Fixing Tanner (Second Chances Book 3) Read online

  Leah opened her mouth to speak but found that he didn’t know where to start.

  “Can I get you a cup of coffee?” Tanner asked and Leah nodded briskly.

  She studied him over the bar top as he prepared her drink, hoping that she might find the answers to her questions in him.

  He was back before she knew it, holding out a steaming cup of black coffee. He took a seat on the couch. She sat down too.

  “I thought I knew what I was going to say,” she said, looking down at her drink.

  “It’s good to see you, Leah.”

  She looked up at him then, her brown eyes meeting his. She noticed then how much he had truly changed. His eyes that had always seemed icy and intense had softened greatly. She could almost feel her racing heart beat slow.

  “The last time I saw you I said some things that I shouldn’t have,” she said. “I was hurt and angry and lashing out at you was the only thing that made sense at the time.”

  “No,” he said. He was out of his seat and next to her before she could even blink. “You have absolutely nothing to apologize for.” He took a deep breath.

  “Leah, you have no idea how much I owe you. If you hadn’t come into my life and challenged me the way you did I would still be the unattached, unfeeling shell of man that I used to be. You’ve opened my eyes. You’ve made me the kind of man I always hoped I could be.”

  Leah didn’t know what to say. All she could do was smile, reveling in the warm feeling spreading through her body.

  “I have made some incredible progress, but I also know that I have a long way to go.” He glanced down at his hands briefly, and when he lifted his gaze back to hers his eyes were damp. “But I want you to know that I won’t ever let you down again.”

  Leah opened her mouth to speak but held back, choosing to let her heart guide her instead of her head. “I want to believe in you and I want to believe in second chances. I want to believe in us… in love.”

  “I want to believe in that too,” he said. “And the way I see it, you’re my one and only shot.”

  Leah looked up at him, unimpressed.

  “You know what I’m trying to say,” he said, smirking.

  “You know… for a writer, you’re not so great with expressing yourself.”

  “I’ll be sure to work on that.”

  His mouth crashed against hers feverishly, their bodies full of need and want and longing.

  __

  Leah lay in the near dark, her leg slung over the bulk of Tanner’s near sleeping form.

  “Are you awake?” she whispered.

  Tanner murmured something inaudible.

  “What’s that?”

  A smile formed on his lips. “I said, ‘barely, you took it all out of me.’ ”

  “I’ve been thinking…” she said.

  Tanner shifted his body so that he was laying on his back, her naked body spread out over his.

  “Uh oh.”

  “No, no. Nothing like that,” she said. “I was thinking that we won’t know where this will all go.” She paused to lick her lips before continuing. “All we can do is take things as they come and keep talking to each other. Is that something you can handle?”

  Her mouth curled into a smile.

  “I’m learning that not everything in life is under my control,” he said, “at least that’s what I keep hearing.”

  She pulled her body away from him and rose to her feet, stretching her arms out above her head.

  “Where do you think you’re going?”

  “I need water,” she said, leaving the room.

  Tanner watched her go, knowing for a fact that he would never tire of that body.

  Moments later Leah poked her head through the doorway of the bedroom. “What happened in there?” she asked, motioning to the living room. “It looks like a bomb hit.”

  Tanner sighed and a wide grin stretched across his face. “I’ve been writing.”

  Leah sucked in a sharp breath, trying to control her reaction. It didn’t go unnoticed.

  “It’s not what you think it is. That book… that research… it’s gone. All of it.”

  Leah pinched her bottom lip between her teeth and remained quiet.

  “I’ve spent so much of my life trying to hide my true self from the world – the flawed me, the mourning, lost me – that I became someone else entirely. But I’m not that guy anymore, and I’ve come too far to ever go back to being that way again.”

  Leah flopped down onto the bed beside him, her hip pressed up against his rib cage.

  “I can tell,” she said, reaching out and brushing her fingers along his forearm. “I could tell you were a different person the moment you opened your door.”

  Leah closed her eyes and sank back onto the bed.

  Please don’t hurt me, Tanner, she thought. I won’t survive this again.

  “So what are you writing about now, then?”

  “Love,” he said without skipping a beat. “What else?”

  He rolled onto his side, propping his head up on the palm on his hand and smiled at her.

  “What?” she asked, scrunching up her nose.

  “I don’t know how you did it, but you did: you fixed me.”

  Leah smiled, running her hand across his bare chest. “You never needed fixing, Tanner. You just needed to be loved. And it turns out, so did I.”

  __

  Dr. Schultz took a deep breath and turned over the notebook in her lap, crossing her hands over top of it. “Well, Tanner. I’m not sure we have much else to talk about.”

  They may have been the ten greatest words she had even said to him. “Oh?”

  “I’ve given you all the tools you need to improve your life. You’ve already done a tremendous job.”

  He smiled in response.

  “I just have one last question for you.”

  “Of course you do,” he said. “Lay it on me.”

  “What are you going to write about next?”

  Tanner had thought of little else for the past few weeks, since realizing it was time to move on from his previous idea. “I’ve actually given that a lot of thought.”

  “And?”

  “I think it’s time that I tell my story instead of everybody else’s.”

  - End -

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  Other Books by Rachel Del

  Losing Lily: A Finding Lily Prequel

  Lily Gardner thought she'd found her soul mate when she met and married the handsome and well-off Thomas Gardner. But as she soon finds out, life and love hold no guarantees.

  Losing Lily is a prequel to Rachel Del's debut novella, Finding Lily, that explores what happens when you realize that your life is not at all what you expected it to be.

  AVAILABLE FOR FREE ON AMAZON

  Fixing Tanner: A Second Chances Book

  With two successful novels under his belt, and the kind of single life that any guy would kill for, Tanner Young thinks there is nothing that can stop him. That is, until he meets Leah Foster: the first and only woman he can actually see himself with… and the one woman who isn’t interested in a commitment. In the midst of a ferocious bout of wr
iters block he finds himself clinging to Leah in hopes that she can turn his book, and his life, around.

  At once heartbreaking and hopeful, FIXING TANNER captures what it feels like to spend your life running away from a past that is destroying your future.

  Don't miss this third book in the SECOND CHANCES SERIES by Rachel Del.

  AVAILABLE NOW ON AMAZON

  About the Author

  Rachel Del is a head-in-the-clouds introvert, homebody and thirty-something writer currently living in Las Vegas, Nevada with her husband and three-year-old son. Originally from Ontario, Canada she spends her days reading, writing and drinking far too much black coffee.

  She blogs at www.rachel-del.com/blog

  To connect with other readers of this book, use hashtag #FindingLilyNovel on social media.