From HARD CRUSH, Book 1 in the Back To You series of interconnected standalones.
©Mira Lyn Kelly
Chapter 1
HANK
"SERIOUSLY, HANK, IT’S one night. Sac up.”
I turn to where Jack Hastings, my oldest friend, current landlord, and prick du jour is giving me his pissiest stare from the driver seat of his hundred-thousand-dollar car.
“Not a chance. No fucking way.” Jack already worked me over until I agreed to tour the new sciences wing, but I’m not giving on the reunion.
We’re in Visitor Parking at Bearings High, and it’s close enough to the student lot to stir up the kind of memories I’ve been vigilant about putting behind me for ten years. Memories of waiting for the first bell in my beat-to-hell pickup… the windows steamed, my fingers tangling through a spill of dark silk. Her breath at my ear and—
“Pussy,” Jack grumbles, pulling me back from the place I don’t let myself go, and just in the nick of time.
“Resorting to name-calling? I’m disappointed,” I deadpan, when in reality, Jack throwing low blows is one of the few things that still gets me to laugh. Reminds me I’m human when the majority of the time I can’t afford the luxury.
More scowling and I’m tempted to whip out my phone for a picture, but then he’s climbing out of the car and giving the hood a pat as he starts toward the sprawling, castle-like brick behemoth.
I adjust my glasses and follow him up the walk. It’s been freshly paved, but I remember the splintered concrete and gravel that used to kick up when we were late.
“New sign.”
Jack nods. “There’s money here now.”
Yeah, I know. “Money I wouldn’t have given if I’d known it meant getting dragged back here to have my nose rubbed in what I’d done.”
I’m joking, mostly, and Jack doesn’t bother to respond.
Inside the school, it’s like walking through a ghost ship. The halls are empty, but every now and then a voice carries from around a corner. A laugh. A whisper. The shrill screech of a chair moving across the floor.
Jack cuts me a sidelong look. “I’ll lay off about the reunion for now, but it’s important you see what you’ve done for these kids. There’s no press. No one ready to spring out of the shadows for a photo op or, God forbid, to try and thank you. So just relax.”
Easier said than done. My phone’s been blowing up since I left work with Jack an hour and a half ago. I’ve been in negotiations for a joint project with SpaceWalk for the better part of a year, and we’re weeks away from a deal. There’s competition—hell, who doesn’t have a multibillion-dollar tech conglomerate built from the ground up these days—but I make it a habit to be the geek bringing the most to the table, so I’m confident. Still, I don’t know what I was thinking letting this clown talk me into leaving. Especially to come here.
We turn down South Hall where a blood drive banner that looks like it might be the same one from ten years ago is strung high above the lockers, and I remember the way Jack used to get a running start to jump up and hit it as we passed. This time he walks under without an upward glance, proving what was never in question. We aren’t the same people we were ten years ago.
“Let’s get this over with,” I say, a bite in my words I can’t account for.
A classroom door opens on the right, and a lanky teen holding a bathroom pass slips out… followed by a quiet trill of feminine laughter that has me stopping short, pushing my glasses up my nose and turning back toward the source with a disturbed frown. Because that sound. It’s warm and rich and so damned familiar it wraps around my chest, stifling my next breath. And now I’m not thinking about meetings or contracts or the future or even the damn reunion on Saturday night. I’m slowly back-stepping until I’m in line with the classroom and looking through the rectangle of glass in the door.
No way it’s her. It’s just being back in the place where she was the center of my world for four years… right up until the day we realized my world getting bigger meant a world without her.
She’s bent over her desk, talking to a student who looks like he’s trying to help her with something on her computer. She brushes back her hair, still the same glossy dark brown and long enough to fall past her shoulders, and I can see the pink tinge of her cheeks and that one standout freckle against the pale stretch of her neck.
Jesus, Abby.
Her hands are moving in that animated way she always had when she was frustrated or excited. It makes me smile, makes me want to hear what she’s saying. It makes me want to slap my own forehead for not guessing she would be here.
For not giving that fucker, Jack, enough credit for knowing what it would take to get me to the reunion Saturday night.
With a helpless shrug, Abby turns to the Smart Board behind her.
I ought to keep walking. She hasn’t seen me, and we have a deal. But just like that first day after she transferred in, I can’t help myself. Instead I lean closer, a tingling in my veins as I strain to hear the words I know are coming next.
She looks at the kid who was trying to figure it out. “Run down to Tech and see if there’s anyone around to help.”
