One Chance

by Best, Victoria J.

  “I’m so sorry. I didn’t expect the door to open. I’m not usually this clumsy.” I chuckled, chagrin making my face heat.

  “That’s my fault. The doorman called to tell me he let you up. I was waiting, spying through the peephole like a creeper.”

  I laughed for real this time before clapping a hand over my mouth. “It’s really too early for me to be making this much noise.”

  Henry dismissed my comment with a wave of his hand. “Nah. Jackson sleeps like a rock and there’s only one other neighbor on this floor. I think he’s in his eighties, so he can’t hear you anyway.”

  “Well, that’s a relief,” I said, laughing again. “How come you’re here?” The question was out before I could think about the reasons I shouldn’t ask it.

  Henry looked at the floor and only looked up at me after releasing a heavy breath. “I was too drunk to go home. Jax made me stay here.”

  He rubbed the back of his neck, eyes still cast down to the hardwood beneath our feet. I felt bad for asking but appreciated that he’d told the truth when he could have lied to me to protect himself from my judgment.

  In an attempt to reassure him, and with my almost-mistake still pounding at my skull, I said, “We all make mistakes, Henry.”

  He dropped his hand, his head shooting up and his eyes locking with mine. The green depths stole my breath for a moment. His eyes were beautiful but, beyond that, when he looked at me that way I could see straight into his soul.

  “I know that. But I’m trying to be a better person.” The words were laced with pain, his voice strained and low as if he didn’t want to say them out of fear that I would realize he wasn’t a good person.

  Nothing could be further from the truth.

  Suddenly, I wanted to confess to all my sins to take his pain away. I wanted him to see that behind everyone’s seemingly pristine reputations, there lived demons. I wanted to tell him all about how I used sex as a way to calm the inner voice that said I was the reason my mother took her own life the way some people took razors to their skin. Right there, in that stark foyer where we still stood, I almost told him my darkest secrets.

  “I don’t want to drink anymore,” he admitted, bursting the words that were bubbling in my chest.

  I closed my mouth, pressing my lips together to make sure the words didn’t seep out against my will. With a nod, and still not trusting my own voice, I took him in my arms, squeezing him in a tight embrace. He let out a sound that sounded like a strangled sob, gripping me to him like I was a lifeline.

  “I’m tired of letting everyone down. Tired of being the reason no one wants to be in a room. Tired of my mother looking at me like she wishes I was never born.” He let all of the words out, unburdening himself on my shoulder while I held him.

  “I don’t know how to do it, Nicolette. I don’t know how to be the person they want me to be.” Henry sounded so sad and defeated that tears spilled from eyes.

  How was this man able to let go, to share his true fears and feelings with me, when I couldn’t even be honest with him?

  “I’m sure you’ll figure it out, Henry. I’m sure we can work it out.”

  He froze in my arms for a second before he pulled back to look at me. His eyes were dry but haunted, his face red and splotchy. But even so, he was the most beautiful man I had ever seen.

  “We?”

  The question caught me off guard because I was lost in his face, studying the angles and lines of his jaw, tracing the bow of his lips, memorizing the stubble pattern on his jaw.

  “What?” I asked with confusion.

  “You said we would work it out. Together?”

  I nodded confidently. “Yes. Both of us. There’s a lot I have to sort through as well, about my mom and everything.” I waved my hand as if it weren’t important right now. “Maybe we can work on it together?”

  Henry didn’t answer me. His eyes held mine, staring, searching, before his head dipped and he captured my mouth with his. He still held me to him, his arms around my waist. He used the leverage to pull me closer while deepening the kiss. I fell into him, getting lost in the kiss. My arms wound around his neck, threading through his hair. The promise I made myself on the way over evaporated as everything else ceased to make sense beyond where our lips were connected. A soft moaned escaped my lips as Henry cupped my ass, pressing me firmly against him, so tightly I could feel the outline of his erection through his jeans and my leggings. I wanted him, wanted him to make the move towards the bedroom, wanted him to take away all the hurt we were both feeling.

  To take away the voice pressing at the back of my mind that told me I should stop.

  “Wait,” I muttered against his mouth, letting go of him and pressing my hands against his chest.

  “Shit,” he growled, stepping away from me and down into the living room.

  He put a whole room between us.

  “Dammit, Nic, I’m sorry,” he said, running a hand over his face as he collapsed onto the couch. He propped his elbows in his knees and hung his head in his hands.

  I watched him for a minute before stepping. I couldn’t let him blame himself for this.

  “You don’t have anything to be sorry about. It’s just all moving too fast, but none of that is your fault. I let it get away from me.” I sat next to him on the couch and he sprang up, pacing to the large window that overlooked the whole of uptown Manhattan.

  “This is what I meant.” He rounded on me, anger flaring in his eyes. I could tell it wasn’t directed at me but at himself. “I can’t even control myself while I’m sober. How the hell am I supposed to stop drinking?”

  I wanted to tell him it would all be okay. But I didn’t know that it would be.

  “I don’t know, Henry. But that’s what we can figure out. You’re in therapy, right? And you can go to AA. I’ll go with you, if you want.” I walked to where he was leaning against the window, his forehead pressed against the glass and his back rounded.

  I placed a hand on his back. He tensed, just for a second, at the contact, before he relaxed into my touch. The muscles in his back were stiff, and I massaged them gently as he stood bowing towards upper Manhattan.

  “Why are you here? Why did you come even after all the times I fucked up? After I was such an asshole to you?” He asked the question quietly, but I heard it perfectly clear.

  “Because I know that under all the smart-ass comments and blustering drunkenness there’s a different Henry. This Henry.” I ducked under his arm, glad I was short enough to squeeze between him and the window so we were face to face, and pointed a finger into his chest.

  He looked down at me, his eyes sad but also filled with something else. The beautiful emerald abyss of them swirling with something unsaid. But I felt it—whatever it was—pass between us and through me as we stood there, barely embracing. I wanted to touch him, to press myself against him until all I felt was his warmth and not the cold glass at my back. But I knew that if I did, if I gave in, I wouldn’t be able to stop this time and I would break every promise I’d made to the both of us.

  So, I pushed away from him when all I wanted to do was get lost in his arms.

  The coldness I’d thought I would escape when I moved away from the window seemed to fill me even more as I settled onto the couch while Henry still stood on the other side of the room. I cleared my throat, wrapping my arms around my middle to ward off the chill.

  “How about, for now, we sit here and talk about what we can do?” I asked him.

  Henry finally turned to me, determination in his gaze. “Okay,” he said as he came to sit with me on the large sofa.

  But that little voice, the one that wouldn’t leave me alone since the day I’d met Henry, wondered if there was a way that Henry and I could salvage this thing between us when we were both so broken.

  Chapter 9

  Henry

  My eyes popped open. For a moment, I forgot where I was and who was with me.

  Nicolette.

  We were snug
gled together on Jackson’s couch, a throw blanket haphazardly draped over us. Our arms and legs were entangled, her head was on my chest as she breathed evenly and softly. It was the loveliest sound I’d ever heard. It was a sound I wanted to wake up to every day for the rest of my life. A sound that made me never want to have another drop of alcohol if only I could be the type of man who deserved to hear it.

  I had never been so terrified in my whole fucking life.

  “Hey,” Nicolette mumbled the word, lifting her head up to see me.

  I forced a smile around the ache in my chest. “Hey.”

  “What time is it?” she asked as she tried to sit up.

  “I don’t know, but I think it’s too early to be awake.”

  She chuckled and my chest tightened at the sound. It was another sound I didn’t deserve but hoped to earn.

  “You’re probably right about that,” she said as she sat up, running a hand through her messy blonde waves that had slipped out of the hair band in her sleep.

  “What?” For a moment, panic gripped me as I thought she’d heard my thoughts.

  “About it being too early. We were up until the wee hours.”

  Nicolette stood up and stretched her arms over her head, the t-shirt she was wearing lifting enough for me to see a flash of bare skin. My dick stirred, not for the first time in the last four hours, but I kept that shit under wraps. I didn’t want to scare her off again. She wanted to take it slow, and I was happy to oblige just to be in her company.

  My gaze was pulled away from Nicolette’s perfectly flat expanse of abs by a text on the lock screen of my phone.

  Jax: Headed to Liza’s to make her come to brunch. Meet us at the restaurant at ten.

  The text had been sent an hour ago.

  “Shit. We’re supposed to meet Jax and Liza in thirty minutes at the restaurant,” I said, hopping up from the couch.

  “It’s already nine-thirty?” Nicolette asked in surprise.

  “Yup. I still have to shower.”

  “Me, too,” she said.

  My dick stirred again as our eyes locked.

  “Don’t even think about it, Henry Rogers,” she said, pointing a finger at me.

  I chuckled, holding up two hands in surrender. “I didn’t say a thing.”

  “You were thinking it,” she said, her hands moving to her hips.

  “I think that you were thinking it. That’s why you said it.”

  Nicolette blew out an exasperated breath. “It doesn’t matter who was thinking it. What matters is that we are going to be late.”

  “We won’t be late. I’ll go get ready quickly and then take you back to your place to get ready.”

  “Quickly!” she called after me as I disappeared down the hall.

  I kept some personal things in Jax’s guest room because sometimes I stayed over here when I partied too much the night before. It was a bad habit, one I was hoping I’d be able to break. As quickly as I could, I showered, ignoring my errant dick as it sprang to life thinking about Nicolette while I was in the shower. I didn’t have time for the distraction. Not bothering to shave, I combed my hair, applied deodorant, lotion, and threw on a fresh pair of clothes. In total, it took me fifteen minutes from start to finish.

  “Wow, that was fast,” Nicolette said as I entered the kitchen.

  She was perched on a stool at the island, drinking a water bottle and scrolling through her phone. Her hair had been re-secured in the hair tie and she was wearing her hoodie. I searched her face because something had changed between us, yet again, in the time between when I went to take a shower and now, but I couldn’t figure out what. Nicolette gave me a small smile as I looked at her. Her phone was tucked into her hand on her lap.

  “Is everything all right?” I asked her as I slipped my arms into my coat.

  She nodded, passing her phone from one hand to the other. “Ready?” she asked as she hopped up from the stool.

  I nodded. “Let’s go. If we can catch a cab as soon as we get outside, we can make it to your apartment in record time.”

  Nicolette turned her phone so that I could see the screen. “No need. I ordered an Uber. It’s here.”

  “Efficient,” I said with exaggerated appreciation.

  She chuckled. “Let’s just say, I’m not the most punctual person, so I’m pretty good at all of the tricks to get somewhere in less time.”

  “Well then, I take back my praise.”

  Nicolette laughed as I held out her purse. She slipped it over her head, across her shoulder, and walked towards the door. I made sure it was locked behind us as we stepped into the hallway. She kept going down the hall as I did, pressing the elevator button just as I approached. Our eyes met for a moment, a flash of uncertainty and something else I couldn’t identify passing across her blue irises. I wanted to reassure her, to tell her I wasn’t going to fuck it up this time, but I didn’t know if that was the case. I had been fucking everything up for such a long time now. Why did I think I could stop drinking cold turkey just because I wanted to?

  Our conversation from the night before replayed in my head as we rode the elevator to the lobby.

  “Wanting to stop is the first step in the right direction, Henry. Being able to admit that your drinking is out of control takes a lot of guts. I’m going to look up some AA meetings in the area and maybe we can go to the next one? Are you in?”

  I had told her I was in. We even shook on it. But as I watched her now, so positive and hopeful, her beautiful smile wide, I wasn’t so sure anymore. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to get sober, but that I didn’t trust myself to accomplish it. Why did Nicolette, someone I had only known for a few days, believe in me when my own family had already written me off?

  The Uber was waiting when we exited the building. We got in and the driver hustled to Nicolette’s apartment, getting there in under five minutes. I paid the guy extra to wait for us at the curb before we headed upstairs. Her apartment was on the fourth floor, at the end of the hall. We entered and she stopped in the small foyer, setting her purse down on a table next to the door.

  “Well, this is it. I don’t have time to show you around, but you can wait for me in the kitchen or living room. I’ll be quick, I promise.”

  She motioned towards both as she headed down the hallway, stopping at a room on the left side. I longed to follow her, to blow off brunch and toss her onto the bed that waited behind that door. But the memory of her reaction to my kiss the night before stopped me. I wasn’t sure why she was hesitant, why she wanted only to be friends for now, but if that was what she wanted, that was what I’d give her. In only three days, Nicolette had become someone I needed, someone I wanted, and I wasn’t willing to give that up for a quick fuck.

  Not when I had so much to lose.

  So, I made the decision to sit my sorry ass down on a stool at the island in the kitchen and wait.

  Fifteen minutes later, Nicolette emerged from her room. Her hair was down and around her shoulders in soft waves, waves that begged me to run my hands through the strands. She was wearing a pair of skinny jeans that were frayed at the ankle, an oversized soft pink sweater, and a pair of black ballet flats.

  And she looked so fucking beautiful my chest wanted to explode.

  “Ready?” Her words snapped me out of the trance I was in as I watched her walk towards me.

  I nodded, unable to speak for a moment. There was a real possibility that I would say something so stupid that Nicolette might tell me to get out and never return. She retrieved her coat from a closet near the door before we made our way into the hall. The Uber was still waiting for us when we exited the building, and though we were still going to be late, the fact that we already had a car helped.

  “I guess you were right, having the Uber waiting is a good trick if you’re running late.”

  Nicolette giggled as she buckled her seatbelt before she looked up at me. “I’m surprised you haven’t figured it out by now. It’s not like I invented it.”


  I frowned, wondering if I should bring up that, until recently, my mother’s car used to pick me up. Since I was trying to better myself, I decided there was no point in holding back.

  “I haven’t used Uber much because I’ve been using company cars. Well, I was using company cars until my mom fired me.”

  I shrugged after I said it, trying to pretend like it didn’t still sting that my mother had fired me.

  “Oh, that’s right. I’m sorry,” Nicolette said, patting the back of my hand.

  Her hand rested on top of mine for a beat too long, as if she was unwilling to stop touching me. Before she could completely pull away—because in all honesty I wasn’t done touching her yet—I turned her hand over and gripped it in mine. Her eyes darted to our joined hands, going wide for a moment. That was how I knew she felt it, too—the zing of electricity that passed between our hands. The sensation that shot up my arm and traveled all over my body until I felt like I was on fire. Her head whipped up, her eyes meeting mine.

  “Henry, I—” she began, but unlike as back at the apartment when I decided to be a perfect gentleman, I threw caution to the wind.

  In one swift movement I leaned down, pressing my lips to hers. That same electricity that was present where our hands were joined traveled from where our lips touched and straight to my head where stars burst behind my eyes. If every kiss was like this with Nicolette, did I even need drugs or alcohol?

  One of her hands was still trapped in mine, but her other hand grabbed the front of my shirt, fisting it in her hand. She pulled me closer, tighter, pushing her tongue between my lips before I could do the same to her. I was afraid until that moment that she would pull away like she did last night, but she didn’t. Instead, she deepened the kiss, scooting as close as we could get without her sitting in my lap.

  The sound of a throat clearing pulled us both from the spell. My head pivoted towards the driver. It was then that I realized the car had stopped at the curb.

  “We’re here,” the driver said.

  Nicolette’s cheeks pinked with embarrassment as I slid several bills out of my wallet and handed them to the guy. He made a killing off our trip, so I hoped he wouldn’t give her a bad rating.