Room 143: A Standalone Romance Read online

  Room 143

  A Standalone Romance

  Laramie Briscoe

  Edited by

  Elfwerks Editing

  Photography by

  Sara Eirew

  Copyright © 2019 by Laramie Briscoe

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Introduction

  Blurb

  Prologue

  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

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Epilogue

  Reviews

  Also By Laramie Briscoe

  Connect With Laramie

  Sneak Peak: Royal Rebel

  Introduction

  Hi! Laramie Briscoe here!

  If this is your first book by me, welcome! If this is your thirtieth book by me, thank you from the bottom of my heart!

  I’ve had this idea in my head for over three years, and I’m so excited to finally bring it to you all.

  With Room 143 you are guaranteed to get

  Small-Town Romance

  Hot Scenes

  A man finding himself

  A woman helping the man she loves find love again

  The cutest dog ever

  Wanna get more Laramie?

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  Blurb

  Around my neck lays a wedding ring.

  In my right hand I hold a hotel room key.

  Which one do I pick?

  The marriage? The key?

  Everything is not as it seems in room one-forty-three

  Prologue

  Nash

  wid·ow·er

  /ˈwidō(ə)r/

  Noun

  A man who has lost his spouse by death and has not remarried.

  Widower.

  I twirl my platinum wedding band around my ring finger. It’s tight now, slightly getting caught on the knuckle, not moving as easily as it once did. It’s sat in the same spot since the day I got married. It’s stayed through eight years of marriage (three with her, five without her), three epic, knock-down drag-out fights, and one horrific automobile accident that killed my wife and our unborn child. It was there the day of her funeral, three hundred and sixty-five days later when I finally got up the courage to take apart the nursery, and right now, one thousand ninety-five days later as I sit on my couch wondering what the fuck I’m doing with my life.

  Most everyone says I should be moving on. I’m young and I don’t have to stay alone forever. There are plenty of women who would be happy to help me get back in the saddle, so to speak. Women throw themselves at me every day. Where I work, where I eat, where I run my three miles a day and do my pull-ups at the local park. Opportunities and free pussy are literally everywhere and being handed to me on a silver platter.

  What everyone doesn’t know, is I’ve tried. More than once, I’ve done my best to put the memories I have behind me, to try and build new ones with someone else. Fuck, I’ve even gone so far as to get drunk and have a one-night stand. Truth of the matter is I still feel like I’m married, still look for her in crowds, and sometimes when I come home at night, I even yell her name. For a few moments I actually wait to see if I can hear her.

  She’d be singing in that horrible tone-deaf voice of hers. Or she’d be trying to wrangle our big boxer into taking a bath before he climbed into our bed that night. The way he’d work his way in between us - me bitching, her giggling - plays over and over again like a highlight reel of someone else’s life. Only it’s not.

  It was my perfect life. Before it all got dumped in the shitter thanks to one dumbass who couldn’t wait at a red light.

  The only thing left of those times are me, the dog, and the memories.

  Tilting my head back against the leather of the couch, my vision blurs as I try to swallow past the lump in my throat. Bailey, the crazy boxer comes over, whining before hopping up onto the couch and putting her head on my thigh.

  She knows.

  About the emptiness, the regret, and the goddamn pain.

  “Yeah girl, I miss her too,” I push out the words, my bottom lip trembling. “I miss everything about our lives back then.”

  Tears come at weird times, as do the waves of grief, the fucking gut-wrenching anguish. Nobody prepared me for those. I’ve always been told, time heals all wounds, Nash. The fuck it does. I’m still here, hurting like I’ve been hurting for the past five years with no end in sight.

  Chapter One

  Nash

  Three Months Later

  “Are you fuckin’ kidding me right now?”

  The words are pushed beyond the tightness of my throat in an anger I’m not sure I can ever fully express. It’s a rage I’ve felt for the last five years. Since my life changed in the seconds it took for an old man to drive home drunk and run a red light. Following the rules of the road would’ve meant that instead of being here right now, I’d be at home, tucked into bed with my wife, and a four-year-old son we’d been looking forward to since the moment she got the positive pregnancy test.

  But that’s not my life, and I’m not there. Instead, I’m sitting in another bar, trying to figure out if I heard the words spoken correctly.

  “Nash, just hear me out,” the youngest of my brothers, Austin, holds his hands up in front of my face.

  I’m not sure if the motion is more stop in the name of love or don’t shoot me motherfucker. If he’s smart he’ll go with the don’t shoot me motherfucker. “I don’t have to hear you out. I don’t want to hear you out.”

  He grabs hold of my bicep. His fingers digging into the red and black checked material covering muscles that have been honed over five years of grief and loneliness. Forged out of self-preservation, insomnia, fear, and a hollow ache in the pit of my stomach. Fucker’s telling me to hear him out? The sounds of the bar dims in my ears, almost as if it’s coming from above a hole I’ve been dropped into. The laughter, the sound of boots on the hardwood floor, the music – none of it registers as loud as it should. The vacuum is too deep.

  “Are you listening?” Austin’s mouth moves as I read his lips.

  This shit happened right after the accident, and I know what’s coming on next. The pounding of my heart, the whirling of the room, and eventually the pain of my body hitting the floor as I pass the fuck out. Throwing his hand off me, I make for the door as quickly as possible. People are trying to talk to me, probably ask me a question about why their cars are acting up, trying to figure out when they should bring their bike in for an oil change, seeing if I’ll do something on the side for free.

  I don’t answer any of them. My eyes are trained on the exit, and I don’t stop my forward momentum until I break through that door, into what is a warm April Spring night here in Harper Valley, Georgia. I’m bent at the waist sucking in gulps of humid air. My chest heaves as I try to bring oxygen into my lungs. I tap my ears, hoping to hear things in real-time now, as loud and clear as they should be.

  “Nash!”

  I whirl around seeing two friends and both my brothers making their way toward me. They’re circling me like they’re a pack of wolves, and I’m a wounded animal. Apparently Austin didn’t leave the key on the table, where I’d left it in my haste to get the fuck outta there. He holds it in his hand, extending his arm, where he holds it in his palm. My own itches with the indecision to take it or not. Which pisses me off even more. It’s the desire I have to grab hold, what all of that means.

  When I don’t make a move, he advances closer, gets all up in my personal space. We’re the same height, even though he’s five years younger than me. His voice is low, pitched so that only we can hear the words he speaks. “It’s time, brother.” He claps me on the shoulder with his free hand. “It’s time to take your life back.”

  Take my life back? How do you take your life back when you’re a twenty-eight-year-old-widower who lost his wife and unborn child in a car accident at twenty-three? Even if lately you’re feeling the loss less and the loneliness more? The memories are more muted than they’ve ever been, and you have to look at a photograph to remember clearly where the freckles were on your wife’s face. How do you stop from grasping at those memories, no matter how much they hurt? The hurt is an emotion that at least gives me a sharp pain in my chest, a feeling where there’s been none for so long.
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  “It’s only been five years.” The words are ripped from my throat, sounding harsh and croaked against the dry sandpaper that is my vocal cords. It reminds me of the times I tried to put my emotions into words after Katie died. I’d cried too much for people to understand me. For months I’d almost been a mute, until one day I could speak without sending myself into an emotional meltdown.

  “Five years is a long time.” Austin holds the key in front of my eyes this time. The gold lettering of the name of the hotel and the number of the room catches the flood lights outside the bar. It’s the north star on a dark night, a flash of fire in the cold, a cold drink on a summer day. There’s a part of me that realizes this could be my salvation. If I rip the key out of his hand and go to this room, I won’t be alone. For one night, I won’t face the oppressive silence of a house that should be filled with Katie singing and the loud noise of a little boy running up and down the hallways. But I’m not sure I can take the step yet. “Take it.” His words echo my thoughts. ”And do with it what you want. Just know she’ll be waiting there all night. We told her it might take us some convincing to get you to go. No hard feelings if you don’t. She’ll be there whether you go or not.”

  No hard feelings? Fuck theirs. What about mine? I snatch the key from his hand, shoving it into my jeans pocket, before I stomp to my truck. Jerking the door open feels good. Slamming it shut feels even better, and when I start it, put it in drive and throw gravel as I peel out of the parking lot, I feel motherfucking amazing.

  Only I don’t, not really. I feel empty, the same way I have for the last five years. Pulling my truck over to the side of the road, I beat my hand on the steering wheel, cursing God, myself, the driver of the car that hit my wife, the doctors who couldn’t save her, and the circumstances that put her in that situation. This time though, the vice grip on my heart isn’t as tight as it’s been in past years, tears aren’t streaming down my cheeks, and I’m not burying my sorrows in a bottle of Jack.

  “Nash, what are you doin’?” I question as I lean my head against the steering wheel.

  In five years I haven’t been tempted. Not even with the one-night stand I tried to have. Women come up to me at the garage I own with my family, and they slip numbers into the front pocket of my jeans, they flirt, they make innuendos, but nothing has ever tempted me. I figure maybe it’s because I know I’m going to have to see those women again. They were around when I wore the wedding ring on my finger that I now wear on a chain around my neck. Fuck, some of them went to high school with me and Katie. More than one of them was in our wedding.

  I haven’t been able to move on, haven’t been able to think about moving on. But tonight, this key is burning a hole in my pocket. The implication of what the guys said is making me want things I haven’t wanted in years. My dick is taking notice – and I want to weep with joy that the damn thing still works.

  “We got you an escort, Nash. Some nameless, faceless woman who is paid to show you a good time. Neither one of you even have to talk names, pasts, or futures. It’s about fucking, Nash. Something I’m damn sure you haven’t done since that night five years ago. You’re tense, you’re an asshole, you need to let loose, and if the only way you can do it is with someone you don’t know – then so be it.” Austin laid the key down on the table and I backed up like that thing was on fire.

  “How do you expect me to dishonor her memory like that?” I lick my lips, tempted. God I’m so tempted. Loneliness has been eating at me, but I don’t want people to see me and think I didn’t love my wife. I did, fuck I still do, but I’m here, living this existence, and she’s not anymore. I’ve found over the last few months I’m not sad. I don’t still look for her everywhere and the other day at the store; I thought another woman was cute. Maybe I’m ready to move on, but I don’t know that I can admit that to other people.

  “It’s not dishonoring. You have a life to live, Nash. Katie’s dead. When are you going to understand that?”

  It was at that point the panic took over and why I ended up here, right now, on the side of the road. The truck idles as people pass me by. I’m sure they see the Gilbert and Sons Automotive decal on the back window and wonder what the fuck I’m doing on the side of the road. Thing is, I can’t make myself turn around and go home to that fucking empty house, but I’m not sure I can pull this keycard out of my pocket either.

  Gripping the ring that hangs around my neck, I wonder what Katie would say. Would she have waited for me or would she have moved on if our situations were reversed? For the first time, I take an objective look at my life. It’s time to do that, to stop holding my grief in front of me like a shield to force everyone else away. Katie was gorgeous, the center of attention, and the person everyone flocked to. I’ve always been the quiet, brooding, darkness to her light. I always wanted to be hiding in the background. I was content to be her support, to hold her up when she needed it. The problem with that is, I don’t know how to let people support me. I’ve always been strong, but tonight that strength is slipping. I hate that fucking empty house and the memories that play like a rock song at an outdoor concert. The sound is loud, but muffled, and not clear anymore.

  No doubt in my mind she would have been scooped up by someone. It wouldn’t have taken her five years. Not my Katie; she would have made peace with her decision and moved on, because that’s the kind of person she was. Knowing that I’m even thinking about doing this tells me that Katie’s with me tonight.

  Decision made, I put the truck in park, stretch out of my leg, and fish the key out of my jeans. Flipping it over in shaking hands, I read the name of the hotel on it. Those gold letters bright in the dim light, Harper Valley Hideaway, tempting me again. One of the nicest ones we have in town, I’m sure not many people would go there for what would equal the hourly rate of a booty call. Most passersby are more than likely business people going to Atlanta, but not wanting to stay downtown.

  “Fuck it.” I throw the words up as a prayer before I pull a U-turn, and head across town to where the hotel is located.

  I don’t know if I can do this, but I also know I can’t not do it. At some point I have to move on, and all signs are pointing to this being the night I dip my toes back into the water.

  The drive there is quicker than I imagined it would be, and when I find myself in a parking spot, I realize I need to shut the truck off. After I do, I sit there for what feels like forever, running my hands along the smoothness of the steering wheel. It’s been years since my palms felt female skin like that, and I have to admit I’m looking forward to it. Glancing at myself in the mirror, I wish I had taken time to clean up my beard, but this lady has probably seen the worst of the worst.

  Reaching around my neck, I unclasp the piece of gold holding my wedding ring. I can’t go fuck another woman while still holding onto a piece of another. I kiss the thin band. “Love you Katie, I’ll never stop.” I feel like it’s important to tell her that, to let her know she’ll always have a place with me. But maybe I can make a place for myself, even if I’m alone. First, I have to take this step, to allow people to touch me again. To feel something other than the pain and anger. Pleasure would be welcome if it can get past the walls I’ve built.

  In the cup holder, my cell phone buzzes, and I grab it up, seeing a text from Austin.