No Reverse

by Marion Croslydon

  “Hate you?”

  “Yes.” My words were soft.

  “I thought I did once.”

  “But…”

  “I don’t hate you anymore, Cass. I never really did.”

  “Good.” I breathed, still unsure. Yeah, not quite the mad profession of love you could find in those stupid romance novels. They set expectations far too high.

  Josh circled around the grave and I drank the sight of him, imprinting all the details of his face in that fuzzy brain of mine. His jawline, the tensed muscles in his neck, the lines of his collarbone pushing against his tight shirt.

  The need to feel him made me take a step in his direction. He stared back at me as if he expected me to come even closer. As if he wanted me to?

  “You’re leaving for Kansas City tomorrow?” he asked.

  “Yep. I’ll be staying at Mr. Guidi’s until you and Eleanor take over.”

  Shit. Saying her name felt like having my throat skinned from the inside. He nodded but didn’t say anything. Josh was kind of silent tonight. Maybe it was better that way.

  He leaned forward so that the tips of his fingers brushed at the gravestone. It looked like his last goodbye.

  “Can you do something for me?”

  Nothing I could do now would cost me as much as what I had already. So it was easy for me to answer. “Of course.”

  “Can you walk with me down to Sweet Angel Point?”

  The longer I waited to turn my back on him, the longer my heart would bleed. Going to Sweet Angel Point would leave it to hang dry.

  “Yes.” My heart could take the hit because I wouldn’t need it after tonight.

  So, after one last nod at Gran’s grave, we started toward the other exit. It wasn’t an arch like the main entrance I’d used before, but a small, rotten wooden gate. It creaked when it closed behind us. We started down the path and I kept myself busy by letting my palm caress the top of the high wild grass bordering the path. I let the last rays of sun warm my skin.

  “Will Sam go with you to Kansas City?”

  “Why on earth do you think that?”

  Josh gave me a stiff nod. “He proposed.”

  “And my answer was ‘no,’ and it still is.”

  I swear I saw the tension ease from his shoulders. They sank. He still didn’t look at me.

  “I’m not going back on my word, Josh. I promised I wouldn’t step in your and Lenor’s way and I won’t.”

  He didn’t say anything else for a while. He took my elbow a couple of times to guide me along the uneven path. I’d miss the strength of his hold on me. But that was the only connection we had. It was like traveling back to when I’d arrived in Oxford, totally unwanted. And that so wasn’t the feeling I wanted to take away with me… to torture me for the rest of my life.

  “How did the job hunting go in D.C?” I asked.

  “Well. I met with a senator.” He named a guy that even I had heard of. “I might join his staff. It won’t be as well paid as the job I was offered by Lenor’s dad, but the money is still good and I can see myself doing it for a while.”

  Hmm. “I thought that dick Carrington would keep the job offer open.”

  “It’s not happening,” he answered flatly. “It’s for the best.”

  I wasn’t going to give Josh career advice. I didn’t even know what I’d do for a living tomorrow, or where, for that mattered. So if he told me it was “for the best,” I trusted him that it was, for him and for Lucas.

  The path came to an end. We’d reached Sweet Angel Point. Josh’s truck was parked there.

  I stepped around the cotton tree. Josh stood next to it. He leaned against it, his hands buried deep in his pockets, fists clenched. He rested his right shoulder against the trunk. I saw him swallow and the fire reappeared in his eyes, not as fierce as before, but slow-burning… like foreplay. Now it was my turn to swallow and to ignore—well, at least try to ignore—the ache traveling from my tummy to that place between my legs.

  Dammit. I was setting myself up for some very lonely nights.

  “Do you regret falling in love with me?” he asked out of the blue.

  I came and stood next to the tree and rested my hands against the trunk. I let the rough surface of the bark mold against my palms. I couldn’t lose it in front of him tonight “I don’t regret falling in love with you. We are why Lucas exists.”

  He lowered his head but I’d had enough time to see the flash of fire crossing his eyes again. “What if Lucas wasn’t there, if he didn’t exist, would you regret anything? Would you regret… me, us?”

  Lucas was me. Lucas was us. That was how I wanted to keep looking at him, somewhere in a secret place of my heart, a place where I didn’t have to share my boy with anyone other than his dad.

  “Falling in love with you was the easiest thing I’ve ever done. There was no choice.”

  “What about now?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If you had the choice now, if we were to meet again, could you fall in love with someone like me?”

  He was swimming in an alternate reality. A reality where guys like him could give the time of day to girls like me.

  “What’s the point?” I grunted.

  “Am I still good enough for you?”

  I could have crashed on my butt right there and then. The Amazing Joshua MacBride was asking Cassandra O’Malley if he was good enough for her.

  But then, a smart, little bee stung my mind. We were both missing a point. “It’s not a question of ‘good enough.’”

  “What kind of question is it then?”

  The little bee had stung but she couldn’t answer for me. I had to tidy up the mess in my head and tell Josh something that made some sense. Challenging, when his gaze was wrapped all around me, when his hand had slid over the rough bark of the tree to rest alongside mine.

  “Gran always used to say that true love did not give second chances. If you were too careless to miss your first chance at it, you weren’t worthy of it.” Damn those tears building up in my throat. “I bailed out six years ago. Whatever my reasons then, I turned my back on you, on us. And then you met someone else.”

  His hand shifted to cover mine. He applied pressure on it and shut his eyes at the same time.

  “Cass…” he whispered like a prayer. When his eyes finally met mine, the dampness in them mirrored mine. “What if we don’t need a second chance?”

  forty

  Josh

  We didn’t need a second chance because we had never moved away. We’d merely been looking in opposite directions. For six long years I’d hated Cassie as my pathetic way to keep myself from loving her.

  The buzz of a cell phone cut in before I could tell her. It took her longer to realize it came from her own pocket. Mechanically she took it out. “It’s a Kansas City number. Maybe that’s about Lucas?” I heard the lump in her throat. “Hi,” she answered.

  A male voice echoed from the phone.

  “Shawn.” She frowned as if he were the last person she’d expected to call. “Can I call you back?” Shawn didn’t sound like he could wait. “Hang on just a sec, okay?”

  I stifled the urge to grab the damn phone and throw it away.

  Her hand slid away from beneath mine, and she retreated three paces. I let my hand slide down the tree and hang by my side. Cassie listened for a while. She was too far away for me to eavesdrop on what that Shawn was telling her.

  I lost sight of her profile when she turned her back completely to me. The call would end soon. She’d be back to me and I’d be able to tell her everything. About the last five days. About the choices I’d already made. Those I wanted to make for tomorrow. With her. For our family.

  She hung up. Instead of coming back to me and our tree, she stared blindly at the prairie that spread around us. The receding sun set them on fire. Cassie, with the golden tones of her skin and her hair, had never looked as beautiful. I was about to beg for even a fraction of her, and I was ready to beg for he
r to take all of me.

  She turned back to me, her whole body looking numb.

  “What’s up, Cass?”

  Slowly, she reconnected with me. “That was the lead singer of the Libs, the band I opened for back in Oxford.”

  I could see she was replaying the conversation in her head, but I needed her to share it with me. She didn’t seem like she wanted to. “And?”

  “They’re touring right now, and they’re stopping in Kansas City at the end of the week. Shawn wants me to join them there. For me to meet their agent, and maybe see how I could fit in the tour.”

  “That sounds promising.” It did.

  It also stood in the way of whatever I was about to say.

  “The guy who does their opening act fell backstage and broke his leg, so they’re one man down.” She seemed to think that the chance given to her was no more than an accident.

  “It’s a good timing since you’re leaving for Kansas City tomorrow.” I hoped she’d miss the strain in my voice.

  She was back staring at the prairie. “I don’t know… I’m not sure.”

  “You don’t want to sing anymore?”

  “I do. I always will, but…”

  I cupped the side of her face and gently forced her to look at me. “What’s keeping you from doing it?”

  “Second chances…” I saw her swallowing hard. “Do you think Gran was wrong?”

  My heart skipped a beat but I didn’t answer. Cassie tried to escape my hold but I didn’t let her. My other hand caressed her jaw line and I bridged the narrow space between us. I was now towering over her and it felt like she had returned to my world.

  “You have to start living your life, Cass.” With me or without me. My palms tightened around her. I couldn’t let her go. Not now, not when we finally could be. I pulled her against me, my fingers buried in the mass of her hair, my lips resting in a kiss on her forehead. “Go to Kansas City. When you come back, I’ll be here. Waiting for you.”

  “But what about Lucas? And the adoption? I want to do the right thing this time.”

  “Cass, I want you. I want the three of us. But whatever you choose, I’ll go ahead with the adoption no matter what. With you or on my own. Lucas is never going back to foster care.”

  She shook her head, still struggling to believe me. In me. “And Lenor? You love her.”

  “She knows. I think she’s always known and I have to live with hurting her badly. But there’s only one way I want to love. Only one way you deserve to be loved. Fiercely.”

  And what I was about to do was my way of doing exactly that. I had to let her go. For now. Cassie had the right to make a choice. “You should go after your dream.”

  Her fingers now lay on my chest, covering my heart. When she talked her voice was like a shiver. “You and Lucas, you are my dream. I’m not going anywhere. I want you. I want Lu—“

  I took ownership of her lips, my hands palming her nape, holding her tight against me. She melted into me, and I felt whole again. I felt whole at last. When I broke the kiss, I saw the tear tracking down her cheek.

  “You need to go on this tour. This time, it’s not running away… it’s becoming who you’re meant to be. We can be together. We can be Lucas’s parents—“

  “—That’s the only thing that matters to me. You are the only thing that has ever mattered to me. You and Lucas.”

  “But you’re also a singer. It won’t be easy, but we can do this. I’ll be there every step of the way. I don’t want you to have only half of your dream.”

  “What about your own dreams? What about D.C., your career, that senator of yours?” I read confusion in her eyes. “I thought you didn’t want to have anything to do with Steep Hill anymore, that you wanted a new life far away from here, from me.”

  “Here or D.C., it doesn’t matter, because, despite all we’ve been through, you’re the only home I’ve ever had.” I had to make Cassie come back to me. “Do you remember what I told you the night we made love for the first time?” She gave me a tiny nod and a smile broke across her face. “It hasn’t changed, Cass. I choose you, now and forever.”

  What will happen to Cassie, Josh and Lucas? Find out in the sequel to No Reverse, out in the Winter 2014.

  Eleanor might have a second chance at true love when she goes and lives in Paris…Find out in You Turn, out in December 2013.

  And to see more of the sexy and mysterious Sam, dive into Oxford Shadows, the second book in the Oxford Trilogy until he gets his own story and his own girl! Hopefully in the Summer 2014.

  acknowledgements

  Thank You! Thank You! Thank You to…

  …Sara O’Connor at Gliterary Girls. You have been amazingly supportive and inspiring. I trust your judgment and I am looking forward to many more Skype calls until we meet one day under the Californian sun or the London rain (but my preference goes to LA!).

  … Claudia at PhatPuppyArt and Teresa Yeh at Teresa Yeh Photography for converting blurbs into the most amazing covers.

  … Chris Eboch. You have taught me so much.

  … Steve Parolini, for making the difference.

  … Juliette Sobanet and Tracy Meyer. My friends across the Pond with whom I share this crazy passion, Telling Stories.

  … My parents-in-law, Jenny and Trevor, who have been a fantastic “street team.”

  … My parents. Welcome on board!

  … My husband, Hector. Marriage can be hard work but there is no one else I’d rather work with.

  … And as always, all the readers and bloggers out there who have made my dreams come true. Sharing with you the stories in my head is the closest thing to magic!

  about the author

  Marion loves to share happy vibes, talk book crush, fictional boyfriends and sexual chemistry with like-minded people. And because she spends most of her days on her own deep inside her writing cave, you are welcome to come and say “hello” from time to time. Just to make sure she doesn’t sink into insanity.

  Her friends, family and arch-enemies (there are quite a few) will be forever grateful for your help.

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  Table of Contents

  prologue

  one

  two

  three

  four

  five

  six

  seven

  eight

  nine

  ten

  eleven

  twelve

  thirteen

  fourteen

  fifteen

  sixteen

  seventeen

  eighteen

  nineteen

  twenty

  twenty-one

  twenty-two

  twenty-three

  twenty-four

  twenty-five

  twenty-six

  twenty-seven

  twenty-eight

  twenty-nine

  thirty

  thirty-one

  thirty-two

  thirty-three

  thirty-four

  thirty-five

  thirty-six

  thirty-seven

  thirty-eight

  thirty-nine

  forty

  acknowledgements

  about the author

  Table of Contents

  prologue

  one

  two

  three

  four

  five

  six

  seven

  eight

  nine

  ten

  eleven

  twelve

  thirteen

  fourteen

  fifteen

  sixteen

  seventeen

  eighteen

  nineteen

  twenty

  twenty-one

  twenty-two

  twenty-three

  twenty-four

  twenty-five

  twenty-six

  twenty-seven

  twenty-eight

/>   twenty-nine

  thirty

  thirty-one

  thirty-two

  thirty-three

  thirty-four

  thirty-five

  thirty-six

  thirty-seven

  thirty-eight

  thirty-nine

  forty

  acknowledgements

  about the author

  Table of Contents

  prologue

  one

  two

  three

  four

  five

  six

  seven

  eight

  nine

  ten

  eleven

  twelve

  thirteen

  fourteen

  fifteen

  sixteen

  seventeen

  eighteen

  nineteen

  twenty

  twenty-one

  twenty-two

  twenty-three

  twenty-four

  twenty-five

  twenty-six

  twenty-seven

  twenty-eight

  twenty-nine

  thirty

  thirty-one

  thirty-two

  thirty-three

  thirty-four

  thirty-five

  thirty-six

  thirty-seven

  thirty-eight

  thirty-nine

  forty

  acknowledgements

  about the author