Second Opinion (21 page)

CHAPTER 23

FOUR YEARS EARLIER

It was our last night together.

I wasn’t sure where our week together had gone, but we sat at dinner, knowing whatever happened, things would be different twenty-four hours later.

As we dined in Rachelle’s favorite restaurant, though, I had literally no concept of just exactly how much my world was about to change.

I had no way of knowing the heartbreak I’d endured for the previous three years had nothing on what I was about to go through.

Everything that had brought us together as a couple replayed in my mind. All of the reasons I had loved her came rushing back to me in the week we’d been back together. And I was positive we were going to find our way again.

She had her life in Riverside, and I had mine in Phoenix.

But it didn’t matter. I’d give up my life in Phoenix in a heartbeat if it meant I had the chance to be with her again.

Especially after everything that had happened during our one reunited week.

I’d fallen in love with her again.

Well, that wasn’t
exactly
true. I’d never stopped loving her.

But I was confident we had managed to get back to the exact place where we’d left off. Now that I knew she had simply been young and scared, I could forgive her. I could move forward with her.

I hadn’t told her yet, but I’d already put in a call to a realtor. I’d started researching jobs in Riverside. I’d find something.

I was even starting to like giraffes again. Rachelle wore a necklace with a diamond giraffe on it almost all the time. I felt it under my tongue when my lips slid down her neck toward her breasts. Giraffes had started to symbolize new beginnings to me, and I thought lovingly of the birthing video of the baby giraffe. That adorable little creature had been able to stand up on all fours just seconds after it had been born. That took real talent.

She took a sip of her wine. I always loved watching her lips, but never more than when she licked off the excess wine left behind.

I reviewed our week in my mind. The majority of our time together had been spent in bed, but it didn’t lessen the bond we shared. We talked and laughed and shared bits of our lives. I saw two separate lives starting to merge into one shared path again.

I couldn’t have been more excited at the prospect.

I was thrilled I had a second chance with her, and this time would be different. This time, we would communicate.

I was more certain than ever the mistakes of our past were easily blamed on youth. But now we had lived out some more of our lives, and we saw what it was like to live those lives apart. Now we were in a place where we understood how tough the simple passage of time could be.

Now that she was back in my life, I wasn’t going to let her go.

I couldn’t.

But it was her last night in Phoenix, and the next morning she’d be getting on a plane to head back to Riverside.

So I had to make the most of our night, and I started it with dinner at Vesuvio’s, her favorite Italian restaurant.

We’d end with dessert.

In my bed.

With me on top of her and inside of her and covering her body with mine.

“Can we have the talk yet?” I asked.

She set her fork down and took a sip of her wine. She looked me squarely in the eye. “Why?”

I sighed. “Because I want to know before you go where we stand.”

“Then let’s talk in the morning.”

A rocket of fear shot through me. It must have shown on my face, because her eyes softened.

“If you already know how this is going to end, just tell me.” My voice was flat. I hid my emotions well, something I’d learned from the explosion the very woman in front of me had caused.

She glanced away from me, her eyes squinting. “What if I told you I’m not sure yet?”

“How can you not be sure?”

She shrugged, her eyes meeting mine once again.

It didn’t seem possible to me that she didn’t know. I felt it between us, and in the week we’d spent together, we were stronger and better than we had been three years earlier.

But three years earlier, I thought we were going to make it forever. And it had been quite the shock to my system to discover she hadn’t felt the same way.

It had thrown me into a deep pit of despair. It was so deep I hadn’t realized I’d never really climbed out of it. Not until this past week.

It was only Rachelle who could bring me happiness again. It was a huge risk to take, but I wanted to end up with her.

This week had proven to me there was really only one person out there who was any other person’s perfect match. Maybe it was naïve. Maybe it was cliché. But I’d sampled enough of the pool in the past three years to be absolutely convinced there was only one woman on this earth who was put there to be my perfect match.

And Rachelle was it.

I’d never loved like I loved her. I’d never felt like I felt with her.

And most of all, I’d never fucked like I fucked her.

“I just want to keep living in the fantasyland we’ve lived in this whole week,” she said. “I don’t want to think about tonight being the end of our week together. And having our discussion means our week is ending. Either way, whether we decide to stay together or split, this week will be over. And I’m not ready for that just yet.”

Her heartfelt speech calmed my nerves a bit, but the whole idea of waiting for our conversation set me on edge.

It was my first hint things might not work out the way I wanted them to.

But I put that thought into a tiny box and buried it deep in the furthest recesses of my mind. I wouldn’t allow the negativity or the fear ruin our night.

Less than an hour later, she was on her back on my bed as my tongue flicked against her clit. I knew what she liked; I’d fallen right back into the same old patterns with her. She had always been vocal about telling me what she wanted. Most women were too shy to tell me they wanted it harder or softer or a little higher.

Rachelle wasn’t shy.

She’d singlehandedly taught me how to give a girl oral sex because she guided me through it. I’d always had a knack for pleasing the ladies, but the moment she’d stepped into my life, that knack became an actual talent.

“Oh God,” she yelled, and I knew I’d gotten her just where I wanted her. She hated to be teased, but I wouldn’t make her wait long.

I wanted her to know I was in control. I wanted her to see while I’d allowed her to boss me around in the past, I wasn’t the same pushover she’d dated all of those years ago. I’d grown into a man.

I sat back.

“What the hell are you doing?” she asked, her voice breathless.

“I’m about to give you the best fuck of your life.”

“You’ve always done that,” she said.

God, I loved her.

And with that thought, I reared up over her and rammed my cock into her waiting pussy.

As our bodies connected on the most carnal level, I felt the love passing between us. Even though I was pounding into her, I felt the love forming inside of me and passing through me to her.

And I felt it returned from her. One hundred percent.

It was one of those moments when I felt like everything was going to be okay. Our talk in the morning could wait. I got it. I understood why she wanted to wait, because either result would put pressure on our night together. Instead, everything was perfect.

I ran my tongue along her neck, and she sighed beneath me. I flipped us over so she was on top of me, and a moan escaped her lips as I rubbed her clit. She held onto my headboard above me as she circled her hips over me, and the view of her over me made me lose all control.

I grabbed her hips and pushed her up and down as I exploded into her.

She yelled out wildly as her entire body tightened and then uncoiled around me.

She collapsed over me, and we both panted for a moment.

“Jesus,” I moaned.

“Holy fuck, Grant,” she muttered.

“I know,” I said.

She rolled off of me and fell into the nook of my arms, the one place made for her and only her.

I didn’t want to sleep because I didn’t want to miss a moment we could spend together, but we both drifted from the exertion our bodies had just endured.

When I woke, it was because Rachelle was shaking my arm. It was morning. Rachelle’s flight was a little after noon, so she had to leave for the airport by ten.

I glanced over at the clock. It was just after nine.

We only had an hour left together.

She was already showered and dressed. She was ready to go. Her luggage was already sitting by the door.

But I was far from being ready to let her go.

CHAPTER 24

PRESENT TIME

I hadn’t slept more than a few shitty hours at a time since the first night I had spent with Avery. I stared at my ceiling in the darkness of my room. Images took shape around my periphery. I saw Avery’s beautiful blonde hair that was always soft under my hands. I saw her brown eyes that expressed exactly how she was feeling when words weren’t necessary.

And on the other side, I saw Rachelle. Her silky, thick hair. Her dark and mysterious eyes that told me different things than her words.

The two were polar opposites, yet they had both taken up residence in different places in my heart.

I had all of these new feelings for Avery, this freshness I couldn’t recall ever having experienced in my life before. But I had the history with Rachelle.

It was a painful and sordid past, but it was ours.

And as I lay there in bed staring into the darkness, I made my decision.

I was pretty sure I’d always known what I was going to do. I had to see her.

I had to know why. She’d left me with too many questions. She’d walked out on me twice, but I was smarter now. I knew better than to allow her to walk out on me a third time.

I’d have my guard up this time.

Besides, I had Avery to think about now. The last time I’d seen Rachelle, she had still been the center of my world. But now I had these intense feelings for someone else. And maybe that would give me the strength I’d need to face her after the way she’d shattered me the last time I had seen her.

CHAPTER 25

FOUR YEARS EARLIER

“Let me drive you to the airport, at least.”

She shook her head. “I already called a cab.” Her voice was soft, and she wasn’t looking me in the eye.

I was still oblivious as to what was about to happen.

Her bags were by the door. She was ready to leave. All she had to do was walk her bag out the front door, and she’d be gone.

“I think it’s time for our talk,” she said. She wrung her hands together in her lap. She was fidgety.

She was
never
fidgety. She was
always
calm and composed.

It was my first hint that morning that things weren’t going to work out the way I had assumed they would.

She stood and paced. “Look, Grant. I—”

She was cut off by the ringing of my doorbell.

I stood to answer it, and she held up a hand. “That’ll be my cab.”

She walked to the door, and I followed behind her. She opened it and motioned to her luggage. “I’ll be out in a minute, okay?” she told the cab driver.

He nodded, and she shut the door. She turned to face me. I was close behind her, close enough to touch her when she turned toward me.

She put a hand on my chest and gently pushed me back a few steps. She took a deep breath, and all I could do was stand there helplessly as I awaited her words.

“Grant, I came here to see what I’d been missing in our years apart. I had to know if I’d made a mistake three years ago.”

Those words gave me hope, but that hope was immediately massacred with her next words.

“While this week has been amazing, full of old memories and what we were like together, I realized it’s not what I’m looking for.
You
are not what I’m looking for.”

I heard her words, but I felt like I was having an out of body experience. It was like she was speaking the words, but she didn’t mean to say them to me. Those words weren’t about
me.
She couldn’t possibly mean them.

I wasn’t what she was looking for?

But she was everything.

She was
everything
.

I was ready to build my life around her. I was ready to give up my life to be with her.

I was ready to spend the rest of my life with her.

But I wasn’t what she was looking for.

I couldn’t speak, and that only made it worse for me. Nervous Rachelle decided to fill the silence with more hurtful words, but these were the ones that would stay with me, that would claw their way into me and never let me go.

These were the words that would ruin me for other women for the rest of my life. These were the words that would kill a piece of me I’d never recover.

Her eyes wouldn’t meet mine. “I’m getting married tomorrow.” Her voice was quiet, but her words were loud. They punched me in the gut. They made me bleed. They fucked every piece of sanity I was holding onto.

They ruined me.

They told me she had meant her words from three years earlier. She never saw me as someone she could marry, but there was someone else who she did see that way.

“Tomorrow,” I echoed. How the hell was she getting married the next day when we’d spent the entire last week together?

It was one of those questions I’d never get the answer to.

She was getting married, and in that moment, it was all that mattered.

She was in love with someone else. Someone else had asked her to marry him, and she’d said yes. She’d said yes to him when she’d said no to me.

“I was never certain if I had made the right decision three years ago, but now I am. I had to see you one more time to make sure I was doing the right thing.”

I finally found my voice.

“So you fucking slept with me for the last week and led me to believe we’d find our way back to each other?”

“I never meant to hurt you. I never meant to lead you on.”

“You cheated on someone,” I spat my words at her. My composure was gone as I raised my voice. “With me. What the fuck, Rachelle? What the fuck made you think that would be okay on any level?”

She’d never been one to back down, and this situation was no different. “I knew it wasn’t okay. But I couldn’t stay away from you.”

“That doesn’t make it okay! God dammit!” I slammed my fist into the wall.

The drywall cracked around my fist as I punched right through it. I pulled my hand out of a dusty hole. Blood tricked from my knuckles, but I didn’t give a fuck. I didn’t feel it against the searing pain in my chest.

Rachelle stood tall. She wasn’t afraid of my rage, but she had an out. There was a cab waiting to take her home to her fiancé.

To the man she was going to marry.

My fucking brain hadn’t even had time to process that fact yet. My Rachelle, the one woman who I’d always assumed I’d marry someday, was getting married to some other man.

After she’d fucked me for the last week, after she’d whispered memories as I held her through the night, she was marrying someone else.

She was leaving me alone.

Again.

Hatred filled my heart as I looked at the woman I’d once loved, the woman who’d made me fall in love with her all over again in the short week we had spent together, the woman who had broken me once and just when I’d started to recover, she had broken me again. But this time I was beyond repair.

I hated her even though I loved her.

I would always love her. My heart belonged to her.

But what she had done was unforgivable.

It was evil, pure and simple.

“Get the fuck out of my house.”

I didn’t look at her, but I could tell she was brushing her tears away. She didn’t have a right to be sad. She didn’t have a right to cry.

Not after what she had done to me.

“I’m sorry, Grant,” she whispered, and then she let herself quietly out the door as she walked out of my life and toward her future with another man.