Only One Kiss (Only One 1)

“Who called you?” I ask, and he just looks at me. “Who the fuck called you, Nico?”

“Doesn’t matter.” He avoids my eyes, looking around. “What matters is that you don’t come back here because next time, they won’t be calling me.”

“Who the fuck is calling you?” I ask, my heart pumping. “Is it Candace?” I wait for him to answer, and when he doesn’t, I ask him another question. “You know where she is?”

“I need you to promise me that you won’t come back here,” he says, and I answer him without thinking twice.

“No.” I shake my head. “I need to talk to her.”

“Ralph,” he says. “She doesn’t want to talk to you.”

“You know where she is.” I don’t ask him the question now. Instead, I tell him. “Tell me where she is.”

“It’s over, buddy,” he says, and the pain in my chest starts again. “You need to go home and be with Ariella and just move on.”

“How?” I ask him. “How do you expect me to move on when just the thought of not seeing her again has my chest hurting so bad that I think I’m having a heart attack? How do you expect me to move on when she’s not with me?” I walk away from him. “You tell Evan that I’m not going anywhere until I talk to her.”

“You want to start a war with Evan?” he asks, and I shrug.

“I don’t give a fuck if I have to go through the whole fucking family to get to her.” I walk to my truck. “You tell him that.” I get in the truck and pull out of the driveway. Taking my phone out, I send Justin a message.

Me: Tell Evan to call me.

That is all I do as I toss the phone on the side and drive home waiting for the phone call.Chapter 33Candace“Auntie Can.” I hear Zoey as she walks outside. “You crying again. You have boo boo?” She crawls onto the outdoor couch that I’m lying on with a cover over me. The air is still hot, but with the shade, it’s a touch cooler than I thought it would be.

“Yeah, I have a boo boo.” I kiss her head when she lies beside me, and even though I don’t want the tears to fall, they do. I wrap her into the blanket, and she watches her iPad.

I’ve been here for over a week, and every single day when I get up, I think the pain will be less. I think that the burning in my stomach is going to go away, but it doesn’t. I hear the dogs bark and look up to see that Zara is coming out of the house carrying two cups of coffee. “You forgot your phone inside.” She smiles as she hands me a cup of coffee and my phone and then sits on the big chair facing the couch.

“Thank you,” I say, ignoring the phone in my lap. The phone that gets heavier and heavier through the day. “I didn’t even notice.”

“You were too busy trying to pretend you were okay to your brother to notice that your phone was left on the kitchen table when you escaped outside.” She takes a sip of her coffee.

“I thought it would get better day by day,” I say. “I mean, is this normal?”

She looks at me. “The thought of losing your brother would cut me off at the knees. I don’t know how I would go on,” she says and blinks her own tears away. “I know that what he did was horrible.”

“Horrible.” I laugh bitterly, but the tear rolls down my cheek anyway as I sit up. Zoey’s not even a bit concerned about what is going on around her as she starts dancing back and forth. “He called me Cassie.”

“Yeah,” Zara says, looking at me. “I know but—”

I shake my head. “No, there is no excuse. None. And even if there was, I don’t want to hear it. We want different things out of life. I want a family with children. I want to be woken up at five a.m. because my baby is sitting on my bladder. I want to feel my child move in me. I want to give birth to my child, knowing I made this. Knowing that the love that we have together made a miracle. I want that, and I’m not going to sacrifice it for anyone.”

“And you shouldn’t have to,” she says. “You’ll find someone out there who will give you everything that you want,” she says, and my heart hurts, thinking that this person isn’t going to be Ralph. I close my eyes and see his smile, and just when I’m about to open my eyes, I see Ari smiling at me. “So what are you going to do?”

“I don’t think I can go back to Dallas,” I say the truth. “I don’t think I can be in the same town as him and not think of what he is doing at that moment. Fuck, I’m in New York, and there hasn’t been an hour that I haven’t thought about him.”