by Piper Rayne
He’s definitely in it to win it.
Day Six
I haven’t even had breakfast when there’s a knock on my door. Charlie went for a run this morning and Cat is at Marcus’ of course, so I open the door, finding Toby in pants and a t-shirt.
“I’m rafting the class three today.” He jumps into my house and I spot Dane just stepping out of his truck.
“Oh, that’s great!”
“Get your stuff.” He looks around my apartment. “This is where you live?”
“Yeah, what do you think?”
“It’s small.” His gaze continues to roam around.
“Well, Miss Cat isn’t here a lot, so it’s just Charlie and I most of the time.”
I’m still holding the door open when Dane approaches.
He’s in shorts and a hoodie with a t-shirt underneath, his sunglasses resting on top of his head.
“Did you convince her?” he asks Toby.
“You’re letting him raft another class three, huh?”
“I promised. And I never break a promise.” He winks, walks in, and sits on my couch.
Toby takes the spot next to him, the two of them propping their feet on my coffee table.
“Has no one taught you any manners? I didn’t ask you to come in, nor is it ever okay to put your feet on someone’s table.”
I shut the door and smack both their feet. They plop down on the floor.
“See, that’s why we need a woman in our life,” Toby says.
“You’ve upped your game to include Toby?” I cross my arms over my chest and cock a hip out to the side.
He shrugs and links his fingers behind his head. “Hey, all’s fair in love and war, right?” He pauses for a second, his gaze roaming up and down my body taking in my yoga pants and tight tank top. “Go get dressed.”
“Both of you need to say please.”
“Please,” they each say simultaneously in such sweet voices.
“I can’t be gone all day.”
“Yay! Thanks, Miss Ava.” Toby jumps up from the couch.
A half hour later, we’re at the rafting place and surprise surprise—they have reservations for three. Once our lifejackets are on and we’re about to get in the raft, Dane pulls his camera out and positions it like he’s about to take a selfie.
“Come on,” he calls us over and Toby and I huddle together with him while he snaps the picture.
A second later, my phone vibrates and I pull it out, looking through the plastic bag to find another Instagram notification.
Dane’s posted the picture he just took. Reading the caption #familyday makes my heart warm and go pitter-patter.
Day Seven (actually night of day six)
“Do you mind if we stop at the bar really quick?” Dane asks after we spent majority of the day on the rapids.
Toby’s asleep in the back of the truck after nailing the class three rafting again.
“Sure.”
When we arrive, every parking spot is taken, leaving Dane to go to the back and park in the alley where the deliveries usually come through. He stops the truck and pulls out the keys, glancing back to Toby who’s now steadily breathing.
Turning in his seat, he reaches for my hand and for the first time since our argument, I don’t pull away.
“Ava, tonight marks the end of day six. I know I promised I’d win you back in seven days, but I only have one more thing up my sleeve. I thought long and hard about what you said the night of the fire. Was I acting out of fear? Probably.”
My heart sinks.
“But if I didn’t love you, I’d have nothing to fear. I can’t help but want to protect the ones I love.”
My sinking heart has been tossed a life raft and wants desperately to latch on to it.
“I realized that most my life, I’ve lived in fear without knowing it. When I told you I couldn’t give you what you wanted, that was out of fear…fear of not being good enough, fear of hurting you, fear of hurting Toby, fear of me being hurt. Even without the fire happening, I’d have realized how much I want to take a chance with you to develop something more than what we had. Truth is, we weren’t friends-with-benefits, we were boyfriend and girlfriend. If you want more time, I’ll wait because I was living my life on a carousel, just going round and round. Our life together might be more like a roller coaster, but I want you next to me on it. Otherwise the ride isn’t going to be any fun.”
He leans forward and presses a kiss on my cheek and I can’t deny that it feels so right to have his lips on me again.
“I promise to never hurt you again.”
He opens the truck door, tucking his keys in his pocket.
“This is my last attempt to win you over.”
I could probably tell him he’s already won me over, but making him suffer a couple extra minutes until I see what he has planned inside doesn’t seem like that bad of an idea.
He nudges Toby awake, carrying him in his arms as we walk through the back door.
I hear Charlie over a microphone and quirk my eyebrows to Dane who only wears that smile I’ve wanted to kiss off him for the past few days.
He stops us at the opening of the hallway into the bar. Everyone from town is sitting around, eating the cupcakes I made yesterday. There’s a giant banner on the window that says, ‘Save the Mad Batter’.
Charlie spots us and smiles, placing the microphone down and coming toward us. “Welcome.”
“What is this?” I ask.
Then Cat grabs the microphone. “Okay, the first auction is a two-night stay at one of Garrett Shaw’s log cabins. Let’s start the bidding at one hundred.”
A bunch of hands rise in the air.
“Oh, hold on.” Charlie’s hand touches my arm.
“You going for it?” Dane asks, and Charlie nods, her hand up in the air.
“One thousand dollars,” she says.
The room gasps, everyone looking over their shoulders at her. Most of the crowd is smiling, but I can’t help but zoom in on the one face that is not. Garrett’s.
Cat slams down the gavel before anyone can up the bid. “Sold to the lovely Charlotte Rose for one thousand dollars.” Cat smiles from ear to ear.
Garrett slides by the table and Cat, his footsteps heavy on the floor as he makes his way over to Charlie. Without a word, he grabs her elbow and escorts her down the hallway.
“Settle, Garrett,” Dane says after them, but before either of us can see what’s happening, Cat’s announcing our presence.
“Our guest of honor has arrived!” All eyes are on us.
“What is this?” I ask Dane a second time.
“It’s a fundraiser. For you.” He knocks his free shoulder with mine since somehow Toby’s still asleep on his other shoulder.
“You did this?” Tears well up in my eyes.
He nods, shifting Toby’s weight in his arms.
“Here.” His dad comes and takes Toby from Dane and sits back down.
“Okay, they’re busy,” Cat says over the mic. “Let’s do our second auction. A moonlight cruise on a yacht from Marcus Kent. Let’s start the bidding at one hundred.” Again, hands go up in the air and as the people are busy bidding, I’m busy looking at my unlikely hero.
“So, did this seal the deal?” Dane asks, stepping closer to me.
“As long as we can make one thing clear.”
“What’s that?” he asks with a smirk.
“We might be monogamous, but the bedroom is always more like thirty-one flavors.”
“You mean you don’t want me to lose my dirty mouth?”
I shake my head. “No, I love my dirty talker. But you can’t lose the ‘you’re beautiful’ and ‘I love you’s’ either. Well, what do you say?”
“I promise to mix it up.” He holds his pinky out. “Pinky swear.”
I clasp my pinky with his, pulling him forward until we’re chest-to-chest and I’m once again in his arms.
“Now kiss me.”
Epilogue
&n
bsp; Dane
Two Years Later
Talk about using all my connections to pull this off.
It all goes to show how awesome Climax Cove and their residents are.
This has been a year in the making, considering the shrubs were planted last spring to grow into a maze this summer. A town silently pushed toward an Alice in Wonderland theme festival night without thinking twice about it. A girlfriend I somehow managed to keep oblivious.
“Can we go through the maze?” Toby asks next to me.
Do you know how hard it is to get a ten-year-old boy to sound excited to go through an Alice In Wonderland maze? For future reference, it takes a twenty-dollar bill and a new video game.
“You want to go?” Ava looks down skeptically at him.
Out of all the hoops I went through to get her to believe this act, I should’ve known this is the part she’d question.
“I think he’s throwing you a bone,” I lean close, whisper in her ear, and kiss her neck.
The distraction works. She places her arm around Toby, who’s catching up to her height wise and the two of them enter through the giant red heart balloon archway.
I follow behind, pretending to be checking the score of the Giants game when in fact, I’m busy texting Cat and Charlie to make sure everything is a go once we get through this maze.
“Who did the maze?” Ava asks.
Toby’s now away from Ava since a few his friends followed us in.
So much for his video game, the kid can play last year’s Madden now.
I link my hand with Ava’s. “I don’t know. Want to find a spot to make-out?” My fingers tighten around hers, and she looks at me and smiles.
“I wouldn’t want to embarrass Toby.” Her words say one thing, but the spark of lust in her eyes says another.
If it were any other day, any other time, I’d corner her between two bushes and lick her own perfectly manicured bush. But today is about so much more than that.
“This way.” I purposely go a different way from Toby and his friends.
“A dead end?” Her hand slides down my front until she cups my package.
“I actually hadn’t planned that, but now...” Her thumb runs up and down my now bulging shaft. Reluctantly I reach down and stop her hand from moving. “Damn, that feels good, but let’s get out of here and then I can take you home. Remember, Toby is sleeping over at Carter’s tonight.”
I pull her into my chest, and she nuzzles into it like she always does. The fruity smell of her shampoo never fails to calm me.
“Let’s go.”
My hand glides down her arm until her hand is tucked in mine once more.
“What’s the rush?” Her footsteps falter, but she stays in step, eventually coming to my side.
“Just eager to have you in our bed.”
“I do like the sound of that.”
We navigate the maze and I allow her to take a wrong turn here and there since I practically mapped the whole thing out so that where we end up is right on the water. What seems like a lifetime later and with my heart pounding in my chest, we’re one turn away from the exit.
She takes the lead and I watch her round the corner.
“Oh, a tea party!” She glances back to me and then forward again. “Come on.”
If everything is on cue, Lily should be approaching her in a costume.
“Hey, Lily,” she says, bending down and grabbing the little girl’s hands.
Ava glances back to me and nods for me to follow.
I round the corner she did, emerging to see that Cat and Charlie did a bang-up job. Tables are filled with guests. They’ve covered the cement walkway with black and white checkered flooring. The tablecloths are all different colors paired with an array of colored chairs and huge fake flowers hung all around.
I hang back, letting Ava take in the moment, soak up her surroundings and say her hellos. After awhile she turns back my way and holds a hand out for me to join her. I don’t think she’s clued into what this is all about yet.
Toby intercedes like he’s supposed to and escorts her to a chair in the middle of the room. A big cushy chair you’d see a queen sit in.
Her gaze roams over to me and I see it then. The moment she realizes what this is. The lottery-winning smile on her face tells me I’m not about to make a fool of myself.
All our friends and family who are in on this moment—whether they’ve known for a long time or just found out when they arrived this evening—circle behind around us.
“Ava.” I clench and open my fists a few times to work out the nerves I can’t seem to shake.
“Yes?” She bites her lip, waiting for me to pull out the box. Waiting for the magic four words.
“I could’ve taken you to a Giants game and flashed it on the jumbotron. I could’ve asked you while we watched the sunset on the dock the other night. There are a lot of ways I thought about proposing to you, but the fact that you love Alice in Wonderland isn’t the reason why I chose this way. There have been perfect moments this past year where I could’ve asked you and it would have been wonderful. Never in my life did I think I’d be patient enough to wait and make sure you had the perfect proposal, but I did because that’s what you deserve. Two years ago, I got lost in your wonderland and the last thing I want is a map to find my way out.” I fall to my knee and her hands move to her lips immediately as she sucks in a breath.
“Will you do me a favor and tolerate me for another fifty or so years?”
She slides off the chair and onto her knees until we’re chest to chest. “Yes,” she whispers, her arms wrapping around my neck. But I stop her, holding her left ring finger until I can slip on the ring I got her.
She smashes into my body until I lose my balance and fall to the ground. Sprinkling kisses all over my face, she quickly looks down at me, worry teasing her brow.
“Is this because you love my cupcakes?”
“Well...”
She shakes her head. “Peanut butter and chocolate cupcakes everyday for the rest of your life?”
“You know better than that. I need variety so mix that up with some vanilla, salted caramel, and unicorn rainbow ones and we’re good.”
She giggles and sits up, pulling me up by my hand. “Deal.”
“I love you,” I say to her, bending down to kiss her lips.
“Not nearly as much as I love you.”
I’ll let her go on thinking that, but the truth is that Ava fills my life up in a way I didn’t think was possible. I was lost before she came around. I just didn’t know it until she found me.
BEFORE you go …
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The Bartender Excerpt
An hour and a half later and hot stuff has come around the bar to take the seat beside me and join me on my mission to get shit-faced. I have to admit, I’m enjoying his company, but it doesn’t exactly make him Employee of the Year given the fact that he’s supposed to be working.
“Won’t your boss be mad that you’re drinking on the job?” I ask.
That damn dimple makes another appearance again before he answers. “Nah, he’s cool. It’s dead in here tonight. If anyone comes in, I’ll be sure they get what they need.” His gaze rakes up and down my small frame, and I get the distinct impression that he’s picturing me naked.
Jeez, I hope my nakedness looks amazing in his brain. Given the half-crooked smile on his face, I think it must. I wonder if his imagination is good enough to picture that dimple in my ass that doesn’t ever seem to want to disappear,
regardless of how much I weigh.
As if he’s tempted fate with his words, the bell over the door dings and an older gentleman walks in and seats himself at one of the bar tables across the room.
“Be right back.” Cole pats my hand before he rises from his seat.
It was an innocent gesture, but it makes me think dirty things. The heat from his hand seeps up my arm like a bee sting and settles somewhere in my chest.
I watch him walk away and can’t help but notice the way his ass perfectly fills out his jeans. It bunches and flexes as his long strides take him across the bar. Maybe Lennon is right and it has been too long since I’ve been with a man.
It’s then that I realize that Tinder dude still hasn’t shown up. The bar isn’t busy, probably since it’s the middle of the week, and I’ve been chatting—okay, flirting—with Cole and hadn’t realized how much time had passed. I grab my phone from my purse and open the app to see that I have a new message.
Pussylickr69: Not coming. Sorry found someone else who wasn’t so much werk.
Fury causes my face to heat as I type out a quick reply that might be, and by that I mean most definitely is, alcohol-fueled.
Whiteebanter: Yeah, I can see how thirty minutes of conversation is too much foreplay for you. Fuck you and your lack of knowledge of the English language. You spell work with an ‘o,’ dipshit.
There. That’ll show him. With a frown, I drop my phone back into my purse.
“Everything okay?” Cole asks as he takes the seat beside me again.
I sigh. “Yeah, I just found out that Pussylicker isn’t coming anymore.”
Cole nearly spits out the sip of drink he’s just taken and has a coughing fit before he fully recovers. “Excuse me?”
“I was waiting for a guy from Tinder to show up, but he just ditched me because apparently it was too much work to have a drink with me before taking me back to his place to bang me.” I spin my glass in place on the bar top.