Truth or Dare: A Second Chance Single-Mom Romance Read online

  Truth or Dare

  The Complete Duet

  Adora Crooks

  Copyright © 2021 by Adora Crooks

  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.

  Book Cover by Mayhem Cover Creations

  Editing by One Love Editing

  Contents

  I. The Dare: Summer, 2005

  II. Christmas: Winter, 2018

  III. New Year’s: Winter, 2018

  IV. The Dinner: January, 2019

  V. The Truth: January, 2019

  VI. At Last: Summer, 2019

  Dear Reader

  Two Truths & A Lie: Summer, 2018

  Bonus Novella

  1. The Royal’s Pet

  About the Author

  Also by Adora Crooks

  I

  The Dare: Summer, 2005

  1

  Kenzi

  He’s the most beautiful boy I’ve ever seen.

  Raven-black hair cut short around his ears. Sky-blue eyes underneath dark, pensive eyebrows. Lips that are just a little too big for his face. Dimples when he smiles.

  He sticks out from the pack—but how could he not?—well over six feet tall and towering over everyone. His body is all lean muscle, and he shows it off under the summer sun, wearing nothing but black boardshorts. He’s sitting on the deck of a fishing boat, perched on the rim, like it’s a throne, surrounded by a cawing group of three boys and two girls, all in swimsuit attire and drinking wine coolers and shitty beer. They’re blasting some Top 40, and it’s echoing up and down the sleepy dock of Hannsett Island Marina.

  At eighteen, he’s been dropped into the body of a god, and it’s clear from his posse and his confident grin that he’s decided to wield his newfound power by the way of Dionysus—chaos, destruction, and boys will be boys.

  And I’m bored enough to be entranced by his peacocking.

  The only thing I’m working on is a tan, playing through my new Gwen Stefani album, and a rereading of Little Women (don’t we all want to be Jo?).

  I’m lying on a towel, Walkman by my side, sprawled out on the top of Four’s sailboat, Sweet Serenity, which is currently tied up in a slip directly across from the party boat.

  Four and Pearl are downstairs (or “below deck” as Four likes to correct me), and every now and then I can hear the blender roar as they down margaritas.

  “Four” is short for “stepdad number four.”

  Which is all he will be, until stepdad number five.

  It’s not that I have anything against him—he taught me blackjack and he smokes Cuban cigars and he wears his hair in a long gray ponytail which he somehow pulls off. It’s just that he’s temporary, and there’s no point in getting attached to something that won’t be around for very long, anyway.

  He owns both a beach house and a sailboat at Hannsett Island, an island off Long Island that you have to take a ferry in order to get to, which means that Pearl and I are basically stranded here for the summer. Pearl is my mom, but I haven’t called her “mom” since I was five. I have a very vivid memory of her breaking me of the habit in Gabriel’s Butchery on the Upper West Side, after I’d ruined her effort to pick up a man in a black tweed turtleneck along with her black-pepper ground salami. Apparently, it’s hard to flirt when you have a little rug rat tugging on your dress begging for attention.

  Getting out of the stink and hot asphalt of a New York City summer seemed like a great idea at the time. Until I realized that Pearl and Four were going to be the ones drinking and necking…while I got stuck with no friends, limited internet access, and skin that burns before it tans.

  It would be better if I wasn’t here. I get that. This is Pearl and Four’s romantic getaway. I’m the annoying teenager who gets pissy when she’s gone more than twenty-four hours without her Myspace account.

  My captivity is made only marginally better by the eye candy in slip 12A. I glance over the top of my book. Raven-Hair has got his legs splayed out, leaning back on his elbows, a posture that says I own this room and everyone in it. His friends address him as “King,” and I can’t tell yet if that’s his name or if that’s just his Holier Than Thou title.

  God save us from the cockiness of a teenage boy.

  I don’t usually go gaga for jocks—they’re too often assholes to girls like me, who got curvier once puberty hit. But there’s something about his swagger that goes right between my legs. Maybe they grow boys differently in Long Island. Something in the water?

  Or maybe it’s just me. Nearly eighteen, never been kissed, hormones rocketing through me, making me boy-crazy, making me more of an Amy than a Jo.

  King’s boat is a tall motorboat with the words Healing Touch scrawled in gold cursive along the back. The engine is going now, gurgling, and it looks like they’re getting ready to set off, even though I don’t see any adults on board. Are they even old enough to drive that thing? And aren’t they all at least semi-buzzed?

  The water, I’ve learned, is lawless.

  Curious, I move a headphone off my ear so I can snoop.

  The dock boy unhooks the boat from the dock, untangling the lines and tossing them into the boat. Two more boys (obviously part of the party crew) come down the dock with a cooler between them.

  “Get over here!” one of the girls shouts from the boat. “Or we’ll leave you!”

  I watch as the boys comically scramble over the side of the boat, carting the goods over first before tumbling in. Just as the final jock makes his landing, he puts his hand on the dock boy’s chest. “Thanks, Dick Boy,” I hear him sneer before giving the kid a shove. He goes tumbling backward and hits the water—much to the delight of everyone on board, who breaks into laughter.

  Oh, hell no. I leap to my feet and throw a single barbed insult: “Assholes!”

  It lands straight between the eyes of King, who—now—suddenly notices me. His eyes meet mine. They’re way, way too blue to be real. His gaze feels like a bolt of lightning striking down my spine. It’s hitting 90 degrees right now, yet my nipples are knots.

  He gives me a cocky half-grin and shrugs a single shoulder as if to say, Whoops.

  I feel the heat rise up my neck. Jerk.

  The Healing Touch glugs as it leaves the slip, and every teenager on board hoots and hollers as they go further out to sea. I hope a kraken swallows them whole, honestly.

  I leave my Walkman and book behind and leap from the edge of the sailboat to the wooden dock. The sun-charred slabs are stingingly hot underneath my bare feet, but I ignore the pain and crouch down to the edge to extend my hand.

  “Need a hand?” I ask as the dock boy swims to the edge of the dock.

  “I’ve got it,” he grumbles, but as he scrabbles at the edge to get his footing, it’s clear he doesn’t have it. He takes my arm, and together we pull him up. His uniform—a white polo shirt with a small lighthouse stitched into the chest pocket and khaki pants—is soaked through. I pick a piece of seaweed from his shoulder, and he grimaces about it.

  “Those guys are a bag of dicks,” I tell him.

  “Yeah,” he says. “You don’t know the half of it.”

  “Can I get you anything? A towel?”

  “I’ll live. The clothes aren’t the problem.” He’s got these soft chestnut irises, and they meet my gaze for the first time. “You want to know the real tragedy?”

  “Always.”

  He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a neatly rolled joint, now soaked and limp.

  “RIP,” he says.

  I hold up a finger. “Hold on.”

  Why, yes. I have tricks up my sleeve. I reach into my bikini, where I’ve stashed away my one vice from Four and Pearl: a rolled joint and a lighter. For the moments I really need to escape.

  For the first time, Dock Boy smiles. “Hello, new best friend.”

  “You can call me Kenzi.”

  Dock Boy’s real name is Donovan. His real age is nineteen. I haven’t discovered his real hair color yet, but I know it’s not black because he keeps having to towel off his neck when the dark hair dye drips down around his ears.

  Hannsett Island Marina is a self-contained ecosystem, complete with its own restaurant (the Blue Heron, accessible by the public) and a slew of private facilities: a general store, a private pool, a communal shower/restroom/locker room, and a laundry room.

  There are only two sets of washers and dryers in the laundry room. Donovan sits on one of the washers, I sit on the fold-out table, and we pass my joint back and forth as his clothes tumble dry.

  He’s wearing only his boxers, but they look enough like a bathing suit that it’s somehow not obscene. Doesn’t keep me from admiring his body, though. He’s lean, not quite stacked like the jocks, but I like the softness of him. He’s kept on this thick leather-woven bracelet and a simple chain necklace with a ring on it.

  “Promise ring?” I ask and point to it.

  He frowns at that. “My mom’s wedding ring.”

  “Divorced?”

  “Deceased.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugs, and that’s the end of that conversation.

  I get it. I have things that were my dad’s, sort of. Pearl kept his record player and a few tattered albu
ms. I play them sometimes, but only because I like music, not because I liked him. He died when I was just a kid, and the memories I have aren’t great ones, so we never had the kind of connection that inspired me to carry around any of his trinkets.

  My head is a little hazy, and I swish my legs under the table. I feel small, but not in a bad way. The comfort of careless innocence. “So why do those guys hate you?”

  Donovan thins his lips. He taps ash off onto the quarter slot. “I’m a loser. I’m gay. I don’t have a yacht or a summer house. Take your pick.”

  “That’s fucked-up. Have you told anyone about it?”

  Donovan’s eyes sharpen. “Who? No one cares. Jason King and his crew of idiots basically run this island.”

  King. That clicks. “Jason King…is that the tall one?”

  “Tall, blue-eyed, and beautiful? That’s the one. He’s a rare breed of island native. Have you visited the Lighthouse Medical Center yet?”

  “Nope, and from the sound of it, I don’t want to.”

  “Good call. It’s Hannsett Island’s pride and joy, though. And the island’s cash cow. Jason’s dad owns it, which basically makes him richer than God. They have a mansion in the Dunes. Two boats. And a second house Upstate.”

  “All hail the Kings,” I say which draws a little wry smile from Donovan. He holds out the joint in offering, but I shake my head. I’m already floating. An ant crawls over my knuckles, its tiny legs tickling, and I let it. I watch its perilous odyssey across the back of my hand and then back onto the table.

  “Why are the pretty ones always jerks?” I wonder out loud.

  I can feel Donovan looking at me. “You don’t seem jerkish.”

  I stick my tongue out at him. He laughs.

  2

  Donovan

  Kenzi quickly becomes my favorite part of my day.

  Which isn’t hard, when my days mostly involve casting off, casting on, buffing the deck, polishing sideboards, rinse, repeat.

  I grind polish over fifty-foot yachts until I’m caked in sweat and my fists refuse to unclench. I can usually find Kenzi at the pool or sunbathing on her stepdad’s boat, Sweet Serenity. She’s easy to steal away for a smoke break, or a dip in the pool, or just a chat over watermelon slices and H2O.

  Kenzi loves music, above all, and some days we just take turns listening to her Walkman. Eventually, she opens up her notebook and shows me some of the lyrics she’s working on. She wants to be a songwriter. Not a singer/songwriter—just a songwriter. Her lyrics are good. Really good. I call her the female Bernie Taupin. She smiles when I say that.

  Plus, King’s crew tends me leave me alone when I’m with her. So. That’s a silver lining.

  We talk about our plans for next year—or lack thereof. She’s on the waitlist for Berklee College and hasn’t heard back, so as far as she’s concerned, she’s taking a gap year. I can relate—I’ve been in limbo for the past year as Dad and I try our luck with scholarship lotto. So far, no hits.

  Except for Tomorrow’s Doctors.

  Every summer, the Lighthouse Medical Center runs a four-week program for what they call “Tomorrow’s Doctors.” Ages 17-19. Throw the minnows in the pond. See if they can swim.

  So, after work, I clock out, hop on my bike, and pedal as fast as I can out of the marina, up the road that winds alongside the dunes, all the way to the medical center.

  The first thing you see when you approach the medical center is the lighthouse itself. The lighthouse hasn’t been in operation for over fifty years, but it’s still a beautiful thing. Red brick, restored to its former glory, with a black chrome dome. The light doesn’t shine anymore, except for special occasions—holiday light shows, that sort of thing.

  The lighthouse is flanked by three buildings: the pediatric wing, the general care and rehabilitation wing, and the emergency wing. I’m hit with the smell of freshly cut grass as I cut across the large lawn to park my bike on the rack. I don’t lock my bike here; there’s no need. Everyone on the island stays on the island.

  I’ve got my knapsack stuffed in a milk carton my dad looped to the back of my bike for storage, and I quickly throw it on my shoulders before heading inside.

  Entering the Lighthouse Medical Center doesn’t knock the breath out of me like it used to. But the first couple of times, yeah, it was hard not to be impressed. The lobby sits underneath a domed ceiling, all glass. Through it, you can see the top of the lighthouse.

  As soon as the doors open, you come face-to-face with a giant art deco–style sculpture of a man on one knee. He has his hand open, the sun sitting in the palm of his hand. Underneath the sculpture, the words run in a band: “A Guiding Light Through the Dark.”

  The only thing more impressive than the talented, skilled doctors at Lighthouse Medical Center are the deep pockets of the donors.

  It’s the kind of money a guy like me can’t even begin to wrap my head around.

  I grip the straps of my backpack a little tighter and trudge ahead.

  Tomorrow’s Doctors meet on the second level of the rehab wing, which is otherwise blocked off for professionals. It’s mostly storage here—a lot of doors marked “Keep Out.” Labs with expensive equipment. I walk down the hall, to the doctors’ mess. There’s a kitchenette here, complete with a coffee machine, a small fridge, and a snack machine. In the adjoining room are bunk beds for the on-call doctors who pull long hours. The lockers that line the room are meant for the staff, but Tomorrow’s Doctors get six spots reserved at the far end.

  I’m not the only one here. The cast are as follows:

  Jason: the leader of the pack, his father’s prodigy.

  Nick: Jason’s best friend, stocky, the kind of guy who will argue with you that his shirt is salmon, not pink.

  Brett: a blond-haired jock, usually found strutting around with a volleyball.

  They’re loitering around the circular table. Nick has taken a bag of Doritos from the snack pile, and it makes his fingers orange.

  “C’mon, Jason,” Nick is whining. “Throw us a bone.”

  “A gentleman never tells,” I hear Jason say.

  “Since when are you a gentleman?” Brett protests. “Spill.”

  I go to my own locker, pop it open, and start to shove my things in it.

  “I can tell you one thing,” Jason gives in.

  “What?”

  “Her sister was better.”

  Gross. His friends howl with laughter, but I have a hard time hiding my disdain. My locker rattles when I slam it, and I hear their laughter come to a halt.

  “Hey, Nick,” Jason says, “does something smell fishy to you?”

  “Yeah,” Nick says, “smells like the whole fresh market just walked in.”

  My jaw clenches. I keep my eyes on the floor, keep my back to them, and ignore their obnoxious cackles as I enter the adjoining room.

  We take our class sessions in a repurposed conference room, with a long oval table surrounded by black swivel chairs. The other two students have already taken their seats, notebooks open. I wouldn’t call them friends. No one is exactly friendly to me, since King and his clan put a target on my back last summer and therefore fraternizing with me is social suicide.

  It wasn’t always like this. Believe or not, Jason and I used to be almost-friends. Between the beachgoers and the patients in and out of the clinic, Hannsett is an island of transplants. No one stays here very long.

  Except for me and Jason. We’re a rarity. Year-around natives. Hannsett Island is like a prison—you love the one you’re with. Before he surrounded himself with summer partygoers who call him King and decided he preferred obnoxious boat parties, frat boys, and picking on anyone he considered an easy target.

  Which included me.

  I sit next to Ernest, who is quiet and generally ignores me, which I’ll take over taunting. Even he rolls his chair a little further away from me today, though.

  I did spend half of the day cleaning a fishing boat. Maybe I do smell like chum.