Page 16 of Fall for You (Second Chances #7)

Ronnie

“ V eronica Marie, are you home?”

I glanced up as my mother’s voice came around the side of my house.

“I’m on the screen porch.”

I jumped as my mother’s head popped up from beneath the screen like she was a human whack-a-mole. Was she crawling around my house spying on me?

“What are you doing down there, Mom?”

My mother looked strangely guilty. “I, uh I dropped something. Listen, I need a favor.”

“What is it?”

“I think there’s something up in the loft. In the barn. I heard something rustling up there. I need you to check it out for me.”

I narrowed my eyes. Mom was acting really weird.

She seemed twitchy, the way she was the time she crashed the farm pick-up truck into a fire hydrant when she was driving in town and was too nervous to tell my father about it.

Of course multiple people texted him the news before she even drove a mile.

“It’s probably a mouse. Or a cat or a bat. You know they all like to come inside when it gets cold out.”

The nighttime temperatures were already down to just above freezing.

“I’d feel better if you could check it out for me. You don’t mind, do you dear?”

I stared at her for a long moment before saying, “Why don’t you check it out?”

My mother had lived on the farm for a long time. She wasn’t afraid of anything, let alone a little mouse. Or whatever was holed up in the loft trying to get out of the cold.

“I can’t get up the ladder.”

“Since when?” I’d watched my mother climb hay bales just yesterday.

“I tweaked my knee.”

My mother was a crap liar. The way she wouldn’t meet my eyes was a dead giveaway.

“Which one?”

“Huh?”

“Which knee did you tweak?” I asked, watching her face carefully.

“Oh. Uh. My right. No, my left. Definitely my left.”

Her eyes darted around nervously.

“What’s going on, Mom?”

“Really Veronica Marie, I don’t think it’s too much to ask that you take five minutes out of your day to check to see what’s making noise up in my loft.” Her voice was full of motherly guilt. “It’s not like I ask a lot from you.”

I sighed deeply. “Fine.”

Mom started walking away, her gait as loose and even as always.

“You’re not limping,” I called after her.

She ignored me and picked up speed, almost sprinting away. What was going on with her?

Putting on my boots, I made the trek over to the barn on the main part of the property.

There was a distinct dampness in the air that hinted that our first snow was fast approaching.

I walked into the barn, listening carefully, but didn’t hear a thing.

All the animals were out in the pasture for the day and if something was scurrying around in here, it was being quiet about it.

I considered leaving, but then I heard a scraping noise overhead that I couldn’t identify. Maybe that was what had freaked Mom out?

Grabbing a shovel in case I needed to kill something, I climbed the ladder and stepped up into the loft, looking around carefully. To my surprise, Alana was seated in the far corner, a laptop propped on a bucket.

“What the --?” My words trailed off as I heard the ladder fall to the floor. When I looked over the edge, my mother was standing there with a big smile.

“You girls talk. I’ll be back in half an hour. Or longer, text me if you need privacy…” Then she hustled out of the barn.

I turned to look at Alana. “What’s going on?”

“Can I talk to you, Ronnie?” I couldn’t read her expression.

“Looks like I’m trapped up here with you, so I guess so.”

Alana smirked. “Your mom was very helpful.”

“So I see. The question is, why?”

She waved me over, and grudgingly I moved closer, sitting on a hay bale angled perpendicular from the one she was sitting on.

Belatedly, I realized they were both covered with thick blankets, the same way we used to do when we’d spend hours up here discussing our hopes and dreams, drinking cheap liquor, and making out.

“Question. Did you happen to hear from someone in town that I was moving back to New York?”

“Yeah I did,” I grumbled. “Thanks for telling me. Not.”

“Is that the only reason you broke up with me?” she asked.

“We can’t break up if we were only having a casual fling,” I said stubbornly.

“Answer the question. Did you come over to my parents’ house the other night and tell me you didn’t want to see me anymore because you heard I was moving back to New York?”

“Yeah.”

Alana shook her head, her expression disappointed. “And it didn’t occur to you to ask me if I was moving?”

“What?”

“If you heard I was moving back to the city, why didn’t you ask me, Ronnie?”

Before I could answer she continued, “Because if you’d bothered to verify what you heard, you would have learned that like many rumors in Hayword, it wasn’t true.”

“What?” I repeated again like an idiot.

“I’m not moving to New York,” she said slowly, like I was a dim-witted child.

“I started a marketing consultancy – a freelance marketing business that I can do from anywhere – and people likely heard my mother or my sister talking about how I got a new client or that I started a new business, not a new job.”

I reared back in surprise. “Wait, what? You started a company?”

I was so confused. Alana opened her laptop, pressed a button, and turned it towards me. Across the top it said, Alana Doyle, Marketing Consultant. It was a simple website, but elegant.

“I like your logo.”

“Chloe designed it,” she told me proudly.

“Are you telling me that you’re staying in Hayword?” I asked, connecting the dots in my head.

“I didn’t want to say anything until I knew I could make a go of it, but after I got my first group of clients, with several others asking for proposals, it was clear I could make freelance marketing a full-time gig,” Alana said.

“In fact, the night you came over, I was planning to tell you that I was moving to Hayword permanently. I was also going to ask you to be my girlfriend. Permanently.”

“What?” I stared at her in shock. Had I had a stroke or was this real?

“You keep saying that,” she teased.

“I’m having a hard time catching up,” I admitted. “I assumed… well, you know what I assumed.”

“Yeah. I know I hurt you back then Ronnie, but I was a stupid kid. I would never act like that now.”

Alana paused, then took a deep breath. “The thing is, I’m in love with you Ronnie. Again. Or maybe still. I’m in love with you and I want us to make a life together. I don’t want a friends with benefits arrangement. I want you to be my girlfriend, and I hope you want that too.”

I shook my head and her face fell.

“I don’t want you to be my girlfriend,” I said, drawing my words out for effect. “I want you to be my wife.”

It took a couple of seconds for my words to register, then her eyes filled with tears.

“Really?”

“Really. Not now, but some day.”

“Maybe we should live together first,” she suggested. “It’ll give us some time to work on our communication skills.”

We didn’t need to rush, not if we were living together.

“Does that mean that you’ll move into the cottage with me?” I asked.

“Well, I’m assuming that you don’t want to move in with me and my family,” she laughed.

“Yeah, I like your parents, but the bed in that bedroom is a little too small for both of us.”

“I mean, it’s pretty cool up there, especially with those stars on the ceiling.”

I shifted across the hay bale until I could take Alana in my arms. She melted against me, and suddenly everything was right in my world again.

“I’m sorry I doubted you,” I whispered. “I’ll never do it again.”

“Good.”

Alana leaned forward, pressing her lips against mine, and then we were kissing, long and hard and deep. The kiss turned rough, and I pushed her onto her back, desperate to get closer. To claim her as mine.

But Alana wasn’t passive. She had my shirt unbuttoned and her hand down my pants before I realized what was happening.

“I missed you,” I whispered against her mouth.

“Let’s never break up again,” Alana replied. “Promise me.”

“I promise.”

We kicked off our pants, too frenzied for each other to bother with our shirts, and turned to our sides, facing each other.

Alana slid her fingers into my channel, sliding up and down as she plundered my folds, and I snaked my arm between us to do the same to her.

In almost perfect tandem, we began fucking each other with our fingers, our touch rough and desperate.

Alana came first, releasing a scream that I silenced with my mouth.

She shuddered beside me, her hand stilling for what seemed like an eternity before she began moving inside my pussy again.

I rolled my hips, grinding myself against her hand, but I couldn’t quite get there.

Then Alana sucked my nipple into her mouth, the feeling incredible even with the thin cotton of my bra between us.

When she bit down hard while pressing her thumb against my clitoris, I lost all control.

We were both still shaking with aftershocks when we heard the voice from down below.

“Helloooo…. Did you girls make up?” my mother called up as she put the ladder back in place against the railing of the loft. “If so, come on over to the house for dinner in an hour. I made chicken pot pie.”

We both burst out laughing.

“Our lives are never going to be boring,” Alana said.

“Not here in Hayword they won’t.”