Insta love, p.1
Insta-Love, page 1
Table of Contents
ALSO BY MAX
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
PREVIEW
Duke
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
INSTA-LOVE
Copyright © 2018 Max Henry
Published by Max Henry
All rights reserved. No part of this eBook may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, including electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental. Max Henry is in no way affiliated with any brands, songs, musicians, or artists mentioned in this book.
This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this eBook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this eBook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it to the seller and purchase your own copy.
Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
ALSO BY MAX
STANDALONE
Malaise
Tough Love
Echoes in the Storm
DARK TIDE (Rock Star) SERIES
Down Beat
COMING SOON
Amplifier
TWISTED HEARTS (Age Gap) DUET
Desire
Regret
BUTCHER BOYS (Suspense) SERIES
Devil You Know
Devil on Your Back
Devil May Care
Devil in the Detail
Devil Smoke
FALLEN ACES MC SERIES
Unrequited
Unbreakable
Tormented
Existential
Misguided
YET TO RELEASE
Redundant
ONE
Ava
New page, new book.
The plain grey brick exterior of my parents’ home glares back at me like an old friend long left behind. I swore I’d never be so low as to have to come back, but hey, best intentions and all that, right? I lean over the tailgate and hoist another box from the back of my truck. At least I managed to achieve one thing while I was gone: I bought a car.
Whoop-de-fucking-do for me.
There’s no need to turn around to know that Mrs Canshaw over the road watches me through her net curtains. The woman is about as subtle as a sledgehammer. I drag the cardboard box that holds a quarter of my worldly possessions toward me and hoist it into my arms, back straight. Pride fills my steps as I walk into the open garage and through to the house. Fuck the nosey people in this neighbourhood; if I want to return to my parents’ house, I can. So fucking what? It doesn’t mean I’m a failure.
Although I sure feel like one.
“I’ve put the others in the spare room,” Dad lets me know as I pass him in the lounge. “I figure you can sort out what you want me to store in the garage, and what you want kept at arms reach.”
“Thanks.” I offer him a small smile as I step through the door to my new-yet-old room. The paint’s been redone since I left as a teenager, but the furniture’s still the same.
Full circle, huh?
“Is there anything you two don’t eat that I should know about?” Mum calls from the kitchen. “I’m about to head out to the supermarket.”
“No. We’re good.” I set the box down on the bed as the other half of ‘we’ turns up in the doorway.
“Where do I sleep?” Lily tips her head as she looks around the room, picking up on the single bed in the centre.
“We’ll push this to the side and I’ll have an airbed until I can afford to buy us a second one.” I drop to the mattress and pat the bed beside me. “Come give me a cuddle.”
My daughter, the reason to get up each day and face this bullshit head on, comes over and climbs onto my legs, curling into a ball to fit. At eight she’s more legs than anything else now, but she’s also not too big to need her mum when things get tough. Although, things the way they are right now, I’d say I need her more than she needs me.
“I can have the airbed,” she mutters into my tank top.
“I want you to have a proper mattress, baby. I’d hate for you to be going to school with a sore back, or tired because you didn’t sleep okay.”
“We can take turns.” She pulls back, sun-kissed auburn hair slipping into her face as she does. “You one week, me the next.”
I hook a finger under her overgrown fringe and tuck it behind her ear. “Sounds like a plan.”
She’s so much of me at this age that some days it’s like watching a real life photo from my past: same hair, same wide eyes, same rounded nose. But that mouth, especially when she smiles lop-sided like this—that’s all her father.
I swallow hard and wrap my arms around her, tugging her close. She slips an arm around my waist and nestles in tight. “It’ll be okay, Mum.”
“I know. We’re a team, eh?”
“The best.”
She’s also my glue, the only thing keeping my heart from becoming dust. Falling pregnant at seventeen was never my life plan, my goal. Ask me when I was sixteen what life entailed for me, and I would have said years spent at university training to be a Veterinary Nurse. My dream since I was younger than Lily. But once upon a time, many years ago, a girl met a boy and life took a sharp turn off course.
Glen was my everything; he made it that way. I lost my relationship with my parents because of him. I bunked school, and I skipped out on going to my afternoon job, all to be with a guy I thought would be my life thereafter. We were damn Bonnie and Clyde, running around and getting into trouble, throwing the proverbial middle finger to the world. I loved him. He told me I was it for him. “I don’t care if we have nothing,” he’d said. “I could be living in a cardboard box under a bridge with you and I’d be happy.”
He lied.
I missed my period and put it down to stress. We’d almost been caught jacking a car the week before. Cops had tailed us for three suburbs before we lost them. The car, half stripped and with parts sold to five scrap dealers around the city, was buried in the overgrown grass by the river. Glen told me we’d save the money we got from the wreckers for a plane ticket out of here, that we’d fly wherever the whim took us and make a new life. I wondered how the fuck I was supposed to do that with no passport, but he had a way with words.
He made me trust him.
Lily was born seven months later, premature and fragile at thirty-three weeks. I spent nine weeks in the hospital with her before they felt she was strong enough to leave. What was quite possibly the most stressful time in my life was almost a blessing in disguise. The hospital provided me with a bed and food to be near my baby. They took care of me when I couldn’t think of anything other than my daughter who needed me.
The lowest point in my life? When the nurse asked if there was anybody I’d like to call to bring me a change of clothes. I cried. I sobbed for half an hour while I told her that I had nothing but the dirty washing stashed in my backpack, that the only person left in my life had no phone, and the tears fell hardest of all when she asked where my baby’s father, Glen, was and I told her the truth: I didn’t know.
“What are you thinking about, Mum?” Lily slides out of my hold and settles on the bed beside me.
“About when you were born.”
She makes a disgruntled face like only an eight year-old would and sighs. “You’re weird.”
I smile and give her a nudge. “And you wonder where you get it from, huh?”
She chuckles and leaves the room, her light and airy voice carrying through the house as she calls out to my mother.
Her father’s never seen her. He doesn’t know she has the same wicked smile, or that she tucks one leg under her and taps her finger on her knee like he did when she thinks. He’s got no idea that his baby girl is going to be trouble for the boys when she’s older, that his baby girl is the most beautiful creature ever created—rose-tinted mum glasses aside.
Lily is stunning—inside and out. Which is more than I can say for him.
After all, handsome as he was, what does any of that matter when a man abandons his partner and newborn child to fly overseas and start again … alone?
TWO
Ava
“That’s the third trailer load this morning.” Mum holds the front blinds to the side with a crooked finger, spying on the new neighbour who carts boxes into the previously vacant townhouse.
Three weeks have passed since Lily and I moved in with my parents. For the last two, the place next door has been vacant with a ‘for rent’ sign pegged in the lawn out front. But when I stepped out the door to take Lily to school this morning, a car from the agency was parked in the driveway with a jet black Jeep Grand Cherokee behind it.
“You’re as bad as Mrs Canshaw, Mum.”
She drops the blind and scoffs as she turns to face me. “W hatever. You don’t know what you’re missing out on.” She flashes me a wicked smile.
I beckon her back to the window and step up to pull the blinds aside again. Only this time I point across the street at the old woman peering out from behind her nets. “See? Just as bad.” Mum giggles and swats my hand away before the retiree sees us both watching.
“Fine. But you have to admit it’s odd. He’s so young.” She pulls the blinds aside half an inch to hazard another look at the neighbour’s driveway.
“And what?” I ask, cocking an eyebrow at her. “Young people can’t have a lot of things?”
“I didn’t say that. It’s just…these places don’t go for cheap. He must earn a lot.”
“Who’s to say he won’t have flatmates? Maybe he’s got family who’ll show up later?”
She peeks quickly through the blinds once more and shakes her head. “No, definitely no family. There aren’t any kids toys, and only one bed.” She steps away from the window and wiggles her eyebrows suggestively as she backs toward the door. “Why don’t you go say hello?”
“Mum!”
“What?” She shrugs, and steps into the hall. “I’d like more than one grandbaby, you know.”
I groan and roll my eyes as she walks away.
“I’m making lunch,” she calls from the kitchen. “Why don’t you go ask if he’s hungry?”
I ignore her meddling and sidle up to the window again, creeping the blind aside to spy for myself. The trailer is backed up to the garage door, filled with boxes and a shelving unit. What’s more impressive though, is the late model Jeep towing it. Yeah, that was his. The damn thing must cost more than I’ve managed to bring home in the last three years combined. Guess Mum wasn’t so wrong after all: he must earn a lot.
I’m mid-step away from the window, my hand relaxing from the blinds, when the man in question steps out of the garage to collect another box. My finger goes rigid, the slip between the blind and the window frame enough for me to get a full-length view of his back. Holy shit. The guy is hot. As in scorching. Molten lava. Surface of the sun kind of hot. Wow. And I haven’t seen his face yet. Would it matter with a body like that?
I mentally chastise myself for being so shallow and briefly close my eyes. Look where the last good-looking guy got you. There’s more to the right man than just how he looks.
Is there though? So what if he’s not long-term material? Why couldn’t I enjoy a fling while I’m here? After all, I don’t plan on living with my parents for any longer than necessary to get back on my feet. Damn it. Now I really do sound like Mum.
He shifts about on his feet, scratching the back of his head as he appears to decide what to take in next. My free hand creeps to my throat while I drink in clearly defined calf muscles, the rugby league shorts stretched over thick thighs, and a narrow waist that leads up to wide shoulders. The tank he wears is stretched and old, showing a lot of skin and defined muscle as he leans forward to swivel a box with one hand. His arms flex and tighten as he drags it toward him with fingers wrapped firmly around a side of the cardboard. He hesitates, and I come close to losing all control when he whips the back of his tank up to retrieve his mobile phone that’s jammed in the waistband of his shorts. Ink covers his lower back, right side to spine, and as he reaches for the phone I pick out more colourful pictures on his shoulder and upper arm. He lifts the phone to his ear and turns toward the garage, his face almost coming into view as he spins on the spot…
“Do you think he’s the kind of manly-man who likes steak sandwiches?”
I yelp and drop the blinds. “Shit, Mum! Don’t sneak up on me like that.”
“I hardly snuck up, darling. You were in a trance.” She nudges me with the elbow of her arm that holds a plate of cheese and tomato on crackers. “You need to at least shave before you head over. Never know where things might lead.” Her gaze drops suggestively to my crotch.
And I came out of this woman. “I can’t believe you’re telling me to do that,” I squeak.
She gives me that ‘don’t bullshit-me’ stare only mums can.
Okay, so she has a point. Shaving has hardly been top of my priorities the last few weeks. There was our apartment to pack up, and then the concert at Lily’s school where I sweated like a pig on a spit because I was forced to throw jeans on mid-summer since it was quicker than shaving my legs… I can’t even say what day I last did the full works.
“I’m just saying that if I was single, that’d be the first habit I’d drop.” She waves her free hand dismissively at me. “Who’s got the time if nobody’s there to appreciate it.”
Placing a hand on my hip, I lift an eyebrow and cock my head. “I’ve been too busy raising my daughter to worry about relationships, in case you hadn’t noticed.” I shove the images of my failed one-night stand post-Glen—the only time a man’s been in my bed since having Lily—to the back of my mind. Eww.
I peer out the blinds again—just to check. The smouldering guy next-door is gone. Problem solved.
Mum’s breath tickles my ear as she peers over my shoulder. “Shame.”
“Cougar,” I mumble.
She chuckles and steps toward the door. “Come on. We can go sit out the back in the sun until it’s time for me to head off to work.” She nods toward the covered window. “He’s not going anywhere in a hurry. You’ll have plenty of time to ogle him now he lives next door.”
We spend the next two hours moving between the afternoon rays and the shade of the outdoor area when it gets too hot. All the while, banging continues next-door as our new neighbour unpacks the trailer, followed by the throaty sound of his vehicle coming and going with and without the rattly trailer.
Mum talks about pointless topics such as current TV shows, the stories in the news, and the new shopping complex being built down the road. It’s our dance, the same thing Mum and I have done for years. We chat about everything and nothing all at once, avoiding the hard-hitting subjects. Which is why she takes me completely by surprise when she swivels in her seat and hits me with the home run.
“Have you ever tried to track Glen down, to get him to pay child support for Lily?”
My gaze drops to my hand, and I pick at a cuticle until it bleeds. “Once.”
“When?”
“A few years ago. When she asked me what he was doing, why he never came to see her.” I stare out at Mum’s impeccably planted garden full of green natives. “I thought he should have to answer that, not me.”
“And?”
“I searched Facebook, but couldn’t find his profile without going through hundreds of ones with the same name. His sister’s profile is private, and I don’t think his parents are on there.”
Mum frowns, resting her head on her hand as she reclines on the lounger. “Did you perhaps think of doing it the old fashioned way and going to his parents’ house?”
I sigh. Yeah, I thought of it. But facing up to my past like that always seemed too brutal. His parents never visited, never once tried to make contact after Lily was born. What did that tell me about how they’d receive me if I just showed up one day demanding to know where their son was?
“I didn’t have the guts to try.”
She clicks her tongue and sits up straight. “Do you want me to?”
