Love Rekindled
Copyright © 2016 by Michelle Lynn
Visit my website at www.michellelynnbooks.com
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No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without the written permission of the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events portrayed in this book are the product of the author’s imagination or are either fictitious or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
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Cover photo:
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Interior Design and Formatting:
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Table of Contents
Love Rekindled
Dedication
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Epilogue
About the Author
Don’t Let Go Excerpt
Acknowledgements
Books by Michelle Lynn
To my daughter
Always listen to your heart
Brad
I’M A CHEATER. THERE. I said it. Two years ago, I fell into a hole, and as fast as my fingers clawed to escape, the dirt continued to pile on me. I’m not saying it’s an excuse. I’m not even saying she should forgive me. Although, I hope she does. But I can’t live without her anymore. I tried. I found a girl and proposed to her, while imagining the delicate finger I slid the ring on belonged to someone else. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t go through with marrying anyone but her. For sure, I never thought I’d say this, but I’m nothing without her. She brings out the good in me. That’s why I’m here, in some small-ass town, to grovel my way back into her heart.
She’s different now, and I’m not referring to the disappearance of her bleached blonde hair back to her natural brown. I loved her as a blonde, but the dark suits her better. I wouldn’t care if she had rainbow-colored hair. I’m not sitting outside the hospital where she works, watching her walk to her car like some stalker, because she’s gorgeous. I’m here because of her heart and kindness. That’s what I’m fighting to get back. The package it comes in is just an added bonus.
Her ponytail swings back and forth as she laughs with what I hope is a co-worker, unless she’s turned lesbian in the last two years. She waves good-bye to the girl and throws her purse into the passenger seat of her Jetta. The car has a little more rust than it did back in the day, but it’s held up well. Still, it’s old and she deserves something newer.
She pulls out of her parking space, and my heart constricts as I watch her drive away from me again. I should duck down so she doesn’t see me, but my eyes won’t veer from her. The beat-up Jetta passes and my stomach clenches. My hand itches to yank the car handle open. My feet beg to disobey and run to her. I don’t have to, because she slams on the breaks and her eyes are locked on mine. Hope pours from mine while hers fume with anger.
She throws the car into park, thrusts the door open, and stomps directly to my door.
She bangs on the window and I jump. “Why are you here?” she screams through the pane.
As I lower the window, the smell of jasmine breezes in. Her perfume still has the capacity to calm me.
“Hey, Taylor.”
“Don’t ‘Hey’ me. Why are you here?” Her voice is sharp and cold, and nothing like I remember. Not sure why I wouldn’t expect less though.
“I thought we could talk.” My fingers move to the knob of my stereo to turn down the music.
“There’s nothing to talk about. Leave.”
She turns and walks back to her car.
I exit my truck and wrap my fingers around her wrist to stop her. She yanks it out of my grip.
“Don’t ever touch me,” she seethes, and I hold my hands up in the air.
“Taylor,” I whisper, and she twists around. The look of fury heavy in her eyes.
She ignores the fact that I’m talking and climbs back into her car. I try to slide through the sliver of the open door, but she squeezes me out and the door rattles shut.
I knock on the window, but she shifts the car into drive. Her hesitation as she sits and studies the steering wheel, tells me my cause isn’t lost. Maybe I have a chance. I knock again, softer this time. Her tear-filled eyes look up at me through the dirty glass, and my heart breaks for what I’ve done. If I affect her this much two years later, how bad did I destroy her then?
“Please,” I beg, and she closes her eyes. I watch her shallow breathing falter.
As though she had a lapse of judgment, she shakes her head and the pain in her eyes disappears, returning to resentment once more. “Go back to your fiancée, Brad.”
Her tires squeal before the rubber catches pavement. Within a minute, she’s left me—again.
“Fuck!” I lift my leg in the air as my toes ignite with heat. She fucking rolled over my foot.
The pain in my foot is nothing compared to the pain in my heart as I watch her taillights disappear around the corner.
Looking up at the Hospital sign, I figure there’s no better place to be. I limp to my truck to lock it up and grab my phone. My foot throbs as I step closer to the sliding doors, but Taylor Delaney occupies my mind with every excruciating inch. There has to be a way I can get her to talk to me and, hopefully, forgive me.
A half hour later, I’m finally in a room being fixed up by Edward Scissorhand’s sister. You’d think they’d have some protocol about the length of a nurse’s nails.
“Shit. My foot is still attached to my body?” I move the phone away from my ear, glaring down at the blonde. She shoots me a tight, insincere smile.
“Brad?” my sister, Piper, screams through the phone.
She’s going to laugh her ass off. I roll my eyes while thinking about being her and Tanner’s entertainment for the night and the two of them falling into a fit of laughter over my crushing situation.
“She ran over my foot when she left me in the parking lot.”
I hear the snickering she’s trying to mask.
“Go ahead and laugh,” I say.
“Are . . . are you okay?” she asks around another muffled sound, which I suspect is her attempt at concealing her amusement.
“I’m fine. Thank God it was my left foot. Ouch!”
I pull my foot back from the hands of Hannibal, and glare down at her. I decide I don’t need t
o talk to my sister, with her perfect life amongst my best friend. He’s living my dream of being the fast-track Olympic swimmer with the love of his life to snuggle up to every night.
“I gotta go. I’ll call you tonight.”
I hang up the phone and toss it on the bed behind me.
The blonde nurse continues bandaging now that I’ve given her my foot again.
“Seriously, wasn’t there a ’How to be kind and gentle’ class in nursing school?” My fingers rip the paper under me from the pain she’s inflicting.
“I’m barely touching you.” Her eyes narrow before she heads to the cabinet to get God knows what.
Looking at my foot, I notice it’s quickly turning black and blue.
The door opens and the scent of jasmine floats in. My head jerks up, and there she is, standing with her hands on her hips and her eyes on me.
“Taylor,” I murmur.
“You know this guy?” blonde nurse says, sneering at me.
“Brad.” Her voice is curt and to the point. Then she turns to Nurse Scissorhand. “I got this. Did he have x-rays yet?”
“Taylor, you were off a half hour ago.”
“It’s okay. We have unfinished business.” She tilts her head my way like I’m a bag of her weekly garbage. I’m not going to argue her point.
“But what about Em? It’s Halloween.” The nurse’s face glows with compassion as she pats Taylor’s arm.
Who the fuck is Em?
Taylor shakes her head, dismissing her immediately.
“It’s fine. This shouldn’t take long.” She points to my foot, and I notice her nails aren’t manicured anymore. Obviously, she got a memo that Scissorhand hadn’t. Actually, the purple nail polish is chipped and mostly worn away. Another thing that’s unlike her.
“If you say so. X-rays are complete and there’s no break. Dr. James said to put the boot on him for a few days. I printed off the instructions; they are on the counter. Have a great Halloween, and give Em a big hug, okay?” Miss Scissorhand wraps her arms around Taylor’s shoulders.
“Thanks, Olivia.”
She narrows her eyes at me with complete disgust, before exiting the room.
Taylor moves over to the counter to inspect my orders, disregarding that we’re in this room alone together. God, her occupying the same space as me is like playing in the State Championship my senior year. Her perfume, the way her hips sway back and forth, and her pouty bottom lip, make images of our time together flicker through my mind. She sits on the rolling chair and lays an ace bandage on her leg. Those fingers are gentle when she grabs my foot to prop it on her thigh.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbles, busying her hands with wrapping my injury.
“Don’t be,” I say, liking her touch much more than blondie’s.
“You’re right.” She looks up, and I wish there was more anger than hurt swimming in her eyes. “You deserved it.” She studies my foot once again.
“Well, you could be a little remorseful.” A smirk crosses my face, but she doesn’t bother to look at me.
“How is your fiancée, Brad?”
“She’s not my fiancée.”
“Oh, sorry, your wife?” Her voice is rough and completely affected, which only brings a smile to my lips.
“Nope. I called it off.”
This earns me a look from her warm blue eyes. Is that disbelief or a tinge of happiness I see staring back at me?
“Caught you with another woman?”
Then again, maybe not.
“No. Who’s Em?”
Her fingers tense and she stops wrapping my foot for a second.
“None of your concern.” She winds the ace bandage tighter.
“Okay. Are you going to a Halloween party or something?” I ask, and the bandage pinches my skin.
“Again, none of your concern.”
Finally, she’s done and slides a boot over my foot. “You’ll have to stay off it for a few days. Lucky it’s your left, so you can drive.”
“Taylor, can we go and talk somewhere? I’ll buy you a cup of coffee.” She busies herself at the counter, signing paperwork and throwing supplies in a bag.
“No, Brad, I can’t. I don’t know why you’re here, but please go back home.”
“I’m sorry,” I say, my throat constricting. “I made a mistake.”
“A mistake?” she screams, her fists clenching at her sides. She lowers her voice. “You cheated on me, Brad. I know we were having problems, but you slept with another girl. ‘Sorry’ doesn’t fix that.”
Her phone goes off, and she retrieves it from her pocket and quickly mutes it.
“I love you,” I confess, anything to keep her here with me. She has to know how horrible I feel. How bad I want to fix this.
“No, you love yourself, Brad. Always have.” She shoves the papers into the bag and hands it to me. “But if you care about me, even slightly, you’ll leave Roosevelt.”
“Taylor,” I call out, and her hand stills on the door handle. Her back rises and falls with a deep breath and for a fleeting moment I think she believes me.
“Please, Brad, leave,” she whispers and opens the door, leaving me on the hospital bed with the smell of jasmine surrounding me.
Taylor
My nostrils tickle and my throat’s scratchy as I walk away from Brad. He still has that cocky grin, but his brown mop of hair is a little neater nowadays. I had convinced myself that, since his swimming days were over for him, his muscular build would turn into a gut that hung over his pants. I’d wished at least, but through his tight Henley, I could still make out the V-shaped torso. For a second, my hands remembered what it felt like to give him massages after each meet. The way his hands would rub along my legs, igniting shivers in the wake of his touch as I worked on his muscles. The times when he’d flip us over and capture my lips until I was dazed and only wanted more of whatever he was offering.
As fast as I’m back in that bed with him, the blonde comes to mind. Her shocked face when I interrupted them. How she slinked off him, pulling the covers tight around her chest as his glassy eyes tried to focus on me. I saw the signs of his drug use a mile away. My sister’s addiction had taught me the telltale signals of a user. She trained me well. There I was again, trying to fix someone who didn’t want fixing. To cheat, that was an all-time low, even for Brad.
“Bye, Taylor, for good this time.” Dr. James waves and I smile. The fact that he let me come back and take care of Brad shows what a nice guy he is.
“I’m out. Em’s waiting.” I jog down the hallway as my phone rings again in my pocket.
I answer it quickly, my pace not slowing down. I can’t be late for tonight. “I got hung up. I’m on my way.”
“Hurry,” Sam says.
“I am, I am.” I hear Em in the background and my feet pick up speed a little more.
I click off and pull my keys out of my pocket, ready to unlock my door. By the time I’m safe in the car, I slam on the gas, noticing Brad made me late for the most important date in my life.
His Black SUV sits two spots down. A new car doesn’t mean a new him. All those nights when we made out in his Mustang after a night at the bar flash through my mind. The days when our hands refused to leave each other’s body. I shake my head at those happy memories, because what he did later negates anything good we had before.
When I met Brad, his reputation had preceded him. He slept with a lot of girls, and usually not the same one twice, but after he’d begged me to go out on a date with him, I thought maybe I was the girl who could change him. I could smack myself in the forehead for how stupid it all sounds. But for a brief time in our relationship, I felt like I was the magic girl who could tame the swimming stud, Brad Ashby. Until he didn’t make the Olympics and everything crumbled around us.
Swallowing the pain those moments still bring me, I concentrate on the good in my life as I breeze by downtown Roosevelt. I pass Carolle’s Tap, Bridger’s Diner, and the mayor’s office. Roosevelt is a town of
six thousand, but you’d never know it had that many people with the amount of gossip that’s whispered over the telephone lines and diner booths.
Unfortunately, the Delaney family is well-known in this town, but not in a good way. My sister has stolen something from practically everyone in town to support her drug habit, which Garrison Voight, the football quarterback, got her hooked on in high school. My dad’s the town drunk, falling off his stool at Carolle’s Tap most nights. Then I came home two years ago, and any self-respect our family might have had in Roosevelt was destroyed to bits. In Roosevelt’s eyes, an unwed girl who was pregnant with no father involvement—well, I became the poor girl considered a whore who couldn’t keep her legs shut. The sad part is I believed them.
I pull down my street as kids fill the sidewalks in costumes, seeking candy. Parent’s smiling faces and laughs echo in the cool, crisp air. Three houses down on the left is a red brick ranch-style home that contains two bedrooms and one bath. My car sputters to a stop, and I wait for kids to pass by our driveway before I pull all the way up behind the green pickup truck. My whole body buzzes with excitement because this is the best part of my day. Seeing Brad today might have thrown me for a loop and brought the resentment from years ago back to the surface, but it all goes away as I step through that back porch door.
“Hey,” I greet Sam, who’s stirring a pot on the stove. “Smells awesome.” My eyes search Em out.
“Chili.” He smiles up at me, continuing to stir.
Then I hear the squeal, and a second later, my girl rounds the corner, barreling right at me. Those soft chocolate brown eyes, which are a match to the ones I just looked into not twenty minutes ago, light up for me as her little arms wrap around my shoulders.
“My girl.” I swoop her up and twirl us around, loving the sound of her squeals.
“Mama,” she says, which I’m proud to say was her first word.
“Happy Halloween, baby.” I kiss her forehead.
The doorbell rings and she wiggles to escape my arms.
I let her down and follow her short, small footsteps to the door. She learned to walk at ten months and hasn’t looked back. I open the screen door to find a ninja turtle and a princess. Em grabs the candy from the bowl and puts one in each bag.
Love Rekindled (Love Surfaced) Page 1