Page 18 of Once Upon A Second Chance (Once Upon A Time…To Happily Ever After #2)

Chapter Fifteen

Richard

By the time I pull into her driveway, my heart is somewhere near my throat.

I don't remember half the drive—just the sharp, clipped edge of her voice over the phone: “I’m okay, but I need you to know—Travis showed up.”

That was all it took. She said she was fine, but her voice trembled around the edges, and now my brain won’t stop cycling through worst-case scenarios like a goddamn trauma reel.

I barely put the truck in park before I’m out, feet hitting the gravel hard as I bolt up the steps.

I don’t knock.

The door swings open before I get there, and she’s already standing on the threshold, framed by the glow of her living room lamp like some fevered mirage.

“Penny—” I start, breathless.

But before I can ask if she’s hurt, if he touched her, if she needs anything, everything, me—

She closes the distance and presses her lips to mine.

Firm. Steady. In control.

It halts every frantic thought still stuttering through my skull.

When she finally pulls back, her hand rests lightly against my chest, grounding me.

“I handled it,” she says softly. “But thank you for caring so much.”

I stare at her for a moment, jaw tight, throat thick with the words I didn’t get to say.

“You sure you’re okay?”

She nods.

“Filed the report. Started the paperwork for the restraining order. Travis won’t be coming back unless he wants a cop on his porch.”

I let out a breath I didn’t know I was holding and lean my forehead against hers.

“Good job! But you scared the hell out of me.”

“Yeah, well.” She smirks, gently brushing a curl away from my face. “Now you know how I felt when you left a hemostat in someone’s chest back in ’08 just before closing.”

“That was one time.”

“And I had to stitch your ego back together for a week.”

Her smile falters just slightly, and I see the flash of what it cost her to stand tall today—to walk to that police station, to speak up, to act.

She’s strong, but even strength leaves bruises.

I wrap my arms around her, pulling her into my chest. She sinks into me easily, like she’s been waiting for this too.

“I’m proud of you,” I murmur.

She exhales into my shoulder. “I’m proud of me too.”

And just like that, the tension in my spine softens. Not because the threat is gone. Not because everything’s suddenly easy.

But because she faced it.

And she’s still here.

After Penny reheats some leftover pasta and insists I sit while she plates it, we settle across from each other at her small kitchen table.

The dog snores underfoot like none of this concerns her. The quiet is domestic, peaceful even—but it’s the kind of peace that comes after the sirens have faded, not before.

She twirls her fork a few times before speaking.

“So… Audrey Wallace cornered me at the Farmer’s Market.”

I glance up. “Yeah?”

“She gave me an envelope full of pamphlets. You know. Resources. Shelters. Support groups for ‘women like me.’” She makes air quotes, voice flat.

I blink. “Jesus.”

She gives a humorless laugh. “Yeah. Apparently, she thinks I’m too far gone to realize I’m being abused, but not too far gone to bake something for the church potluck next week.”

I put down my fork.

We sit there in the thick quiet of it.

“I’ve been feeling it too,” I admit. “The looks. The cold shoulders. Simmons won’t stop double-checking my work, and three patients cancelled this week without rescheduling.”

Her eyes flick to mine, sharp. “You didn’t tell me that.”

I shrug, but it doesn’t come off casual. “Didn’t want to make it worse.”

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 she had tried 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.

It’s too much, too fast, too good. I slip the last of my clothes off, and her eyes make my whole body burn.

“Now,” she says, the word a low, desperate plea.

She draws me back, wraps her legs around my waist and pulls me inside her. My breath catches at the tight, perfect fit of her, at the way she arches and gasps and moves with me.

I bury my face in her neck, my mouth finding skin as we find a rhythm, slow but urgent. Her muscles clench around me, and I know she’s close when she grabs my hands and winds our fingers together, when she bites her lip and closes her eyes and—

“Richard,” she cries, and I feel her shudder, feel her come apart in my arms.

The sound of her, the sight of her, the way she grips me like she never wants to let go—there’s no holding back. I follow her over the edge, gasping her name like a prayer, like a promise.

We stay like that, tangled and breathless, until the room cools around us and our hearts remember their own pace. I roll to my back and she sprawls across my chest, a heavy, sweet weight.

“Wow,” she whispers, and I feel her smile against my skin.

I laugh, a small, wonderstruck sound. “Yeah. Wow.”

The trail is quiet this morning, sunlight slipping through the branches in broken, shifting beams. A breeze carries the scent of damp leaves and honeysuckle, and for a while, I let the rhythm of my boots on gravel and the sound of birdsong clear out some of the static in my chest.

Mount Juliet has plenty of these little cut-through trails—half-wild, half-maintained. I picked this one because it winds near the river and doesn’t usually see much foot traffic.

Too many people lately.

Too many eyes.

And it’s not even the glares that get to me.

It’s the uncertainty.

The way people I’ve laughed with, worked beside, waved to at grocery store checkouts now blink twice before smiling, as if unsure if I’m still the man they thought I was. As if they’re searching my face for the truth, and they don’t like that they can’t see it easily anymore.

I stop at a bend where the trail overlooks the river, take a breath, close my eyes.

The wind rustles the canopy above.

Then—Screaming.

Not the fun, splashy kind.

Panicked.

Frantic.

My eyes snap open just as a voice cracks through the air—raw and high with terror. “Help! Please, someone help!”

Downstream, just around the curve of the bank, I spot them—a couple stumbling along the muddy edge, pointing, yelling.

And then I see the child.

A toddler—maybe two, maybe three years old—caught in the current, arms flailing, head barely above the surface as the river pulls her straight toward me.

There’s no time to think.

No time to shout.

I’m moving before my brain catches up.

Boots hit the bank, then the water.

It’s cold and fast and stronger than it looks, but I’ve already shoved off, cutting across the current with powerful strokes. The kid is struggling, eyes wide and mouth open in a silent scream, choking on water every time she surfaces.

“I’ve got you,” I call, voice as calm as I can make it.

She doesn’t hear me. She’s too far gone.

I push harder, legs burning, lungs tight.

One more reach—

And then I’ve got her.

Small, trembling arms, slippery with river grit and panic, loop around my neck.

She clings like a barnacle, coughing and sobbing, and I shift to hold her above the waterline with one arm while paddling back with the other.

The parents are in the shallows now, half-sobbing themselves.

Someone else has shown up—an older man with a phone pressed to his ear, gesturing wildly toward me. My feet finally touch mud, then gravel, then earth.

I hand the girl over, my arms shaking now from adrenaline and effort.

The mother collapses to her knees, clutching the child to her chest, sobbing thanks I barely hear.

Someone’s patting my shoulder. Someone else presses a towel into my hands that wasn’t there a second ago.

I just nod, dripping and breathless, trying to process what the hell just happened.

“You— you just jumped in,” someone says behind me.

I turn slowly. It’s one of the dads from the school down the road. I recognize him, barely—Brian? Bill?

“I saw it,” he says, eyes wide. “Didn’t even pause. You just went.”

I meet his eyes, not really knowing what to say.

So I just shrug. “Wasn’t gonna let her drown.”

He laughs, still stunned. “Jesus. You’re a damn hero.”

The word catches something in my chest.

Hero.

I don’t feel like one. Not with everything going on. But I look around, and the people watching me now aren’t staring with suspicion.

They’re staring with awe.

And that? That feels new.