The Fire Between High & Lo (Elements #2)(94)

My father loved Tate Lewis. Even though Tate dropped me as soon as he got an NFL offer and broke my heart three years ago, Dad was still in denial that the situation was seriously over.

“Okay, okay.” He lifted his hands and gave me an easy smile. “So this is one of those shows where the last woman standing gets to be with the man?”

Just hearing it reduced to that made me ashamed of even pretending to go on the show. I almost balked and told the truth, but I heard my mother’s words in my head.

Giving up is the first step to failure.

The words played on a loop.

I took the first step toward failure. Walking away from the test, running home because I got scared, that’s a failure.

I cleared my throat. “Yes. This season the man in question is Julian Winters. He’s a songwriter and music producer. On a fundamental level, I don’t believe in reality dating shows. But I figure, if I participate and I am myself and stay above the fray, it could actually help the image of women that is being conveyed. And he is very intriguing.”

I sold that so smoothly, I almost bought it myself.

My dad nodded in agreement. My mother was a harder sell.

Pulling out my phone, I pulled up the picture of Julian.

“This is him.” I showed my father first and then my mother.

She looked at the phone and then me and then the phone again. A smirk played on her lips. “Ah, I see. Well the look on your face earlier makes a little more sense now. I look forward to watching you on the show, Zoe.”

She didn’t look completely convinced, but she was dropping the issue.

Shit, it worked!

I was surprised, but grateful. But then it hit me.

Shit! Now that means I have to actually go on the show.



The One on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B01D0Z73QA





Unspeakable by Kristen Hope Mazzola


Prologue.

Ryder



My fingers gripped tighter onto the handlebars as I read the sign: Vilas – 5 miles. I was nervous. It was f*cking ridiculous and entirely pathetic, but I was scared of rejection. I had never felt like a bigger * for admitting that fact to myself, but there I was. My heart wouldn’t calm down, not even with every deep, slow breath of fresh mountain air I forced to pump in and out of my lungs. My brain was a jumbled mess of uncertainty, but there was no turning back at that point.

As the road curved slowly down the mountainside, my mind tripped back to where it had all begun.

“Mom?” I climbed onto my mother’s boney knee in the middle of the afternoon. Our front room was blazing hot from the sun pouring in through the sheer curtains.

She helped me get settled into her arms, the ash of her cigarette landing on my shoulder. “What is it, Ryder? Mommy’s watching her soaps.” Even as a five-year-old, I could tell how much she didn't want me just by the tone in her voice.

“Why don’t I have a daddy? All the other kids at school have daddies.”

She put her cigarette inside the empty Old English bottle next to her foot and chugged out of her glass of grain alcohol with ice cubes clanking around. “Your daddy didn't want you so he never came home.”

Sniffling, I tried to wrap my tiny mind around what those words truly meant. “But why? Aren’t daddies supposed to love their kids?”

“Yours doesn't love us. Now piss off. Go play in your room. Mommy’s tired.”

I scampered off to my section of the studio apartment that was my ‘room’. I grabbed my Thomas The Train blanket and wrapped it around my shoulders as I sniffled and cried over a dad that had never been there.

It was a plain as day memory that had plagued me for more than ten years; that’s how long it took me to grow the balls to confront my mother again about my father who had never loved us. That’s when she finally told me the truth: that she had been a few years older than my dad and could have been charged with statutory rape when she was f*cking him, so she’d run away, only to send a letter to him years later, once she assumed she couldn't be sent to jail for raping a minor.

What a f*cking awful eighteenth birthday present.

My mom swore that she had sent it, but who knew if he had gotten it, read it, or even if she was telling me the truth or not. I wasn’t even entirely sure why I was looking for my old man after eighteen years, but there I was, twisting and curving along an old mountain highway, not knowing if my father would know his own son when he saw him. It was freaking insane. Nothing else had panned out for me in my life so far, so something had to give…right?

What if he doesn't even know I exist?

It was my biggest fear.

My forearms were sore from the four hour ride, but I didn’t give a shit. All I was focused on was finding a place to grab a beer and get my head on straight again.

I pulled off into a parking lot with a few trucks and a handful of bikes near the front.

Seems like my kind of place.

I swung open the heavy wooden door and puffed my chest out while all the guys lining the bar and at the pool tables stopped dead to stare at me making my way to an empty stool. There should have just been a damn sign on the wall: No f*cking outsiders welcome; it would have made things way less awkward.

The middle-aged bartender smiled sweetly at me as her long, curled dark hair bounced along while she made her way over to me.

“What are you havin’, sugar?” she asked, wiping the counter.