Today. Tomorrow. Always.: a Free Falling novella Read online

  Today. Tomorrow. Always.

  a Free Falling novella

  By Raven St. Pierre

  Today. Tomorrow. Always.

  a Free Falling novella

  © March 2015, Raven St. Pierre

  Cover Photo courtesy of The Reed Files

  Cover design by Najla Qamber Designs

  This book contains sexual themes and content not suitable for persons under the age of 18. This work is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental. No part of this e-book may be reproduced or shared by any electronic or mechanical means, including, but not limited to printing, file sharing, and email, without prior written permission from Raven St. Pierre.

  This e-book is licensed for personal enjoyment only. This e-book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.

  The Free Falling Series

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  Secrets (Book 2) ***on sale for $2.99***

  Exposed (Book 3) ***on sale for $2.99***

  Today. Tomorrow. Always.: a novella (Book 3.5) ***only $0.99***

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  Synopsis

  Events and decisions of the past almost cost her everything, but she was given a second chance.

  He marvels at the beautiful life that almost slipped through his fingers, vowing never to let anything come between them again.

  The memory of being apart lingers with both Sam and AJ, but those days are long gone. Now that the dust has settled, all that remains is their unwavering love and an impenetrable bond many have tried and failed to break.

  “Today. Tomorrow. Always.” is a glimpse into the life this couple has managed to build together and a chance to catch up with old friends you’ve grown to love throughout the Free Falling series.

  A note to fans of the Free Falling Series…

  This one’s for you—all of you.

  Upon releasing what I originally intended to be the final chapter of Sam and AJ’s story, the feedback was overwhelmingly positive. However, one thing readers seemed to be feeling collectively, with all the hardship the couple experienced, was a longing to also be a part of Sam and AJ’s happier times. Just let me say that I heard you, each and every one, so for that reason, I wrote this novella to share a side of these two that you didn’t get to see in the other three installments. It’s drama-free and upbeat, all while still embodying the same feel of the rest of the series. I really, really hope you all enjoy it and I can’t wait to read your feedback in the reviews!!!

  Love you guys from the bottom of my heart,

  Raven

  Raven appreciates your support and would love to get your feedback when you finish! Leave your review of this author’s work wherever you made your purchase and let others know what you thought of “Today. Tomorrow. Always.”

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  Chapter One

  AJ

  A set of small hands reached up and the little guy attached to them stared at me with watery eyes. He had the hardest time accepting that I had to first put my things down before picking him up. With a fistful of my pant leg gathered in his hand to steady himself, he followed me over to the counter where I placed my keys, a few pieces of mail, and my suit jacket. This was the warm greeting he always gave when I came home from work and I found myself looking forward to it every day.

  With my hands free, I stooped to take him into my arms. The second I did, a big grin spread across his face, showing off two teeth on the top and two on the bottom as his pacifier clattered to the tiled floor. Gentle pats hit both sides of my face as he gurgled a few syllables.

  A sound from the living room led me in that direction, carrying Anthony with me as I left the kitchen.

  “Is that mommy in there?” I asked him.

  He gave a big nod.

  “Good. Let’s go get her.”

  Turning the corner, the sound of my steps no longer echoed throughout the house as I made it onto carpet. There, on all fours with her head and arm underneath the couch, was Sam. Whatever she was searching for, she looked good doing it.

  “Now that’s what I call a greeting.”

  She laughed when she heard my voice, but continued to fumble around under the couch. “Hello to you, too, and quit being nasty.”

  I tilted my head to the side for a better view. “You can’t have all that in my face and expect me not to say something.”

  Her laughter filled the room again as the boy and I watched, staring intently for two totally different reasons. I’m sure seeing Sam made him think of snacks and hugs and whatnot. Me? Not so much. Hugs weren’t exactly what came to mind.

  “Ha! Found ‘em,” she announced, hopping up with her keys in hand. She dangled them triumphantly in my face, although I had no idea what was going on.

  “Congratulations?”

  She rolled her eyes at me with a grin. “Your son here is a menace to society.” Before going on, she landed a kiss on my lips and lightly pinched Anthony’s cheek. He smiled and rested his head on my shoulder, popping his thumb into his mouth in place of the pacifier he’d lost.

  “Thanks to him, I’ve spent the last hour looking for my keys.”

  “Nah… you have zero proof he did it,” I rebutted, defending my son despite fully believing he was responsible. He’d done the same thing to me about a week ago. I was ready to leave for work, only to find that my keys were missing. That time Sam and I found them in the back of his toy dump-truck. Since he started walking a few weeks back, things have been coming up missing left and right.

  “No, no, no… don’t let that cute face fool you. The little booger stole them, and then hid them, because he enjoys seeing me search all over the house like a crazy person.”

  As if he knew he was in the hot-seat, Anthony reached for his mom and she gladly accepted the tight squeeze he gave her neck, making sure he knew she wasn’t really upset. With my arms now free, I could greet my wife properly, grabbing her, pulling her close as she eased our little boy over to her hip. I sought a kiss and she gave me what I was after.

  There was a high-pitched giggle and a screech off to my left as the kiss with Sam deepened, keeping it PG since we wouldn’t be getting any alone time until later tonight.

  “I think he’s watching us,” Sam said breathily as her lips moved with mine.

  “Let him. The boy has to learn from somewhere.”

  She shoved me away a few inches when she burst out laughing. “Get your hormones in check! What’re you gonna do when our guests get here? Three whole days of no… contact.”

  Did she just say three days? Since when did we start caring if someone was around or not?

  “Terrell and Mais
ha are hardly guests; they’re family,” I countered. “And besides, with the whole… ‘kid situation’ we have going on here—” I paused to gesture toward our son. “I’m pretty sure they know we have sex.”

  “AJ! Don’t say that word in front of him!” Sam screeched, trying not to smile as she covered one of Anthony’s ears with her free hand and pressed his other to her chest. “All we need is for our parents to call to talk to him and he blurts that out.”

  I imagined the scenario she just described and smiled. “C’mon… Tell me that wouldn’t be funny, though.”

  She couldn’t even deny it, giggling a bit at the thought. “Oh my gosh… I can’t even deal with you two right now. You’re both trouble.”

  She handed my namesake back over to me, mussing his dark curls with her fingers right after. “I’ll be back in a few. My plan was to be done at the store by the time you made it home, but somebody decided to mess up my plan. I won’t mention the perp’s name, but he’s the shortest person in the room. That’s all I’m gonna say.”

  A kiss went to Anthony’s cheek and then mine as Sam passed by.

  I followed her with my eyes. “Need me to do anything while you’re gone? The guest room’s all set?” I asked.

  She nodded. “Yup, I freshened up the sheets and everything while he napped. But if you’re looking for something to do, could you put him in the tub for me? I still have to cook when I get back and I don’t want to have to worry about it after they get here.”

  “No problem.” I headed toward to the stairs to run the bathwater.

  “Don’t forget to put a towel down on the floor first. You know he likes to splash,” she warned, as if I hadn’t done this a hundred times before.

  “Got it.”

  “And don’t forget—”

  “—the faucet cover so he doesn’t bump his head. I know,” I said with a laugh, already halfway up the steps. “I’ll handle bathing the boy; you go do your thing at the store and quit worrying.”

  When I turned around, she was standing in the foyer. A warm smile crossed her face as it often did when she watched me with our son. She knew I had things under control. “Ok… I shouldn’t be gone long.”

  “Be careful,” I said as she turned to leave.

  “I will; try to stay out of trouble. Both of you,” she called out, closing the door behind herself.

  I turned toward Anthony and he smiled like he knew what was going on. I shook my head. “Geez… Mommy doesn’t let us have any fun, does she?”

  *****

  It’d been about four or five months since our last trip to Boston to visit Terrell and Maisha and now they’d finally arrived to spend my birthday weekend here with Sam and I on Staten Island; hanging out, catching up. After dinner, the ladies made their way into the living room and Terrell and I decided to sit poolside. Every so often I’d glance over, peering through the sliding glass doors at Sam. I’d catch a stray smile on her face here and there, reminding me where our son had inherited that ‘I can get away with murder because I’m adorable’ expression from. That face—it felt like I’d been staring at it my whole life, but I still hadn’t gotten used to how beautiful she is.

  Anthony was asleep in his mother’s arms, looking more and more like her as the days passed. He definitely had my eyes and a combination of Sam’s hair texture and mine, but there was so much of her in him. Watching them, I instantly thought of what a lucky guy I was. Money, cars, things… none of that could make or break me. As long as I had my family, I had it all. When it all began, she was just a girl I had to have, and I was a kid whose every thought seemed to lead to her.

  Even now, years later, that hadn’t changed.

  On cue, without realizing I was watching, Sam’s hand went to her necklace. Her fingers caressed the ring she kept there, a silver band with the inscription “Today. Tomorrow. Always.” I remembered the day I’d given it to her as her nineteenth birthday gift, although it was meant to be much more than that. It symbolized an implied promise that what we had, our bond, our love, was timeless.

  It was hard to remember what life had been like without her, who I’d been without her. Even the dark years when she was absent seemed like I’d dreamt them. Of course I hadn’t forgotten the emptiness, the sting of losing her, but those wounds had long since healed.

  Out of the blue, Terrell laughed loudly and I glanced over at him, putting my thoughts on hold. “What’d I miss?”

  He continued to smile as he stared at the water rippling across the pool. “I was just thinking about that time you rode with me to take Maisha down south to visit her aunt. You remember that?”

  There was no way I could forget—the worst heatwave I’d ever experienced in my life, food poisoning, and a blown engine in the middle of nowhere. “Yeah… I remember,” I said, shaking my head as all the details came back.

  “Man… good times.”

  I turned to look at him, expecting to see some sign that he’d been joking, but there was none. “Good times? I can recall at least five instances that I honestly thought I was gonna die that week.”

  Terrell waved me off. “Quit exaggerating. It wasn’t that bad.”

  Actually, the longer I sat there thinking about it, the worse it got.

  The call had come in from Terrell late one night, sometime during the summer between our junior and senior year of college. He’d asked me to tag along to help him drive. The plan was for one to drive while the other slept, which worked out in the beginning—before the food poisoning hit. One ill-advised visit to a diner off the highway made it impossible for us not to stop every ten minutes. Every bump in the road, every curve, had us all in agony. In hindsight, we should’ve taken that as a sign and turned back.

  “Okay, I need some of whatever you’ve been drinking or smoking, because that experience was terrible from every angle,” I said with a laugh, trying to think of even one positive thing that came of it.

  “You don’t remember that hole-in-the-wall bar we found on the way back?” His eyes got big. “Best wings I ever had in my life. No lie.”

  I shook my head, laughing. “Good wings didn’t make up for six straight days of misery, though. I’m sorry.”

  “What about when Maisha fell off the bed in that motel room?” He howled, this time loud enough that I was sure he disturbed the neighbors. The sound of it was so obnoxious that it was impossible not to laugh with him, though.

  Even Maisha’s fall had been due to yet another negative aspect of that… ‘adventure’; she’d discovered a roach crawling on the headboard and fell trying to get away from it. Funny? Absolutely. But it was like I said, all signs pointed toward that trip sucking.

  “She tore her head up on the wall,” he added. “Remember?” Next he imitated the thud it made.

  “You’re crazy,” I said, shaking my head at him when he doubled over in his seat. “What even made you think about that?” I asked.

  When he calmed down a bit, he answered. “We passed by a nasty-looking motel on the way up here and Maisha mentioned it. In fact, every nasty-looking motel makes her think about it.”

  That was a memory I could do without, and I imagined she could do without it, too. Terrell was the only one who’d found a bright side. That was kind of his way, though—his outlook on life.

  “Anyway, how’s work been?” he asked, jumping subjects.

  I yawned before answering. “Better. With the new guy I hired, I’ve got a whole lot less on my plate. All the travel was starting to get to me. Now I’m able to divide that part up with him, so I’m enjoying the job again.”

  “You’re talking about the guy you stole from that other company, right?”

  I laughed. “I didn’t steal him; I made him an attractive offer and he took it. That’s business.”

  While I downplayed the scenario, there was a bit of truth to what Terrell had accused me of. Kai, my newest hire, was highly sought after by a number of other organizations who realized the same thing I did; in his previous position, he was
underutilized and undervalued. Soon after meeting him, following the lead of an associate, I knew he’d be a perfect fit. There were just two small problems: several other execs had their sights set on him, too; and the second issue was that Kai wasn’t looking to make a career change at the time. He had so many untapped assets, though, so I didn’t take no for an answer. He was professional, had a firm grasp of the construction business at the executive level, and he was multilingual… and all he’d been tasked with in his previous position was to manage a moderately sized team of business analysts. That was it.

  Being born in Japan to a Japanese father and a mother of both Japanese and Thai descent, he spoke both languages as fluently as he spoke English. Not to mention, he had a firm grasp on the culture, which was equally important. He had the potential to be the perfect business liaison between our company and our clients in Japan.

  After cutting to the chase with him one afternoon over lunch, I discovered the one thing his current position, nor any of his other prospects, offered him: flexibility. Yes, there’d be travel, and probably a lot of it at times, but the compromise we made was that he could manage his own schedule while he was here in the States. Some days he’d come into the office after hours, which I didn’t mind. Other days he’d teleconference from home. I’d even seen him work three, consecutive, fourteen-hour shifts in order to have a long weekend to tend to something personal. Again, I didn’t mind. To say the guy was hardworking was an understatement.

  “Hey, I’m not judging,” Terrell concluded with a chuckle. “Do what you gotta do. I was actually asking about having your dad around again, though. It’s working out?”

  I chuckled a bit at his question, thinking about the weeks that had passed since my mom and dad officially became New Yorkers. Things had once been so bleak between my father and I that I found myself wishing I could cut him out of my life completely. However, here we were, working together on a daily basis again, forced to speak, forced to find common ground on business matters just like when I was living in Virginia. But… I couldn’t remember a time I’d been happier having him around.