Abbi Glines: Take a Chance

“Nan hates her. Who the hell can hate Harlow? She’s too damn sweet to hate. Girl hasn’t done anything to Nan, yet Nan’s mean as a goddamn snake. Poor Harlow stays away from her. I hate to see my baby girl so defenseless. She needs to toughen up. She needs a friend.” Kiro set his joint down in an ashtray and turned his head to look at me. “Be her friend, kid. She needs one.”

I wanted to be a lot more than Harlow Manning’s friend. But she wouldn’t even look at me. I had tried more than once to direct one of those earth-shattering smiles my way, but she hardly glanced at me. Prove me nuts. “Not sure I can be her friend and Nan’s at the same time.”

Kiro frowned, then sat up and leaned forward. “Three kinds of women in this world. The kind that suck you dry and leave you with nothing. The kind that only want a good time. And the kind that make life worth a damn. That last kind . . . the right woman’s the one who gives as much as she takes, and you can’t get enough. She’s the kind . . . if you lose her, you lose yourself.”

His bloodshot eyes told me he hadn’t just smoked a joint today. But even high, he made sense. If anyone knew about women, it was Kiro Manning.

“I’ve had all three. Wish like hell I’d stayed away from the first. The second is all I touch anymore. But that third one . . . I won’t ever be the same. And I wouldn’t take back one minute I had with Harlow’s mom.”

He ran his hand through his stringy hair. “Nannette, she’s the first kind. Be careful of the first kind. They will fuck you over and walk away laughing.”

Three months later . . .

Only nine months. Just nine months. I could make it nine months. I would hide in my room and only come out when she wasn’t here. Classes would start soon and I would have my courses to distract me. Then Dad would be home and I’d leave this place behind me. I could do it. I had to. Dad hadn’t given me any other option.

The house was quiet. The loud sounds of Nan having sex with some idiot had woken me up around two this morning. I had put on my Beats and cranked up my favorite playlist. At some point I had fallen back to sleep. Because the music had been pumping in my ears when I woke up this morning, I wasn’t sure if I was home alone or not. It was after ten and the house was so quiet, I was pretty sure no one was here. Besides, Nan didn’t seem like the kind to have a sleepover this late.

She screwed them then tossed them.

I threw back the covers and ran my hands through my hair to tame the tangles before stepping into the hallway. Silence was all that met my ears. I was safe. I could eat. Nan hadn’t been here when I arrived last night, but I knew she must have noticed my car outside. Dad had an Audi waiting on me when I had landed at the airport.

After finding the house, I had gone to buy some groceries, then unloaded my food and luggage. Dad had bought this house for Nan with the understanding that I would stay with her for nine months while he was on tour with Slacker Demon. She wanted a house in Rosemary Beach, Florida. He had supplied a big one. Dad did everything big. Which was good for me. I could hide from her more easily. Unfortunately, there was only one kitchen.

I walked down the hallway and headed down the winding staircase, which spiraled past the top two floors before ending at the bottom floor. My bare feet made very little noise as I walked across the hardwood planks. I had just opened the fridge to get my organic milk when a door opened and closed somewhere in the house.

I froze and considered shoving the milk back in the fridge and hiding. I wasn’t ready to face Nan yet. I needed coffee before I dealt with her. The heavy footsteps on the stairs weren’t Nan’s. Which made me even more nervous. Facing some strange man wasn’t appealing, either. I wasn’t dressed. I still had on my pajamas. Pink satin polka-dotted shorts and a matching tank top were all I had on. I glanced around for a hiding place, but before I could figure out what to do the footsteps landed on the bottom floor.

I was stuck . . . unless I hid behind the counter while he escaped. Maybe he wouldn’t come this way. The front door was past the kitchen, but the back door was just as close to the stairs. I set my milk carton on the copper countertop and waited. The footsteps weren’t heavy anymore. I barely heard them. Straining my ears, I tried to figure out where they were going.

It wasn’t until it was too late to hide that I realized he was barefoot and headed my way. My eyes locked with Grant’s as he stepped into the kitchen wearing nothing but a pair of black boxer briefs. He stopped when his eyes met mine. We stood there silently, staring at each other. The realization that he was the one who had woken me last night made my stomach knot up. I didn’t want to think about him in bed with Nan.

But the realization doused me like a bucket of cold water. Grant was still sleeping with Nan. All that stuff he’d said to me was a lie. He had made me a promise, one I hadn’t asked for and he had never intended to keep.

“Harlow?” he said, his voice thick from sleep. He’d been up most of the night. He must’ve been exhausted.

I didn’t respond. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I hadn’t expected him to even be in Rosemary Beach. But he was here . . . and he was sleeping in Nan’s bed.

I was an idiot.

Three months ago . . .

A knock on my bedroom door interrupted my favorite scene in a book I had read at least ten times. Annoyed, I laid down my Kindle. “Yes?”

The door opened slowly and Grant Carter stuck his ridiculously beautiful head into my room. His long hair, which curled at the ends and tucked neatly behind his ears, made a girl want to sit and just play with it for hours. I often wondered if it was as soft as it looked. His eyes twinkled as if he knew exactly what I was thinking, so I forced a scowl on my face. I never scowled, so it was a new thing that I reserved just for him.

It wasn’t really fair. I disliked him on principle. He had been nothing but nice to me, but the fact he was in a relationship with Nan was enough for me to not like him. If a guy could like Nan then something was wrong with him.

“I ordered Chinese. Want to help me eat it? I got way too much.” His blue eyes were so hard to look away from. They had been my downfall since the first time I laid eyes on him. That had been before I knew he was Nan’s Grant.

“I’m not hungry,” I replied, hoping my stomach didn’t growl and give me away. I had been meaning to fix myself something to eat, but the book had sucked me in. Seeing Grant always made me want to escape into one of my stories where guys who looked like him fell in love with girls like me. Not girls like Nan.

“I don’t believe you,” he said, pushing my door open and walking into the room with a tray covered in boxes from the little Chinatown place my dad loved so much. “Help me eat. Just because I dated Nan doesn’t make me tainted. You act like I’ve got a damn disease—and I’ll be honest, it hurts my feelings.”

Really? Was I hurting his feelings? I hadn’t meant to. I didn’t think he would really care. Besides, he was the one who ran off cursing the night we met when he found out who I was after he had made a move on me.

“ Dated? ” I asked, surprised with myself. “You’re here waiting on her to show up. I don’t think that’s past tense.” I sounded like a schoolteacher.

Grant chuckled and sat down beside me on the bed and set the tray down on the bedside table. “She’s my friend. I’m checking in on her. Not dating her. Besides, I just got word that she’s back in Rosemary.”

See, that . Just that. He was her friend . What normal person was Nan’s friend? None I knew of. “She’s sleeping with the members of Naked Marathon. Surely you’ve seen her in the gossip magazines on Sellers’s arm. Last week she made the news with Moon, and there was all kinds of talk about her breaking up the band. Which isn’t going to happen.”