Second Chance Love (Heaven Hill Book 6) Read online

  “C’mon, Liam’s asleep,” Rooster whispered.

  Roni couldn’t believe that he’d conned her brother into letting him sleep over, just so he could spend time with her. “What if we get caught?” she whispered back. It didn’t really matter to her, she was of age, but he was a few months from it. If they got caught, she knew without a doubt his parents would punish her to the full extent of the law. That’s how they were, and that’s why Rooster wanted out so bad.

  “We’re not goin’ to get caught. Your brother sleeps like the dead and your dad’s on a run. We’ll be back before he gets back; you and I both know that.”

  It was tempting, she loved being alone with him. When they were alone, he was different. He listened to her ideas and didn’t give her shit the way Liam did. He made her feel like she mattered. She was missing so much of that in her life. Old beyond her years, that’s what she’d heard some people call her. Raising Liam since her mom had left had made her miss out on things that other teenagers had done. Rooster was younger than her, but he’d taken her virginity the month prior and she loved him more than she’d ever loved anyone else in her life. She hadn’t told him, she was scared to, but she hoped that he could sense it. “Okay,” she relented. “Let’s go.”

  He grabbed her hand and led them out the front door. They would come back through the window if they had to, but he didn’t want to do that until it was absolutely necessary.

  “Wait, don’t we need towels?” She tugged on his hand to bring him to a stop.

  “Already got it taken care of. I took a bag down there earlier today, hoping I could lure you there tonight,” he grinned. His eyes, a cross between blue and grey depending on his mood, sparkled with mischief.

  “You set me up,” she accused.

  “You fell for it, didn’t you? C’mon, we don’t have forever.”

  The two of them ran against the backdrop of the midnight black sky, making their way through the field that bordered the property. On one of their excursions, they’d found a spring that looked like it fed into Barren River. It was deep enough to swim in and they’d never seen anyone else there.

  “I didn’t bring a suit,” she told him as they came to the edge of the water.

  “Me neither,” he grinned over at her.

  Something told her that this wasn’t the first time he’d used those words. It made her self-conscious. People had a certain way they expected her to be and she usually wasn’t what they expected. She didn’t want to disappoint Rooster; she didn’t want to run him away.

  “C’mon Roni,” he encouraged her, his hands at the button on his jeans.

  She watched as he undid the button and shimmied out of the jeans, throwing them far enough back that they would be away from the water, but would be easy to find later. When he took his boxers down, she laughed.

  “You’re going naked?”

  “Aren’t you? I have towels, but I sure as hell don’t have a change of clothes.” He jumped in then looked back at her as he was treading water. “It’s great, seriously, c’mon in.”

  Roni had never been naked in public before, and it felt weird to strip bare, especially with him watching her.

  “Nobody here but us.”

  That didn’t make her feel much better. “You wouldn’t turn around would you?” she joked.

  “I’ve already seen it,” he laughed. “Don’t get shy on me now.”

  Her eyes avoided his as she disrobed and ran quickly to the water, diving in. When she surfaced, she was right next to him. Rooster reached over and grabbed her arms, putting them around his neck. She sighed as their bodies touched. “This feels so wrong,” she whispered, afraid that someone would hear them. Who, she wasn’t sure, but she didn’t want anyone to intrude upon them.

  “It’s right, Roni, it’s the rightest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” he whispered back.

  It was only then that she let him take her lips. In their relationship, physically so far, he had been the one to make all the moves. She had been too scared to, afraid that he would reject her, but then at the same time, afraid he would accept what she wanted. It was a crazy thing, the age that the two of them were at. He was more of a man than she was a woman and truly, here in this setting, age was only a number.

  A knocking at her door broke Roni out of her memory. Shaking her head, she got up and walked over to the reinforced steel, courtesy of the club and Travis. Looking through the peephole she groaned, it was Rooster.

  “I know you’re in there,” he told her. “Your car’s parked out front.”

  It would do her no good to pretend she wasn’t home; he would keep on until either he got someone from the club to come over and let him in or she let him in. It was easier to relent. “What do you want?” she asked him, suddenly tired, as she opened the door.

  “To talk to you. Is that okay?”

  She knew it didn’t matter whether she said it was okay or not, he would do what he wanted to do. Stepping back from the door, she let him enter.

  Rooster came in and had a seat on her couch, opposite the chair she liked to sit in. He knew that about her, they’d hung out enough that he was aware of her favorite seat in her house. “Why are you avoiding me?”

  “Are we back to this again?” She crossed her arms over her chest. “Why do you always think I’m avoiding you?”

  “Because you are. I’d like to know what I did.” He shrugged. “I thought we were coming to an understanding, getting back to where we liked each other. You know, almost like it was that summer.”

  She couldn’t risk that, she couldn’t risk her heart again and she damn sure couldn’t take a heartbreak like that. Roni hated being indecisive, but this was the most painful thing in her life. Just when she thought she would be able to handle it, her head brought her down and told her that her heart was wrong. “We will never be back to the people we were that summer. Too much shit has happened, that’s water under the bridge.”

  “Why can’t we try? What’s stopping us now? William’s in jail, I’m good with Liam. You have no man in your life that anyone is aware of, I have no woman…”

  “What about Stacey?” she asked, humor in her voice.

  “Y’all have got to leave me alone about her. She scared the fuck outta me.” He scratched the back of his neck as he kicked his long legs out in front of him. “Tell me, what’s holding you back?”

  How did she tell him it was the secret she’d kept to herself for so long? She’d wanted to tell him back then, but she hadn’t been able to get a message to him at the camp, and then by the time he got out, he’d wanted nothing to do with her. It was easy to play it off, though, act like there wasn’t a huge elephant in the room that only she knew about. “Who’s to say you won’t decide that you want to be good guy sheriff again at some point?”

  He chuckled. “We both know that was never me. You, of all people, knew the real me. You knew who I really was.”

  “Did I? Because you played a good part for years, Rooster. You arrested my brother and several members of the club without batting an eyelash. You helped put them in jail. Excuse me if I don’t want to welcome you with open arms.” Roni knew she had her back up, but this was how she protected herself. The only way she could.

  “That’s not fair,” he argued. “I had a job to do, a position to uphold.”

  “I did too,” she fired back. “I didn’t leave my family and friends when the going got tough.”

  The thinly veiled insult hit right where it was supposed to. “It’s not like I had much of a goddamn choice,” he gave right back as good as he got. “It was do the camp or go to juvie. I was lucky that the judge decided I could do the camp in the first fuckin’ place.”

  “Because you had well-liked parents, Rooster, let’s call it what it was. They bought you out of juvie.”

  He fumed as he got up from the couch. “You know what pisses me off more than anything? You know that those two people I call parents are the biggest pieces of shit to ever walk this earth. Yo
u know that they play a good game and put on a good show. You, of all people, and now you wanna throw that back in my face? There was a reason I was constantly at your house. There was a reason that I was always in on whatever you and Liam were doing. I told you everything.” He pointed at her. “I don’t appreciate you throwing that up at me, at all.”

  That had been a low blow and she knew it, but if it got him out of her apartment, then she would take it. She watched as he paced, his long legs eating up the distance of her living room. Suddenly he stopped and looked at her, a slow smile spreading across his face. “I’m not a dumbass, I know for some reason you’re pushin’ me away, but that’s okay. Sweetheart, I got all the time in the world and I ain’t going anywhere. Two can play at this game.”

  Before she could say anything, he’d kissed her on the cheek and he was gone.

  Chapter Seven

  After her run-in with Rooster the night before, Roni woke up wanting to do something different, wanting to change something about her life. She wasn’t sure what, but she knew that it had to be today. Glancing at her hair in the bathroom mirror, she curled her lip. It was limp and too long to have any kind of style. It had been years since she’d had highlights. This was the change she needed, and she knew exactly who could help her. Christine was working towards her cosmetologist’s license at the Curly Q she hoped she could be fit in quickly.

  A quick couple of phone calls later, and Denise was meeting her downtown, along with B and Jessica who’d had the same idea thanks to the summer weather. An early evening haircut with her best friends was just what the doctor ordered. The only lady they hadn’t heard from was Meredith, but Roni was pretty sure that she would make an appearance too, if the rest of them did. Grabbing her stuff, she was out the door and in her car.

  The drive downtown wasn’t a long one. She had the luxury of living near the country but still being close to the city. It was one of the reason’s that she loved her apartment and was reluctant to give it up. Liam had asked her many times since he’d become president of the club to move out to the clubhouse so that he could keep an eye on her, but that was a bit of independence that she couldn’t seem to let go of.

  As she pulled onto the square, she saw that she was the first of the ladies to make it down. Another reason that she loved her apartment. She was within minutes of almost everything. Parking, she took her time walking along the square before making her way into the building that housed the hair salon. It had been a long time since she’d made the trip down here and an even longer time since she’d stepped foot in a hair salon.

  “Hey, Roni,” Christine greeted her as she came out from the back room. “Everybody else is on their way. B went to go get them, and I think they’re stopping to pick up Meredith too. We’ve closed the shop for a ‘private party’,” she grinned. “That way, we can talk about whatever we want without having to worry that there are people listening that don’t need to be.”

  Christine was one of the smartest women that Roni had ever met and one of the strongest too, there wasn’t anything that Roni didn’t respect about the other woman. “Sounds great! Are you going to do my hair today?”

  “If you want me to. Shelby’s around if I need her or if any of you are nervous about me doing your hair. She’s going to be across the street at the coffee house unless she’s needed,” Christine explained, getting her foils ready for B’s hair. She’d done her brother’s girlfriend’s hair enough to know that she would want highlights, and it took a lot of foil to do her head of hair.

  “No, I’m good. You do B’s hair and I love the color you give her.”

  “Thank you.” Christine beamed. “It’s like I found my calling mixing color. I know it sounds odd, but there’s nothing I like to do more than to sit someone down with some drab ass hair and make it an explosion of color. It gives me such joy.”

  Roni could tell it did by the look on Christine’s face. She had a seat in the chair beside where Christine was pulling out the foils. “Then please do something with this mop I have. It’s lifeless and has zero color, no dimension at all.”

  Christine stopped what she was doing and came over to stand behind Roni. She moved her head to the left and to the right, sizing up the way Roni looked. “I’d like to cut it too,” she told her, taking up a length of it. “I think if we put some layers in, right about here,” she indicated where she wanted to do that, “it will give it some bounce. Putting color in it will automatically give it more volume, and if we color it just right, it’ll catch the light and make it look like you have a ton more hair than what you do.” She pulled her bottom lip between her teeth. “Are you okay with letting me have at it?”

  “It can’t be any worse than it is now,” Roni laughed. “Go for it.”

  “Do you have any product in it?” Christine asked, bending down so that she was on eye level with her, moving the hair to get a feeling of what Roni would look like when she was done.

  “A volumizer, for all the good that did.”

  Christine snapped her fingers. “Let’s go wash it out then, and I’ll get my color mixed. We’ll be in business in a few minutes.”

  As she led her to the back, the door opened and the bell rang. “You here, Christy?”

  They recognized that voice as belonging to B, and then they heard the voices of the other women. “We’re back here,” they answered. “Washing hair.”

  Within moments the group had moved into the small room off the main one and were all talking a mile a minute. Neither Roni nor Christine could keep up since they hadn’t been in the car on the way to the shop. Instead of trying to follow along, both of them just smiled and nodded, cracking each other up when they realized they were both doing the same thing.

  These two things were what Roni had needed—to get out of her own head and to be around friends and family.

  “What do you think?” Christine asked an hour and a half later as she used the round brush for the final time on Roni’s hair.

  She turned Roni around so that she faced the mirror and then waited, holding her breath, to see what the other woman would say.

  “Holy shit,” Roni mumbled, a smile immediately coming to her face. Gone was the boring, dark hair that reminded her so much of her brother. That was a major reason she’d decided to go ahead and make a change. She’d realized, working with him day in and day out, that she looked like him, only with boobs. Now, the person staring back at her was undeniably feminine. Christine had given her layers and bangs; her hair looked like she had extensions it was so full looking. The drab dark color was still there, but it was played up by chunks of red, mahogany, and what looked to be a honey-colored blonde. It gave it depth and dimension. She looked like a brand new person.

  “Wow, you are looking hot,” Denise told her as she came up behind her. “Rooster won’t know what hit him.”

  Leave it to Denise to get right to the point.

  “I didn’t do this for Rooster.”

  “And I don’t shave my bikini line for Jagger,” B piped up. “We’re women here; we can be honest with one another. You have a thing for him.”

  Roni didn’t want to get into this. She couldn’t explain to people how she felt about him, most of the time she couldn’t explain it to herself. “I do, but…” She trailed off.

  “But what?” Jessica encouraged her. “Anyone that has seen the two of you together can feel sparks. It’s not blatant, but it’s there, lying under the surface”.

  “And I know you’ve hung out with him,” Christine said softly. “I’ve seen him at your apartment while I’ve been in Steele’s cave.”

  Meredith cut her eyes over at the other woman. “What else are you watching in Steele’s cave? Where all does he have cameras?” Her expression was panicked and the ladies laughed.

  “Not in the bedroom if that’s what you’re asking,” she giggled. “Mostly entrances and exits to homes, unless the occupants of the home have agreed to more.”

  “Sorry,” Meredith apologized. “Didn�
�t mean to fly off the handle there, but as they were saying there is something there. It’s not blatant and the two of you are very respectful to Liam, but after I heard about the fling the two of you had when he was a teenager, I can definitely see it now.”

  How did she explain her feelings to these people? They were her friends, but she never knew herself exactly how she felt about Rooster once the damage had been done. It was much easier when he was a sheriff and there was something keeping him away. Now that the obstacle was gone, she found herself at odds.

  “He kissed me the other night,” she blurted out, not able to keep it in any longer.

  “What kinda kiss we talkin’ here?” B asked, her full attention on Roni. “Nice peck on the cheek, or the kind of all-consuming one that says he wants to own you?”

  “What does it matter?” Roni tried to play it off.

  “Oh, it matters.” Meredith nodded. “Matters big time. In one swipe of the lips, you can tell if a man wants to just know you’re there or if he wants to drag you off to the garages and have his way with you while there’s a club dinner going on.”

  The cackles in the room were at an all-time high. “Sounds like you have some experience with that,” Jessica snorted. “I need to interview you for my next romance.”

  “I’m with Tyler motherfucking Blackfoot; I think you’d all be lying to me if you told me you don’t think he’s hot.”

  There was no argument in the room.

  “Back to the question at hand.” Denise pinned her gaze on her sister-in-law. “What kind of kiss was it?”