Gravity, p.1
Gravity, page 1
CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Information
Description
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
Chapter Twenty-Two
Chapter Twenty-Three
Chapter Twenty-Four
Chapter Twenty-Five
Chapter Twenty-Six
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chapter Thirty
Chapter Thirty-One
Chapter Thirty-Two
Chapter Thirty-Three
Chapter Thirty-Four
Chapter Thirty-Five
Chapter Thirty-Six
Epilogue
About the Author
Gravity
A Bad Boy Romance
by
Amelia Wilde
© 2016 Amelia Wilde, All Rights Reserved
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means whatsoever without express written permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Description
Infuriating. Intoxicating. Irreplaceable.
All words I’d use to describe Dex Stevens, the boy who never played by the rules.
We were never a couple.
We were always in love—electric, time-defying love.
He saved me.
He shattered me.
I’ve spent eight years trying to live without him.
Moving up in my career means moving closer to home, and I’m grabbing the opportunity with both hands. Getting rid of baggage. Striking out on my own.
But it turns out I’m right back where I started.
Because Dex’s apartment is in the same building as my brand-new office.
And this time, I don’t think I can stay away.
Prologue
Abby, age 18
I’m having a heart attack. My heart is exploding. It’s dying in my chest. It’s so painful I can hardly breathe.
Dex looks at me, his deep blue eyes half-shaded by his eyelashes.
He’s not saying anything. A minute ago, I would have done anything to stop the words from coming out of his mouth. Now I want him to speak again, to take back what he said.
“You can’t break up with me, Dex.” I choke on the words. “We’re not even really…together yet. We haven’t had a chance. Why are you doing this?”
His hands are shoved in his pockets, and his shoulders droop underneath the tight black t-shirt fitted to his lean body. Even now, even after what he’s done to me, I want to reach out and run my hands down his biceps until my hands meet his. I want to intertwine my fingers with his and not let go for hours. It turns me on just to hold his hand and I know he feels the same way. It’s not like this with anyone else.
So why is he destroying what we have?
“We have the summer to figure this out,” I say, swallowing the lump in my throat. Maybe I can coax him into changing his mind. “You don’t have to make this decision now. You know that, right?”
I know our plan is crazy. I know my parents will never approve, that they’ll have a problem with it. But I don’t care.
I’ve loved Dex since the minute I first saw him. It was middle school. We were on the bus, going to a track meet. He ran sprints and I ran the mile, and both of us sucked. But something about his blue eyes and quick smile drew me in. Even then, my heart skipped a beat—and that was well before he grew into his full height and lost the awkwardness of a boy too tall for his hands and feet.
We’d spent every year after that circling one another like gladiators in the ring, if gladiators were two small-town kids who didn’t know how to deal with their feelings.
He’d get a girlfriend, then I’d get a boyfriend. It never seemed to matter. Somehow we were always finding each other in vulnerable moments. It always started off innocently and always ended in passionate kisses behind the auditorium loading dock. We couldn’t stay away from each other.
There was more that bound us together. The way he saved me. But it still makes me feel like I’m suffocating when I think about that night. I can’t. Not now.
After the thing at the party happened we decided to go all in.
This summer was supposed to be when we finally showed the world how right we were together…and he was backing out.
He clears his throat, his eyes flitting down to the ground. He has the bluest eyes I’ve ever seen, and no matter what’s happening—whether he’s fighting back tears in a rage at the latest injustice his asshole father has handed down or locking on mine as he leans in for a kiss—they are as deep as the ocean.
My heart beats in wild hope. The next words out of his mouth have got to be an apology for the heinous thing he’s just said to me. They have to be. I’m standing two feet away. It’s much farther than I’d usually stand but so close that not touching him is killing me.
“Bee, I’m sorry.”
“Sorry for what?”
He shakes his head, and I know.
“I just can’t…I can’t be with you.”
“Why not?” I cry, crossing my arms hard to keep myself from collapsing onto the ground. We met up at the Overlook, a parking area with an incredible view of the lake. I can’t count the number of times we’ve met here to kiss…and more.
“It’s just not going to work out, okay?” His mouth twists, and one of his cheeks trembles just slightly. He doesn’t want to say this to me, but he’s saying it anyway.
But why?
“You’re going to be fine,” he says, and he raises a hand like he wants to gather me into his strong arms. I wish he would. I wish he would take me into his arms and tell me that today was all a big mistake, that he knows being with me is the right thing. But he doesn’t. He drops his arms to his sides and shakes his head a little. “You’re going to go off to college in the fall and it’s going to be…it’s going to be amazing.”
“I’m not going without you,” I say, my teeth gritted. I’m not going to start crying. Not now.
“I can’t go with you, Bee,” he says, his voice begging me to understand. Damn him for using that nickname to try to win me over.
I refuse. I refuse to accept this.
“You can. You can, and you know it.”
“I’m not going to graduate.”
“Who gives a fuck about that?” I shout, my hands flying into the air between us. I want to slap him. He’s being so stupid. If I could just make him see… “It doesn’t matter, Dex. You can get your GED and apply in the spring.”
But his eyes are determined. He’s shoved the knife in, and now he’s going to twist it.
“I don’t want to go with you.”
It’s a lie. It has to be a lie. The flush in his cheeks tells me that it’s a lie, but my heart reacts like it’s the truth. His arms flex like he’s holding himself back from reaching for me, for putting one hand behind my neck and crushing our lips together like there’s no tomorrow.
“Dex, what happened…it was terrible. It was awful. But it wasn’t your fault. It wasn’t—”
There might as well be no tomorrow if he says what I think he’s about to say, but he’s already opening his mouth to interrupt me.
“It’s over between us, okay? You won’t see me anymore.”
Those words suck the air right out of my lungs. Even if we haven’t been “official,” I’ve woken up every morning for months thrilled to be alive, to be in love. Dex was usually the first person I talked to in the morning and the last voice I heard before I fell asleep at night. I’m constantly going over my cell phone plan’s available minutes, but I don’t care. I have to hear his words, feel the smoothness of his voice.
And as far as I know, he has to hear mine. What we have isn’t something to walk away from, even if times are hard.
I know they are. I know they’re awful for him, but that doesn’t have anything to do with us.
It can’t have anything to do with us.
We’re in love. We’re soul mates. That’s the thing that’s pulled us together all this time, even when we tried to date other people. That’s why nobody else worked out.
Why can’t he see it?
What do I have to say to make him see it?
I don’t understand what’s happening. I’m not sure I can survive it.
“Dex, no. Why?” The last word tears from my throat and I see it hurt him. But he just pulls out his ph one. It’s a crappy phone, all he could afford.
“I have to go. Good—good luck, Bee.”
He turns and gets into his car. The engine starts up, and I see him put a hand to his eyes.
There’s still time for him to turn off the car. To get out and come back to me.
He can still come back to me.
Please, come back to me.
But when he takes his hand away from his face, it drops down to the gear shift and the car pulls slowly forward, then picks up speed as he starts to go down the hill. It’s a dirt road back toward town.
I watch his taillights recede into the distance.
He doesn’t look back.
He’s gone.
CHAPTER ONE
Abby, the present
“I don’t know what we’d do without you, Abby. There isn’t a soul in this company I’d trust more than you. It’s the perfect promotion for you.” Leonard Howe smiles his old-man smile at me from across his massive desk. I’ve worked for his company since the day I graduated college, and he still looks the same as he did four years ago.
“Thank you, Mr. Howe. It’ll be nice to be closer to my parents for a while. Back near the water. It’s hard to be away.”
“I can understand that. Those little villages up north are God’s country.”
He leans forward and extends his hand to shake mine. I accept with a smile. I loved the city when I moved here after high school, but the lack of water gets to me. It seems like such a small thing.
I miss the lake breezes, the way the mornings are cool in the summer. You don’t know what you’ve got ’til it’s gone.
“They really are.”
“Tell your parents I said hello, will you?” My parents have never met my boss, but you’d never know it from talking to him.
“Of course, Mr. Howe. I’ll check in with you on Monday from the new space.”
The sun still streams in through his office windows. It’s just after five o’clock. The work day is about to be over, and if I didn’t have to drive three hours north, I’d spend the rest of the evening outside on my patio. Well, the patio that I used to have.
I packed up the last boxes from my apartment this morning. It was bittersweet, taking the final things out of the cupboards and tucking them away in sturdy boxes. I’ve lived in that apartment since my sophomore year of college and loved every minute of it. It might have been small and a little on the crappy side, but it was mine.
Leonard Howe presses my hand and sends me on my way.
My four-year work anniversary is coming up. During those years Howe Marketing International has grown and so have I. Now it’s my big chance to be part of the expansion.
It does mean living practically in my hometown, something I wasn’t exactly thrilled about when Leonard called me into his office and explained excitedly that he was opening a new branch in Beechford and he wanted me to head it up. Beechford is only twenty minutes from Winthrop Harbor, where my parents still live.
I swore I’d never move back there. I’ve kept visits practical and minimal—some weekends and holidays. I spent a single summer there after college. But moving back was never an option.
Not after what happened with Dex.
But my parents are getting older. Not as old as Leonard, but older, and it’s time I gave up my childish insistence on staying away. I can’t keep letting the ghost of what could have been with Dex get in the way of spending precious time with my family.
I need to focus on the positives.
The new office is going to be mine, all mine. I’ll be running the whole thing, reporting directly to Leonard remotely.
Steering my car carefully out of the parking lot, I turn right onto Parkside Drive. HMI’s headquarters are located across from a sprawling county park. I’ll miss walking there at lunchtime.
The only thing left to do is say goodbye to my boyfriend, Tom.
I catch myself sighing. Tom’s great. He really is. Maybe he can be a little much sometimes, a little possessive, a little too into his passion for the Second Amendment, but that doesn’t make him a villain. He’s a decent guy.
He’s just no Dex.
Even eight years later, driving in traffic reminds me cruising around town in Dex’s car, holding hands with the radio loud.
I’m on my way to meet my boyfriend but the face on my mind is Dex’s.
We were such stupid kids back then. You always think there’ll be enough time to do the really important things, and then it gets yanked away from you. Dex used to write me a letter every day and fold it up into a paper football. I saved every one of them, tucking them neatly into a three-ring binder, each one in its own plastic page protector.
The first summer I came home from college, I threw the binder away along with all my other “high school junk.”
My heart sinks just thinking of that binder.
I wish I’d kept it.
More than that, I wish he’d called to apologize, to take everything back.
I held on to that hope for two years. But he never called, and so I got over him.
At least I told myself I got over him.
Deep down I know the truth.
Deep down I’m still in love with him.
I hate him for what he did. And I love him.
They’re stupid, absurd thoughts, and I shake my head hard to clear them away as I pull into the parking lot of the Arbor Cafe, where Tom and I eat most of our lunches and dinners out. He’s waiting for me out front. He doesn’t see me. His cell phone takes up all of his attention.
What would happen if I just drove away right now?
My foot goes to the brake, and my hand to the gear shift.
No.
Tom is considerate, even if looking at him doesn’t send a shiver of pleasure down my spine. He’s handsome in his way. Dark hair, dark eyes. But I was kidding myself if I thought our mostly comfortable companionship held a candle to the wild passion that Dex and I felt for each other. Besides, Tom has never given me the slightest inkling that he’s going to up and leave. He’s in it for the long haul.
Beginning with Dex, I dated a long string of men who left as soon as they got what they wanted. Tom is the first one I can trust not to turn his back on me.
Leaving the car in park, I turn it off and step out. Tom raises his eyes from his phone, and a strange smile plays across his face when he sees me. He looks nervous and shy and my gut lurches again. I don’t know why this certainty is hitting me right now, and so suddenly, but it is.
Something’s going on.
***
Inside the cafe, Tom has had our regular table dressed up with a fancy tablecloth and candles. Our favorite waitress, Candy, approaches the table, positively beaming. Her blonde hair is piled on top of her head and hairsprayed to within an inch of its life. She wears her makeup thick and heavy, layers of black mascara and bright lipstick, so her wide smile is framed by a vivid pop of color.
“How are you doing, sweetheart?” she says to me as I take my seat.
“Great, Candy. I’ll miss you, though!” She knows this will be my last meal here for a while. Is that why they’ve pulled out all the stops?
“And you know I’ll miss you!” she cries, and then gives my arm a motherly pat. “But today we’ve got a little surprise for you. Sit back and relax, okay?” She gives Tom a wink before disappearing into the kitchen.
“What, no menus?” I say to Tom, but he just quietly smiles at me. His expression is odd. It’s somewhere between simpering and lust, and I don’t like it. What the hell is up with him?
Candy starts bringing out all of my favorite appetizers, followed by my favorite meal. It’s nothing fancy, just a burger with ketchup and the spiral fries the cafe is famous for, but it’s plated especially carefully today. Candy never stops smiling throughout the entire meal. She’s normally pretty upbeat, but even this is over the top.
I’ve never felt so uneasy in my life.
