Page 5 of Forever my Love

ChapterTwo

Keep your cool, Reece kept telling himself as he sat across from Hailey.

How long had it been since he’d first seen her? That moment, a little over a year before, when he’d walked into Baked and had seen the pretty brunette, he’d felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. Winded.

She was, well, a dream.

He’d danced around asking her out because he’d seen how jumpy she was around men that gave her attention. She seemed scared. Hurt. Leery.

So as to not scare her off, he’d bided his time, wearing her down by being friendly and keeping the flirting to a minimum. He was trying to convince her that he wasn’t a threat.

For the first few months after the sisters had arrived, the entire town had talked about them. It had been obvious to everyone that they were running from something. Even Hailey’s older sister Harper, who worked as a bartender at the Golden Oar, steered clear of men.

But recently it had become obvious that Harper and Nick were an item, and Reece felt that it was time to try and break down a few more of Hailey’s barriers.

When he’d offered to give Hailey self-defense lessons, he’d been sincere in wanting to teach her to stand up for herself against any threats. He was a firm believer that women should know how to defend themselves. A while back, his big sister Hannah had taken down a crazy woman who had locked her fiancé, Wyatt, in a freezer.

Hannah and Reece had both attended self-defense classes when they’d been children. After that incident, he trusted that his sister could handle anything.

Reece had enjoyed the classes so much as a kid that he’d joined a few other classes. He had earned a black belt in both judo and tae kwon do. Then he’d discovered boxing, which was his favorite sport by far.

When he’d been in high school, he’d entered a couple of boxing matches. Before he knew it, he’d won so many fights that his father had to build a whole trophy shelf for him.

In the past few years, money had started pouring in from the fights, and he’d been able to save enough to finally purchase a house. Even though it was rundown and needed a lot of work, it was all his.

After high school, he’d believed at first that he wanted to go to college. Instead, he’d taken a job programming and coding games with his father’s company, something he’d done for as long as he could remember. The job allowed him the time to pursue his love of boxing while still paying the bills.

No matter the jock label he’d been given in school, he was a shy nerd through and through.

The freedom the coding job gave him to work when and where he wanted allowed him to spend more time with Hailey. He could take his work laptop anywhere and shift around town each day. He used to sit in the Brew-Ha-Ha bookstore, Sarah’s Nook Bakery, or the Golden Oar restaurant.

Now his favorite place to work was in a booth in the back of Baked. This way, he got to chat with Hailey every now and then.

He’d never struggled to flirt with a woman before, though the last girlfriend he’d had had been months before he’d seen Hailey for the first time. It had been a very long, very dry year for him. Still, he was oddly satisfied with their interactions, even if they were just casual and friendly. But he did secretly hope for something more. Dreamed of what she’d taste like, feel like, look like underneath him.

“So, you can tell me the truth,” Hailey said, leaning slightly towards him.

“The truth?” he asked, his eyebrows going up as thoughts of her under him—sated, warm, vibrating from his touch—played in his mind.

“How’d I really do today? I mean, I punch like a kid, right?” she said with a grin.

He smiled back. “You’re slightly better than my sister, and she took down a stalker,” he pointed out.

Hailey’s eyes narrowed, as if she didn’t believe him. Then she asked, “How did you get into boxing in the first place?”

“I was bullied as a kid,” he answered truthfully.

She laughed, then dropped her smile when she realized he was telling the truth.

“I used to be really skinny and short.” He shrugged and then took another sip of his drink.

“You?” She shook her head. “I don’t believe it.”

He chuckled, then pulled out his cell phone. His screen showed him at age ten with his favorite dog, Dutch.

Hailey’s eyes ran over the image and then grew large. “Wow, you were really skinny.”

“It didn’t help that I was basically a wild child. I hardly ever stood still for more than five minutes,” he admitted. “I ate everything in sight, or so my parents keep telling me, but just didn’t gain weight. Until I picked up boxing.”