Rekindling the Flame (Smoky Heights #1)

Chapter 1

ONE

AURORA

The mediocre sex is the one thing I won’t miss about the city.

The loud noises, the infinite variety available on every block, the constant stimulation that keeps me from hearing my own thoughts … that I will miss.

I know a lot of people would consider Smoky Heights an idyllic place to spend the foreseeable future, what with the small-mountain-town vibes, the endless woods that meet the horizon in all directions, the peace and quiet you hear so much about.

Those people didn’t flee that town in their early twenties, to never return until now.

Tonight’s scoop du jour rolls off of me, panting, sweat running down one side of his face.

Rude of me to call him the flavor of the day. We’ve been seeing each other on a ton of days when neither of us has someone else filling our calendar, on and off, for a while now. It sounds harsh, but we both know what this is. A shitty alternative to sleeping alone.

Tonight’s a night I’ll take any company over my own.

My last night in NYC.

His eyes squint in question, and I give him a half-hearted smile with no pretense behind it. I didn’t even bother faking it, and we both know it. “A lot on my mind,” I tell him in response.

It’s not an apology. It’s the truth. So would be saying that he’s maybe a five out of ten, but sometimes a real cock is better than a silicone one, even if he can’t use it that well.

But then again, when you start your sexual history off with an eleven out of ten, I guess everyone who comes after (pun sort of intended) is going to be a disappointment. It’s had me grading every partner since on a curve. Haven’t found anyone above a seven in all my years trying. And believe me, I’ve tried.

But that’s the thing about your first, you don’t have anyone to compare them to, so you don’t even know if what you have is average, terrible, or—depressingly, in my case—the best you’ll ever find.

Speaking of going back to my hometown, of all that’s on my mind, all I’m freaking out about … His ears must be burning.

For my own sanity, all I can do is hope to hide out at my mom’s, avoid the reminders of my past, and somehow pray that I don’t run straight into my past.

You’d think more than a decade apart would fracture the magnetic pull we once had between us, the electric chemistry that sparked up as soon as we were in one another’s presence. Common sense says it probably has. But what we had defied common sense. A kind of attraction, an all-consuming need, that’s never manifested with anyone else since. I guess I thought it would be the norm with other partners, but, turns out we were the anomaly, and I’m the one who ruined the best thing I’ll ever have out of selfish fear.

I suck in quick breaths through my mouth, in and out, while my eyes bounce from object to object in my room, anything in the vicinity, until the thoughts stop spiraling. Until my head quiets a bit.

The guy to my right helps. So do the shouting voices from the street, floating up and infiltrating my sixth-floor window in the midnight hour, sandwiched by sirens and the occasional single horn blast.

Not sure what’s going to focus me when I don’t have these distractions to drown out the sound of my own thoughts, but I guess that’s just one more cross to bear when I’m back in the Heights.

But when you get the call that your only remaining parent has months left to live, what else do you do? Maybe it’s the guilt of leaving her alone all those years ago, never going back to visit since, maybe it’s just what anyone with a heart and the financial means to pull it off would do, but I didn’t think twice. I knew there was only one right thing to do after that news, and if I didn’t follow through with it, I’d never forgive myself.

They may still never forgive me, but there’s no way I’m not trying now.

I turned in my notice as an associate at the major firm I’ve been employed by for the past eight years (they didn’t accept it, but I did try to quit), broke the lease on my studio apartment on the Upper West Side, and scheduled movers to be here tomorrow to pack it all up and put it in a portable storage unit while I head back to where I escaped from.

Never thought I’d be forced to face my fears at thirty-three, but I guess I couldn’t run forever.

“Aurora?”

My eyes find Trevor’s, and I see the concern shining in his.

“Mmm?”

“You good, hon?” he asks, that Eastern seashore accent poking through, despite the fact he’s lived in Manhattan about as long as I have.

I let my fingers trail over his temple, push through his sandy blonde hair, mid-length nails scraping softly along his scalp. “As good as I can be,” I promise him.

“Gonna be weird without you on the sixty-second floor.” Trevor never passed the bar, so he’s worked as a paralegal for years longer than he ever planned to. He’s a good paralegal. A good guy. Just not the guy capable of passing his bar on the third attempt. And not the guy capable of holding my interest, at least not for more than the occasional office lunch or casual hookup. Though, to be fair to him, nobody does these days.

“Gonna be weird, period,” I tell him, trying to keep my mind on the here and now, not let it drift and wander to what’s waiting for me back home. Who. All the reasons I left in the first place. “What am I supposed to do when I’m craving Korean barbecue at two in the morning?” I joke.

“I suspect you won’t have a shortage of barbecue where you’re headed.”

“A definite shortage of variety, though.” In a town of less than five thousand? Barely got a Sonic and a Dollar General. “And restaurants open past 8:00 p.m.,” I tack on, remembering the one local diner we had growing up used to close before the sun went down. Though, it’s probably out of business now, like so much of the town, considering who used to run it.

“I’ll send you some of your usuals from Goldbelly. Besides, you won’t be gone forever, right?”

I scoff. “I’ll be scratching my way back to the city tooth and claw the second my mom’s affairs are in order and the dirt is on the casket.” The words are more callous than I intend them to be, but they’re still true.

That cynical voice in the back of my head tells me those sound like famous last words, and I let the bevy of sounds that accompany living on an island along with millions of others drown that voice out in the cacophony, the way I’ve found peace for the past twelve years.