Broken Miles Bonus Epilogue

  Broken Miles: Bonus Epilogue

  Claire Kingsley

  Copyright © 2018 by Claire Kingsley

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  This is a work of fiction. Any names, characters, places, or incidents are products of the author’s imagination and used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual people, places, or events is purely coincidental or fictionalized.

  Edited by Elayne Morgan of Serenity Editing Services

  Cover by Lori Jackson

  www.clairekingsleybooks.com

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Zoe

  Forbidden Miles: Chapter 1

  Also by Claire Kingsley

  About the Author

  Zoe

  To the surprise of no one, organization was not my thing. At least not when it came to neatness. Organizing details of events, sure. I was all over that. But my stuff? Not so much. And certainly not while packing up my apartment to move.

  There were boxes everywhere. Some of them were carefully labeled—the first boxes to have been packed, at least. But the movers would be here in the morning, and I was tired from packing all day. At this point, as long as everything got into a box and made it to our new house, I’d be happy.

  We’d been staying in the Hummingbird Cottage on the winery property since Roland had come back from San Francisco and proposed. I’d barely even been to my apartment. I certainly hadn’t slept here. It felt like Roland and I needed to make up for lost time; we didn’t want to be away from each other. Living in the cottage for a couple of months had worked out well, but we wanted our own space. So while I’d been planning our wedding, Roland had been looking for a new house.

  He’d found a beautiful property just minutes from Salishan. The house needed a little work, but ever the businessman, Roland had declared it a sound investment. I saw a place where we could settle down and raise a family. It was perfect. And now that our wedding was over—and we were back from our surprise honeymoon in Hawaii—it was time to move in.

  I dumped a bunch of books into a box with a random assortment of other crap.

  Roland watched me with a pained expression on his face. He looked so cute in his faded jeans and Salishan Cellars t-shirt, his dark hair careless and that sexy stubble on his jaw. As much as I loved him in a button-down shirt, he was adorable when he was a little rumpled like this.

  “Could you just…”

  “Could I just what?” I asked, brushing a strand of hair off my forehead. I probably looked just as messy as he did, in a loose-fitting shirt and distressed jeans, my hair up.

  “How are you going to find anything?”

  I shrugged. “Open the box. Look inside.”

  He winced. The man actually winced at me. “I’m about to kick you out of here so I can finish packing your shit myself.”

  “Oh, really?” I asked, putting my hands on my hips.

  “Really.” His mouth turned up in a smirk and he came over to stand in front of me. Slipped a hand around my waist. “Or maybe we’ll finish later, and I’ll fuck you first.”

  And, I won’t be needing these panties anymore… “I like that option.”

  “I thought you might.”

  He pulled me tight against him and captured my mouth in a kiss. I slid my fingers through his hair and breathed in the scent of him. Felt the scratch of his stubble against my face.

  God, I loved him so much.

  There was a loud knock at the door. I was prepared to ignore it—I was much more interested in what Roland was starting to do with his hands—but he pulled away.

  “Damn it, he’s early,” he said.

  “Who’s early?” I asked. “I thought the movers weren’t coming until tomorrow.”

  “They’re not.” Roland kissed my forehead and went to answer the door.

  Cooper burst in before Roland had the door halfway open. “Okay, bitches. Let’s do this.”

  I blinked and stepped out of the way so Coop wouldn’t run me over. “Wait, what are we doing?”

  Roland ignored my question and started moving boxes, like he was clearing a path.

  “Oh yeah,” Cooper said, standing in the bedroom doorway. “This is going to be great.”

  “What’s going to be great?” I turned to Roland. “What’s going on?”

  Roland met my eyes with a mischievous twitch of his lips. “Just getting a little help with the move.”

  “You’re up to something,” I said.

  He shrugged and tried to act innocent. I wasn’t buying it.

  Chase came in through the still-open front door. “Dude, Coop, you realize your truck is blocking the street, right?”

  “Then get your ass in here and help,” Cooper called from the bedroom.

  “Help with what?” I asked. “Will someone please tell me what you’re doing?”

  Chase disappeared into the bedroom without answering. Roland looked amused, but kept his mouth closed. A few seconds later, Chase and Cooper came out, carrying my mattress.

  “Why are you taking my bed?” I asked. “Isn’t that why we hired movers?”

  “We refilled the gas can, didn’t we?” Cooper asked. “The small one?”

  “Yeah, I did it yesterday,” Chase said.

  “Gas can?” I asked.

  “You guys need a hand with that?” Roland asked.

  “Oh my god, will you three stop ignoring me?” I asked. “What the fuck?”

  “Calm your tits, Zoe,” Cooper said as he navigated the mattress through the front door. Chase held up the other end. “That is the weirdest expression, don’t you think? As if it’s her tits that are agitated. No, we’ve got it. We’ll bring this down and come back for the box spring. Chase, you gotta lift your end so we can clear this railing.”

  “Got it.”

  “Roland, why do they need the gas can?” I asked.

  He rubbed the back of his neck, that maddening little smirk still on his face. “They’re taking it over to Salishan.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question,” I said, although I already knew what they must be doing. There was only one reason Cooper needed both a mattress and a can of gasoline. “They’re going to burn it, aren’t they?”

  “Yeah, maybe,” Roland said.

  “Why are you letting them get away with this?”

  “Hey, you were all about the bonfire when we burned Mom’s mattress,” Roland said.

  I put my hands on my hips and huffed. But he did have a point. “Okay, yeah, I was in favor of burning your mom’s bed. But that’s because it was the bed she shared with your dad and he fucking cheated on her. It was symbolic. She was burning the remnants of her old life.”

  “And we’re going to burn the remnants of yours,” he said.

  “But, this isn’t the same,” I said. “There was no cheating.”

  “No, but you were single for four years with this bed,” Roland said. “I want to burn the fucker.”

  It was hard not to laugh, but his face was so serious. “Do you mean to tell me this was your idea?”

  “It’s possible I may have said something that led to Cooper declaring tonight a bonfire night, yes.”

  Cooper and Chase came back in, barely acknowledging we were there. They were two men on a mission. A minute later, they were out the door with my box spring.

  “I don’t know how to feel about this,” I said. “That’s a perfectly good bed.”

  Roland stepped in and kissed me on the forehead a
gain. “We don’t need it. And frankly, I don’t want to know about anything that may or may not have happened on it. So it’s gonna burn.”

  The bonfire was impressive, I had to give them that. And there was something cathartic about watching my old mattress go up in flames. I’d moved on from that time in my life—the time when Roland and I had been apart—and the fire sending sparks into the night sky was a powerful symbol of that transition.

  It did make me laugh that Roland wanted to get rid of the bed, specifically. He had quite the look of satisfaction on his face as we sat around the fire with the rest of his family, watching it burn.

  I took a sip of wine and leaned closer to him. “You know what the only shitty thing is?”

  “What?” he asked. “I know you said the bed was comfortable, but our new one is great.”

  “No, losing the bed is fine,” I said. “Our new one is perfect. No, the shitty thing is, I don’t get to burn yours.”

  Before our wedding, Roland had made one more trip back to San Francisco to close out some business deals with his old company and pack the things he wanted to keep. He’d gotten rid of all his furniture rather than move any of it here.

  “Do you want to throw something into the fire?” he asked.

  I glanced at him. The firelight cast his face in a warm glow and flickered in his eyes.

  “Do you have something in mind?”

  The corner of his mouth hooked in the grin I knew so well. I’d taken the blame for coming up with a lot of the crazy shit we’d done when we were young, but he had a naughty streak that was just as big as mine.

  “I have a little something.” He pulled a small bag out of his coat’s inside pocket. “This isn’t exactly the equivalent of burning my old bed. But if you want to toss it in, it will definitely mean something.”

  “What is it?”

  He took my wine cup and placed the bag in my hand. Whatever was inside wasn’t very large. I opened the bag and pulled out a flat, plastic disk. It took me a second before I realized what I was holding. It was my birth control pills.

  I blinked at the pink container, then met Roland’s gaze. “You… you want me to toss this in the fire?”

  That mischievous half-smile of his was turning into a full-blown grin. “Yeah.”

  “But that would mean…”

  “I know.” He brushed my hair back from my face and kissed me softly. “It means I want to have a baby with you. What do you think about that, Zoe Miles?”

  I bit my bottom lip as my hand curled around the container. With Roland smiling at me, I stood and tossed my birth control pills into the bonfire.

  Roland reached out and pulled me into his lap, then wrapped his arms around my waist and rested his face against my chest. I draped my arm around his shoulders and leaned my cheek against his head, basking in the glow of the warm fire, and in the love of the man I’d almost lost forever.

  “I love you, Zoe,” he said.

  I squeezed him. “I love you too.”

  Roland and I had been through a lot to get to this moment. We’d both thought we’d lost each other. That our happily-ever-after had turned out to be anything but. Thankfully, circumstances had brought us back together, and we’d been brave enough to take the chance. And now, neither of us would ever let go.

  And a baby Miles? I really liked the sound of that.

  The Miles Family series continues with Brynn’s story, Forbidden Miles.

  Forbidden Miles: Chapter 1

  Chase

  I was so screwed.

  Shelly was all the way across the parking lot, but any second she’d look up and see me. I pulled my baseball cap down—like that was going to matter. She knew what my truck looked like.

  The heat blasted against my legs and I had the window rolled down to let in the cool October air. It was late afternoon, but the temperature had already dropped. Fall was like that in Echo Creek, the town I lived in on the east side of the Cascade Mountains. The change of seasons stole its way into the air, turning hot summer days into cold fall nights without warning.

  My stomach growled, and I checked my rear-view mirror again. How long could a girl stand outside her car before she finally got in? Wasn’t she cold? I’d worked through lunch and I was fucking hungry. If this went on much longer, I’d have to suck it up and walk by her.

  I wished I didn’t feel the need to hide from her like a dumbass. But I’d screwed this up pretty badly and I was determined to stay out of Shelly’s web of crazy.

  Was I an asshole for calling her crazy? No, I assure you, I was not.

  The cab of my truck was getting too hot, so I turned down the heat. Another car pulled into a spot and a couple of guys got out. Went inside Ray’s Diner. Lucky bastards. Shelly was still standing outside her car, and even though she was busy texting, I wasn’t fooled. She had a Chase-radar that would zero in on me the second I tried to walk by. It had been a long fucking day and the last thing I wanted was to deal with a Shelly episode. I just wanted some dinner.

  I’d had a thing with Shelly earlier this year. She’d seemed like a nice enough girl. Pretty. Blond hair, blue eyes. We’d hooked up a few times, but I’d broken things off pretty quickly. I usually did. Relationships were complicated, and I liked my life the way it was. Simple.

  I made a good living as a heavy machinery mechanic. Lived with my best friend, Cooper. Coop was never going to settle down, and I probably wouldn’t either. We worked hard, played hard. It was a good fucking life and I had no interest in changing anything.

  Shelly? She’d wanted to change everything.

  It was my fault for breaking the rules. Shelly had started texting me again after I’d broken up with her, and Coop had warned me. Crazy girls are fun sometimes, but you don’t date them. Ever. It’s rule number one.

  And Shelly had turned out to be the queen of crazy.

  What had started with a few texts had quickly become me dating her. It had felt like whiplash; I wasn’t even sure how it had happened. One day I was answering her text, and next thing I knew, she was asking me to clear space in my closet for her shit.

  She’d wanted me to text her before I left for work in the morning and call her on my way home at night. If I didn’t let her know where I was and what I was doing, she’d flip out. I’d gone out for a few beers with Cooper one night and she’d accused me of cheating on her. The next day, she’d started talking about me meeting her parents, like she hadn’t gone all psycho on me the night before.

  And meet her fucking parents? Hell no.

  My tolerance for her kind of drama was very low, so I’d put an end to it. And she hadn’t taken it well. The angry phone calls and texts were one thing—not entirely unexpected. But I’d caught her driving by my apartment twice, and she’d tried to corner me at work. That was getting into psycho stalker territory. I wasn’t much for confrontation, but I’d had to tell her, in no uncertain terms, that she needed to back off.

  So far, she had. It had been a few weeks since I’d heard from her. But the last thing I needed was to run into her in a parking lot and have her try to suck me into her vortex of insanity again.

  So here I sat, my empty stomach gnawing at me, watching her in my rear-view mirror, hoping to god she was going to get in her car and leave.

  This was why I kept things simple. Casual. No strings.

  Finally, she put her phone away and got in her car. My stomach rumbled again, as if to express its displeasure over the delay. I waited until her car disappeared from sight, then went into Ray’s.

  Ray’s Diner had been here for as long as I could remember. And Jo, the fifties-something waitress, had probably worked here since it had opened. She had bleached hair with gray roots and a warm smile that deepened the wrinkles around her eyes. Cooper flirted with her, hardcore—of course, Cooper flirted with anyone who had a vagina—but she’d always felt like more of a mom-type to me.

  “Hi there, cutie,” Jo said with a smile when I walked in. “Just you, or is your twin joining you
?”

  Jo knew Cooper and I weren’t related, let alone twins. But a lot of people assumed we were brothers. I had mixed feelings about that. On the one hand, we did look alike. We were both tall, kept in shape. Dark hair. Cooper had blue eyes, whereas mine were gray. But I could see why people thought there was a resemblance. The fact that we were together more often than not, and had been since we were five, added to the brothers thing.

  “Nope, just me,” I said.

  On the other hand, how many times had I wished I really was Coop’s brother? That I was a Miles? I felt like an idiot for admitting it, even to myself, but it was the truth. I’d grown up wishing I was one of them. Sometimes the twins remark was a gut-punch reminder that I wasn’t.

  Jo seated me at a booth near the door. I glanced at the menu, more out of habit than anything.

  “You need a second, or do you want the usual?” Jo asked.

  “The usual.” I handed the menu back to her. My usual was a cranberry walnut salad with grilled chicken. Cooper loved to give me shit about what I ate, but I figured I needed to balance out all the beer. He could eat anything and stay toned, but he also never stopped moving. He probably burned a few thousand calories a day just fidgeting.

  Jo brought me some water and I flipped through shit on my phone while I waited for my dinner. The diner was quiet. Just a few other tables were full. I had a view all the way to the back of the restaurant and I noticed a couple sitting in a booth tucked around near the restrooms. They were both on one side of the bench seat, snuggled up close. No food on their table—just drinks. But what caught my eye was the fact that they were totally making out back there.

  Not that I was judging. Hell, I’d made out with girls in that back booth plenty of times. It was a good place for it. Hidden enough that you probably wouldn’t get in trouble, as long as you quit when Jo or one of the other waitresses walked by. But out in the open enough to make it fun.