Second chance vow, p.1
Second Chance Vow, page 1
Second Chance Vow
M Robinson
Contents
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
The end
Acknowledgments
Meet M. Robinson
MORE BOOKS BY M
COPYRIGHT© 2021 Second Chance Vow by M. Robinson
All rights Reserved.
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission of the author.
This book is a work of fiction. References to real people, events, establishments, organizations, or locations are intended only to provide a sense of authenticity and are used fictitiously. All characters are a figment of the author’s imagination, and all incidents and dialogue are drawn from the author’s mind's eye and are not to be interpreted as real. Though several people, places, and events portrayed in this book are correct, the story is fiction that the author has made up for entertainment purposes only.
Created with Vellum
To Rachel Van Dyken
I will forever be grateful to have you in my life. I wrote this book fast and I swear it’s because you trained me to. You write at the speed of lightning, and when we’re writing together I need to keep your speed, so you’re not waiting on me, lol! I love you so much, and I’m so thankful for our friendship, our random talks, our heartfelt ones, our laughs, and even our cries. Everyone needs a friend like you, you’re one in a million.
I love you, bestie!
Prologue
Christian
Now
“I fucking love you, Kinley, and you know it.”
“It’s not about loving me, Christian. I love you with everything I am, but sometimes … it’s just not enough. I can’t live like this anymore. It’s not fair to either of us.”
“I don’t give up on anything, Kins. Especially you.”
She sighed, bowing her head.
I couldn’t believe we were having this argument at my little sister’s wedding. She was marrying my best friend, and this was supposed to be their day. I thought … fuck, I didn’t know what I thought anymore.
How could we let life just get in the way of our love for each other?
We’d been together since we were fifteen. Married at twenty-four, and I knew she was the one I wanted to spend the rest of my life with. I wasn’t going to risk losing her for anything, so I asked her to marry me and never looked back.
Ten years ago, we were so in love.
So devoted.
So fucking consumed with each other.
Where did we go wrong?
With the most sincere, pained expression on her face, she coaxed, “I don’t want to be just another challenge or obstacle, something you don’t give up on, Christian.”
“You’re taking my words out of context, Kinley.”
“Am I? I haven’t been your priority in who knows how long.”
“That’s bullshit! I’m inside you making you come on my cock—”
“This isn’t about sex, Christian! This has nothing to do with that!”
“What the fuck? I give you everything! What more do you want from me?”
“You give me everything? You can’t be serious. You think I don’t realize how detached you are from me because I can’t—”
“We are not talking about this here,” I snarled in a low rumble. Gripping onto her arm, I dragged her ass to the back of the farmhouse on my sister’s property where the ceremony and reception were being held.
During the exchange of their vows, we watched my sister and my best friend’s new beginning while my world was crashing to a devastating end. And all I could do was sit there and stare at Kinley’s face, desperately trying to hold onto the good times, memories of our life together.
I could see in her bright green eyes that I’d loved for as long as I could remember, her thoughts reflected my own—remembering a time when we were the ones standing in front of our friends and family, vowing to be together for better or for worse. She still loved me.
I still loved her.
Yet none of it mattered anymore.
Life had passed us by in the blink of an eye. We were no longer those two crazy kids who thought we could take the world on together. Our love had been replaced with anger, our devotion began to crumble, and our lives started drifting apart.
But anything worth having is worth fighting for, right?
She was the only woman who had ever touched my heart, my soul, and every fiber of my being belonged to her.
I was hers.
Inside and out.
However, now her love felt like a double-edged sword speared directly into my heart.
Her eyes weren’t a bright, shiny shade of green. They looked sad and hollow, although I could still see the love she had for me hidden behind the depths of her uncertainty.
She turned around to leave, and I grabbed her arm, turning her to face me. “I love you, Kinley.”
She immediately shut her eyes as if it pained her to look at me. I reached up instead, holding onto the sides of her face, willing her to open them for me.
“Sweetness,” I tenderly coaxed.
I only called her that when I really needed her to look at me, to talk to me, to listen to me…
To feel me.
“I love you,” I breathed out close to her lips. “I love you so fucking much, and you know that, baby. I saw your face during their vows. You can’t hide from me. I know you were remembering our wedding day. How I looked at you when you were walking down the aisle. From the moment you walked into that church you took my breath away, and ten years later you’re still taking it away. Don’t you remember how I used to make you feel, Kins? Please, babe, tell me you remember how we used to be?”
She sucked in a breath as I wiped away her tears with my thumbs. “What happened to us? We used to be so fucking happy, so in love. You remember, don’t you?”
—Kinley—
I cried, “Of course I remember.” I’d never be able to forget. He was in my veins, in my blood, imprinted so deep in my bones I didn’t know where I began and he ended. “You protected me. You’re always protecting me, Christian, but you can’t protect me from this—from what we’ve become.”
“I loved you then. I love you now.” He kissed the tip of my nose. “I’ll love you always.”
“You love what we used to be, not what we are now. It’s over. You know it’s over.”
We had to be. I couldn’t continue to allow him to sacrifice more than he already had for me. It wasn’t fair what I was doing to him and had been putting him through every month for the last couple of years. I had to stop being selfish and put his needs and wants first.
I loved him enough to let him go, knowing I could never give him what he truly yearned for. I tried…
But I was broken.
He shook his head. “I don’t want this for us, and I know you don’t want it either. We’re still here, sweetness. Deep inside, it’s still us.”
“Christian, please… I’m not trying to hurt you. It’s the opposite—I’m trying to set you free. I’m just so fucking exhausted from disappointing you all the time. I can’t live like this anymore.”
“Well, I can’t live without you.”
I opened my eyes, revealing our life together in my devastated expression. It was the least I could do. This was killing me too. I didn’t want this, but I didn’t have another choice. I’d made the wrong one over ten years ago, and it had cost me the love of my life.
“How do I look at the woman I love and just walk away from her? Huh? Please tell me, Kins, because I have not a fucking clue.”
I swallowed hard while more tears slid down my cheeks. “I know you blame me.”
“That’s not true.”
“Yes, it is. I can see right through you. I always have, and I always will. I wish I could change things. If I could go back… Fuck, I just can’t do this anymore. I’ve spent years regretting what I can’t change, and now I see it in the way you look at me, in the way you talk to me. You blame me, Christian, so stop pretending like you don’t.”
“I don’t care anymore. We’ll work through it.”
“All you’d be doing is settling for me, and I can’t do that to you. We’ve been trying to make it work for years. Enough is enough. You have to let me go.”
“The fuck I do.”
I shoved him. “Stop! Just stop! We agreed!”
“What other choice did you give me?”
“The only choice we have left!”
“That’s not the answer!”
Our chests were rising and falling in unison which was the only thing in sync with us.
“How can you not see it? What you’re doing to yourself, to me—to us?”
I jerked back, his questions knocking the wind out of me. “
“Fight for us!”
“I can’t more than I already have, Christian! I have no fight left in me! It’s all been taken away with every—” I stopped myself, unable to say the words.
It hurt too fucking much.
“Christian! I can’t be here! I need to leave!”
“For fuck’s sake, Kinley! You can’t leave my little sister’s wedding!”
“I don’t care! It’s your fault that no one knows the truth, and the longer I’m here, the harder it is to not tell everyone!”
Despite not wanting him to say the words, there was no holding back the fury soaring through his body as he spewed, “We’re not ruining their wedding because you want to tell everyone right now that we’re getting a divorce!”
“Yes! I do want to tell everyone! It’s time! We’ve been hiding it for months! For years we’ve been pretending to be something we’re not, and I can’t do it anymore! For once can you just listen to me? Can you just see things through my eyes? You can’t protect me anymore! I’m not that young girl you found in the woods! Why can’t you see that?!”
“You’ll always be that girl to me. You may have forgotten her, but she’s never left my side. You’ve never left me, and you never will. Do you understand me?”
“Christian, we’re not an us anymore.”
“We’ll always be an us, Kins. From the first time I claimed your lips, you were mine.”
He did the only thing he could in a moment that felt as if we were saying goodbye. Gripping onto the back of my neck, he slammed his lips against my mouth, kissing me like he did that night all those years ago. He was desperately trying to remind me of who we used to be.
Except when we pulled away, resting our foreheads on each other for support, I wept, “I don’t want to be yours anymore… It hurts too much.”
I lied.
Not for me.
Not for us.
For him.
It was my turn to protect him…
From me.
My mind was thrown right back to that night when I found my soulmate at fifteen, in the woods, where he protected me, and he…
Made me believe in love at first sight.
Chapter 1
Kinley
Then
“You need to slow down on the whiskey, Kinley, or you’re going to be sick,” my best friend Jax warned, standing beside me out in the woods.
I was trying to enjoy the end of the year party. This was where everyone from several schools always gathered in our small town of Fort Worth, Texas.
“Jax, it’s the last day of our freshman year of high school! We’re officially Sophomores and made it yet another year at good ol’ Adams High. Why can’t you just live a little and enjoy it?”
“We both know you’re not hammering down that bottle because it’s the beginning of summer break, Kinley.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not talking about this.”
“I know. You never want to talk about your mom.”
“That’s because there’s nothing to talk about.”
“She wants to see you. That’s not nothing.”
“I have nothing to say to her.”
“You haven’t seen or spoken to her since you moved here with your aunt when we were in sixth grade.”
I was originally from Ohio before my aunt moved us here, wanting us to start over. Her words, not mine. There was no starting over for me, not with what my mother had put me through since I was born. Back in Ohio, I had no one until my aunt got involved. Here, I only had her and Jax.
“You mean when she lost custody of me, and I had to go live with my aunt or just be another abandoned kid thrown into the system?”
He sighed deeply, knowing I was right.
Jax wasn’t going to win this argument. My mother could try to reach me until she was blue in the face, but I wasn’t going to give her the time of day. In my eyes, she was as good as dead like my sperm donor of a father was.
I'd never met him. He skipped out on us after she’d told him she was pregnant with me. At least that was what she always said when I’d ask her about him. Although, I didn’t ask often. Especially as I got older and realized what my mother was.
“Listen,” Jax coaxed. “I’m not trying to tell you what to do.”
“Really? Because it sure as shit feels like you are. You have no idea what she put me through.”
“I know enough.”
“You know nothing.”
He tried to grab the bottle out of my hand, but I chugged down another swig instead.
“I don’t like seeing you like this, Kinley.”
“Fine.” I shrugged. “Then don’t watch.”
Before he could reply, I stomped away from him. I was angry that he was bringing her up when all I was trying to do was forget about the fact that she thought I’d want to speak to her, let alone see her. She meant nothing to me, and I was mostly pissed she was making Jax and me fight. Other than my aunt, he was the only person in my life I could count on.
I’d met him the first day of sixth grade which was also my first day at a new school, and I swear he could smell my fear. It was a reccurring joke between us. I was super shy back then, not used to having friends. When it came time to pick a partner in science class, I looked around the room in a panic, not knowing anyone.
Until a boy with kind eyes was hovering above my desk, asking me if I wanted to be his partner for the rest of the school year. There was something about him that just made me smile, and at that point in my life, I couldn’t remember the last time I had.
However, rumors of our friendship were what school gossip was made of. Everyone thought we were hooking up behind closed doors, but it wasn’t true. We weren’t. It wasn’t like that between us. We were just best friends. Jax was on the football team, and he’d been playing as the quarterback since he was six-years-old. My best friend was incredibly handsome and had absolutely no problem scoring with girls, on and off the field.
While I remained single, never having a boyfriend.
I didn’t feel like I needed one. I had Jax, and that was good enough for me. He lived near my house, and since my aunt was constantly working in the ER as a registered nurse, Jax and I spent a lot of time together.
We slept in each other’s beds more times than I could remember, which was probably why gossip ran rampant down our hallways. It wasn’t a big deal. I was used to people talking about me once they knew I lived with my aunt and my mother wasn’t in the picture.
Nobody knew why, though, and it only piqued their interest in wanting to continue to gossip about me. My aunt bought us a cute house in a nice neighborhood that reminded me of the movie Pleasantville. I learned pretty early on that everyone knew one another in this town. Complete opposite from the hustle and bustle of Cleveland where everyone kept to themselves.
When she decided to move us, she picked the first place her finger landed on the map. Lucky enough, the hospital in Fort Worth was looking for a new RN, and she filled the requirements, working all sorts of crazy hours, so I didn’t see her a lot.
Yet another reason I was grateful for my friendship with Jax. He came from a broken home too. His parents got a divorce when he was younger, and neither one of them was around very much, so we found a family in one another.
Shoving away the thoughts, I chugged more booze while making my way deeper into the woods I wasn’t familiar with. It was almost like I was walking into a different world. Tree after tree filled my surroundings as the woods came alive with the sounds of animals. When the smell of smoke and weed began fading, I realized how deep I truly was in the middle of nowhere.
