The Second Chance (Inferno Falls Book Three)

by Aubrey Parker

  I can only imagine how he feels. I feel some of it too, but I was willing to end the stalemate years ago, whereas he was never able to let go. At any point, he could have reached out, and we could have begun again. But after a year of absence, I suppose he couldn’t face all that wasted time. He turned his head and allowed it to stretch into a second year. The feeling doubled.

  Ten years. Ten years we’ll never get back.

  It’s not enough to tell Grady that we can wipe the slate clean and start over. For a while, he’ll need to process. Pine for the time he threw away, as if that will turn back the clock. I’m ready now. Especially after that kiss, I desperately want him. But I’ll have to wait. Time is an enemy between us.

  In the room, it’s quiet. My door is closed. Grady insisted. He said he gets up throughout the night, and also that his cat might wander, might fall asleep on my chest and startle me. Right now, I’d welcome the company, the purr, the beating of another rapid heart.

  I feel hollow inside. Too lonely. I don’t think I’ve ever felt this way. Even when Grady left, I had anger to comfort me. Even when I was pregnant without the father to help, fear was my eternal companion. But now I have nothing but emptiness. I’m a shell in the dark, staring out at the moon.

  I turn sideways, still trying to get comfortable. I turn the other way. The sheets are soft, but they feel like creeper vines binding my arms and legs. No position works. I’m either sweating or cold. I can’t spread out or huddle. Every time I close my eyes, I feel like I’m in an abyss rather than restful, but the night will never pass with them open. I need to sleep but can’t. I’ve been trying. The past haunts me, and every time I try to relax, something else pops up in front of me like a boogeyman.

  I face the wall. My thrashing must unseat something on the end table, because I hear a tiny crack, like something tapping the floor. I ignore it. I’m the opposite of quiet in here because the silence is oppressive, like a heavy blanket above meant to smother me. I know what I’m doing; it’s like sighing in a conversation’s lull to show the other person my boredom. I think that part of me needs Grady, outside, to hear me being restless. Knowing I’m tormented too. Knowing that nobody is sleeping peacefully. Knowing I’m all alone, breathing long and low, my chest heavy, feeling like I’m brimming with tears that won’t quite come.

  I force myself to be still as I stay turned toward the wall. In the new silence, I can hear my heart’s every thumping beat, and every drag of my breath.

  I hear the minute crack of door leaving jamb, of that door parting the darkness.

  Something heavy settles on the bed behind me.

  I keep watching the wall without turning. My heart is pounding. I feel pressure on my hip, like the weight of a hand. My breath betrays me. I want to hold it, eyes open, feeling something in my chest that I can barely articulate. Every inch of me is alive, but I’m afraid to move.

  “I remember this bed,” says a voice.

  I blink. I hold myself stock still. I don’t even twitch, suddenly unsure if any of this is real, afraid to break the spell.

  “It feels so long ago. I remember this notch.” I feel a shifting as he reaches, likely to point to something I can’t see but know all too well. “I joked that you were keeping score. You know: notches on a bedpost. I was so nervous, I just sounded stupid. I don’t think either of us wanted to admit how afraid we were, the first time for both of us.”

  I hear a sigh. The weight behind me shifts back as he resettles.

  “I barely remember that kid, Maya. He was so full of life but so stupid. He didn’t think. He just reacted. I remember the way you used to tell me that I was cool in a way other guys weren’t. But I remember thinking I was a phony. I wasn’t ‘cool’ at all. I was scared out of my mind. Not on the surface maybe, but beneath. Even before my parents died, I never felt like I fit, and it only got worse after they were gone. I didn’t fit at school, didn’t fit outside of it. Maybe that came off as bad boy rebellion, but it looked different from the inside. I always felt untethered. Like I didn’t have a home base, even when I was here. I wasn’t comfortable anywhere. Not until that night. Here, in this bed. With you.”

  I won’t look up. Whatever he has to say, I won’t interrupt, even if it’s only with my gaze.

  But he doesn’t continue. Instead, I feel his hand shift on my hip. It slides up my body to my shoulder, to my neck. He delicately rearranges my hair, sweeping it back. Other than the sensations, he’s vanished. Silence is screaming. I can’t even hear his breath, as if he’s holding it.

  Then he’s lying behind me, his length along mine, his warm breath on my bared neck.

  “I was thinking, out there,” Grady says. “And I realized something terrible. Something I hope isn’t true, though I’m afraid it is.”

  Finally, I turn. I roll mostly onto my back then turn my head to meet his eyes. He looks so sad, it breaks my heart.

  “It’s something I don’t think I ever said to you,” Grady practically whispers. “Just one more thing I did wrong as a dumb kid.”

  My heart beats harder. I can feel him breaking. But I need to meet him halfway, so I don’t let him speak. I arch up to kiss him. He’s taken enough steps tonight. The next one is the hardest, but for now I know all I need to. Maybe all I can take.

  The kiss is softer than the first. Quiet. Hesitant, backed with latent passion waiting to explode. Every heartbeat spreads sensation to my lips, to our slowly intertwining hands. We’re both holding back. In the dead-silent room, I hear every little wet sound we make as we come together and break apart. As we shift, breathe, and move our hands ever so slightly. I feel like there’s a bomb in my chest. I can sense the heat coming off of Grady, like he’s feeling the same.

  Every movement is soft and slow but barely controlled.

  We kiss. And kiss. And kiss.

  Grady strips the covers out of the way. I sleep in a tee and little shorts. His hand wanders under my cotton top. His touch, after all this waiting, is electric. I can barely take the sensation of his fingers on my bare skin, crawling higher. He cups my breast, and when he finds my nipple, my eyes close and I exhale, bending into his neck.

  He pulls my shirt higher, baring me to the room. He’s a ghost of himself in the moonlight. The absence of visuals intensifies my other senses.

  His thumb rolls across my hard nipple, stippling my skin with gooseflesh. I feel the way my lips, wet with his affection, cool as his breath brushes them.

  My nose flares as I curl against him, inhaling his long-forgotten scent.

  I hear the sounds of our kisses. I hear the rhythm of his desperate breath by my face, my neck. I can even hear the way his shirt rustles as my own hands explore, the sliding noises as his hand turns south and runs beneath the elastic of my shorts.

  And I can taste him on my lips. When I kiss him, I remember the flavor of his affection. I move down his neck, tasting his skin’s slight salty tang.

  Everything I’ve missed.

  Everything, I suspect, I’ve spent the intervening years trying to find again.

  He slips my shirt away, and I free Grady of his. He has the lean, hard feel of someone who’s lived by his wits. My hands explore. He’s firm flesh and moving muscle. I want to touch, and touch, and touch.

  As his mouth moves to my chest, I tilt my head back and exhale a decade’s heaving weight. He kisses down my middle; I’m sighing into the emptiness that’s been my only friend. His fingers hook under my waistband, and a second later I’m totally bare, vulnerable as a virgin. I feel the movement of the room’s air, his motions a breeze as he moves around me.

  It’s like I’ve never been touched.

  It’s like we’re right back where we left off, with no time lost between us.

  I remember every inch of him. His hands and mouth feel so right on me, it’s like we never parted. We’re a key in a lock, each body remembering the other. I part my legs a little, urging his attention where I need it most. But my hands wander as well, and soon my fingers are benea
th his unzipped jeans, wrapping his rock-hard shaft.

  I tell myself to go slow, to make it last. But at the same time my own body’s betraying me. I’m sliding around on the bed, on my back, my hips rising and undulating as his hand lingers on my belly. I want him lower. If he doesn’t touch me soon, I’ll die.

  I close my eyes as Grady kisses down my neck and up, gently sweeping my hair away to nibble my ear. Nobody else has ever done that to me, and my body responds as if he’s entered a password. This is Grady, it cries out, feeling his delicious welcome. This is Grady beside you, after all these years of nothing.

  I slide his pants away, my hand shamelessly tugging his cock, unable to keep things slow. The fervor of his kisses increases, and I feel him throb in my hand, the tip already leaking. My legs part farther, and finally his hand moves down to find my desperate sex. I want him inside me, and he obliges, his fingers painting portraits in my flowing wetness.

  I’m fully on my back, my knees sighing to the side. I feel an orgasm already building as his fingers trail upward across my clit. But for almost ten years I’ve been coming without Grady inside me, but I won’t again, maybe never, ever again.

  I take his hand and pull it away. My pussy screams protest, but a second later I’m shoving Grady down, rolling us over, sliding down his body to take him in my mouth.

  He feels so good between my lips. On my tongue. I can tell he’s already close too, and I don’t want him finishing without me. But we’ve been apart too long, and something in me needs to re-experience every inch of the man whose touch I’ve missed for so long.

  I only take a minute to lick and suck his length because I can’t remain untouched. He’s running his hands through my hair, feverishly grabbing for my hanging breasts. My sex pulses with need. He exhales harder, nearing an immediate peak, and I slide along him, his wet cock drawing a line of my own saliva down my chest. I stop when the line does, when my lips are kissing his shaft longwise as it lays on his chest.

  I come up slightly then reach down to slide him inside me.

  In the scant moonlight, I watch Grady’s eyes close as he enters my wetness. I almost can’t take the sensation. It’s not just sexual. It’s not just about the building climax I’m barely keeping at bay; this is the potent force of long-forgotten years. My hands are on his chest, savoring every detail. When I lean down to kiss him and his hands cup my breasts, I’m hopelessly trying to register every bit of minutia as it’s all lost in the soup of sensation. My head is spinning as my first orgasm builds, as Grady’s shaft moves into and out of me. My heaving breaths push my tits into his hands.

  And I love him.

  And I love this man, and my heart missed him so much.

  As fast as I feel ready to climax, I’m sure I’ll be able to come twice. But the wait must have the same effect on Grady because despite the lasting power I remember, he’s already moving faster, gripping me like he’s close. I sigh into it and let go as he thrashes on the sheets beneath me, our orgasms perfectly synchronized. I grip his cock with my muscles as he throbs into me. I call out, heedless of who might hear, and he gives this helpless little noise as he makes his final, spastic thrusts. Then I lie down, my bare chest on his, and we breathe into each other as if we were a single body. My heart hammers. I can feel his thumping against me, like a twin.

  “I shouldn’t stay for long,” he says as we roll to the side, looking toward the guest room’s door and his couch beyond.

  “Then stay for just a while,” I say, hugging him breathlessly into me as if I’ll never let go.

  CHAPTER 32

  Maya

  Serenity doesn’t last long.

  I wake the next morning to three texts from Chadd. I have no idea what’s wrong with this asshole. I haven’t responded to him since we hooked up, and now he’s tormenting me.

  I definitely don’t want him anymore. But I hate that anymore is part of my thought and can’t believe, in retrospect, that I wanted him at all. Now that I’ve had a dose of Grady, something inside me has snapped back to where it was maybe supposed to be all along. With those eyes, what I did with Chadd — and, really, many others before him — is so repugnant it makes me want to hide. And really, one of the emotions I feel, looking at Chadd’s texts, is pity. It’s not sexy at all to pity a guy, and for that, I guess I’m happy. I don’t want to be tempted, and I’m not. But still the pity is there, because confident sounding or not, the amount of times he’s tried for an encore seems pathetic. And on top of it all, it’s not even hard to understand. I’ve been jilted before. Now I’m jilting this man because it’s not like I never gave him the time of day. I succumbed while weak — it’s not outrageous that he’d think I might be game for round two.

  I delete Chadd’s texts while my eyes tick around for who might have seen. I forgot I left the phone charging in the kitchen before our sleeping arrangements were decided, and anyone standing beside it when those texts came in might have seen them on the lock screen. It was maybe fifty feet from where Grady spent the night. I happen to know he has the same phone I do. He could have come in for coffee, seen it, and unplugged it in a forgetful moment. He’d have seen plenty, plain as day …

  But I won’t think about that because it didn’t happen. I was up first; I tiptoed around the back way from the guest room to the kitchen so I wouldn’t disturb Grady in the living room. My heartbeat definitely sped up when I saw what was waiting and what might easily have been seen. It may have been a near-miss, but it was a miss.

  And yet I still can’t stop my skin from crawling.

  I kind of wish I was just being harassed. Women get harassed all the time. By my definition, harassment is a guy showering a girl with unwanted attention that she’s in no way interested in. I guess that’s me right now, but my brain gives Chadd a loophole. This isn’t harassment in my head; this is simple pursuit. I fed a stray dog, and it’s my own damned fault that he keeps sniffing around for scraps.

  I’m being wooed, not harassed. It’s twisted and he won’t take a hint, but it’s not like I’m psychologically healthy.

  I want to erase the past. Last night, before we made love, Grady talked to me about his seventeen-year-old self as if that kid had been an entirely different person than he is now. That’s how I feel about younger me, but younger Maya, who was so stupid and shortsighted and different from the woman I am now, existed just a week ago. But I’m no longer her. She had sex with a man in the bathroom. I’d never do anything like that, and I wish Chadd would get it through his head.

  I’m not deluding myself this time. In the past, I’d want a man’s advances, even while I brushed them away. I’d tell myself I didn’t want these texts while wanting him if the time was right. That’s not how it is now. I never want to see Chadd again.

  (Or Tommy Finch.)

  The last is like a voice whispered in my ear, as if reminding me. And my brain says, Oh yes, of course. I forgot about that guy, who’s not a problem at all.

  Grady’s arms wrap me from behind as I’m still futzing with my phone. I’m almost shocked enough to drop it. I hope Grady takes my rapid pulse for simple surprise rather than guilt. I sure hope he doesn’t think it’s strange, the way I immediately pocket my phone, which had three incriminating texts just sixty seconds ago — messages he’d clearly have seen if he’d approached me from behind a minute earlier.

  “Good morning.” His face has grown stubble, and it’s rough against my cheek, but I don’t mind. There’s nothing I mind about Grady right now. I’ll take all of him, no matter his form … if he’ll have me, and never uncovers the secrets and regrets I don’t want to reveal.

  He’s just now, after nine and a half years, willing to move past the idea of me and Tommy. And because he’s not naive, he must be willing to move past the idea of the lovers he assumes I’ve had in the meantime.

  But if he only knew. If he only knew what he was forgiving.

  I force myself to wish him a good morning back, but I can’t meet his eyes. Not yet. Not after wha
t we finally shared again last night, and the horrible weight at the bottom of my heart this morning.

  “Did you sleep well?”

  “Well enough, thanks,” I say, trying to keep my voice steady as my phone vibrates in my pocket. “You?”

  “Not so great.”

  I turn. I’m sure, suddenly, that he’s going to say “We need to talk.”

  But Grady smiles instead. “I kept thinking about you.”

  I feel undeserving. Unworthy. Ashamed that he’d say such a thing to someone like me.

  “Oh.”

  He reaches past me for the brewing coffee then pulls two cups from the cupboard. Without asking, he tips a packet of Equal into the cup. Not only does he automatically know the little things about me like how I prefer my coffee; he even knows, after just a few visits, where things are in my parents’ kitchen.

  “I should be mad at you, you know,” he says.

  “Oh?”

  “I had a whole trip planned.”

  “A trip?” I feel like an idiot, giving him these little, unsatisfying responses. But I have no context, and feel like I’m tottering atop an uncertain pedestal.

  “I was on my way to Alaska.”

  “‘Was’?” Damn me. I sound like a parrot.

  Grady smiles that sexy, disobedient smile that used to irritate our high school teachers so much. “I’m reconsidering those plans.”

  I feel something catch in my chest. The moment hangs for a second like a ball at the top of its arc. Does this mean what I think it is?

  And then: I’m happy if it does, right?

  I’m not at all conflicted, not at all feeling caught?

  My phone, in my pocket, buzzes again, reminding me of the text I haven’t acknowledged. It’s a tap on my shoulder, and I can practically hear the voice of sense whispering in my ear.

  Good God, girl. Don’t let him stay in Inferno Falls with you. The water here is filthy with your misdeeds. The two of you will be a ticking bomb, just waiting for the moment you’re together and run into the wrong person, in the wrong place, at the wrong time.