First Edition
Copyright © 2020
By Penelope Ward
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, things living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental.
Edited by: Jessica Royer Ocken
Proofreading and Formatting by: Elaine York
Proofreading by: Julia Griffis
Cover Photographer: Harol Baez
Cover Model: Jeremy Santucci, Instagram: @jeremysantucci
Cover Design: Letitia Hasser, RBA Designs
Table of Contents
* * *
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Three Years Later
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
Dear Readers
Other Books by Penelope Ward
Acknowledgements
About the Author
For Brandon
Thanks for brainstorming with me on this one, son.
(P.S. You need a haircut.)
Prologue
* * *
Life can change in a flash—even in what, at first, seem like the most routine of circumstances.
It was one of those busy days at work where the time seemed to go by faster than usual. The Japanese restaurant where I waitressed was packed—the side with hibachi tables and the regular dining section. I bounced back and forth between the two.
“I’m gonna need you to take over table six as well,” my manager told me.
“Sure, no problem,” I answered, taking an order of sukiyaki off the counter.
I’d been waitressing at Mayaka to help make ends meet while paying for school. At twenty-four, I’d gotten a late start on my college education after a few rough years, but I was finally getting my shit together.
Today I’d picked up an earlier shift. That turned out to be a very bad idea, because taking over table six forever changed my day—and perhaps my life.
“Can I start you off with some…” I lost my words. My heart nearly stopped as I looked into a familiar but long-lost face—a face I wasn’t sure I’d ever see again.
His eyes widened.
My notepad fell to the floor.
Jace.
Oh my God.
A woman sat across from him.
Who is that?
My throat closed.
The only thing that felt right was running—so I did.
“Excuse me.” I shook my head and turned around swiftly, making my way to the other side of the restaurant, past the shooting flames of the hibachi tables.
Bursting through the swinging doors, I entered the kitchen. “I have an emergency, Mae. I need to get home. I’m sorry to leave during a busy time, but I really need to go.”
“Is everything alright?” she asked.
My words were rushed. “I hope so. Can’t get into it now. I have to head out. I’m so sorry.”
I bolted out of the kitchen. The sun blinded me as I opened the front door of the restaurant and raced through the parking lot to the sidewalk by the main road. Was leaving work a cowardly thing to do? Absolutely. Had I risked my job? Possibly. But no way was I ready to face him. The last time I’d seen Jace was three years ago, and he’d broken my heart into smithereens. Up until that moment, my heart had only ever belonged to him—since the time I was practically a child.
What was he even doing back in Florida? I’d thought he was gone for good. From the look on his face, he hadn’t been expecting to see me working at Mayaka. Who was that woman with him? Why did he have to look even better than I remembered?
My heart felt heavy as I continued to pound the pavement. Of course I’d decided to walk to work today for exercise. A car would’ve been much better when it came to fleeing my past.
I was just about to cross the busy street when I felt a hand on my shoulder.
“Jesus, Farrah. Slow the fuck down.”
I flinched, my heart nearly pounding out of my chest.
When I turned around, his steely blue eyes pierced through me, and I wondered how I’d ever thought I could escape having to face him.
Jace forced a sad smile. “If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were running away from me.”
We both panted. I flashed a nervous grin, not sure whether to laugh or cry.
His question was ironic.
Jace had been gone for three years, and he had the nerve to say I’d run from him? He was the one who’d run away.
Chapter 1
* * *
Farrah
Three-and-a-Half Years Earlier
“Whoa. Where are you going dressed like that?” Jace’s deep voice stopped me in my tracks.
Bingo.
He noticed.
A chill traveled down my spine as I answered, “The Iguana.”
“A bar. Interesting. I thought people wore clothes there.” Jace smirked, opening a pistachio. He popped the nut into his mouth before throwing the shell aside.
I looked down at the crop top that showcased my stomach. I’d worn it specifically to flaunt my new belly ring. My jean shorts barely covered my butt.
Pretending to be peeved, I said, “Last I checked, what I wear isn’t any of your business, Jace.”
“It is my business if I have to go beat some guy’s ass because he gets too drunk and puts his hands where they don’t belong.”
Jace was protective of me, which I both loved and hated. It would’ve been better if he didn’t look at me like a little sister, though. His attitude came from an innocent place. That’s the opposite of what I wanted. None of my feelings for this man were brotherly. But that was my little secret, I supposed.
“I’ll be fine.” I shrugged, opening the refrigerator and taking out a jug. I poured some water into a glass, feeling tingly because I could still feel his eyes on me, even if he was only concerned.
“I can’t tell you what to do…but speaking from a guy’s point of view, if I see a girl dressed the way you are now, it sends me a certain message about her. You know what I’m saying?”
Jace was clueless. Totally clueless. Little did he know he was the only guy whose attention I wanted lately. Anytime I dressed provocatively, it was an attempt to rile him up.
Ever since he’d moved in two months ago, getting Jace’s attention was one of my pastimes. But unlike the pistachios he was chomping on, he was a hard nut to crack. Sure, I’d caught him looking at me from time to time, but I never knew what he was actually thinking. And truly, I didn’t know what I was thinking trying to get him to notice me. Jace wouldn’t touch me with a ten-foot pole—not just because he was living with us now, but because I was his best friend’s sister. Thus, he looked at me like a sister, too—which I hated. As much as he’d been like family over
the years, I’d never looked at him like a brother. My attraction was too strong. I’d had a crush on him from the moment I’d met him, when I was probably around six.
“Last I checked,” I said, “the girls you hang out with don’t dress any more conservatively than this.”
He licked some of the salt off his lips. “Well, that’s…different.”
I cocked a brow. “How so?”
Jace’s jaw tightened. He didn’t have an answer.
Exactly.
I took the liberty of answering for him. “I know why you think it’s different. You seem to forget that I’m twenty-one now. Some of the girls you date are practically my age, but you don’t see me as mature, because when you left for college, I was twelve. That’s the person you remember.” I sighed. “I’m not twelve anymore. Reverse the numbers.”
My brother, Nathan, walked in at that moment. “I don’t care how old you are. You’re dressed like a whore.”
I rolled my eyes.
Jace glared at him. “Don’t say shit like that to her.”
“It’s my job to tell her the truth.”
“But you don’t have to use those words, jackass.”
I chuckled. “Yeah. Jace basically told me the same thing, except he was a lot nicer about it.” I gulped the last of my water and placed the glass on the counter. “Anyway, it’s hot as balls at The Iguana. Their air conditioning is sucky. Everyone dresses like this,” I lied.
They looked at me in unison, both with skeptical expressions.
Jace and Nathan had been best friends since childhood. He and my brother were six years older than me. I’d spent the majority of my preteen years lusting after Jace in secret. In those days, he’d come over to the house all sweaty after football practice, and my hormones would mimic Mexican jumping beans. Whenever he’d so much as talk to me, I’d get weak in the knees. If you looked at my diary entries from back then, there was something about Jace on every other page. Wanting someone and knowing I couldn’t have him had been pure torture. Especially during those last couple of years before Jace went away to college, I was hopelessly lovesick.
And then? He was gone. My twelve-year-old heart had been devastated when Jace moved away to attend school in North Carolina. And he only came home in the summer for the first few years.
He’d stayed away for nine years in total and had only recently moved back home to Florida. I certainly never imagined he’d end up living with us. At twenty-seven, Jace was the boy I remembered lusting after, but even bigger and better. He was a full-fledged man now. And I wasn’t a child anymore. So you can imagine where my head had been lately.
Nathan snapped me out of my thoughts. “You’d better bring the pepper spray with you if your stubborn ass won’t change into something decent.”
“You know I always carry it.”
Sometimes my brother didn’t hold back, but I couldn’t blame him for being protective. I was an adult now, but old habits died hard. Nathan had become my caretaker after our parents were killed during a robbery seven years ago. I was fourteen, and Nathan was twenty when we lost them. Jace had been home from college that summer, working for my dad’s landscaping company. Sadly, he was with my parents when they died. That was still so hard to fathom. To this day, Jace couldn’t talk about it. I knew he suffered from survivor’s guilt. He’d been shot at as well, but he’d gotten lucky. Still, the trauma of having witnessed my parents’ murder had inflicted a different kind of damage—not physical, but it had scarred his soul for life. None of us really talked about what had happened. Our painful past was a ghost that followed us around, one we never acknowledged.
I knew from the police report that my father and Jace had been driving back from a landscaping job. They’d stopped to pick up my mother at the convenience store where she worked. My father had felt like someone was following them from the moment he and Jace left the job site. The man eventually tried to run them off the road before pulling out a gun. My dad had a ton of cash on him, since his landscaping clients typically paid him that way. The investigators believe the man had somehow known about that money, which was why he’d been following their truck. Perhaps he’d been tipped off by someone working for my dad.
According to the report, the victims, Ronald and Elizabeth Spade, had cooperated, handing over the cash, but the man, who was high on drugs, fatally shot my parents anyway. A bullet grazed Jace, but he was unharmed. Based on the description of his vehicle, police later found the man holed up in his apartment. He was shot and killed following a standoff. And that was the end of it. Our lives changed forever, and the innocent, idyllic childhood I’d enjoyed became a memory.
After that summer, Jace never came home again. That was understandable.
Though it had now been seven years since my parents died, I knew I hadn’t properly dealt with that loss. Some mornings, I still woke up expecting my mother and father to be here. If it weren’t for Nathan, I wouldn’t have made it. He did his best to fill the void they left. As miserable as we both were in the beginning, he’d tried to make life as normal as possible—like continuing our tradition of family movie night, even though it was just the two of us now. To this day, we picked one night a month to watch a movie together.
Nathan and I still lived in the neighborhood where we’d grown up in Palm Creek, Florida. After Mom and Dad died, staying in our childhood home had been too painful, so Nathan used the money we’d inherited for a down payment on a house a couple of streets over. Unfortunately, my brother had been recently laid off from his car-sales job and needed some help paying the bills. Around the same time, Jace moved home to temporarily manage his dad’s business. Nathan asked Jace if he would rent out our spare bedroom to help with our mortgage payment. Since Jace was in limbo, waiting to buy property until he knew whether or not he’d be staying in Florida permanently, moving in with us was a good, temporary solution. It benefited everyone. So that’s how we became a party of three.
I turned to my brother. “Can I have a ride to the bar?”
“What’s wrong with your car now?”
“It might be the alternator this time. It’s in the shop again.”
“That piece of shit.”
The old, rust-colored Toyota Corolla I drove constantly gave me trouble. Thankfully, our local mechanic—ironically named “Rusty”—always offered me a good deal. Nathan was convinced Rusty had ulterior motives when it came to me, but I gladly accepted the price break without questioning the reason for it.
“I’m saving up for something else,” I assured him. “Until then, I have to deal with it. Not like I could get any money for that piece of junk if I tried to sell it.”
“Next time, don’t take it to Rusty,” Jace said. “I can try to fix it.”
The idea of Jace shirtless and sweaty under my car wasn’t exactly unpleasant.
“Thanks. I hadn’t thought to ask you. I appreciate the offer.”
“When do you need to be at The Iguana?” Nathan asked.
“I have to leave now. I just need a ride there. Kellianne says she can drive me home.”
He looked over at the clock. “I can’t take you now. Someone’s coming in ten minutes to look at the lawn mower I’m selling. I can take you after, though.”
I frowned. “I’ll miss the beginning if I don’t leave now.”
“Why is that such a big deal?” Nathan asked. “It’s just a bunch of drunk people spewing dumb shit.”
“It’s not dumb. It’s captivating.”
Once a week, The Iguana held their open mic “Pour Your Heart Out” night, and I’d been obsessed with going as of late. Patrons—mostly somewhat drunk ones—were encouraged to get on stage and reveal anything they wanted to a room full of strangers. It could be something they needed to get off their chest, or their deepest, darkest secret. You never knew what you were going to get. Some of the confessions were sad, things I could relate to after years of harboring the pain of my parents’ murder. Other times, it was a sexy secret. Some people held n
othing back. It was definitely eighteen-plus. Even though I loved listening to it all, I hadn’t had the guts to get up on stage yet. Someday.
“I can take her,” Jace interrupted.
I inwardly celebrated.
“Thanks, man. I appreciate it,” Nathan said.
Jace stood up from the table and tossed the pistachio shells he’d accumulated on a paper napkin into the trash.
He grabbed his keys from the counter and threw them up in the air. “Let’s go.”
A surge of adrenaline coursed through me as I followed Jace outside to his shiny black pickup truck, parked in our driveway. It was almost 8PM, and the hot Florida air had started to cool down. A warm breeze blew around the palm trees in front of our house. We lived on a quiet street of similar-looking stucco homes. Our house was only one level, but it was pretty big in comparison to the other properties. We had three bedrooms and a large, screened-in pool in the back. Because the homeowners’ association was very strict, all of the houses were kept in good condition. Otherwise, you’d have to pay a fine. Members of the association drove by periodically and would send nastygrams if they so much as noticed the paint chipping. Fortunately, Nathan could fix pretty much anything himself.
The black leather seat felt hot against my skin. The truck was huge, too big for our small garage, which was where Nathan parked his little Hyundai. Jace always had to park outside in the heat.
He started the ignition but didn’t back out, instead looking down at my navel. For a split second, I thought he might have been checking me out. “Put your seatbelt on.”
Well, now I feel dumb. “Oh.” I grabbed it and placed it over my chest before locking it in. “Sorry.”
I flinched when he wrapped his hand around my seat as he backed out of the driveway.
Did you think he was going to touch you, Farrah?
I had to giggle.
“What are you laughing at?” he asked as he drove down the road.
Wracking my brain, I made something up. “You know what they say about men with big trucks, right?”
The Crush Page 1