Linley Floyd left Pigeon Creek, Alabama and all she was, including the name she was born with, in the rear view mirror seven years ago when she moved to New York. When her boyfriend and she's sure, the love of her life, proposes, she finds herself r...
A/N: The last chapter was titled The Road To Hell Is Paved With Good Decisions for a reason, y'all! This chapter picks up right where the last one left off (or well, I should say the morning after it left off). Jake and Linley are not in a good place at the end of this chapter, not at all.
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Everything hurts when you wake up. It feels like an entire New York construction site has set up shop inside your skull, complete with jackhammers, big machines, and yelling and beeping. But the bed is soft under you, and you're warm, and the arms around you feel too good for words.
Wait...
The arms around you?! You slide carefully out from between the sheets, shivering at the goosebumps rising on your bare skin. It's more than just the pain of a hangover in your body, then. You're sore, the specific kind of sore that you've really only felt after a night of passion, and when you look back into bed, it's to see Jake lying on his stomach fast asleep while facing you. It hurts seeing him lying there because it's everything you've wanted for seven long, lonely years.
The longer you're awake, the more you remember about the night before. You remember every single thing you said - to him and about him. You remember Jake picking you up like you weighed nothing and carting you out to the parking lot when you'd been nearly blind with rage and drunk. You remember the kisses, too. You bring your shaking hand up to your lips because even now, you can still feel them. After that first kiss, it was like you were consumed by lightning. Every part of you ached for Jake. He'd kissed you in that parking lot like you were the air he needed to breathe, kissed you until you wanted nothing more than to feel his touch again.
The two of you had stumbled into his car and driven home with barely withheld need coursing through you. As you stumbled into the house, avoiding Bryant's dog bed in the corner of the living room, it felt like you were finally alive. When he finally had you in his bed, it was like having sex with no other man. You can still feel the ghosts of his touch on your skin. He'd stripped your clothes off tenderly, replacing them with his kiss, his touch. It was heated, frantic, every inch of your skin singing under his touch.
You'd say it was hate fucking, but there is too much history between you and Jake Seresin. It had felt like nothing you've ever felt before, not even with Bradley, and that scares you. You came to Alabama for one reason, only one. To get a divorce - not get horribly drunk and end up in the same situation you were in before you left all of those years ago. This situation also means that you just cheated on Bradley. God, Bradley. What's he going to think? How can you tell him? Carole's already on a warpath about you and the wedding. If you tell him you cheated, it'll break his heart.
Oh, god!
If Carole finds out, he'll be shipped off to California to marry one of his exes quicker than you can apologize, and you'll be seeing interviews where she accuses you of breaking her baby boy's heart. You can't hope to have him forgive you. Not when you know his thoughts on relationships and on cheaters. Not when you know how much he's struggled to advance in his career. The news of your infidelity would completely destroy your relationship as well as any political aspirations he has.
