Finding Solace

Prologue

Jason Koster

It’s pouring rain, but that doesn’t matter. I can’t look away from my past. Or her.

Delilah Noelle.

Damn.

We shared many shameless kisses with our bodies covered in the slick love we’d made. Carefree hair blowing in the wind. A sunset captured on the back of a rowboat. We were all the good things that first love brings.

Yeah, we were wild in love back then with no cares in the world. Whether by choice or circumstance, all good things must come to an end. Nothing good can last. It’s been a hard lesson to learn, but one that finally sank in.

A love so pure, so innocent like ours could never survive.

And didn’t.

The motorcycle’s too loud to be considered stealth, so I’m sure she hears me coming. A bike like this, even custom and almost costing as much as a small house, will never impress her.

How do I know? Because I never impressed her.

Guess that’s why she left me.

Or did I leave her?

I know the truth, but sometimes, I pretend the facts are fuzzy. Hazy facts or not, four years is a lot of time to pass without living with your other half . . . your better half.

She’d called us soul mates at one time. Maybe she was right, and I’ve been living without half my soul all this time. That’d make sense, though it can’t cleanse the soul I have left, if any.

Now I’m back in the same town I once hated, sitting in front of the same house I once visited daily. And I’m not thinking clearly, much like a night I’d like to forget.

I don’t know what I was thinking coming back here. I don’t know what to think at all.

Maybe . . .

No. She’s not an option. She’s married.

She’s off-limits.

It didn’t stop him back then, but it should stop me now. Crazy memories fill my brain—holding her in my arms and making her promises I intended to keep. Too young to make those kinds of promises. Naïve for thinking I would be her guy forever or she’d be my forever.

Rumor has it he hits her.

If I’m not careful, he’ll never take another breath if we cross paths again. The thought of anyone laying a hand on her kills me inside, but do I have a right to those emotions when it comes to her?

Gossip has gotten back that she visits my mom on occasion to reminisce. That she misses me.

Fuck.

Rumors. Fucking rumors.

Delilah is still so damn beautiful. I see that same look in her eyes I remember from back then. The one that brought me to my knees the first time I ever laid eyes on her.

As I look at her standing on that front porch now, I can’t deny that she makes me feel the same. Her smile, her small wave . . . two things I’ve craved. Missed. I scrub my hands through my hair and question everything I’m about to do.

Why am I here?

Unfinished business or feeling sentimental about a past I can’t reclaim?

What am I doing?

I have no fucking clue, but I do it anyway.

I swing my leg off the bike to find out and then cut the engine to the black Harley. Shoving my hands into the pockets of my leather jacket, I start walking across a lawn I’ve walked a million times in another life.

The railing wobbles under my hand, and chipped paint pops off. I prop one foot up on the bottom step and stare at her.

Many things in life catch us, distract us, keep hold of us. I’m not one easily caught, though. But the one thing I never seemed to be able to get uncaught in is Delilah.

It’s been too long since I’ve laid eyes on the beauty standing before me or felt a heart I thought had been lost on some dark highway. Here it is, beating to life just from being near her again. I take a deep breath, and say, “Hi.”

Her shoulders drop, the tension falling away as if she’s been waiting for this day and found relief in its arrival. “What took you so long?”

1

Jason

New York is always an option. I hate Manhattan, but I could live in a borough. I could blend into the city life and disappear among all the other ghosts that inhabit the area. I pass the exit, the city no longer a choice, and keep driving south.

I never felt as if I belonged there anyway.

I’ve traveled this country from Maine to Los Angeles, Alaska to Key West. I’ve stayed a few days in a motel outside Atlanta and swum in the Gulf along the Mississippi coast. I’ve drunk whiskey in the open air of Joshua Tree and slept under a blanket of stars in Texas.

I lived.

I survived.

But all roads seem to lead me back to Solace Pointe.

My jersey number still graces the beat-up old sign along the highway. The billboard is just before the exit that leads you to a one-stoplight town with a pharmacy still serving ice cream at the counter and Wilbur Macy rocking in a chair at the corner of Main and First.