Surprise Daddies: A Contemporary Romance Box Set

by London James

  I flee down the hall and grab onto the railing as I swing myself around to climb up the steps. Once I’m out of their sight, I let out the sob that’s been strangling my chest for the last few days. The wall catches me as I stumble against it and lose my footing. The despair finally leaving my body is too much. I can’t be in this house another day.

  “Everly!” Rowan yells from the downstairs lobby, and I hear him running up the steps after me.

  I do what I do best.

  I run.

  And slam my bedroom door, letting the cries disable me until I’m sliding down the wood separating me from the biggest mistake I’ve made in my entire life. I want to throw myself into his arms so bad and finally feel at home, but I can’t. I’m having withdrawals from him. My body shakes from not getting the fix. I’m addicted.

  And I’ll never be okay without him. I’ll consistently be on the mend, trying to move on from the one thing I want most.

  “Everly,” Rowan repeats, with a shake of the doorknob.

  I muffle my cries with my hand and pull my legs to my chest. My cheek finds my knee, and the tears find a new path to fall down, wetting the material of my leggings.

  The door stops jiggling, but I still hear him breathing.

  “Everly.” This time when he says my name, it isn’t full of demand or hate, but yearning. I turn around on my knees and stand, placing my hand on the door.

  “Rowan,” I find the strength to say his name, even if it does sound weak on a short, quaking breath.

  He doesn’t say anything, but I hear him. I hear his deep sighs and the creaks in the old, wooden floors as he shuffles his weight from one leg to another. I gasp as I feel heat on the other side of the door, searing my hand. I stare at the spot with wide eyes, but I don’t say a word because I know it’s all in my head. There is no way I can feel his hand on the other side of this door, no matter how much I wish I could.

  I lean my forehead against the door, rolling it back and forth from the restraint I’m fighting. I want to open the damn door.

  “Everly.”

  “Rowan,” I whisper.

  We don’t say anything else. Everything that needs to be said, is said in that moment. I gasp as the heat I felt, the connection, the familiar magnetic pull between us, breaks. His hand is gone. The heavy steps of him walking away only makes fresh tears fall.

  I hate this house.

  I hate this room.

  I hate it all.

  I run to my suitcase, unzip it, and throw all my clothes from the drawers in the bag. I don’t fold them. I don’t care. I need out of here. My pain still drips down my face in heavy flows, and I brush it away with my forearm. Next, I run to the bathroom and grab all my items off the counter and toss them in my bag, carelessly.

  I grab my cell charger, stuff it in my purse, and run out the door. Voices carry from the kitchen and pause their conversation when they hear my footsteps coming down the marble staircase.

  “Everly!” Gray’s voice begs me to stop, but I don’t.

  I rush outside to the freezing cold weather and drag my suitcase through the snow. It can get wet for all I care. I’ve been living in this personal hell for too long. It’s time I go home now.

  “Wait, you mad woman!” Gray yells, right before snatching the bag out of my hand.

  “Gray, not right now, okay? I need to go. My flight leaves soon.” It doesn’t leave for another five hours, but an airport full of people I don’t know is better than this place.

  He holds up his hand in surrender but doesn’t let my bag go. “I know, okay. I know you need to leave. I just want to say something real quick, and you can be on your way.”

  I cross my arms over my chest and tap my foot against the pressed snow. “Okay.”

  “I don’t know everything that went on between you two, and I don’t know you too well, but you seem like a kind person—a good person. And whatever happened for you to run from him all those years ago, I think there is a reason, but you haven’t said it.”

  He hands me his card with his cell phone number. “If you want to talk about it, call me. I can be your friend and his. And whatever we talk about, stays between us. He is hurt because he loves you still, so much—”

  I snort. Yeah, seems like a lot of love.

  He tilts his head and smiles sympathetically. “I know it doesn’t seem like it, but heartbreak changes people. He is changed. And so are you. It was nice to meet you, okay?” He holds out his arms for a hug, and I comply.

  He is a good friend. I’m happy for Rowan. I press my cheek against his chest, and it still doesn’t feel like Rowan’s. No one ever will.

  “Take care of him for me.” I snatch my bag from his hands and unlock my car. “It was good to meet you, Gray. I hope you guys get everything you want.”

  He shoves his hands in his pockets and nods. “I hope the same for you, Everly.”

  I give him a sad, forced smile and climb in the car. It takes all of my being not to look in the rear-view mirror as I chase the driveway down its paved path. I can’t look back. I just have to keep moving forward, and then maybe one day, the future won’t seem so daunting, and the past won’t seem so tempting.

  Chapter Nine

  Rowan

  It’s been fifteen hours since she left.

  I’m at Flamingo’s, the new bar in Spokane, and I swirl the shot glass around in a circle on the bar, watching the amber liquid threaten to spill from the rim. It’s my birthday as of two minutes ago, and Gray got me a birthday shot since he has been twenty-one for a few months and wants me to celebrate.

  “Staring at it won’t bring her back,” Gray comments as he sips on his beer and stares at the crowd of people filling the bar. It’s a neat place. Neon flamingos hang on the wall, there’s a dance floor, tables if you want food. Spokane has never had anything like this before, so I’m sure it will do well here.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” I toss the shot back and wince as flames burn my throat. My eyes water, and the whiskey sits in my stomach, giving it a slight burn. I see why people drink it now. I haven’t thought of her for the entire ten seconds it took to swallow.

  I wave the bartender down and signal him for another one.

  “Okay, if that’s the case, let’s pick you up somebody. Let’s get you a warm body under that cold, broken heart of yours that you’ve been milking for two years.”

  I lift a brow at Gray, but I don’t get mad. He is right. I should be over it by now, and I don’t know why I’m not. “I’m good. I don’t need anyone warming my bed. Leave the bottle,” I tell the bartender as he pours the shot right in front of me.

  “Yes, you do. But the warm body you want is in New York City right now.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I don’t want anything to do with her.” The lie poisons my tongue. I want everything to do with her.

  “Liar,” he fires back, smiling at a big-breasted brunette as she walks by.

  I toss the shot back and don’t say anything. So what if I do want Everly still, after she dragged my heart through barbed wire and nails. I just want to forget about her. I want to get so drunk, the memory of the brown-headed siren fades to black, and her name is nothing but a slur on my tongue.

  “Can I ask you something?” He pulls the stool out and takes the shot from my hand that I just poured myself. He tosses the shot back and cringes. “Jesus, what is that? Well whiskey? We are millionaires, and you get well whiskey?” He waves the bartender over and pushes the Jack Daniels across the countertop. “Give us your best bottle of the expensive stuff.”

  “The bottle is four hundred dollars.”

  Gray doesn’t say anything in return, just stares waiting for the bartender to do something. “Oh, you are wanting a reaction. Yes, four hundred, it’s fine.”

  “Oh, okay.” The bartender seems surprised. I don’t blame him. We are a bit young to ask for a bottle that expensive.

  “I didn’t care about what kind of whiskey, Gray.
I just wanted something.”

  “To numb the pain,” he nods, as though he is finishing the sentence.

  “No, to celebrate. I’m finally twenty-one. Woo!” I say, with no enthusiasm whatsoever.

  “I don’t know how I’m friends with you, man. You can be so depressing sometimes.”

  I turn on my stool, a little offended. “That’s not true. I’m fun. We have fun all the time.”

  He lifts his eyebrows, not convinced. “You’re a sad sap, bro.”

  “Am not,” I mutter, taking another shot of whiskey. “Seeing her was a shock, okay? I didn’t expect to ever see her again, let alone be her stepbrother. It’s weird. I don’t know how to handle it. I’ve known this girl my entire life. Everything I can remember has to do with her. She is in everything. Have you had that before? That kind of connection? I’ve climbed up the side of her house and snuck into her room just to watch TV with her, just to hang out. We went to every dance together. We had the chickenpox together. When her dad died, I was there for her. When my mom died, she was there for me. It isn’t as fucking black and white as you’re making it out to be. She was my only constant. So yeah, it was like losing a part of me. She was my family, in the sense of being a soulmate. I thought that’s what she was. So, can you just get off my fucking back about how I am acting and dealing? I don’t know how to deal with it. I was fine until I saw her. It brought back emotions I pushed aside.”

  I slam the bottle of whiskey down, frustrated, and pissed off. Whiskey drips down the neck of the slender bottle onto my hand. My chest heaves, and instead of using the shot glass, I chug from the bottle directly. I’m so sick of explaining myself.

  Hell, I’m tired of feeling like this too. It isn’t easy. I’m a man’s man. I don’t like feeling emotions. Everly is the one thing that makes me feel. I don’t have a choice. There isn’t an option to switch it off. I want to, fuck do I want to, but I can’t. I’ve tried. I keep trying. I won’t stop trying either. But until the day I can, I just have to figure out how to let her go. How do I let fifteen years of love go?

  When there is an answer, I’ll fucking do it.

  “Let it out, buddy,” he tells me as he slaps my shoulder with a reassuring grab afterwards.

  I groan and put my head on the bar. “I’m not letting anything out. You’re just annoying me.”

  “Shhh, love hurts. I know. It’s okay. Here.” He pours me another shot and slides it in front of me. And then pours himself a shot. “To heartache,” he cheers, lifting his glass in the air to toast.

  “You’re an asshole.”

  “I know.”

  I shake my head and take the pity shot he poured me. Ten minutes later, he is wandering around the bar, talking to a woman with tattoos up and down her arms. Typical. My head swims, and my thoughts turn to Everly again. I think about the time her dad died. It doesn’t hurt as much, and I’m thanking the liquor for that. Everything is numb.

  She was thirteen when he got hit by a drunk driver. He had been thrown out the windshield. Dead on impact. I was the first person she called. And the sobs that echoed on the receiving end of that phone call haunted my dreams for weeks. I never heard her cry like that before. It came from the soul. And it hurt me so bad to hear her in so much pain. I felt it, and I started to cry for her. I just listened as she sobbed through two words: “Dad died.”

  I cried for her, and for me because her father was a good man. A kind man. He didn’t deserve to go out the way he did. He deserved to watch his little girl grow up. She asked me every night for six months to stay with her, so every night I climbed up the side of the house and snuck into her window. I held her every single night while she cried herself to sleep.

  And when my mom died? Whew, I don’t think I would have made it without Everly. My mom died two years after Everly’s dad, of cancer, and it was the hardest thing I’ve ever had to witness. I watched her wither away with every day that passed, and Everly was there with me visiting my mom in the hospital. I went through different steps during the entire process: anger, sadness, depression. Everly held my hand every step of the way.

  I tend to push people away when I need space, and when my mom died, and we buried her, I disappeared to the Overlook. Everly knew exactly where I was. I yelled at her that night. I told her to leave. I told her I didn’t want anything to do with her and that I didn’t want to see her. To just go.

  But she stood there and let me use her as her verbal punching bag until I wrapped her in my arms, held her tight, and sobbed onto her shoulder.

  “I can’t believe she’s gone,” was all I repeated over and over into her neck as she let me cry out my agony. Everly never judged me because she understood the pain of losing a parent. I was a momma’s boy, so losing her killed a part of me. But Everly slowly brought that part back to life.

  We forged a bond I never thought could be broken. To know someone like that, to feel what they are feeling, what they are thinking, to share the pain, to find them in the darkest times when they are lost in their thoughts, which I’ve learned is the most dangerous place to be, that takes so much trust and time.

  Sure, I’ll meet someone else, and I’ll love them, but I don’t think I’ll ever have a connection with them like I had with Everly.

  “Penny for your thoughts?” the bartender asks as he wipes down the counter. “You seem awfully downcast for your twenty-first birthday.”

  “Just wondering how something so good could end so bad, that’s all.”

  “Word of advice?” He pours two shots and takes one in his hand.

  “Sure.” I reach for the other and bring it to my lips, ready to take this shot and be plastered because that is what will happen.

  “Anything that good, can never be that bad. And anything that good, will never really be over.”

  “How did you know it’s that good?” I ask with a raised brow.

  “I’ve seen a lot of broken men in my day—”

  “Whoa, hold up. I’m not broken.”

  “I know. I was going to say, I’ve seen a lot of broken men in my day, but you aren’t broken. Sure, you’re sad, but you still have something in your eyes that says it isn’t over; you’re just fighting that.”

  I slam my glass down and wipe my mouth to get rid of the whiskey on my lips. “Damn, you’re good. Who needs therapy?” I chuckle.

  “That’s all bartenders really are these days.” He takes a shot of the four-hundred-dollar whiskey and licks his lips. “Wow. Yeah, I can see what your friend meant. This is so much better.”

  “He tends to be right about a lot of things.” I take out my wallet from my back pocket and toss my black American Express card on the counter, something I’m still not used to having.

  He whistles when he taps it against the counter. “Damn, I haven’t seen one of these in ages. Tell me, how did you get so rich so young?”

  “My friend and I invented a financial services app. It took off; now we’re about to break ground on land to build a headquarters.”

  “No shit? Are you guys looking for an accountant or anything?”

  “Always are, why? Know someone?”

  He scratches his head and gives a smirk. “Me. I have some experience as a tax lawyer, but no one is looking for that.”

  “Wait a minute. You’re a lawyer and you work here? Are you kidding me? What the hell happened?” I ask, flabbergasted that this guy is bartending.

  He shrugs and pours a draft for someone. “Business went under, and I needed a job. There isn’t much here in Spokane. You know? I bartended in college to work.”

  I pull out a business card and hand it over to him. “We won’t be ready for a while. Six months, maybe more, before everything is built. But you could have your own office. We have plenty of work for a lawyer that specializes in money. Send me your resume and salary requirements to that email, and I’ll be in touch.” Damn, saying those words make me feel forty instead of twenty-one.

  “Are you serious?” he grips the card, staring at it with con
fusion, hope, and adoration. “You aren’t playing with me?”

  Gosh, he is too young to be so cynical.

  I should probably take my own advice.

  “Rowan Michaels.” I hold out my hand for a proper introduction. “And I’m very serious.”

  “Heath. Damn, man. You might have just changed my life. I have a little girl at home, and she is always with a babysitter at night. I’m missing all the good stuff. I just don’t want the bar scene anymore.”

  “You have a daughter? You don’t seem old enough.”

  “She’s ten. I had her when I was seventeen. Her mom bailed, signed away all her parental rights,” Heath pours another beer as he talks to me. A multi-tasker—I like that.

  “And you went to law school?” I whistle, impressed. Not many men can or would do that and raise a kid at the same time. Shows a lot about his character.

  “I had to. I wanted to provide a better life for my daughter, but here I am. Don’t get me wrong; this pays okay. I’m not struggling, but I want more for her. For us. I want to be the dad that can take her to soccer practice and watch her games.”

  “You are more than meets the eye, barkeep.” I pour us another shot. “Cheers.”

  “Cheers.” He tilts his shot back and stuffs my card in his pocket. “You’re going to hear from me very soon.” Heath moves his way down the bar, tossing a white rag over his shoulder as he leans forward and tries to understand what someone is saying.

  Damn, he makes me feel like a loser. I know I’m not, but his problems are bigger than mine. I put my wallet back in my pocket after everything is paid and try to walk around the flamingos all over the place, looking for Gray. After stumbling a few times and running into a few girls that wanted more than just my number, I find him.

  He’s making out with a blonde chick that looks like she steals cars for a living. I’m sure she doesn’t. I don’t understand it. He is so clean cut, and it surprises me every time when he gravitates toward someone so opposite. Maybe he feels dangerous, like he is running on the wild side, I’m not sure. But his preppy boy appearance, and her badass style, it’s bound to clash, isn’t it? Opposites can only attract for so long until there is a negative reaction.