No Second Chances by Marissa Farrar Read Free Book Online Page A

hadn’t been all about what he’d done to me. I had my own guilt to live with, and deep down I was worried that if I had to hear too much about those years he’d spent behind bars, I’d find myself confessing.
    Sniffing, blinking back the tears, I put my car into reverse and started to pull out of the space—
    Hands slammed down on my rear windshield, and I jumped, jamming on the brakes. “Jesus Christ!”
    A figure appeared at my car window and tapped with knuckles. I rolled it down and Cole’s face appeared in the space.
    “What the hell is wrong with you?” I demanded.
    “I didn’t want you to leave without giving you this.” He held out a slip of paper. “I know you’ll probably burn it, but I just wanted to say that if you ever need me for anything, you can call me, okay?”
    I stared at him, not taking the slip, so he leaned in and placed the paper on my dashboard. “Take care of yourself, Gabs.”
    And he stepped away, allowing me to pull out of the parking lot.

 
    Chapter Eight
     
     
    Cole – Present Day
     
     
     
    I shouldn’t be surprised Gabriella Weston hated me.
    What had I been hoping for—that the years would have faded everything I did, and she would come rushing back into my arms? She’d been my one and only real girlfriend, but that didn’t mean I’d been hers. She could have been married and divorced again for all I knew. Hell, she could still be married, though I hadn’t heard any rumors about a husband, and I was pretty sure if there was someone special in her life, they would be with her during a time like this. The same couldn’t be said for me. Gabi was the only girl I’d ever loved. I’d been in prison for the past ten years. I hadn’t exactly had much opportunity to create new relationships. Not that my location made much of a difference. Even if I’d been a free man, I didn’t think I’d ever find a love that would burn as strong and bright as the love I’d had for her when I was seventeen, going on eighteen.
    How different would things have been if I hadn’t screwed everything up? We might be married by now, have a couple of kids of our own. She might not have gone through whatever trauma had cost her her leg.
    I had a shift later that day, the evening shift, which meant I wouldn’t be getting off until the early hours of the morning. I wouldn’t mind the later finish if I could just figure out a way to sleep in the next day. After spending most of my adult life under prison rules, my body was trained to wake at six a.m., and even when I didn’t collapse on my bed until after one, I still found my eyes pinging open right before six. I was conditioned, that was for sure, but I wanted to leave my prison life behind me. The future I’d dreamed of when I was eighteen had never materialized. In fact, I’d been forced to put it off for another ten years, but now I had a second chance and I didn’t intend on fucking things up again.
    I took a shower, got dressed, and headed out to my shift. As usual, the kitchen was busy and hot, and I nodded my hellos to the guys working their asses off to make sure customers got their meals on time. I was on prep for the start of the shift, and would move to pans later in the night after most of the meals had gone out. It wasn’t exactly classy work, but I was allowed to keep my head down and get on with things without being forced to interact with too many people.
    As I worked, my thoughts kept drifting to Gabi. Both times I’d seen her had felt like a punch to the chest. It was like stepping back in time, and I had to physically stop myself from reaching out and touching her as we spoke, just as I always had when we were teenagers. She looked exactly the same to me, though I knew I must appear brutish to her. Ten years behind bars would harden a guy up. I wondered if she hated my tattoos, and that my hair was so much shorter now. Did she feel nostalgic in any way for the boy I had been back then?
    The kitchen was always a