Waiting for Forever (Hope Valley Book 8) Read online

  Waiting for Forever

  a Hope Valley novel

  Jessica Prince

  Copyright © 2020 by Jessica Prince

  www.authorjessicaprince.com

  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.

  Contents

  Don’t Miss Out

  Discover Other Books by Jessica

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Epilogue

  More from Hope Valley

  Discover Other Books by Jessica

  About Jessica

  Don’t Miss Out

  I can’t believe we’re already 8 books in on this series. Man, I love this town so much!

  This series truly has my heart, and I hope you guys continue on this journey with me!

  Click here to sign up for my newsletter so you can stay in the know about all the Hope Valley series news to come

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  Discover Other Books by Jessica

  REDEMPTION SERIES

  Bad Alibi

  Crazy Beautiful

  HOPE VALLEY SERIES:

  Out of My League

  Come Back Home Again

  The Best of Me

  Wrong Side of the Tracks

  Stay With Me

  Out of the Darkness

  The Second Time Around

  Waiting for Forever

  CIVIL CORRUPTION SERIES

  Corrupt

  Defile

  Consume

  Ravage

  THE PICKING UP THE PIECES SERIES:

  Picking up the Pieces

  Rising from the Ashes

  Pushing the Boundaries

  Worth the Wait

  THE COLORS NOVELS:

  Scattered Colors

  Shrinking Violet

  Love Hate Relationship

  Wildflower

  THE LOCKLAINE BOYS (a LOVE HATE RELATIONSHIP spinoff):

  Fire & Ice

  Opposites Attract

  Almost Perfect

  The Locklaine Boys: The Complete Series Boxset

  THE PEMBROOKE SERIES (a WILDFLOWER spinoff):

  Sweet Sunshine

  Coming Full Circle

  A Broken Soul

  Welcome to Pembrooke: The Complete Pembrooke Series

  GIRL TALK SERIES:

  Seducing Lola

  Tempting Sophia

  Enticing Daphne

  Charming Fiona

  STANDALONE TITLES:

  One Knight Stand

  Chance Encounters

  Nightmares from Within

  DEADLY LOVE SERIES:

  Destructive

  Addictive

  Prologue

  Danika

  Leo Drake had been the object of all my fantasies since he and his parents moved into the house across the street. I was seven and he was nine, but that didn’t stop an almost-immediate infatuation from forming.

  When I was a little girl I used to watch from my second-story bedroom window as he sped up and down the street on his bike, jumping the makeshift ramp he’d set up with nothing but a piece of scrap plywood and an empty milk crate.

  Even as a boy, he’d had no fear. I remembered watching, my breath held firmly in my lungs, causing them to burn as he’d hit that ramp with zero hesitation, trying to catch as much air as possible.

  Considering his dare devil tendencies, it hadn’t been that big of a surprise when, after one particular jump, he’d wiped out in a really big way.

  I could still recall the way my heart leapt up into my throat in fear as his pained screams penetrated the glass I spent most of my days pressed up against, how I wanted to cry for him as he clutched his arm to his chest and rolled around on the dirty asphalt, and how badly I wanted to run outside and comfort him in some way as I watched his father rush out and pick him up off the ground.

  I figured, after that incident, it would be a good long while before I saw him again, but I’d been wrong. He was outside my window only a few days later, racing around on that bike with a bright green cast on his arm.

  I’d watched him just like that for the next few years, imagining how it would be to actually go up and speak to him. Finally, when I was thirteen, I’d gotten my chance.

  I’d been sitting in the little window seat, my favorite place in my whole room, the place where I’d get to catch glimpses of the boy I’d been enamored with, when I heard a loud bang from outside. When I lifted my head from the book my nose had been buried in, I spotted him storming down his porch steps with an aluminum baseball bat in his hand.

  He stomped across the driveway to the large magnolia tree that had grown in the strip of yard between his house and the one beside it and started beating the thick trunk with the bat. Each strike was so hard I could hear the consistent ping of metal against wood even with the window closed.

  I wasn’t sure what came over me just then. For six years I’d been content to watch him from a distance, always too shy to approach. But as he beat the trunk of that tree to oblivion, something inside me snapped.

  I dropped my book to the floor, losing my place but I hadn’t cared one bit. Rushing out of my room, I ran down the stairs, taking them two at a time, only pausing long enough to slip my feet into a pair of flip flops by the front door before bursting through.

  I made it through my yard and halfway across the street before the realization of what I was doing set in. The hard slap of my shoes on the hot asphalt became a soft thud as I slowly brought myself to a stop a few yards away from him.

  “What are you doing?” He didn’t hear me over the banging of his bat, so I repeated the question louder.

  He stopped mid-swing, dropping his arms and looking back at me over his shoulder. A million butterflies had started flapping their wings in my belly the moment his eyes hit mine. “Huh?”

  “I asked what you’re doing.”

  He gave me an unhappy frown. “What’s it look like I’m doin’?” He gave the tree trunk another whack.

  If anyone else had talked to me like that, I’d have curled into myself and slinked back into my house, closing myself up in my room. But for some reason, my feet carried me into his yard instead of going back. There had been something in his eyes that day, sadness masked behind the anger, that I couldn’t turn away from. “Okay. Well then why are you doing it?”

  “Because I want to,” he grunted, taking another swing.

  I’d waited quietly as he worked out more of his fury with each slam of the bat. “But you’re ruining it,” I said a couple minutes later. “It’s a pretty tree, and you’re messing it all up.”

  “Good,” he h
issed, pulling his lips back to reveal his teeth as he beat at the trunk harder, sending splinters of wood flying in all directions. “She loved this tree, and she’s a bitch. I hope I fuckin’ kill it.”

  The hate in his voice caused me to rock back on a foot, but I wasn’t deterred. “Who’s a bitch?” I’d asked, my cheeks burning with guilt at saying that word. If my parents had heard me I’d have been in so much trouble, but it was just the two of us then. Me and Leo. Me and the boy I’d been watching for six years but who, at that moment, I barely recognized.

  “My mom.”

  “Why’s your mom a bitch?”

  He reared back and swung even harder, answering, “Because she left us!” on a yell so loud it made me flinch. As soon as he’d gotten those words out, his arms fell to his sides and he dropped to the ground like all the strength had suddenly been zapped right out of him. His anger had been worked out, leaving room for the sadness to take over.

  I’d hesitated for a few seconds, counting the rapid beats of my heart before I found the courage to move. I finished my trek across the blacktop, each step measured and slow until I reached his side, then I lowered myself onto the grass, crossing my legs and pulling them close. Neither of us said anything for a really long time before he finally spoke up. “You live across the street.”

  “Yeah. I’m Dani. Well, Danika, but everyone calls me Dani.”

  He turned back and stared out at the street, mumbling, “Cool name.”

  There’d been no stopping the goofy smile that pulled so big it made my cheeks hurt. “I think yours is cool too.”

  Neither of us spoke for several minutes, and I struggled to think of something to say, something that might help take away some of his sadness as I pulled blades of grass out of the ground and tore them down the middle. I finally managed to find my voice. “You’re right, you know.”

  His head jerked around, his brows shot together. “Right about what?”

  “Your mom,” I said quietly, my nerves taking hold and squeezing my throat. “She’s a bitch. I don’t know her, but I know if she left you and your dad, that makes her a bitch, ’cause only a bitch would do something like that.”

  It felt like forever before he said anything, but when he gave me his muttered, “Thanks,” it had been like winning every prize they gave out in school.

  I’d stupidly thought that was the beginning of something, that maybe, on that small patch of grass underneath a battered magnolia tree we’d formed a friendship, but that hadn’t been what happened.

  I never got more than a random tilt of his chin in passing after that day; an innocuous “hey,” or “what’s up.” Even then, he’d never waited for my response. He’d issue the trite, meaningless greeting and keep on going like it was nothing.

  Time passed and Leo and I went back to exactly what we’d always been . . . a whole lot of nothing. But what had started when I was just a little girl had developed into feelings much stronger the older I got, and by the time I reached high school my crush was so big, most of the space in my mind was reserved solely for thoughts of Leo.

  Unfortunately, he was so out of my league, we weren’t even playing the same game.

  He was the kind of guy every shy, slightly awkward teenage girl dreamed of having as a boyfriend. The star pitcher of the baseball team. The starting quarterback during football season. The boy voted most popular, best looking, most likely to succeed. He was a member of the National Honor Society and tutored during his free time.

  Meanwhile, I carried an extra thirty-plus pounds on my frame thanks to my love of baked goods. For me, pimples and breakouts were a vicious cycle that came every damn month. I wasn’t good at hair or makeup, so all my attempts at doing either of them ended in disaster. I was a nerd of the highest order, and as such, high school was a living nightmare.

  I was the loser girl, unnoticed by most of my fellow classmates. He was the prince of Hope Valley High School.

  Growing up, I’d watched countless movies and read tons of books about unrequited love, and they always, always ended the same way. The hot, popular guy finally noticed the nerdy girl and fell madly in love with her.

  That didn’t happen for me, and I can tell you with 100 percent certainty that those movies and books are a crock of shit. Unrequited love is a bitch. I’d lived within spitting distance of Leo Drake for years and he’d barely known I existed.

  The only thing worse than watching the object of my affection from afar was watching him with other girls. Especially one in particular.

  If Leo Drake was the prince of Hope Valley High School—and he certainly was—Whitney Brown was the princess. However, where he ruled with kindness and humor, she’d ruled through tyranny.

  For some girls, life just came easy. It was as if God had seen fit to give them everything they could possibly want to make each day better than the last. They were beautiful, and smart, and popular without ever having to try.

  I wasn’t one of those girls, but Whitney was. Captain of the cheerleading squad, prom queen, and member of the homecoming court. She was the blonde beauty all the girls wanted to be friends with and all the guys wanted to date, and the power had seriously gone to her head.

  She also just so happened to be one of the main reasons why my high school experience had sucked so badly.

  With a two-year gap between us, a nerdy, quiet sophomore like myself shouldn’t have been on the queen-bee’s radar. But she was a mean girl through and through, picking on those she felt were inferior. I must have been the most inferior of them all, because, for some reason, I was her favorite target.

  Of course, Leo didn’t have a clue who his girlfriend really was. She had a gift for switching personalities with a speed that gave her poor, helpless victims whiplash. Whenever he was around, she was so sugary sweet you could get a toothache, then, as soon as he was out of earshot, the bitch came out.

  She’d personally coined the nicknames Dorky Dani and Danika Dough Girl. They might not have been the most creative of names, but to an overweight, self-conscious teenage girl with out-of-control hormones, they were pure torture.

  For two years, I watched them break up and get back together with such frequency, they’d become our school’s very own soap opera. Each time they broke up, that hope would spring back to life, swelling so big in my chest there wasn’t room for much else. Then it would be cruelly ripped out when I’d spot them down the hall, making out by Leo’s locker only days later.

  Finally, the day I’d been dreading for years came. As much as I hated his girlfriend, and as happy as I was that she’d no longer be there day in and day out to rain terror down on the rest of us, I was heartbroken when Leo graduated.

  Even though he’d never had a clue, he’d been one of the constants in my life for almost ten years. I’d watched from my window as he and his father loaded all his stuff in the back of his old, beat-up Ford truck as he prepared to take off for college, and that was where I remained, rooted in place until his taillights disappeared from sight.

  Life carried on after that. The world kept spinning and one day turned into another. Years passed, and that all-consuming crush I’d had on Leo eventually began to fade. There were random sightings here and there. He’d come back to visit his dad, but he never stayed long.

  Word spread through town that he and Whitney had married, setting up their life in Philadelphia where she’d popped out a couple kids and he worked as a cop. Meanwhile, I’d taken my love for all things baked and turned it into a way of life, opening the most popular coffee and pastry shop in Hope Valley: Muffin Top, my pride and joy.

  I’d also managed to discover who I was and grow into that woman. I was no longer the shy, nerdy kid I used to be. The acne eventually cleared up and the weight came off. My body developed into that of a woman, and bonus, I’d finally managed to tame my unruly hair and learn to properly apply makeup. I’d turned into a strong, confident, independent woman. I dated, but none of them had ever taken that all-important roll as The One.
/>   Leo Drake no longer consumed my every thought. Sure, there were still those lingering twinges in my chest every now and then, but they were much more manageable. That was, until he returned to Hope Valley three years ago. After his father suffered from a stroke, Leo’d packed his family up and moved them back to the small town where he’d grown up to help take care of him.

  I hadn’t been thrilled to see Whitney Brown—now Drake—was back, but I didn’t let it faze me. They had their lives and I had mine. She was still the same entitled, bratty woman I’d always known her to be, only she didn’t have the same leverage over me she’d once had. Plus, there was the added fact that my shop served the absolute best coffee and pastries in three counties. Even she wasn’t stupid enough to risk a lifetime ban from my shop.

  Then one day, the Hope Valley grapevine had gone into a tailspin with news of their divorce. It had been finalized about a year ago, and, just like that, the once-golden couple was no more.

  As hard as I fought it, that twinge of hope began to grow once more. For the past year, I’d tried my hardest to beat it back.

  But I was failing miserably.

  Chapter One

  Leo

  I knew the moment I put my truck in park and looked up to the front door of the house that shit was about to get ugly. Before I’d even killed the engine, the front door had opened, revealing my ex-wife. It was all there in her pinched lips and the lines carved between her brows as she frowned, she was pissed and geared up for a fight.