When Lightning Strikes (The Storm Inside Book 3)

by Alexis Anne

  “So there’s no chance of you changing your mind one day? Taking things more seriously?”

  “Why do you care? You know how I feel about guys. I don’t want another relationship. This makes me happy, be happy for me. Please.”

  “Of course,” I replied just as our food arrived.

  I was grateful for the distraction because I was freaking out over the last thing Grace said.

  You know how I feel about guys. I don’t want another relationship.

  She’d always reminded me of Greg—they had the same crass attitude toward sex and relationships—and right now it was like she was a mirror image of him.

  I’d known he was trying to be something he wasn’t when he started dating me. He was fundamentally flawed and permanently scarred. But he’d genuinely wanted to give us a try and I was so insanely head over heels for him that I jumped in blind with both feet.

  I knew the way he left me was a possibility, but it still shook me to my core when it happened. Things between us were so good. I felt more real and alive with him than I’d ever felt before. Now that he was gone I realized how long I’d let my life drift—how empty I’d allowed it to be. For a few brief months everything was different.

  And now it was the empty again.

  I’d put my life and future in the hands of someone who couldn’t handle it. That was my mistake, but I wasn’t going to make it again.

  Asking him to choose between me and his past was a fundamental flaw. No matter how much he cared about me, he was permanently attached to an accident neither of us could change.

  I’d asked him for the impossible and expected too much. In a way, I felt horrible for asking him to be something he wasn’t. I knew how that felt and I never wanted to do that anyone else.

  “What are you thinking so hard about over there?” Grace eyed me.

  “You’ve inspired me, Grace. I need to make some changes.”

  Her eyebrows shot up. “What kinds of changes?”

  I cut into my burrito with a renewed appetite. “All kinds of changes. Starting with a new job. Then I think we need to talk hobbies. I don’t have any…I think it’s time to change that.”

  “Anything else?” she asked. “Is this an early mid-life crisis?”

  I shook my head. “Nope. This is me finally taking control of my life. You’ve had it right all along. Life is to be enjoyed and I spend too much of it worrying and trying to fit in. I want a boy toy, I want a new job, and I want a hobby. Preferably something exciting.” I shoved a forkful into my mouth.

  Grace stared at me with her mouth hanging open. “I’m all for the job change and the hobby…I think. But the boy toy? You?”

  I nodded. I needed to get Greg Hamilton out of my system and I wanted to have fun. Why not combine the two? “Yep. I’m done with relationships.” If I couldn’t be happy being me, as me, and nothing but me, then I was never going to be happy.

  No epic love from any man could give me that. It was something that had to come from me.

  *****

  “Don’t get me wrong, you’re perfect, Marie. I just want to know why you’re leaving Bancroft Sports.” Isaiah Long was the vice president of the Tampa Bay Lightning—one of only two professional hockey teams in Florida and only a handful in the entire southeast. We were having a quiet lunchtime interview at a café between the rink and my offices.

  It was my third such lunch this week.

  I quietly put the word out with my tightest local connections, hoping to stay in Tampa. I’d already met with the Bucs and the Rays, and next week I was stepping outside sports altogether with a string of interviews at marketing and advertising firms. I wanted to stay in sports since it was an industry I knew so well, but I also wanted to keep my options open in case Edward decided to make things difficult.

  I smiled at Isaiah. I really liked him and the way he ran things. I could be a good fit. “As I’m sure you are aware, sometimes working with family comes with added pressures.”

  He chuckled and tossed his napkin on the table. “Family or Edward? Because word on the street is that working for Edward comes with added pressures, so I can only imagine what it would be like to add family connections on top of that.”

  He was a very good looking man. Light blue eyes, gorgeous dark hair, nice body, and a fantastic light grey suit. Working for him would come with the side benefit of eye candy.

  I leaned in. “Let’s just say that working for Edward has prepared me for any and all high-pressure situations.”

  Isaiah grinned and leaned forward, too. We were only inches apart. “I think we would be lucky to have you. I just worry we won’t be able to pay you what you want. Or keep you busy enough.”

  Was there extra meaning behind those words? Did his voice drop a seductive octave? I think it did. It made my heart race—just a little. “Well, for one, I expect my salary to match the position. And for two, I would appreciate a slower pace for a while. I have a daughter entering high school.”

  “Natalie’s a good kid. But yeah, high school is a rough four years to keep up with. I’ll run your resume up the flag pole, but I can tell you now, the job is yours if you want it. It doesn’t start until hockey season ends, so you’ll have plenty of time to transition.”

  A little thrill of excitement ran through me. It was a nice ego boost to hear that other companies wanted me. A really nice ego boost.

  “Thank you very much, Isaiah.” I stood up and shook his hand, noticing how he gripped my hand and lingered longer than necessary. It felt wonderful and awful all at the same time. It was exactly the kind of attention I wanted—it was just coming from the wrong man.

  I hated that I still craved Greg’s attention.

  I slipped outside and walked back to the office. The last two weeks had been filled with a nonstop stream of excitement. When I told Grace I wanted to find hobbies and have fun, I meant it. Not having Natalie around was incentive for me to go buck wild. I wanted to get as much of it out of my system while she was gone.

  I went to a book club, but the group wasn’t for me.

  I tried parasailing. It was fun, but not exactly something I’d be doing every week.

  I tried paddle boarding, snorkeling, and wind surfing.

  Next I tried salsa dancing, but it only made me miss Greg. Apparently drinks and clubs now made me think of him and only him. Bastard.

  Then I tried joining a running group and things started to click. I could go as often as I liked, the mix of people changed daily, I got in a workout and felt good about myself, and most of the people were really fun. I even went out and had drinks with them on Saturday afternoon. A few of them were training for an obstacle race and I decided to join them. It was the first time I’d met a group of people outside of work that I could have a fun, casual relationship with.

  It was a start.

  Mixed in with that were two blind dates. One setup by Grace, and one from a new friend in the run club. Both were fine men and I had fun, but in both cases I couldn’t bring myself to hold their hands, let alone kiss them. Sex was completely off the table.

  I don’t know what drugs I was taking when I thought I could have a fling. It wasn’t who I was—not even when I did it with Greg. He was special and I think I knew that from the very start. I might have done things unconventionally with him, but my heart and head were always in the right place.

  The big dumb lug.

  It was warm and the sun was bright so I had a layer of sweat going by the time I got back to the office. I grabbed a water and flopped onto my office couch with an iPad full of work. I even took off my heels and put my feet up.

  Edward would blow a gasket if he could see me.

  I smiled at that.

  But my mind wasn’t on my work. It kept drifting back to the one person I didn’t want to think about. What was he doing? Was he really working on himself or had he just gotten scared?

  And, most importantly, why did he feel so strongly that he needed to do it on his own?

  Di
d it matter? We weren’t together and he wasn’t my problem anymore. I was my problem and I was working on me—which was exactly what I was going to keep on doing until I felt happy from my toes to my hair.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  My trip back was a blur. The emotions were intense and kind of clouded over everything, but there was one conversation in particular that made me really stop and understand.

  I was in the kitchen with Kathleen, Jenn’s mom. Her grandkids were running around out back and everyone else was still at work. So it was just me and the woman I’d spent nearly every afternoon with as a kid.

  “Cookie?” she asked.

  “As if that’s even a question,” I scoffed and held out my flowery china plate for the warm chocolate chip cookie. “But I drink coffee with my cookies now, instead of chocolate milk.”

  She grinned and pulled the coffee pot out. “I hear the coffee is a bit stronger down in Tampa.”

  “Yeah,” I chuckled, “I do have a thing for the café con leche. It’ll knock you on your ass.”

  She raised her eyebrow.

  I swallowed. “Sorry, ma’am.”

  “Mmmm hmmmm….”

  “You know I learned to swear from you, right?”

  She sucked in a breath. “You did no such thing. I never swear.”

  This was always one of my favorite things about Kathleen. She swore like a sailor in private, but pretended she didn’t know a single curse word in public. Everyone was in on it. It was one of her many charms.

  She poured the steaming black liquid in my matching flowery teacup. “Cream? Sugar?”

  “Just a sprinkle of sugar.”

  She set the pot on a potholder and sat down across from me. “Do you still do this?”

  I happily chewed my first bite of cookie before answering. They tasted just like I remembered. “Every afternoon.”

  She smiled warmly, like that was good news. We nibbled and sipped in silence for a minute or two, and I got the feeling she was working up to something.

  “How long did you work for Tom?” she finally asked.

  I’d told them bits and pieces, but never really dug into the nitty gritty details of my life since I left.

  “About twelve years.”

  “Did you get to travel?”

  I shrugged, feeling embarrassed or shy, or something. Definitely weird. “A little. Germany, London, hopped around Europe a bit. Mostly I stuck to work.”

  She nodded slowly and took a slow sip of her coffee. Her eyes flicked out the windows to check on the kids and then back to me.

  “Why now?” she asked.

  I raised my eyebrows.

  “Why now?” she repeated. “After all these years of avoiding us, why did you suddenly decide to come home?”

  I set my cup down and stared at the black liquid. Sometimes the words flowed soft and easy, but sometimes they got bottled up behind something and I had trouble getting them out. Right then, every word felt like a struggle.

  “It was time?”

  She shook her head. “It’s been time for a very long time. Something made you finally get on that plane and come home, and I have a feeling it’s because someone woke you up.”

  I felt my face grow hot as my heart started pounding in my chest. I swallowed and took a slow, deep breath. “Jake and I became friends for a reason. The minute I saw him I knew he’d lost someone, too. You can just see that emptiness in people like us. I didn’t know at the time we actually had very different stories. Jake had walked away from the woman he loved so he could self-destruct on his own. He didn’t want to take her down with him.”

  Kathleen set her cup down and folded her hands in her lap, waiting for me to get to the point.

  “I think we did the same thing for the same reason—we both wanted to fall apart somewhere we wouldn’t hurt anyone else.” I shook my head, feeling the familiar panic sweep through me. “I couldn’t hurt anyone else. Not ever again. So I went as far away as I could.”

  Her lips turned down. “You self destructed?”

  I nodded quickly. “And then I put myself back together. We both did. The difference was, though, that Jake had someone he wanted to be a better man for. I watched him struggle to build himself up into a man he found worthy, and then I watched him hesitate. He was so bogged down in the details of making amends and worrying about wrongs, that he couldn’t reach out and ask for the life he wanted. The life we all knew he deserved. So I opened the door for him. I went to Tampa, opened the door, and all he had to do was walk through it. He just had to decide: did he want to ask for the life he wanted, or did he want to keep debating if he was worthy of it.”

  Kathleen’s eyes fell to the table and she fiddled with her teacup. “Have you found someone that makes you want to be a better man?”

  The question hung in the air like a lead balloon. It was the heaviest air I’ve ever breathed in. It stung my lungs and made my throat burn. Or maybe those were the tears I was trying to hold back.

  “Yes.”

  Kathleen nodded quickly and wiped a tear off her cheek. Then she stared out the window for a while before taking a long, deep breath and letting it out. “It was a funny thing…watching you two fall in love at the age of five. Your mom and I talked about it all the time. Would you wind up married, or best friends?”

  I smiled.

  “We thought for sure you’d be friends after the Great Cooties Incident. You were eight, and one day you two got off the bus and no longer loved each other. Jenn thought you were gross, and you insisted on giving yourself a cootie shot before you’d walk in my door.”

  I laughed, and so did she. Those were good memories.

  “But then puberty hit and you both had stars in your eyes again. It’s so hard to tell your daughter to be careful around her best friend. You two were inseparable, but we didn’t want you jumping into things before you were ready. But you were good kids. You’d been together forever. You seemed to think you had forever, too.”

  And now my chest ached again.

  Forever.

  It hadn’t lasted very long.

  I wiped away a tear and so did Kathleen. This was heavy shit.

  “I want to ask you a question, Greg. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to, but I’m going to ask it anyway.”

  I nodded.

  “What have you done with your life? Have you done anything meaningful with it?”

  That stung and yet, felt relieving at the same time. “I helped my best friend get his life back. That was pretty damn meaningful.”

  “To them. Absolutely.”

  “I’ve built one helluva company.”

  She smiled and nodded. “And for you?”

  I cleared my throat and drank some more coffee.

  “You know it’s interesting,” she said. “Mrs. Thompson moved in next door just about a year ago. I’d never met her before the day the moving trucks arrived. We had her over for dinner, as you do. Invited her to breakfast once or twice. I’ve lent her sugar and she’s sent over eggs. We’ve gotten to know each other as well as two people who aren’t very similar can. But you know what?”

  She leaned in and pushed the plate of cookies towards me.

  I took one and cocked an eyebrow. “What?”

  “She knows I bake a fresh batch of chocolate chip cookies every week because they were Jenn’s favorite. She knows I still listen to Hootie and the Blowfish because they made Jenn giggle, and because of that, I now listen to Darius Rucker. She knows I give everyone a book for Christmas—relative or not—because Jenn loved books and the written word more than anything else. This woman I barely know, knows exactly who my daughter was. Does anyone in your life know why you eat chocolate chip cookies in the afternoon?”

  I stared at the cookie in my hand and felt my heart breaking. Natalie knew I loved my cookies—but I’d never once told her why. We bantered about books, but she had no idea why I’d read so many. It would have been so easy to share all of that, but I never did. Not with an
yone.

  “Those kids out there?” Kathleen turned slightly in her chair and pointed outside to Jenny and Caleb. “They have afternoon cookies just like you and Jenn did. They read books, just like you did. They giggle to Hootie and the Blowfish. They know who Jenny is named after and how much she means to us. She’s not gone, Greg. She’s not here with us anymore, but she’s not gone.”

  Being back in this kitchen, sitting at this table with cookies in front of me, and kids playing outside, made me realize how much I missed this part of myself. I’d been hiding from it, pretending it didn’t exist, even though it was a huge part of who I was. Despite the heavy conversation, all I felt sitting at that table was relief. I didn’t have to hide these memories anymore, or pretend this part of my life never happened.

  “I see that now,” I finally said.

  Kathleen nodded. “I didn’t stop being a mother the day Jenn died. I’m still her mother, and I still needed to be Jessica’s mother. The world will never make sense without Jenn in it, but it still goes on. I am heartbroken and I still grieve, but I’m also still a wife and a mother, and now—because life keeps going—a grandmother. I wouldn’t have those beautiful babies out there if I’d stopped living. And the thing Greg? About life? It really only makes sense if it has a purpose. You need to have a reason to get out of bed everyday, you need to be doing something that matters with your life. In doing so, we make our own lives matter, but we also honor those we’ve loved.”

  I was too choked up to speak. Kathleen had been my second mother and voice of reason for so many years. I don’t know why I expected anything less now. She was probably the strongest, wisest woman I’d ever met. This only confirmed it.

  And I knew she was right. I’d run, I’d mourned, I’d hid…and none of it had felt right. That was why I was still so twisted and torn—I’d finally come to terms with the idea I couldn’t reverse time and bring Jenn back, but I hadn’t figured out how to bring her life the meaning and purpose I wanted to honor it with. She was a remarkable person and I knew she deserved so much more than my locked away memories.