Free A Second Chance at Forever by JM Stewart

after I met her. Her father had beaten the hell out of him.”
    The thought of the pain that poor little boy had gone through and the wound his loss left behind had a heaviness settling over her chest. “What happened to her father?”
    "Currently serving a life sentence.”
    “You must have loved her.” She’d meant the comment as merely an observation spoken out loud, but his body stiffened beneath her. He grew quiet, tension rising in the air between them. Angela suddenly wished she could suck the words back.
    She opened her mouth to voice the thought when he very quietly said, “Married her, actually.”
    His soft admission surprised her, seeped inside and wrapped around her heart. She took it for the gift it was. In those words she heard others her brother had told her a little over a year ago. “Alex lost his wife and his daughter.”
    She remembered Brock flying out to New York for the funeral. It had been a horrible car accident; a drunk driver had crossed the median on the highway.
    Angela lifted up onto an elbow, stared down at Alex. He held her gaze, his face for that moment open to her. For the second time that night he’d let his guard down. The pain shadowing his eyes made her long to somehow take some of it from him.
    She worried her lower lip. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said anything. I didn’t mean to bring up bad memories.”
    He slid a hand up her back, soft and reassuring. “It’s okay. Long as I’m being honest, it’s kind of a relief not to have to pretend.”
    She offered him a gentle smile. “I know exactly what you mean.”
    That seemed to set him at ease, for his body relaxed. Once again that sense of comfort settled between them, warm and familiar.
    “I have to get up soon. My flight leaves at eight.” He rolled her over, tucking her beneath him, his weight braced on his elbows. “Shower with me?"
    She slid her hands up his back, arched her hips against his in answer. “If we get in that shower together there isn’t going to be any washing getting done, Alex.”
    He nipped at her bottom lip. “That’s a problem how?”
    ****
    An hour later, Angela and Alex stood together by the hotel room door. He stared at her, his hands stuffed into his pockets, fully dressed now in khakis and a light blue button-down shirt.
    They’d been in this exact spot for several moments now, neither one of them seeming to know what to say to the other. Tension sat thick and palpable between them.
    He touched her chin, stroking his thumb over her skin. “Take care of yourself, Ang.”
    Despite knowing this night had been everything she’d wanted it to be, the thought of never seeing him again had her chest tightening. She didn’t know what to do with the feeling.
    So she leaned in, kissed his cheek, then forced herself to turn and leave.
    The click of the hotel room door closing echoed behind her, resounding the finality of the moment. It had been a beautiful night, but it was over.
    As it should be.

Chapter Six
    Angela spit the water out of her mouth and eyed herself in the bathroom mirror. Six weeks had passed since she’d last seen Alex. Since that weekend she couldn’t forget no matter how hard she tried.
    She had tried. She’d lengthened her morning run by two miles, had buried herself in her work at Harvelle, offering to do the late night upgrades on the servers. Stayed later than usual at the club on the weekends, until it closed at four a.m.
    None of it had worked. Her nights were still crowded with bittersweet images of him, of them .
    Six weeks may have passed, but she was still every bit as caught as she’d been then. Every day she wondered…did he think of her at all? Did he linger over their night together the way she did? It made her feel too much like the teenager she’d been once, just a girl with a crush on her big brother’s best friend.
    Shaking off the familiar melancholy seeping into her chest, she dried her face with a towel and left the bathroom to wind her way