take long for me to find Rhett.

  He was sitting with Evelyn.

  I froze and my heart stopped in my chest. Evelyn was talking with him, scooting her stool closer and closer. His eyes were hooked on her face, listening to her intently as his eyes moved up and down her body. I felt bile rising in my throat as tears crested my eyes. I watched as Evelyn leaned into him, and I watched as he didn’t lean back.

  Even though I knew that they hadn’t slept together that night, the sight of them sitting so close brought the doubts I had about Rhett and me to the forefront. I turned on my heels and headed out of the casino. Tears were dripping down my cheeks as my heart splintered in my chest. How could he sit next to the bitch that had ruined us all those years ago and look so damn cozy doing it? A sudden, sick thought stuck in my brain. Maybe he had told her to say she lied, just so he could sleep with me.

  Would he really do that? I tried to tell myself no, but how well did I really know Rhett anymore? Just because I wanted him to be the same thoughtful, chivalrous guy he’d been in high school, didn’t mean that he actually was. He’d spent years as a Navy SEAL, in some of the worst places in the world, doing God only knows what. The Rhett I remembered hadn’t been capable of that. Had he? Or had he fooled me all along?

  I choked on my tears as I headed for the elevator. All I wanted to do was lock myself in my room until this fucking nightmare of a cruise was over. My emotions were at war inside me. Part of me screamed that Rhett would never hurt me, that he loved me the way he said he did, and that I should believe him. The other part of me was too goddamn damaged by the shit that had gone down in our past.

  I stepped out of the elevator and stopped at the door to our room, fumbling for my keys. I wanted to get inside and bury myself under the covers in my bed until this big stupid boat docked in Miami and I could get the fuck out of here.

  I slowly opened the door, hearing Ana’s soft snores in the room. When I heard footsteps come up beside me, I pulled the door closed again so as not to wake her.

  “Chanel?”

  I groaned when I heard Tommy’s voice.

  “That you?” he asked.

  “It is,” I said.

  “Hey. Good. I was wondering if you’d seen Ana?” he asked.

  “She’s sleeping.”

  “She told me she was coming to the dinner tonight. Is she feeling okay?”

  “Don’t know,” I said.

  “You feeling all right? You sound sad.”

  “I’m fine Tommy.” There was no way I was getting into this with him.

  “You know Rhett was looking for you too. Said he had something really important to tell you.”

  “I’m not really interested in anything else he has to say,” I said.

  “What the fuck does that mean? Did you two have a fight or something?” Tommy asked.

  “Or something,” I said.

  “Well, whatever, but Rhett said it was super important that he talk to you.”

  I couldn’t hide the sarcasm in my voice. “Yeah, it looked really important. So important that he was cozied up to Evelyn in the casino bar,” I spat.

  Tommy looked stunned for a quick minute. “Wait, what? No, Rhett doesn’t give a shit about Evelyn, he doesn’t even know her. You know that she was paid to make it look like Rhett was cheating on you, right?”

  I guess I was getting into this with him. “Was she? Or was she paid to say that so that Rhett could have another run at me?” I asked, my hands balling into fists at my sides.

  “What are you talking about, Chanel? Why would he do that?” Tommy asked.

  “Why would someone pay her to pretend to sleep with him at prom? Who the fuck does that?” I nearly yelled at him.

  “I honestly don’t know, but what I do know is that Rhett never cheated on you that night and he isn’t cheating on you now,” Tommy said, obviously frustrated by my lack of belief in what he was saying.

  “And why wouldn’t you say that?” I asked. “He’s your best friend, your wingman. You’d say anything to make him look good.”

  “You’re right, I probably would. It still doesn’t change the fact that I’m telling the truth right now. Besides, I really like Ana. Why would I want to risk getting on her best friend’s bad side?”

  I should have heard what he’d said. I should have been happy to hear him finally admit that he liked Ana because I knew she liked him. My brain, however, was spiraling out of control, and my mouth was moving before I even had time to realize what I was saying. “Right, because that’s going to work out. You two are a fling, and you both know it,” I said.

  Tommy’s face fell and he looked like he’d been punched in the gut. I don’t know what had possessed me to lash out at him like I had, but now that it was out of my mouth, I couldn’t take it back. He threw his shoulders back and slipped his playboy mask back on.

  “You’re probably right,” he said.

  I sighed and rested my head against the door to my room as Tommy turned to go.

  “Tommy?” I called after him.

  “What?” he asked, stopping but not turning back toward me.

  “Tell Rhett I had time to think and I don’t feel the same way.”

  “Got it,” Tommy said in a clipped tone as he continued down the hallway, his hands shoved into the pockets of his swim trunks.

  I made my way into my room, feeling worse than ever as I tumbled into bed. I knew I wouldn’t sleep well until Luke was behind bars, and I was safe in bed at home. This cruise had brought out the best and worst in everyone, and I was ready to put it all behind me.

  But when my eyes closed and my mind slipped into a peaceful slumber, the only thing I dreamed about was Rhett. With his brooding stare and his strong stance and his rippling muscles. With his musical laughter and his cheeky little grin and the happiness he brought forth in my life. My mind tortured me with all the things that could’ve been. The life we could've had and the house we could’ve built. The children we would’ve raised and the vacations we would’ve taken. My mind played that reel over and over all night, and I woke up with my pillow drenched underneath my cheek.

  What an absolute fucking mess.

  CHAPTER 32

  RHETT

  I woke up before the sun and felt the ship dock at the port in Miami. And after the conversation I had with Tommy last night, all I wanted to do was get the hell off this ship. Tommy had come back to the room last night in a heated daze, rattling on about how he had run into Chanel. I pulled out of him the conversation he had with her last night. About how she was through with me and how she had seen me at the casino bar cozied up to Evelyn. I wasn’t fucking cozied up to her, but I knew that would happen. I knew if Chanel saw me there with her, she would automatically think the worst.

  I fought every urge to bang down her door last night. As I sat on the balcony and watched the sun rise over Miami, I resisted the dire need to see her, feel her, explain myself once and for all. I knew it wouldn’t matter if she didn’t love me though. So why put myself through it. I needed to let her go and live her life the way she wanted to.

  As much as it shattered my heart, I had to be okay with that.

  I needed to get off this ship before I ran into Chanel. Her proclaiming to Tommy that things were over with us and that she didn’t love me was all I needed. I had come on too strong and too many puzzle pieces fell at the wrong time for us to be doing this anymore. We came, we cruised, we tried, and now we had to leave.

  Maybe that was how this was all supposed to turn out.

  I didn’t wa
nt Chanel hurting because of me any longer. As much as I wanted one last moment with her, I knew seeing me would kill her. With the anxiety of Luke being hauled off the ship and the hustle and bustle of getting home, I knew it would be too much for her. Chanel was almost at her limit, and I wasn’t sure how much more she could take. It broke my heart to run from her, but if that was what she needed from me, then I would give it to her.

  She deserved at least that.

  As I packed my things and jostled Tommy, I saw how distraught he was. It was shocking, how much Chanel’s words about Ana had hurt him. He said something about Ana just thinking he was a good piece of meat or something, and in most realms, that would’ve inflated Tommy’s ego, but he had been beaten down last night and disappointed in a way I’d never seen before. As the sun came streaming over the horizon of the ocean, he rolled out of bed without saying a word. No snarky comment. No derogatory statement about the pussy we got on the ship. Nothing.

  Just silence from a man who couldn’t understand why he hurt so much.

  The two of us packed up silently and headed off the ship. I was done with women for good. The only woman I ever wanted didn’t want me. The easiest woman in the world to please had been displeased with me. I couldn’t keep her smiling, and I couldn’t earn her trust back, so there was no point. I had held onto a fantasy for ten years hoping I could fix it, hoping I could repair it with my own two hands and bring it back to life like I had so many others during my tenure as a SEAL. But none of my training and none of my missions and none of my senior officer’s words of wisdom had prepared me for something like this.

  The emptiness I felt inside was draining, and I was better off alone.

  Tommy and I walked out of the room, pulling our bags behind us. Neither of us said a word as we found our way to the front of the ship. The halls were still dimly lit, and everyone around us was still sleeping, but not us. We stopped on the grand staircase and watched as several police officers embarked onto the boat. I held out my arm, stopping a dazed Tommy in his tracks. We watched as the security guards from the boat escorted Luke from the elevator, transferring him into Miami P.D. custody. I felt anger boiling in my system. I felt the need to drop down onto this motherfucker’s face and rip his heart out through his asshole. Just seeing him after I’d pried him off Chanel that day was enough for my vision to drip red.

  Tommy and I stayed and listened to the Miami police officers read him his rights before dragging him off the ship.

  Once the coast was clear, Tommy and I made our way to the front door. We walked down off the ship toward the area where all the cabs were, ready to carry us to wherever we wanted to go. I stood at the edge of the street, the anger slowly fading from my body as it was replaced with darkness.

  Without Chanel’s light in my life, there was simply nothing.

  “You heard from Chanel?” Tommy asked.

  I shrugged my shoulders as a cab pulled up to us.

  “You heard from Ana?” I asked.

  “Eh, what’s the point?”

  I looked over at Tommy and saw how brokenhearted he was. It confirmed all my worst fears about everything that was happening. Tommy, for the first time in his fucking life, had gotten attached to someone, a woman who, by all accounts, was just like him. She had fun and fucked well and made him laugh with his soul instead of his lungs. I could see him staring off into the distance, fantasizing about her as I turned his answer around in my head.

  He wasn’t done with her. Not emotionally.

  “Come on. Let’s catch a ride back to the hotel,” I said.

  We slid into the cab, and I rattled off the address for the hotel. Tommy and I had a few more days’ worth of a stay in the hotel we had booked for this trip. Even though we only lived a couple of hours outside of Miami, something in my gut told me we would need the extra days.

  As we rode silently back to the hotel, my mind was elsewhere, wondering how Chanel was doing and if she was ready to get home. In all our conversations, I didn’t even bother to ask her where home was for her. Had she stayed in the area? Or was New York her permanent home now? Growing up just outside of Miami had been a hell of a lot of fun, but Chanel always talked about getting out and going somewhere that felt more like home to her. It was why I wasn’t shocked when Cornell had been her college of choice.

  The state of New York suited her in some ways.

  Either way, it didn’t matter. The cruise was over, Chanel was done with me, and I finally had answers as to what had happened on prom night. It wasn’t the clean slate I had originally wanted, and I sure as fuck didn’t know what the hell I was going to do with my life, but it was better than nothing. It was better than wasting away as a Navy SEAL, surrounded by death, blood, and danger for the rest of my life.

  Now all I needed to do was erase my memories of this past week because while Chanel was buried within my mind, I would see her whenever I closed my eyes.

  Just like I had last night and every night for the past ten goddamn years.

  CHAPTER 33

  CHANEL

  I sat on the balcony as the sun hung high in the sky. Ana was sitting silently with me, sipping on the last mimosa she would enjoy on the ship. Even though I had woken up before the sun, I wasn’t ready to get off the ship. If I left too early, I would run into Luke, but if we left at the time our level was meant to leave, I would run into Rhett. So, I decided to stay cooped up in the room, my mind coming to a standstill as Ana kept me company.

  “You feeling okay?” Ana asked.

  “I feel empty,” I said.

  “I’ll take that as better.”

  “Why would you take that as better?” I asked.

  “Because last night, you were a blubbering mess.”

  “Point taken.”

  “You ready to get back to the grind?” she asked.

  “Not really. I haven’t updated my blog in days. People are wondering what the hell happened to me.”

  “What are you going to tell them?”

  “Honestly? I don’t know. I don’t know about anything anymore. When I was in high school, I was dead set on getting out of Miami. I didn’t want to grow up here and make my life here. I went to New York, loved college. Got an internship with The New York Times, and then guess where I ended up?”

  “Right back home,” she said.

  “Right back in the one place I wanted to leave. Ana, I live forty minutes away from the house I grew up in on the outskirts of a city I felt I didn’t belong in. But after being in a state that opened its arms to me and helped me to create a life for myself, I came back. Why did I do that?”

  “Because you missed the hell out of me,” she said.

  “I’m serious. Why did I come back to this place?”

  Ana sighed as she scooted her chair closer to me on the balcony.

  “Because, sometimes, a girl just needs her home.”

  “This place never felt like home. It doesn’t even feel like home now.”

  “Then maybe your idea of home is wrong,” she said.

  “What does that even mean?” I asked.

  “Maybe you’re expecting to feel a specific emotion when home resonates with you a different way. You say you don’t like the city, but something draws you back to it. Maybe it’s not the people, and I don’t blame you there. But maybe it’s the familiarity. Maybe home for you isn’t about peace or serenity. Maybe it’s about being familiar with a place. The routine of it all. Knowing how it flows and ebbs.”

  I closed my eyes and allowed her words to hit me deep.

  “Come on. Let’s get off this ship. We can go back to my place if you aren’t ready to go home yet, and we can figure out what to do from here. The point is, this cruise is done, and we can put all this shit behind us,” Ana said.

  “Okay. I’m ready,” I said.

  We grabbed our things and headed down the hallway. The ship was almost deserted as we made our way to the front doors. There was a small line of people making their way off the ship, but I didn
’t see Rhett in it. I sighed with relief as Ana and I made our way downstairs but, before I could even get off the damn ship, I heard a voice that made me cringe.

  It was Evelyn, and she was at my side in a flash.

  “Did you talk with Rhett?” she asked.

  “Why the hell would I do that?” I asked.

  “He was trying to find you yesterday. I take it he didn’t?”

  “Nope, but I got the message loud and clear. Hope the two of you are happy,” I said.

  “What?” she asked.

  “Don’t play stupid,” Ana said. “Chanel saw you two in the casino.”

  “Then why the hell didn’t you come up to us?”

  “The two of you looked like you were having a grand old time,” I said.

  “Hardly. I was apologizing to him for what happened in high school.”

  “Uh-huh. And just exactly what happened between you two in high school? Tell me. It would be wonderful to get some clarity on this before I left and never laid eyes on you two again,” I said.

  “Look, I’m sorry for what I did, okay? But that shit was ten years ago. You gotta get over that.”

  “You’re sorry for pushing yourself into a car with a man who didn’t want you? Thanks.”

  “Would you just listen, Chanel? I’m trying to tell you what happened.”

  “Then get on with it. I want off this ship,” I said.

  “What happened that night, it isn’t what you think. Rhett didn’t cheat on you. Nothing happened.”

  “Then what did happen?” I asked. “Please. Enlighten me.”

  “I was Luke’s date to prom that night,” she said.

  “Lucky you,” Ana said with a murmur.

  “He told me he wanted to try and make you jealous, and he thought taking me to prom would do that. But when he saw how close you and Rhett were, it made him upset. He agreed to pay me two hundred and fifty dollars to try and separate the two of you. At the very least, keep Rhett occupied so he could talk with you.”