50 Ways to Win Back Your Lover (Bower Boys), page 1
ALSO BY KELLY SISKIND
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One Wild Wish Series
He’s Going Down
Off-Limits Crush
36 Hour Date
Showmen Series
New Orleans Rush
Don’t Go Stealing My Heart
The Beat Match
The Knockout Rule
Over the Top Series
My Perfect Mistake
A Fine Mess
Hooked on Trouble
Stand-Alones
Chasing Crazy
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
Text copyright © 2022 by Kelly Siskind
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Published by Montlake, Seattle
www.apub.com
Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.
ISBN-13: 9781662505645
ISBN-10: 1662505647
Cover design by Caroline Teagle Johnson
CONTENTS
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
THIRTY-ONE
THIRTY-TWO
THIRTY-THREE
THIRTY-FOUR
EPILOGUE
AUTHOR’S NOTE
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ONE
Despite what some people think, I’m not dead. I haven’t been stranded on a desert island these past ten years. I didn’t secretly join the priesthood or get stuck in one of those escape rooms. Nope. I’m here. Out in the world and alive.
At least I was alive, until the loudspeaker at the terminal gate crackled to life and uttered two words, one name—the name that has the power to cut me down at my knees: Delilah Moon.
Now? I’m definitely dying. Or is this a mini stroke?
My brain’s gone on the fritz, unable to form a coherent thought other than Delilah Moon, Delilah Moon, Delilah Moon. I’m pretty sure if I move, my rubbery legs will fold, sending my frozen face on a collision course with the half-crushed Dorito on the retro carpet.
Delilah Lost-Love-of-My-Life Moon.
I scrutinize the departure area like a sniper who’s inhaled a case of Red Bull: furtive reconnaissance with a frantic edge. Kids sit slouched, half sliding off their faux-leather seats, faces plastered to their phones. The adults aren’t much better, thumbing their devices, eyes dilated in their Cell Trances. My brother Lennon is thankfully still off perusing the terminal’s stores. If any of my brothers heard that name, they’d shout a list of reasons why I have to hide from Delilah Moon—if this is the Delilah Moon—and remind me we aren’t allowed to talk to anyone from our pasts.
Heart racing, I lean toward the elderly woman beside me. “Did they just say the name Delilah Moon?”
She glances at the departure counter, magazine crinkling in her grip. “I believe they did. It’s a lovely name, isn’t it?”
It isn’t lovely. It’s downright angelic, but that name cannot be here. “Maybe they said Eliza Woon. It was tough to hear clearly.”
“No.” The man next to her leans forward, shaking his bald head at me. “Definitely Delilah. It made me think of dahlias, my wife’s favorite flower.” He winks at her.
A sudden flash hits me: Chasing a shrieking Delilah through the wildflowers on her property. Laughter, sun, carefree bliss. Scooping her up and tugging her down, her fingers threading into my hair, our lips connecting under a canopy of daisies and scarlet flax.
My stroke intensifies, but I still don’t see her. Not one hint of the breathtaking woman who undeniably owned my heart. And my pulse? Still running a three-minute mile.
Unsure what to do, I reach for my sketchbook—any possible distraction—and proceed to cut my finger on a page. Because, of course. Blood beads along my skin. I suck on it, attempting to control my hamster-wheel thoughts. It’s not her, right? It can’t be her. Nope. No way. Definitely not her. Life wouldn’t be this cruel.
By the time I glance up again, it’s clear Life enjoys kicking me in the nuts.
My first and only love is hurrying up to the departure counter. Her curly brown hair is longer than I remember, her hips rounder, her body fuller. Lush. The girl I knew has transformed into a woman, and instantly, my eyes burn. I stand up. Sit down. I’m a malfunctioning jack-in-the-box. Which kind of sums up my current self, forever confined and controlled, forced to embody a different name and altered existence, because . . . are you ready for this kicker?
I happen to be in witness protection.
Delilah leans on the counter, angled away from me. From this vantage point, I can’t tell if her lips still have that bee-stung look or if her blue eyes still undo me with one glance.
Another breath-stealing flash hits: Delilah and me, sixteen and inseparable, lying side by side in her barn, hay sneaking into uncomfortable places, her family’s Arabians snorting and nickering while we take turns flipping comic book pages, her eyes so blue they’re the color of summer freedom and Sonic the Hedgehog, the parts of my body touching hers on fire with a heady mix of love and lust.
The burning behind my eyes worsens.
“Why is your face red?” Lennon’s holding a plastic bag with whatever he bought, his back to Delilah, clueless to the source of my overheating body.
“I’m not red,” I force out, but my rushing blood isn’t corroborating my lie. I lean to the side, desperate for another glimpse of Delilah.
She rotates, digs into her purse, searching for something.
I pull back and hide behind Lennon.
He tilts his head and rubs his beard, the cuffed sleeve of his plaid button-down slipping to his elbow. “There’s a definite red tinge.” He smiles at our elderly neighbors. “Doesn’t he look flushed?”
The couple scrutinizes me. “I think it’s the name,” the lady unhelpfully blurts. “The flight attendant said—”
“Nothing.” I pop up, grab my satchel, and forcibly lead Lennon away from that couple and Delilah.
“Are we on a reality show?” Lennon says, getting up in my space. He’s not as tall as me, but he’s fit from his mountain biking and rock climbing. He’d tackle me if he knew Delilah was nearby. “Is this the part where we’re given clues, and I have to figure out why you’re being rude to senior citizens? What’s up with you?”
“I mean, we could be on a reality show. Our asshole father did launder money for a drug cartel. Netflix would cream themselves to tell our story.” Five boys forced into witness protection, ripped suddenly from their lives like pages from a censored book.
That shit would kill it in ratings.
Lennon smirks. “Michael Fassbender would play me. He’s not as hot, but he can pull off the beard and reddish-brown hair.”
“You’re delusional,” I say, ducking as Delilah leaves the departure counter. “He’s not hipster enough.”
Lennon scowls. “How many times do I have to tell you: wearing plaid doesn’t make me a hipster. And you’re acting weird. What was the lady saying about a name?”
“Nothing.” I peek at Delilah again. She takes a seat beside some dude wearing orange jeans, thankfully facing away from us.
Even if she saw me, the odds of her recognizing me are slim. I’m twenty-seven, not seventeen. My Justin Bieber haircut is thank-fuck gone, replaced with shorter strands I struggle to tame, but at least I don’t look like someone dropped a limp mop on my head. I’m taller and fuller, not muscled up like our three oldest brothers, but I run like my life depends on it, which it kind of does. The six-pack I didn’t have when Delilah first took off my shirt has emerged. I’m now Brian Baker, not Edgar Bower—E to my friends back then—but I still have a telltale scar through my upper lip. She might notice that defining feature or see our treasure trove of memories swimming through my eyes.
Orange Jeans Guy smiles at her. She smiles back.
I clench my jaw, mentally talking myself down from doing something stupid like telling Orange Jeans Guy to take a hike.
Delilah Moon isn’t mine. She hasn’t been mine for ten long years, and if she knew I was within fifty feet of her, she’d probably use my face for target practice. (Delilah won Windfall’s skeet shooting contest at age fifteen.) Leaving her without a word was bad enough. Ghosting her after we made love for our firs
t and only time?
Forget skeet shooting. She’d probably launch a grenade at my crotch.
“Actually,” I tell Lennon, struggling to inflate my lungs, “I am feeling off.”
An ache has settled in my chest, my dormant love for her scrabbling to the surface. If I tell Lennon I’m stealing glimpses of Delilah’s slightly sloped nose, wishing I could brush my nose against hers as our lips slowly meet, he’ll forcibly drag me away from here. I’m not ready to lose sight of her again. Not yet.
“I’m having a Delilah Day,” I tell him. A partial lie.
“Oh, yeah. Okay.” His sympathetic tone doesn’t ease my churning panic. “It’s been a while since you’ve had one of those.”
Delilah Days were my most morose days during our early years in WITSEC, a.k.a. witness protection and my messed-up life. I’d sit on social media obsessively, too nauseous to eat, my skin that translucent bluish color of an underground dweller who never saw daylight, reading Delilah’s old posts over and over—worried messages that grew increasingly desperate.
If anyone knows where the Bowers are, please contact me.
E, if you see this, call me. I’m freaking out.
E, I don’t understand. Where are you?
How could you leave me like this?
As you can imagine, I didn’t cope well. Kind of like now.
“It has been a while since I’ve felt this intense,” I say.
Lennon adjusts his plastic bag, then crosses his arms. “Something specific bring it on?”
“Nothing major.” Unless you count seeing my former best friend and lover for the first time in ten years. “The departure counter called out the name Eliza Woon, which sounded like Delilah Moon. And this connector going through Charlotte is throwing me off, knowing we’ll be close to Windfall.”
He huffs. “I knew taking this flight was a bad idea.”
We’d normally never have booked a flight going to Charlotte, so close to our former hometown, but my meeting with my agent in New York got pushed back. We had to change our flights home to Houston and wound up heading there of all places.
“Anyway.” Lennon rocks on his heels. “I know this is rough. I totally miss Windfall too. The festivals were a blast, and the hiking and biking trails are killer,” he says wistfully. “But it’s different for you with Delilah. Any specific memories coming back?”
A nervous laugh almost escapes me. “Nope. Nothing specific.”
“Well, I’m here for you. Unless you drink my beer at home again. Then you’re on your own.”
“I don’t like your hipster beers.”
He holds up his middle finger. “I’ll piss in the cans next time and seal them up. Maybe you’ll like that better.”
Living with Lennon and riling him up with hipster jokes is usually entertaining, but I’m a second from a nuclear meltdown.
I glance at Delilah’s riotous hair, needing more from Lennon. Something. A hint of what I’m supposed to do. I mean, what if seeing Delilah out of the blue is fate trying to push us back together? “I was just thinking, wouldn’t it be wild if I ran into Delilah here? Like, if she happened to be on our flight and I had the chance to talk to her.”
“Not really,” he says, his tone hardening, “since there’s a death threat on our heads. If you saw Delilah, we’d run our asses away from here and book another flight.”
“Ha, ha,” I say stiffly. “I was just playing the what-if game.”
Except this isn’t a game. My chest aches from her proximity. Delilah’s name is a love letter looping through my mind. If I tell Lennon she’s here, I’ll lose this tiny connection to her, even if it’s fleeting. So, no, I haven’t contemplated ditching this flight. I’ve barely walked ten paces from Delilah’s orbit.
“Anyway,” I say, going for nonchalant, “it’s just a rough day.”
But also kind of amazing. Seeing Delilah brings back our first kiss outside of Haddie’s Diner, the taste of innocence and peach ice cream on her tentative tongue; sneaking into her room and leaving flowers by her bed; fighting with her over which comic book we’d read; cradling her all night after her father’s heart attack, then again after the funeral; surprising her with a puppy—Dill Pickle—from Big Joe’s litter; spending afternoons sketching her on our wildflower picnics; confessing that she made my heart feel like a hot-air balloon, so big and bright and full it could carry me to Mars. “You’re not Delilah Moon,” I’d tell her. “You’re Delilah Mars. That’s where my heart is. In Mars, stuck on you.”
Lennon’s talking about some book he bought, but I don’t listen. Orange Jeans Guy is on his phone now, as is Delilah. I alter my angle to see her face better. She’s too far away for me to absorb small details, but she’s smiling while she talks. Her skin is more cream than tan, like she doesn’t spend hours outside anymore. The intensity of her blue eyes isn’t as clear from here, but her lips are as full as I remember, that Cupid’s bow in the center teasing me with its feminine dip. Her jeans and white T-shirt are casual, perfectly Delilah, accentuating her fuller figure.
In two seconds, I’m addicted.
“Jesus.” Lennon waves in front of my face. “You really are out of it today.”
I blink at him. “Honestly, I’m fine. And dandy. Totally fine and dandy.”
“Fine people don’t say the word dandy.” He narrows his eyes at me.
Unable to resist, I steal another look at Delilah . . . and Lennon starts to turn, intent on following my traitorous eyes. Not good.
I grab his shoulders and force his focus on me. “Tell me more about your book.”
“You’re evading.”
“No, I really want to hear about your book.”
“Likely story, Captain Weirdo. Something else is going on with you.”
He twists out of my grip and turns.
My heart climbs into my throat. “I’m hungry. We should get a snack for the flight.”
Ignoring me, he searches the departure area and doesn’t seem to notice Delilah. Then he does a double take. “No, no, no. No fucking way.”
Face pale, Lennon whips back and drags me past a coffee shop to a different departure area. “That was Delilah.”
“Are you sure?” I rub the back of my sweaty neck. “I’m almost positive they said Eliza.”
He points a furious finger at my face. “You cannot talk to her. You can’t breathe near her or even look at her. We can’t be here at all.”
“I didn’t plan this. I’m as shocked as you are she’s here.”
“But you lied about it, and in case you’ve forgotten, the cartel our traitor father testified against is still alive and well. Connecting with anyone from our pasts could paint targets on all our heads.”
Like I need the reminder.
But Delilah Moon isn’t just anyone, and it’s been ten excruciating years of revisited memories, unbearable heartache, and frustration. As crazy as my story is, if I told Delilah the truth, she might even believe me. Learn to not hate me. The skeet-shooting-my-face thing might not happen. Hope thrums in my chest, hot and insistent, fogging up the rational side of my brain.
“I need to speak to her,” I blurt.
“Nope. No. No, you don’t.” He waves his hands frantically. “Absolutely no way.”
“Witness protection isn’t a jail sentence. No one’s forcing us to stay in hiding. We do this to keep each other safe, but it’s not like I’m turning up in Windfall, where someone might be staking her out.”
Lennon drops his bag between us and forcibly holds me, the veins on his corded forearms looking ready to pop. “I love you. I love our brothers and Mom. I know your relationship with Delilah was intense and special, but family comes first. You cannot speak to her. Jesus Christ,” he mumbles. “We have to switch flights.”
A few people shoot us curious glances. The loudspeaker announces a departure.
I attempt to battle Lennon’s panic with forced calm. “We checked for other flights,” I remind him, slipping out of his hold. “When I had to push back the departure date, you checked and said this was the only flight we could take, because you can’t miss more work.”
He glares at me. I scrub a hand down my face, hating that I can’t see Delilah from here. Missing a second of her when she’s this close is physically painful.
“Did you have fun in New York this week?” I ask, changing tactics. “The show we saw, checking out art galleries, eating a stupid amount of salted pretzels?”
He squints one eye at me. “I did.”
