LAST CHANCE
TO
FALL
A NOVEL BY
KELSEY KINGSLEY
COPYRIGHT
© 2018 Kelsey Kingsley
All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced in any form without permission from the publisher, except as permitted by U.S. copyright law. For permissions contact:
[email protected]
Cover: Danny Manzella
Editor: Jessica Blaikie
For Keegan—
Because Sean loves plums.
TABLE OF CONTENTS |
TITLE
COPYRIGHT
DEDICATION
A LETTER FROM ME TO YOU |
PROLOGUE |
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 |
EPILOGUE |
A NOTE FROM ME TO YOU |
SNEAK PEEK
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS |
ABOUT THE AUTHOR |
OTHER BOOKS from KELSEY KINGSLEY |
A LETTER FROM ME TO YOU |
Dear Reader,
Let’s sit together and chat for a second, shall we? Just a second, I promise. It won’t be long.
I wrote One Night to Fall in October of 2017. It came to me on the freakin’ toilet, of all places, and after having a dream about it, I banged out the first draft in less than a week. When I wrote that book, I had absolutely no idea that it would eventually be a series. I had absolutely no clue that I was going to be here several months later, releasing a book about the third, more sensitive brother.
And that’s honestly a funny thing, because the third, more sensitive brother just so happens to be my favorite of the three. I know, I know … we’re not supposed to pick our favorite children, and each one means the absolute world to me. Each one contains pieces of me, in one way or another, but this one, my Seanie … he’s special.
Because, see, while Patrick Kinney is more or less perfect in every way (that Irish bastard) and Ryan Kinney is the softie with the rock-solid exterior, Sean Kinney represents a part that resides in every single one of us. You know the one. It’s that little part of us that’s afraid to let a moment to slip through our fingers. The part of us that feels compelled to consult Dr. Google whenever we have a headache. The part that makes us see things from the corner of our eye whenever we have to go into the basement after midnight.
Wait, what? That’s just me?
Well, whatever. You get my point.
Sean represents our fear of the unknown, of the what if’s. He represents the little piece of us that’s just dying to be set free but we’re too fucking scared of what could happen if we just let it out. Because sometimes, living is scary. Sometimes, it’s the scariest thing of all.
And sometimes, we have to ask ourselves, “What would you do if you weren’t afraid?”
And do it.
Sincerely,
Kelsey
PROLOGUE |
Secretaries & Fires
All I wanted was a mattress.
I hadn’t asked to walk in on Jack, pounding his red-headed secretary into our bed. The bed we had made ours. The bed we had picked out together—bounding from one mattress to the next, trying them on for size, until one felt just right. The bed we had sex in once upon a time. Safe sex. Missionary. Jack wasn’t one for excitement, but neither was I, and it worked; it was comfortable.
Maybe that was the problem.
Hell, there were a lot of problems. The lack of passion. The lack of conversation. The boredom. The nightly, mundane “what do you want to watch” debates as we flipped through three-hundred TV channels until one of us decided there was nothing on, and off to bed we went. He rolled one way, I rolled the other.
But, it’s what I had wanted, wasn’t it? I told myself this, reminded myself relentlessly, but that never made our life together any easier.
I actually remember sitting at the table one morning after he had left for work, just drifting off into the deluge of thoughts I found myself stuck in on a more and more frequent basis as the years passed: What if I never feel happy with him?
Really, I should’ve seen the affair coming. I mean … Honestly! He had been staying later and later at the office, had missed dinner too many times, and well, the thing was, I hadn’t particularly minded all that much. I had begun to enjoy that little taste of freedom, despite how much I hadn’t really wanted that freedom to begin with.
But even still, I hadn’t asked to walk in on him fucking her.
I would have settled for a breakup over dinner. I would have been fine with the “spur of the moment” shouting match that we both would have seen coming. But watching him, hearing their squelching noises in our bed …
Yeah, I hadn’t asked for that. I could’ve done without that.
Then, to add insult to injury, he treated her as the victim. He shielded and protected her, as they collected their clothes. He kept his arm around her as they diverted their eyes and walked right past me. I wanted to scream at him that I was the victim here, I was the one being hurt.
Except … I wasn’t.
I was relieved.
But still, that bed … I couldn’t look at the thing. I knew I couldn’t sleep in it when I had seen them, their skin slapping together with each rhythmic thrust, and so I pushed it out the window. Those floor-length windows that I had once loved so much had finally come in handy for something. And then, when it was lying in the backyard, it didn’t seem good enough.
So, I set it on fire.
I watched the flames lick the mid-afternoon May sky, wondering what had happened to me. Wondering what had possessed me to do something so insane. Wondering why he had to cheat on me, wondering why he couldn’t just break up with me first, wondering why it had to be his fucking secretary—wasn’t it always the fucking secretary?
I got the fire extinguisher, just where I had made sure it always was—just in case. Just in case of a dinner accident. Just in case I set a mattress on fire.
I put the flames out, leaving behind the smoke and ashes of the bed we had sex in—the bed they had sex in. The bed he ended us in.
And I cried.
Because relationships weren’t safe.
Because relationships were unpredictable.
They were storms, hurricanes, and earthquakes, and they were more painful than cancer.
I found his platinum Visa card, and ordered the most expensive mattress I could find from the closest store. I took a shower, cried some more, and headed down to Harold’s a few minutes before closing. Because I had forgotten some stores close early on Sundays.
All I wanted was a mattress.
I never wanted to be spending a night with a tall, blonde, blue-eyed Irish guy named Sean. I never wanted to be making plans with him. I never wanted to walk without apprehension to the door of his apartment. I never wanted to, one day later, meet his equally tall, equally attractive brothers, and I never wanted to be standing in the kitchen of his childhood home with his mother and sisters-in-law.
But there I was … and all I wanted was a goddamn mattress.
CHAPTER ONE |
Cuties & Lap Dances
Saturday
“A lap dance for my friend over here!”
My eyes slid from their comfortable spot on the corner of the stage to glare at Jules, my best friend and current arch-neme
sis. “J,” I hissed under my breath and through my teeth, as though the one little warning would stop him from pushing the stripper onto my lap.
“Bro, it’s my bachelor party, and you’re the only one here,” he countered with a grin, reminding me for the umpteenth time that his other groomsmen lived out of state. “Someone’s gotta get lucky tonight, and if it can’t be me, it has to be you.”
“It really doesn’t have to be—”
But there she was, sex, on mile-long legs.
“Hey cutie,” the mocha-skinned girl purred into my ear, fingernails grazing over my shoulder. One long leg stepped between my knees, nudging them apart, and with a sigh, I begrudgingly complied. She turned her back to me, the stereotypical butterfly tattoo at the dip just above her shapely arse in full view as she lowered herself to my lap. Rotating. Grinding. Arousing. A very drunk Jules whooped from beside me, clapping his hand on my shoulder, and with my dick strained painfully inside my jeans, I cursed physical stimulation and the inability to control myself when subjected to it.
She turned to face me, and she dropped again. Her arms around my neck, her breasts in my face. My fingers drumming, drumming, drumming against the table. The music bumped and thumped in my ears, through the legs of the chair, and I bit the inside of my cheek. My fingers itched to grab her hips, to pull her down to me, to keep her there until I was thoroughly finished and satisfied.
“The song is just about over, cutie,” she said, using the pet name again. It was probably her signature, I told myself—what she called all the guys. But she had used it twice with me, and I hummed with the burning desire to have someone. Because it had been, how long? A few years?
And it wasn’t just the sex. I mean, sure, there was certainly that; a man is a man is a man, and a man needs to have that physical connection about as bad as he needs to breathe. But I could get laid, if I wanted. I could walk into a bar, find myself an easy lay, and go for it.
But that wasn’t me.
I was the Relationship Guy. I was the Careful Guy. I was the Designated Driver Guy.
“Do you want a private dance?” she asked, sliding her G-string clad heat over the aching boner in my jeans. “Fifty bucks for two songs, cutie.”
There it was again: Cutie. My fingers drummed on the table, and I shook my head. “No. But thank you for the offer though,” I said, smiling politely through the throbbing aches between my legs. My cheeks were on fire, and I was ready to run back to River Canyon, climb the stairs to my apartment, and shamefully rub one out.
She stood up, all business. Just like that. One long-nailed hand dug into her hip, the other opened to me. “Fifteen.”
I sighed hotly, turning to glare at Jules as I lifted to dig my wallet from out of my pocket. Wouldn’t Ryan be proud?, I thought to myself; paying to have some chick rub up on me with nothing but a hot set of blue balls to show for it. And with the ten and five in hand, she sashayed away, and I watched her arse disappear into the hazy darkness of the club.
Off to find the next cutie to climb all over, I guess.
“Thanks for that, arsehole.” I turned to fold my arms on the table, rubbing my hand over my face. A disgusting cocktail of shame and arousal tainted my veins. “I told you I wasn’t interested.”
Jules grinned, his white teeth bright against his dark skin. The smile was usually contagious, but in the strip club, I wanted to wind up and punch him for dragging me into New York City to have my dick rubbed and not touched. “Come on, Seanie. You gotta live a little, man!”
Live a little. I scoffed, shaking my head while my jaw worked stiffly from side-to-side. “Are you done here?”
He bit his lip, studying me for a moment before smacking his hands against the beer-sticky tabletop. “Come on Princess,” he said, and stood up, tossing a few bills down. Together, we walked out of the pulsating club and onto the rain-glossed street. Cars zipped by, horns blared from a nearby distance, and Jules hailed a cab. We climbed in, told the driver to take us to the Marriott in Times Square, and just as we pulled away from the curb, my soon-to-be wed companion went ahead and slugged me in the arm.
“Feckin’ hell!” I shouted, and the driver glared at us in the rearview mirror. I rubbed against the spot, staring angrily at him and wishing we weren’t sharing a hotel room. “What the hell was that for?”
“It’s for being a fucking pussy,” he stated so matter-of-factly, I could have punched him right back. “That chick was all over you, and—”
“You told her to be! She was paid to be!”
“Whatever! She’s not the only one either!”
I groaned with a roll of my eyes. “Oh really? Who? Please, tell me, because you seem to know something I don’t.”
He twisted his lips, pressed a fist to his chin. He was thinking hard, and coming up empty. I pointed at him as the taxi swerved around a few pedestrians, and shoved me against him.
“See! You can’t even think of anybody!” I shouted, my finger touching his cheek.
He shoved me back to my side of the cab. “Get off me man. And just because I can’t think of anybody off the top of my head doesn’t mean there haven’t been any. Whenever women flirt with you, you pussy out. You look at them all like they’re … from another planet or something.”
“I’m just waitin’ for someone I’m interested in to come along,” I said, turning my gaze toward the window. Rain tapped lightly against the roof, encasing me in the exact melancholy I was suddenly forced to deal with.
“Nobody’s going to interest you bro, and you know, that’s cool. You don’t need to be with anybody, but I just think it’s fucking sad that you can’t even go out with me a week before my wedding, and have a little fun,” and with that, he turned to stare out the opposite window.
I had to wonder if the world looked as wet and bleary to him as it did to me. Full of possibilities, and none of them for me.
CHAPTER TWO |
Burnt Mattresses & Fraud
Sunday
Jules woke me up with a pillow thrown directly at my head. Flashbacks instantly flooded my memory of our old sleepovers as kids. The nights spent playing Super Nintendo until we couldn’t keep our eyes open, passing out in my parents’ basement and waking each other up in some obnoxious way that we would bank, plotting our payback for the next time.
That morning in the hotel room, as I cracked my eyes open to his smiling face, I wished we were still sharing the apartment I live in. I would have drawn the finest penis onto his forehead in the boldest Sharpie I could find.
“God … Dick …” I grumbled, and I chucked the pillow back at him before rolling over to close my eyes again.
Jules threw it back. “Hey asshole. Check-out is in twenty minutes.”
“Oh, feckin’ hell,” I groaned and begrudgingly sat up. “I feel like I didn’t sleep at all last night.”
“Yeah, well, you better sleep on the way home then, ‘cause you have to work today. Remember? So, get your white ass out of bed, cupcake.”
My hands scrubbed over my face. “What the feck was I thinkin’, not takin’ the day off?”
“Well, you were probably thinking you wouldn’t get wasted last night. Because you never do. But you had forgotten that I was calling the shots at my two-man bachelor party, and I’m a worse influence on you than your brother.” Jules shot me his award-winning grin again before disappearing into the hotel bathroom. “Don’t worry though, bro. I got you. There’s a pot of coffee on the counter,” he called out to me, and I hummed my appreciation.
“You’re an arsehole, but I don’t know what the feck I’d do without you sometimes,” I called back as I stood up on wobbling legs and shuffled over to the steaming coffee pot. “How much did we drink when we got back here?”
He stuck his head out of the bathroom door, toothbrush hanging out of his mouth. “Enough that you sang ‘Livin’ On a Prayer’ with some chick who was equal parts hot and tone-deaf.” My mouth fell open, and Jules burst with a belly-laugh. “Relax bro, I kept you safe fr
om having a drunken one-night stand.”
“Oh, goo—”
“Well actually, you saved yourself when you puked all over her shoes, but I got you back to the room.” And then he winked before disappearing back into the bathroom with a cheeky “you’re welcome.”
“Thanks,” I grumbled, suddenly enlightened as to why my teeth felt like they had sprouted hair overnight.
And then, I reflected back to the first and last time I had been drunk. I’d just turned twenty-one years old. My twin brother Ryan had talked me into going out to celebrate with him. “Come on, it’ll be a good time Seanie. It’s a right of passage,” he’d said to me, and thinking that it was going to be some sort of brotherly bonding experience, I had agreed.
Unbeknownst to me, he had invited a group of his delinquent buddies along, and to keep up with the lot of them, I drank enough booze and smoked enough weed to leave myself in a blacked-out stupor for six hours.
A good time, it was not.
❧
“How was the bachelor party?” my older brother Patrick asked, leaning over the counter at work. He eyeballed the computer screen I was typing on and he quirked a brow. “You’re seemin’ pretty feckin’ busy for a guy who sells mattresses.”
“Memorial Day sale, Paddy,” I sighed, tapping along the touchscreen. “I actually sold a Dream Enigma today. That’s unheard of. It’s a ten-thousand dollar bed. Some guy named Jack is comin’ to pick it up later today.”
“Big spender,” he replied, his tone reflecting how dull my job was. Nobody is excited about mattresses. “Anyway, how was it? Jules told me on Friday you guys were goin’ to a strip club.”
“Mm-hmm,” I groaned, reminiscing on that gloriously painful three minutes of not being permitted to touch the breasts in my face. The awkwardness of it all. The shameful, dirty guilt of it all.
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