Second Chance Summer (Chance Series, #1) (13 page)

“What are you gonna do, huh?” He flicks my nose, his finger brushing my cheek. I’m pretty sure he’s left an oil smudge or two on my face from his deliberate move.

“Send you in for a service?” I say innocently, keeping my eyes wide.

He chuckles once and dips his head, leaning his hips into mine and pinning me to the wall. His mouth hovers over my ear and I try to push him off me. Half-heartedly – I don’t really want him anywhere else other than where he is right now.

“I’m the mechanic around here, Kia. If anyone is giving a service, it’s me, and I’m pretty sure you’re next on my to-do list.” He ghosts his lips along my earlobe.

“We, um…” I swallow against the urge to breathe him in. “I was serviced the other day, thanks.”

“And if you think I need a service, I clearly didn’t do a good enough job in servicing you.” He cups my chin and turns my face into his. “Maybe I need to have a real good look at you and your bodywork.”

Air rushes from my lungs at his words. My eyes are fixed onto his hot gaze, and I couldn’t move if I tried. Even though there are layers of fabric between us, it feels as though we’re skin to skin. I lick my dry lips.

“Hmm?” he murmurs, dropping his fingers to my neck and trailing them down.

“Maybe you need to do that shit in your own time and get to work!” Adam laughs.

Blood rushes to my cheeks and my mouth drops open. Shit. I totally forgot Adam was here – and that’s one of the best and worst things about Reese.

With one passing look, one little touch, he can make me forget that the rest of the world even exists.

“I could,” Reese smirks.

“You will,” I demand, nudging at him, so he stands. “I need to go and…” I look down at my clothes. “Shit! You covered me in oil!”

“I really fuckin’ hope that isn’t another mechanical innuendo!” Adam shouts.

“No, actual oil,” I reply and smother a giggle. “I have to go change now. Damn it, Reese!”

The smug bastard grins. I swipe my keys from the table next to me and poke my tongue out at him as I back out from the garage. He laughs, and I leave the garage in a damn better mood than I arrived in.

~

The doorbell rings and I put my cell down. “I got it,” I shout up the stairs coldly. Mom says nothing in response, and I take a deep breath, opening the door.

I look into a pair of blue eyes. A pair of blue eyes I know, but I haven’t seen them for six years. Neither have I seen the strong nose, the tanned skin, or the stubble on the jaw. And the only place I’ve seen the dark brown hair is when I’ve looked in the mirror.

I stare at the man in front of me like he’s an alien. He might as well be. It feels like he’s a stranger instead of the man I doted on for so many years. His blue eyes, the same as mine, study my face, scrutinizing me. The man who only yesterday I discovered I live in the same city as for most of the year.

The man who, despite my anger toward my mom, didn’t try to contact me for five years when he knew exactly where I was.

“What are you doing here?” I breathe out, stepping back.

“I… You’ve grown up, Kia bear,” he says.

I shake my head in disbelief and click my tongue. “You walked out on “Kia bear” six years ago, and I ain’t heard a word from you since. What are you doin’ here,
Dad
?”

Mom’s footsteps thud down the stairs. “Kia, who is-”

“Surprise,” I say dryly. I step back, letting go of the door handle like it’s burning me.

“Leon?” Mom’s eyes bug from her head.

“You look well, Mari.”

She purses her lips. “Why are you here?”

“Can we talk about this inside?” Dad asks, looking in my direction.

I put my hands up. “Don’t mind me. You didn’t six years ago. No one does now.” I turn and stalk into the kitchen, anger racing through my body.

It’s all coming back – everything I felt when I found out he’d gone and that he wasn’t coming back. The betrayal and the heartache. The ever-present sting of pain and the lonely ache in the pit of my stomach. The feeling of abandonment from the man who promised to always be there.

My hands shake as I grab a mug and click the kettle to boil. I clench my jaw when the front door shuts, and I have to suck my tongue to stop myself from turning and screaming at him the way I want to.

Because I
still
don’t know why he left.

I never got the explanation. From Mom, from Dad… No one ever gave it to me, and no matter how much Mom thinks her excuses are an explanation, they’re not.

I make my coffee in silence and lean back against the kitchen counter. I look at my parents coldly, shooting daggers with my eyes.

“Not quite the welcome I was expecting,” Dad says softly, breaking the silence.

“Did you expect us to roll out a red carpet?” I raise an eyebrow. “Six years, Dad. It ain’t like you went to Mexico for a month, is it?”

“Kia…”

“You left without an explanation. You just upped and went in the middle of the night. Am I supposed to cry and fall into your arms? Is that what you were expectin’?” I put the mug down. “Well I’m sorry to disappoint, but you don’t get that. Not when either of you has ever told me the reason why I woke up one morning to find you weren’t there anymore.
Ever
.”

Dad’s face slowly turns toward Mom, and she visibly shrinks back a little. “You didn’t tell her the reason I left?” he asks, his jaw tightening.

“She never needed to know,” Momma replies, getting up and reaching into the cupboard for a glass.

She slams it down. Grabs the vodka bottle. Pours it in. Downs it.

“Never had a reason to tell her,” she continues, setting the glass down more gently. “I was gonna tell her when she got older, before she went to college, then she was so happy I couldn’t do it.”

She cared about something other than the alcohol? I’ll be damned.

“You should have told her, Mari!” Dad thunders. He stands and slaps his hands against the wooden table, making it shake. “She has a right to know!”

“And who would have been here to deal with the fall out, huh?” she cries, turning to him. “It woulda been me, Lee! You never left a number, an address, or anythin’! She woulda hated me, and she would have had to live with it until now!”

I look between them, frowning. Neither of them are making any sense to me. “What are you talkin’ about?”

Mom and Dad stare at each other for a minute. His hands clench. Hers shake. He tightens his jaw, and she purses her lips.

I can feel the tension. It’s crackling around us, almost palpable in its intensity and effect. Almost suffocating in its heaviness.

Dad sighs, dropping his head, and sits back down on the chair. I look between them again when neither speak.

“Well?” I prompt. “Does anyone wanna tell me what’s going on? Or should I say, what really went on?”

Dad looks up at me. “I left because your momma decided one man wasn’t enough for her. She decided I wasn’t enough for her.”

My heart stops. I don’t want what he’s saying to be true. No matter how I crave the truth, I don’t want to believe anything other than what I have done for years.

My eyes travel to Mom in slow motion. “Is that true?” I whisper. “Did you cheat on Daddy?”

She looks at me blankly. No twitch of her lips, no blinking eyes, not even a stray hair falls in her face. It feels like time is standing still as our eyes collide with each other’s. Mine asking, and hers hesitating. I don’t breathe until she finally opens her mouth and the truth comes out.

“Yeah,” she says simply, still unmoving, still unfeeling. “Yeah, I did. I had an affair, Kia.”

~

I climb the ladder to the treehouse. Somehow. Somehow, I do it. With the last burst of strength in me, I pull myself up, everything inside the wooden walls distorting behind the waves of tears falling from my eyes. I curl up on the floor and listen to the rumble of a car leaving. He’s gone to wherever, and she’s gone her safe place. And I’m in mine.

I’m alone the exact same way I have been for six years, but I’ve never felt quite as lonely as I do right now.

My phone burns a hole in my pocket. One message, three words. That’s all I need to do and Reese will be here. 

Do I need him? I don’t want to need him. I don’t want him to be the one that makes it all go away in only the way he can. I don’t want to need him at all, but tonight I do.

Tonight, and maybe always. 

I pull my cell from my pocket and type out a shaky message. Three words are all I need to bridge every gap, fill every hole and stitch every tear between us. Three tiny, simple words that mean more and hold more power than they should.

I let the cell fall to the floor next to me, hot tears burning blazing paths down my cheeks. I thought I knew betrayal. I thought I knew heartbreak. I thought I knew lies.

But I knew nothing. If I knew it all, it wouldn’t hurt so badly right now. It wouldn’t feel like every part of me was twisting into knots if I knew what real pain feels like.

Six years of being surrounded by lies and deceit. Six years of Mom burying her head under the sand and blaming it all on Daddy when none of it was his fault. Six years of keeping me away from him because she couldn’t face
her
mistake. It wasn’t his mistake, not like she was so adamant it was.

Reese’s strong arms wrap around me, breaking into my train of thought. He lifts me from the floor and into his warm chest.
Reese.
He rocks us slowly, running his fingers through my hair, and I bury my face into his neck.

“It’s okay, baby,” he whispers softly. “I’m here. I got you.”

“She lied. The whole time,” I croak out, wrapping an arm around his neck and pressing my face into him. “She said it was him, but it wasn’t it wasn’t
it wasn’t
it was her the whole time and she
lied
!” The words tumble out almost hysterically.

“Who said what, baby?”

I take a deep breath, the words clogging in my throat.

“Talk to me,” he begs. “Tell me what happened.”

“Momma, she lied.” I take another deep breath, pushing through the thick waves of emotion washing over me. “She told me Daddy left ‘cause he was a good for nothin’ excuse of a man, but it wasn’t why.
She
cheated. She had an affair, and he found out, so he left. I’ve blamed him for six years. Six goddamn years I’ve hated him for leavin’ me, and it was never his fault.” 

Reese doesn’t move. He doesn’t say a thing, but I feel and hear his sharp intake of breath.

“Every day I’ve watched Momma drink herself into nothin’, and hated him for leavin’ her. For leavin’ us. I hated him, ‘cause he didn’t care enough about me to stay. I blamed myself. I thought it was somethin’ I did.” His arms tighten around me, and I continue, “He left in the middle of the night. I kept kidding myself, thinking he’d be back to get me and take me with him. Momma, too. Y’all started to look at me with pity, and that was when I realized he weren’t ever comin’ back. He’d gone, all ‘cause of what she did to him. To me. To us.”

I shudder, and he kisses the top of my forehead, letting his lips linger there. He’s waiting; just waiting for me to shatter the rest of my walls and let him in, but I’ve already pulled down every wall blocking him out. I’ve already taken away everything I was holding between us.

Because I can’t stop. It’s started, and I can’t stop. To tell someone, to tell
him
what happened. It’s a feral need inside me, tearing through my body in the same way a river tears through a broken dam. 

“Y’all know my momma lives for that bottle. You don’t know how bad it is, how much she truly does live for it, but y’all know.
Poor Kia
, y’all say when you think I can’t hear you. I’ve seen things no kid should have to see. I’ve picked her up off the floor more times than I can count, cleaned her sick, taken out the bottles. I’ve been the mom when I shoulda been the kid. I tried; I tried to tell her how she made me feel, but y’know what? All she cared about was him. The guy who left us. Suddenly I didn’t matter anymore. I still don’t. Not to her.” I loosen my grip on Reese’s neck and turn my face slightly, looking through the tree house window at the setting sun. “So I left this damn town as soon as I could.” 

His body tenses. 

“I did what my Daddy did. I ran,” I whisper. “I ran from what scared me, what I couldn’t deal with. But unlike him, I had to come back. I had to come back to deal with his mess, and mine. He only came back ‘cause he wants a divorce. After all this time, he finally came back for it.

“I’m done with it. They argued over this big secret, and I still didn’t know it. She couldn’t even tell me. He had to tell me. It was like the world had been pulled out from under me, and not in a good way.” My jaw clenches. “And then she admitted it, just like that. ‘I had an affair’. No guilt. No remorse, just her and her vodka. She had an affair; Daddy caught her at it and left the same night. He played happy families for me, and left while I was sleepin’ the next night.” 

Reese’s hand moving on my back is comfortable. So relaxing, calming. Just like he is. 

“I’ve waited six years to hear from him. A letter, a call, even an email y’know? Nothing... I had nothing. And now I know why, ‘cause he told me tonight.” Hot tears flame down my cheeks as anger breaks through the sorrow and self-pity. “She stopped it. She got to every letter first. She disconnected every call and deleted every email. She said if he ain’t man enough to stay with his family he ain’t man enough to see his baby girl. Her. She stopped it all.” Deep breath. “And it wasn’t even him. She messed up; she cheated. She tore us apart, and she had the balls to say my Daddy ain’t a man?” I shake my head. “She ain’t a woman, and she ain’t a mother.” 

Reese is still rocking me slowly, holding me so tightly against his body I think I’m about to mold into his skin. Silence.

This is me. I’ve bared my soul to him, the reality of my life that not even Luce knows. I’ve let him into a place no-one else has ever been, where no-one else ever will be. I don’t know if I’ll ever be the same again.

But I do know there’s no pushing him away.

Not this time.