Page 1 of A Second Chance At Forever

1

Mason

Five years later…

I wokewith my alarm clock blaring in my ears. I rolled across the bed and smacked it off the table and into the wall, silencing it. Running my hands through my hair and across my face, I forced myself from bed.

I made my way into the bathroom and turned on the shower, needing to get ready for another day of the same shit life I had been living for five long years. As I stripped down for the shower, I checked my reflection in the mirror. I noticed my dark hair was longer than I usually let it grow and I ran my hands over my scruff covered face.

I need to get this shit under control.

Between working all day at my late father’s shop and the second job I had picked up to occupy my time, I hadn’t had time to shave. Making a mental note to hit up a barbershop, I turned on the radio and stepped into the hot shower.

I immediately regretted it.

My ex-girlfriend and country music star was singing her heart out while breaking what was left of mine. I made the biggest mistake of my life letting her go off to pursue her dreams of becoming a country music artist and I got left in the dust as soon as her dream career took off.

Lennox Madison moved into my small town when I was nineteen-years-old. She was the most beautiful girl I had ever seen in her white sundress and bare feet. As stupid as it sounds, the moment my eyes landed on her, I was in love. She shook me to my very core.

I washed quickly so I could get out and turn off the radio before her memory stirred parts of my body that I didn’t want to deal with.

Stomping from the shower, I pushed the power button on the radio with a little too much force, jamming the button into the radio, but at least I didn’t have to hear the rest of that song.

Lennox and I had promised each other that we wouldn’t let the distance come between us. Like all long-distance relationships, we eventually drifted apart.

We made it about a year before I had to call it quits. We had plans to visit each other and to have video chats, but her busy schedule didn’t allow it as often as we needed.

Once her career took off, people started to take notice of her.

Her manager put her together with the biggest celebrities for publicity. That’s when things started going south. Rumors started flying about her dating, then visits got canceled and we started going weeks without talking.

As much as I loved her, I couldn’t do it any longer. It broke my heart to hear her on the radio and to see her on the arm of another man. A man I had nothing on. I wasn’t rich or famous, I had nothing left to offer her.

I had no choice but to try to move on. Just the memory of her alone was enough to hold me back, always waiting. I knew she was never coming back to me, but if she did, I couldn’t have denied her.

I was wrapped around her little finger from the first day I laid eyes on her. I’d tried everything to get on with my life.

I threw myself into my work and restoring my old house. I started coaching the high school soccer team. I dated girls and had more one night stands than I could count, but nothing worked. I had decided that nothing was ever going to work. She was always going to be the one that held my heart, the one that got away.

I jumped into my truck and headed for the shop. My father had passed away several years before, leaving my brother and I the family business he built from the ground up. He left me the house and the boat rental shop while my brother got the bar and grill.

We offered watercraft rental and sold fishing bait, drinks, snacks, and anything else you would need to have a fun day on the ocean. Then, when you were sunburnt and beat from a day on the water, you could walk the short distance up to the grill and have a cold beer and a hot meal.

It was a pretty good set up, really. If you wanted that life.

I didn’t. I had a full ride on a soccer scholarship.

Did I take it?

Nope.

After my dad passed away, I had obligations. I couldn’t leave my brother to take care of everything alone, so I stayed and took the life that was forced upon me. That was when I met her.

I was pissed off and bitter about being robbed of my dream when she walked into my life. But she made everything better.

She tipped my world upside down and was my first love, my only love.

There hadn’t been a day gone by that I didn’t think of her. I tried my best to leave her where she left me, in the past. But nothing worked for me. I knew I was doomed to live out the rest of my life feeling like half a person.

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