Jenson
Melissa Belle
ISBN: 978-1-946307-11-8
e-ISBN: 978-1-946307-12-5
Published in the United States of America by Autumn Ink Press.
This is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. All names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual situations or persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.
Copyright © 2018 Melissa Belle. All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, transmitted, or distributed in any form or by any means, except for brief quotes used for the purpose of review, without the prior written permission of the author. Any trademarks, service marks, or product names are the property of their respective owners, and are used only for reference.
Cover Art: J. Hunter
For anyone who’s ever felt wrong to love who you love.
Contents
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
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Epilogue
Coming Next!
Acknowledgments
Also by Melissa Belle
About the Author
Chapter One
Jenson
In five hours and two left turns, I’ll be pulling into the town I left years ago, the same place I left my heart. I tuck my two sons into their car seats and buckle them in before I climb into the driver’s seat and start the truck. We pull out of my townhouse complex in Pittsburgh, and I head for the highway.
“Daddy, how long before we get there?”
As we pull up at a stoplight, I look at Kyle in the rearview mirror. “A little while. But before you know it, we’ll be home. To the home where I grew up,” I clarify. “You boys remember the town. You always love visiting Liberty Falls.”
“Will we get to play football with your new team like we do here? What if they don’t let us?” Connor asks me, as he pulls his blankie tighter around him.
They may be identical twins, but my two boys couldn’t be more different in temperament: Kyle’s always running three steps away from me, and Connor makes his decisions more cautiously. I’m trying to take a page from each of them and follow my heart without ignoring all sense of logic. Like this move I’m making across the state of Pennsylvania—I’ve wanted to do it for a while, but I didn’t make the leap. Not until right now. My heart pounds at the risk I’m taking, but the woman at the finish line is worth it. She’s always been worth it, and she always will be.
“I’ve already told the head coach how much you love coming to practice. He’s looking forward to meeting you both,” I assure Connor.
“Will we see Grandma?” Kyle asks.
“We’re going to stay with her and Grandpa, like always,” I say.
“What about Livia?” Connor asks, staring at me in the mirror with those serious green eyes that match mine in color and intensity. “Will we see her too?”
“Yeah, I want to see Livia!” Kyle chimes in, nodding his blond head vigorously.
My chest tightens. “I hope so boys. I certainly plan on it.”
As the light turns green, I put my focus back on the road. But my thoughts are only on one woman.
Olivia Graham, I’m coming back for you, babe. I hope you’re ready because I’m not giving up this time without one hell of a fight.
Olivia
#JustDivorcedGoals
1) Keep well-meaning but pushy relatives off my back so I can figure out my love life on my own.
2) Date a man who makes my palms sweat and my heart pound. A man I trust and who accepts me for the somewhat neurotic, numbers-obsessed, good-hearted, quirky-humored woman that I am. Someone like…
I suck in a deep breath as hot sensations flood my mind. And my body. And…intimate parts of me.
I spin around in my office chair, squirming in my seat and pressing my feet into the carpet to try to shake the memory of Jenson Beau. Before I can force myself to concentrate on my work, the phone rings at my desk.
I whip my chair back around and grab the phone. “Hello and welcome to Liberty Falls Union Bank. This is Olivia. How may I help you?”
“Olivia, I have some bad news,” Hayley says in a nervous tone.
“What is it?” I say in alarm. “Are you okay?”
“Oh, I’m fine. It’s just…don’t kill me, but I have to work this Sunday.”
“What?!” Panic fills my chest. “You can’t go to my great-aunt’s birthday party with me?”
“This huge editing project due Monday literally just came up, and my boss is insisting I’m the only one who can do it. And I would start in on it early so that maybe I’d be done by Sunday, but the client isn’t even sending the proposal over until Saturday. They’re paying double for the quick turnaround, so it will be a nice paycheck for me.”
“Well, that part is great,” I say. “But you were going to be my friend-date. My sidekick to help me stave off my pushy relatives, who will no doubt be pestering me all day about what went so wrong to drive me to divorce. Not to mention everyone trying to set me up.”
“I know. And I swear I will be there for you for the next shindig. When is the next Graham family event?”
“In a week. But this one will be the worst because it’s first. No one’s seen me since my divorce was finalized, and they’re going to be lying in wait like a pack of lions.”
“I have a plan for my replacement. I’ll meet you at your house tonight. With a bottle of wine.”
“Make it two,” I say as I hang up the phone.
“No way in hell.” I nearly drop my half-empty glass of wine onto my living room floor as I vigorously slash an emphatic “no” through the air with my hand. “I can’t.”
“But why not?” Hayley asks only in the way a person who knows why I’m saying no can. Her auburn hair is piled messily on top of her head, and her pale blue eyes light up as she carries on explaining her crazy-ass plan to me. “I know your backstory with Jenson Beau, Olivia.”
“So then you understand why Jenson can’t, under any circumstances, be my date to a family event. We were raised like cousins.”
“But you aren’t cousins.”
“That’s a technicality our families refuse to acknowledge.”
Hayley’s clearly not listening because she’s already pulled Jenson’s Facebook page up on my laptop. “Message him.”
“No.”
“If you’re saying no, then you’re simply not drunk enough.”
“What do you want me to say to him—‘my divorce was just finalized, and I’m single for the first time since forever, and I’m hoping you are too so we can pick up where we left off when we were kids? Oh, and before you had children with another woman?’”
“It sounded better inside my head, but yes! Do it!”
“I can’t. Jenson and I are…friends now. That’s it. His mom said something about a new woman he was seeing.” A comment Cindy made off-handedly but that I filed away in my mind. “She said it a while ago, but I never heard about any break-up. So they’re probably still together.”
“So ask him to
be your friend-date. You know, to replace me. Nothing romantic.”
Friend-date.
My drunken fingers hover over the keyboard. Jenson Beau was always there for me. And even though we went our separate ways when he left for college clear across the country, we kept in touch. And we see each other sporadically on holidays and at family gatherings. I love his two sons. And they love me. But the way I feel about their father…that was never quite as easy to define.
Hayley taps the screen as she refills my wine glass.
I chug down the alcohol faster than I probably should, but between that and the first bottle Hayley and I already finished, it’s more than enough to get a full-on buzz going.
I stare at Jenson’s handsome face on his social media page. For a moment, I feel like those bottomless green eyes are staring right at me. Begging me to act.
And I start typing.
Thanks to the wine coursing through my veins, I write quickly and with no filter. When I finish, I lean back and let out a big breath.
Before I can even reread what I wrote, Hayley, with those lightning-quick editor fingers of hers, reaches around me and hits Send.
No, no, no, no, no.
What have I just done?
Jenson
I carry Connor into my mom’s house and put him to bed in the guest room she has set up with twin beds. Kyle always needs time to wind down after one of our trips, so I set us up in the den and fire up the iPad.
“How about we watch a wildlife video?” I ask him as he snuggles into my chest.
His emerald green eyes that look so much like mine get big. “With lions?”
I rub his head and chuckle. “Definitely with lions.”
I look back at the screen in front of me, but before I can click on the video, my social media app lights up with a message.
“Daddy!” Kyle jabs his chubby finger at the alert. “You have a message.”
“I know, but I can check it later,” I say. “Let’s get to the video.”
Before I can stop him, he clicks on the alert.
“Kyle, we’ve been over this, remember? My messages are for me to open, not you or Conn…” The message on the screen shuts me up cold.
“Daddy? Is it your new football team?”
“Not exactly.”
One.
Two.
Three.
Four.
That’s how many times I read Olivia’s message.
Kyle, who at five wants to believe he’s mastered reading but in reality he’s still getting there, leans in and looks right along with me. And I’m too floored to stop him.
“I can’t read what it says,” he says as he gives up and lays his head on my lap. “Can we watch the video now?”
“In a second.”
Olivia’s message is brief and to the point, exactly like her.
J, I’m sure you’ve heard about my separation, so I’ll be quick. My divorce was finalized today, and I’m sure you can imagine what tomorrow will be like at Auntie Sue’s birthday party. I was hoping to see a friendly face amongst the room of lions. If you’re otherwise engaged and not planning to attend, no worries, and I apologize in advance for embarrassing myself.
Shit. My heart feels like it’s going to come out of my chest. Because this news is…fucking huge. I knew Olivia was going through a separation with her dick of a husband, but I hadn’t heard anything concrete about it in weeks. And I didn’t want to push her like I’m sure everyone else in her family’s been doing. So I didn’t reach out. Instead, I held my breath and…hoped for the best for her.
I click off the message and open up the video for Kyle. Before we’re two seconds in, Connor appears in the doorway. He settles in on my other side, and the three of us watch a pack of lions search for food on the savanna. But I’m barely paying attention.
Divorced.
She’s officially divorced.
Like me.
And for the first fucking time in a long time, Olivia Graham and I are in the same place at the same time.
When the path opened up for me to finally move back home to Liberty Falls, I held onto the near-impossible dream that somehow the stars would align for us. But I didn’t allow myself to truly believe things would have a shot in hell of working. But just now…Olivia sent me a ray of hope.
A smile crosses my face.
Happy homecoming.
Chapter Two
Olivia
I pull into the back of the parking lot outside Liberty Falls banquet hall and turn off the car. My windows are down, and the scent hits my nose immediately.
Lilacs in bloom.
And the nostalgia…it’s so strong my throat aches.
I was sixteen, caught between being the baby of my family and studying my ass off to be the first one to go to an Ivy League business school.
Jenson was gorgeous, three years older, and my best friend in the world. I used to sneak out at night and meet him underneath the covered bridge in the center of town. The lilac bushes grew on either side of the bridge, and while Jenson was giving me my first kiss, the incredible aroma of the flowers in bloom was overwhelming my senses.
Then he was taking me to second base, and I was giving him my heart.
But before I could give him everything, we stopped. And we waited.
We waited for me to turn eighteen and legal. He was always three steps ahead of me, so when I was sixteen, he was already legally too old to date a minor in Pennsylvania. Add to that the fact that our families would have highly disapproved and tried to do anything to avoid the judgment and scandal of the mayor’s youngest daughter falling for her “cousin.” Even though Jenson isn’t actually my cousin, nobody seems to remember that little fact.
None of that could stop us from feeling the way we did about each other.
But we found love young, too young to know just how rare and precious it was. Jenson waited for me to catch up to him, but when I did…
Life got in the way.
I swallow down the pressure building in my throat and force myself to exit the car.
It’s time. Time for the party where everyone will ask me about my failed marriage and remark on how I’m not getting any younger. No matter that I’m still in my twenties; to my family-oriented relatives, I was halfway to finished when I didn’t have a baby on my hip by twenty-four.
I tried to keep my divorce under wraps until Auntie Sue’s party was over, but word spread within minutes of me receiving the papers. I don’t even know how, or who, spilled the news.
But that’s what it’s like living in a small town with a large family where everybody knows everything about everyone. There are no secrets except for those truths buried so deep no one seems to think they exist anymore.
I’ve taken two steps through the parking lot when I run straight into my aunt.
“There you are! You poor thing!” Aunt Edna rushes me with two arms outstretched and grips me hard.
“I’m fine, Edna,” I say. “I really am.”
Mom is right behind her. “She’s strong like steel,” she says to her sister-in-law. “But I’m telling you, Olivia, thank goodness you didn’t get that job you applied for in New York. Imagine if you’d moved there with”—Mom shudders—“that awful ex-husband of yours? And then you found out he was sleeping with his colleague? You would have been a victim of circumstance and stuck in the Big Apple all alone!”
I pat her arm. “Mom, please relax. I’m okay. I really am. And honestly, I’m glad I went to New York for that interview. Otherwise, I may not have caught Nate cheating.”
Aunt Edna’s eyes grow round as saucers.
“I’m fine,” I say quickly.
“But you must be so lonely,” Aunt Edna opines as the three of us finally turn and start walking toward the banquet hall. “To not even get kids out of the deal—now you’re in your mid-twenties with a ticking clock!”
“A time bomb, I call it,” Mom says in a hushed tone as we step underneath the awning and head for the
door. “When you were married and taking your time, Olivia, things were fine. But now you have to start over completely! Finding the right man could take years all on its own. Then, you have to plan the wedding and hope his sperm are fast swimmers so you can start your family by thirty.”
I think I’m going to throw up.
I turn away from my mom and Aunt Edna and catch my bright blue eyes reflected in the window next to the heavy wooden door leading into the banquet hall. Jenson would stare into my eyes for hours by the moonlight during the cold Pennsylvania winters of our youth. I clench my teeth, wishing for the millionth time that we had thrown the rulebook out the window and just played for keeps. But that’s all wishful thinking. Jenson’s in Pittsburgh, I’m here, and sixteen and innocent has come and gone.
Mom opens the door to the building. “Showtime, ladies.”
As the flash from the cameras hits us, I tug at the spaghetti strap on my silky silver dress and walk into the large open room filled with people already seated at tables. This is a simple birthday party for the matriarch of our family, but because my father’s the town mayor, the local paper has sent a crew of photographers like they do for every family event we hold. Harold Graham has been involved in the political landscape of Liberty Falls my entire life, and I’ve grown to expect that every choice I make will be examined and judged under the harsh, but well-meaning, light of my small, conservative town.
I go kiss Auntie Sue, who’s seated at the table of honor in her gold-trimmed wheelchair decorated with pink ribbons and a Happy Birthday sign tied to the back. Her daughter, Matilda, spoons a bite of applesauce into Auntie Sue’s mouth and wipes her face with those fancy cloth napkins the hall puts out. Auntie Sue’s son, Jeff, sits on her other side, pretending to look helpful but not really doing much of anything.
Jenson (Wild Men Book 4) Page 1