Page 71 of Once Upon A Second Chance

A pause.

“I just…” I trail off, then push back in my chair slightly, hands scrubbing over my face. “I don’t know how to fix it. If this keeps up, Holloway won’t be comfortable giving me the job permanently and I’ll have to go further afield to find work, maybe Nashville. I thought coming here, keeping my head down, doing good work—it’d be enough to let people make up their own minds about me. ”

“But it’s not,” she says gently.

“No. It’s not.”

Penny reaches across the table and threads her fingers through mine. “It’s not fair. But it’s not your fault either.”

I squeeze her hand, grateful and frustrated all at once. “How do you prove a negative? How do you show people you’re not the man someone says you are?”

She’s quiet for a moment. Then she shakes her head. “I don’t know.”

There’s something so honest in the way she says it—no attempt to cheer me up, no empty reassurance.

Just the truth, sitting there between us. It almost hurts more than if shehadtried to fix it.

Later, we drift to the couch, plates abandoned in the sink. The TV’s off. No sound but the low hum of the fridge and the soft creak of the couch as she leans into my side.

Her head rests on my shoulder, my hand finding its way to her thigh, thumb drawing slow, idle circles through the fabric of her leggings.

We don’t talk anymore. We don’t really need to.

This isn’t about solving anything—not tonight, at least.

Her cheek is so close I can feel every small motion—how her skin moves against mine when she smiles, how she breathes, how her lips find my neck. Warm. Unhurried.

I close my eyes and let the heat rise. My hand moves up, fingers brushing under her shirt, tracing her skin. She shivers, but not like she’s cold.

Penny shifts, turning so she’s facing me, legs tucking beneath her. It puts her right in my lap, and her weight there is a perfect kind of gravity.

I kiss her, slow and deep, the way you do when you have too much to say and all the time in the world to say it. She leans into it, into me, and I can taste her, sweet and familiar.

Her hands slip beneath my shirt, pushing it up, pulling me closer. I let her tug it over my head, let her claim the small victory of bare skin against bare skin. Her palms are soft and steady, mapping every inch like she’s memorizing a place she once lived. We don’t break from each other, even for a second.

I ease her onto her back, and she draws me with her, a gentle insistence that won’t let me go.

She watches me, eyes dark and full of the things we never say. I kiss down her throat, her collarbone, the curve of her shoulder. She tastes like salt and warmth and wanting.

“Richard,” she says, like it’s the only word she has left.

I take her shirt off. She arches up to help, to meet me halfway.

The fabric drifts to the floor, and I move against her like a tide. She’s breathing hard now, lips parted, a quiet whimper escaping when I kiss the pale line of her ribs. I could drown in this, in her, and not mind at all.

We roll to our sides, tangled and close, neither of us wanting to be the first to let go. My hands find her hips, her waistband, the thin elastic that stands between us. I pause, a question in the shape of a touch.

She answers by pulling me back to her, by slipping the leggings off, by wrapping herself around me. I’m dizzy with it, with her.

Her fingers curl into my hair, my shoulders, my spine. I find the clasp of her bra and fumble once, twice, before she laughs and helps me, the sound breaking into a gasp as I kiss her again.

“Penny,” I breathe.

“Yeah,” she murmurs, words lost in the quiet of my neck, my ear.

I pull her closer, impossibly close, all of her pressed against all of me, and the world outside quiets to nothing.

Her hand reaches between us, and I groan when she touches my cock, when she wraps me in the heat of her palm and strokes until I have to pull away or lose it right there.