5 Years Later_a second chance romance novel Read online

  My body, my heart, and my mind were locked in a deep war.

  Don’t do it.

  I took another step.

  We had a lot to talk about. There was a lot that Aiden needed to explain. A lot I needed to explain. I needed to know why he was back and for how long. If this was real or just some strung-out version of a booty call. Or maybe we were just friends who fucked every once and again.

  I took another step.

  “Lily,” Aiden said. “I…”

  I lunged at him, which was risky.

  He was at the ledge of the roof.

  But Aiden caught me.

  My mind warned me again.

  Don’t do it.

  I kissed Aiden. And it felt fucking great.

  I did it.

  And the night was just starting.

  I stripped the leather jacket off of him and it hit the floor just inside my door. I clawed at the back of his white shirt and he put me on my feet as the shirt came up and off his head. That ended up on the floor. My hands slid down his chiseled chest and down to his stomach muscles. I grabbed at the top of his jeans and he took my wrists and pulled me away. He grabbed my waist and took control, lifting me up again.

  Our mouths collided and we kissed harder, faster. The time left between us was a lot to make up for. And maybe it was a mistake to just jump into bed, but whatever. It was my birthday and Aiden was what I wanted. What I needed.

  He took me to my bedroom where I finally got my hands on his jeans for good. I got them down to his knees and he took care of the rest. My hand slipped between his legs, feeling a familiar thickness that sent tingling up my arm, trigging memories of when I was just becoming a woman.

  I looked up at him and he stepped back, his hands now taking their turn to take care of me.

  To be honest, though, I couldn’t wait.

  I took my shirt off and he opened my pants. I reached back and unclipped my bra as he dropped down to one knee before me.

  I let out a gasp when his lips touched my stomach, making me flutter. I grabbed at the top of his head and looked down, feeling his lips making a trail down my body. His hands touched my hips and then quickly moved up, going for my breasts. I watched his big hands slide over my breasts with ease. My nipples were instantly erect, sensitive against the roughness of his palms. I quickly moved my hands to his hands, cupping him as he cupped me.

  My hips started to shiver with anticipation.

  His mouth kept going and when I felt the touch of his hot breath between my thighs, I groaned and thrust at him. That’s when he released his grip on my breasts and brought them down my body. He paused at my sides, against my ribs, and pushed me back to the bed.

  I fell back and threw my left leg over his shoulder and dug my heel into him.

  Five years later and I had more confidence and control in my body and my needs. And Aiden was about to understand that.

  Then again… this was Aiden… his touch alone was enough to make me climax.

  His tongue touched my tender sex and I gasped.

  I grabbed the sheets on the bed as Aiden brought his hands down and around, grabbing at my lower back, pulling me tight to his mouth.

  He moved fast and wild, the tip of his tongue reintroducing itself to me. Not that I or my body could ever forget him.

  Aiden took me to the brink and then paused.

  I was breathless as I looked down at him. His stare was as powerful as ever.

  He came up a little and kissed my soft body, then pulled away.

  As he rose up, he grabbed the top of his boxers and eased them down, showing me what I had been missing for five years.

  His hard thickness was obviously ready to go.

  You never forget your first…

  As he came forward I quickly threw my right foot at him, hitting him in his hard stomach.

  “Aiden… protection…”

  “Aren’t you…”

  “Yeah,” I whispered. “But that doesn’t mean…”

  Aiden grinned and grabbed my ankle, moving me out of the way.

  He put his body forward between my legs and against me. He kept his lower half away though. It was just his stomach and his chest.

  His mouth gently kissed above my chest and then worked his way up to my ear.

  “Lily, my flower,” he whispered. “It was only ever you. Okay?”

  I put a hand to his back, feeling rippling muscle.

  “What do you mean?” I asked.

  Aiden looked at me. “You’re the only one I ever fucked without a condom, okay? And I’m not going to start wearing one now with you.”

  I bit my lip as my heart and mind collectively yelled, “holy shit…”

  Aiden thrust forward and sank into me.

  I hurried to throw my other hand around to his back and sank my nails into him. I hooked my ankles around his body as he started to fuck me harder and faster. Five years was a lot of time to make up and I was fine with that.

  Aiden fucked me harder. The bed groaned. I groaned louder. Aiden grunted.

  We kissed. Fast. Sloppy. Everything I could ever want.

  Happy fucking birthday to me.

  I looked at Aiden as we paused from kissing.

  The intensity and passion had never let up…

  But I already knew the truth.

  He wasn’t going to stay around forever.

  Chapter 7

  (Decent Pancakes)

  10 YEARS AGO

  (AIDEN)

  She was fucking beautiful. I stood at the end of the bed in my jeans, my shirt over my shoulder. I rubbed my jaw and yawned. There had been no sleep last night. After rolling in the sheets with Lily for a couple hours, exploring every inch of her memory, turning it back into a reality, she finally fell asleep and I just watched her sleep.

  In my mind, I couldn’t stop picturing her lifting that cup to her lips. So fucking close to something terrible happening to her. If she had drunk that drink and that guy got his hands on her…

  I gritted my teeth and counted my lucky stars that I had been there.

  But that’s how it always went for us. Being there at the right time and at the wrong time.

  Today was a new day, though.

  I was there. She was there.

  One step at a time.

  My stomach protested with a deep growl. I went to the kitchen and opened the cabinets to make some coffee. Then another idea got to me. The little corner shop.

  A place where we used to stand outside and smoke cigarettes. Where we’d scare younger kids into giving us their pocket change so we could buy food. Where we’d stand and whistle at pretty girls and women.

  Man, we were nothing but assholes then.

  But the corner shop.

  It was called Mae’s.

  The front was a convenient store type of place but the back was a little shit hole diner. Skillets plugged into power strips that were stained slimy from bacon grease. The place forever stunk of it, too. But they had some decent pancakes. That’s what I was in the mood for.

  Some decent pancakes and some old, muddy coffee.

  The road hadn’t been kind to me and the band, but anything that resembled something fancy just made me feel wrong. We all grew up working the streets to get to tomorrow, so the notion of a paycheck, insurance, or just money to worry about seemed absurd.

  I had a few bucks in my pocket, and I put my shirt on and went for a walk.

  It had been years since I’d last walked those streets, even though I had a rental car. It felt good. Well, for the most part. Seeing some of the old haunts got to me. The boarded-up houses. Houses that were knocked down. Some of the places that had been fixed up and turned into something else. People trying to clean the neighborhood up with their urban development theory of shuffling out the shit and bringing in the processed environment to make those with money feel good about themselves.

  On one of the corners, two guys stood there, wearing denim jackets and ripped jeans, sharing a cigarette. They were mu
mbling to each other. They were filthy. They looked at me and both smiled and nodded.

  I gave a wave and went on my way.

  I sometimes missed the old neighborhood. But when I left, I left for good. I wouldn’t be snooping around stoops and back alleys looking for some old buddies to stir up trouble with. I wouldn’t nestle up to the bar at Mack’s place, even though I was actually old enough to drink. I wouldn’t pick fights just to see what would happen. Throw rocks at windows for fun. Or any of the other dumb shit I used to do that I thought of as just surviving.

  When I got to Mae’s, I noticed the sign was really faded. The top right was cracked and busted bad. Probably from a rock. The same for the front window, except you could tell it had been shot. The spider cracks were everywhere, along with a piece of a cardboard on the hole taped up from the inside.

  I opened the door to the smell of a mix of dust and grease.

  The convenience store part was a shell of what it used to be. Some leftover processed cupcakes and shit that were expired but probably still tasted alright were scattered on mostly empty shelves. Behind the counter, there was only a handful of packs of cigarettes—the cheapest ones.

  An old man put down his newspaper and eyed me.

  “Holy shit. Charlie?”

  “Aiden,” he said in an even rougher voice than I was used to. “Well, goddamn.” He stood up from his stool and put his bear-paw hands to the counter for balance. “What in the fuck are you doing here?”

  “Pancakes,” I said.

  “You came all the way back to this place for fucking pancakes?”

  “Best I could find,” I said with a wink.

  “They’re shit. You know it,” he laughed.

  “How’ve you been, Charlie?”

  “Waiting to die,” he said. “Took a lung last year. Lost a kidney two years ago. Little by little, I’m heading down that tube.”

  “Aren’t you supposed to go up?” I asked and pointed to the ceiling.

  Charlie snickered. “Me and that guy…we don’t get along so well, Aiden. How about you? You keeping out of trouble?”

  “I’m alive,” I said. I patted my chest. “Alive and…living.”

  “Good for you. Now go get some fucking pancakes.”

  I wandered through the store to the back.

  There was a handful of people at old, circular dining-room tables. None of the tables matched. None of the chairs matched. That was the charm of this shithole. There were ceiling fans, but they broke down years ago. The blades were eaten up by grease, bugs, and time, and they looked a quarter of the size they were supposed to be.

  Two women stood behind long tables, splattering pancake batter and bacon onto what looked like the same griddles as the last time I ate there.

  “Whaddaya want?” the first woman asked me.

  She studied me. She knew me. I knew her. Harriet.

  I didn’t bother with the small talk like I did with Charlie.

  “Three shorts and two pigs,” I said.

  Three shorts meant three short stacks. Three pancakes each meant nine total for me and Lily to split. Two pigs meant two orders of bacon.

  I worked my way down to the end of the table where a third woman was. She sat in a wheelchair and collected the cash, putting it into a shoebox.

  I gave more than she asked for, and she didn’t give me change.

  That was just how shit went here.

  I gathered up my bags and left through the side door.

  I stood in the alley for a few seconds, looking left to right.

  Memories were hard to let go of sometimes. The good. The bad. The rough ones were the worst.

  But for me, the best memory was in her bed.

  I wanted to keep that memory alive as long as I could.

  “Sorry about this place,” was the first thing she said to me when I plopped down a styrofoam box with her pancakes and bacon in it.

  “What?”

  “This place. It’s…I mean, I have a good job. I have a great job, actually. I was thinking about getting a better place.”

  “A better place?” I asked. “What’s wrong with this place?”

  Lily smirked. “I don’t know. I just feel…”

  “Ah, Lily,” I said. “We grew up with next to nothing. You have a roof over your head. What the hell else matters in this world? You think for a second I give a damn about what your apartment looks like?”

  “I guess not,” she said. “These are pretty good.”

  “Decent,” I said. “Haven’t had these in years.”

  “Years,” Lily whispered.

  I knew right then the conversation was going to take a wicked turn, and why not? I had it coming. After all, I was the one who spent a night with her in bed and then left before the sun came up, whispering a goodbye in her ear.

  I inhaled a couple pancakes and munched on some bacon.

  I watched Lily the entire time. Her dark hair and the way a few strands wouldn’t stay tucked behind her ears. The natural beauty that had possessed her from years ago was still there, but she had the graceful age of womanhood. She was completely intoxicating. And that was coming from a guy who spent years on the road, traveling across the country, meeting all kinds of women. Nobody could come close to catching my heart like Lily.

  Not a chance in hell.

  Finally, our eyes locked while she was about to take a bite of a pancake.

  “What?” she asked.

  “You. You’re so fucking beautiful, Lily. I’m sorry. I just had to say that.”

  “I’ll let you say that since you saved my life last night,” she said.

  “We should probably get all this off our chests…five years.”

  “Aiden…”

  “No,” I said. “I had this vision, Lily. My beautiful flower. The guys called me up that night and said a guy named Chuck wanted to meet us. We had to leave then to get to Seattle to meet him. So, we all did. We never looked back. But I looked back. A lot. Oh, sweetheart, I fucking missed you.”

  “But you got signed. I tried to find some of your shows.”

  “Well, that’s the thing. We got signed. We got to tour. We got to keep writing music. But it was this spinning wheel that couldn’t stop. I’m five years into it, and I barely have anything to show for it. The rest of the guys are coked-up and drunk, just living on the edge.”

  “Why not you?” Lily asked.

  I reached across the table and took her hand. “You, Lily. I wanted to keep my promise to come back to you. But shit just kept getting out of control. Chasing that dream down. You know? Every show was the next big show. The one that was going to change our lives. But it never happened.”

  “You’re popular, though.”

  “Yeah. But not comfortable.” I leaned back against the leg of her couch. Sitting on the floor, eating—damn, that brought back memories of us together. “I didn’t know what to expect. Whether you’d be here. Be married. Kids. A boyfriend. Anything.”

  “No,” she said. “I just…did my thing.”

  She swallowed hard.

  She wasn’t giving me the full story.

  That was fine.

  This was new. Old, yeah, but new right now.

  We finished eating, and I cleaned up the little mess.

  I then stood in the small kitchen and looked around.

  Lily still seemed shocked that I was there. There was so much left to talk about.

  “Hey,” I said to her. “I have an idea.”

  “What?”

  “I want to go get my guitar. Play some songs for you. Like I used to do. Except these ones are better.”

  Lily grinned. “I’d like that.”

  “Do you have work or anything today?”

  She quickly shook her. “No. I’m fine. I mean…yeah. Go get your guitar.”

  I walked to the door and froze. I glanced over my shoulder and saw her staring at me.

  I walked to her with a purpose and grabbed her face, gently.

  “I will be ba
ck,” I whispered. “Not five minutes, but not five years either.”

  “Aiden…”

  I pressed my lips to hers and let the moment swallow us up.

  She was back in my heart and back in my arms…right where I wanted her to be.

  Chapter 8

  (Small Cough)

  10 YEARS AGO

  (LILY)

  I took a quick shower when he left. I ripped through my closet and drawers to find my best clothes. So stupid, right? After all, this was Aiden. This was the guy who had seen me at my worst. This was the guy who held me when I ugly cried. This was the guy who never made me feel ugly, only beautiful.

  Yet I changed my outfit three times before looking at the clock and realizing I was late for work.

  “Shit,” I whispered.

  I jumped on and then over my bed, looking stupid as I tried to run on a mattress. I grabbed my cell and crashed into the floor. I stared at the screen, knowing what I was about to do.

  Play hooky. Fake sick. On a job that was really good to me.

  But…Aiden…

  He could just be in town for a day, for a show, and then be gone again.

  That was well worth a missed day of work. Plus, I could keep up with anything on my phone, if someone really needed me that bad.

  I called the office and cleared my throat.

  I pinched the bridge of my nose and bit my lip.

  “Sue,” I said. “Hey, it’s Lily.”

  “Lily…you sound…”

  “Little sick,” I said. “Small cough.” I faked a cough. “I just feel really rundown right now. I don’t think I should be bringing this into the office.”

  “Right. Of course.”

  “Sorry. I have my phone if anything happens.”

  “I think we can survive one day without you,” Sue said. “Make sure you take care of yourself. Lots of rest. Get some soup and some crappy daytime TV. All the game shows, and soaps, right?”

  “Yeah, exactly,” I said. I coughed again. “It’s been a long time…”

  Since Aiden was here. And I shouldn’t do this. But I have to do this. I can’t miss out on him.

  “Go rest up,” Sue said. “Do you have your laptop?”