Thrown Down by Tessa Bailey

Author:Tessa Bailey
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: tessa bailey, bad boy, reunited lovers, single mom, Second Chance, brazen, tortured hero, entangled, high school sweetheart, contemporary romance, sexy, Made in Jersey, Jersey, erotic romance
Publisher: Entangled Publishing, LLC
Published: 2016-04-03T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twelve

Vaughn’s hand shook around the glass of Jack Daniels. It hadn’t stopped shaking since Afghanistan. Since the day he’d lost a dozen friends—good men, better soldiers—lost some of his hearing, hell, lost his mind, too, maybe. The sound of a stool scraping back sent Vaughn’s heart shooting up into his throat, but he disguised it with a cough and drowned it in whiskey.

Yeah, some of his functioning brain must have shaken loose in the explosion. Why else would he be sitting in the Third Shift while River waited for him at the motel? River. Honest, loving, beautiful, pure white sunlight River. How could he touch her with soiled, shaking hands? How could he look at her without cracking in half? She deserved more than a rotting corpse of a man. Christ, he’d been a shitty choice for River since the beginning, but trying to keep her now—with his head so fucked up—would be a criminal act. He couldn’t, could he? Could he?

She would make it all better. He knew she would. Two years she’d waited for him while he completed his tour. That had to mean something, right? Maybe he wasn’t a waste of oxygen if River would wait, even though he’d left in the first place hoping she wouldn’t.

Go. Just go to her. She’ll heal you.

Vaughn didn’t know where the permission had sprung from, but he couldn’t move fast enough once it had been issued. He threw money onto the bar, all but diving from his stool—

“Vaughn. Welcome back.” River’s father appeared to his right, a strange expression on his face, as if he was forcing himself to be polite. But how the older man felt—how he’d always felt—was right there in his eyes. “Where are you headed?”

“You know where.” Familiar defensiveness stabbed Vaughn from the inside, but it was dulled now by greater tragedies than merely being disrespected. Life and death tended to put things into perspective, so he forced himself to soften. Even though River’s father had clearly loathed him from day one, almost to a confusing degree. Almost as though it went beyond Vaughn dating his daughter. “Look, I thought your daughter might move on if I left. She didn’t, though. She didn’t. And I can’t…I’m not a bastard who can leave her sitting somewhere, wondering where I am.” God, just picturing it choked him. “I’m going to do better by her—”

“You can’t.” River’s father picked up a cardboard bar coaster and tapped it against the worn wood. “You’ve burned all your bridges in this town. There’s no way for you to provide for her. You’re holding her back by not ending it, dammit.”

Vaughn’s lungs were on fire, but he had no choice other than to stand there and take the verbal beating. In some sick way, maybe he even wanted to hear it, knowing the sentiments were well deserved.

“I’m not a rich man, either, Vaughn. But I can give her something you can’t.” He removed a stack of folded papers from his jacket pocket, the top piece stamped with a county seal, just above an address he recognized well.

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