Again! Again! (Fox River Romance Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Again! Again!

  Levi

  Inigo

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  Again! Again!

  Zach Jenkins

  Again! Again!

  Zach Jenkins

  Copyright © 2018 Zach Jenkins

  All rights reserved. No part of this story may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means without express written permission of the copyright holder. This book contains sexually explicit content which is suitable only for mature adults.

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  Contents

  Again! Again!

  1. Levi

  2. Inigo

  3. Levi

  4. Inigo

  5. Levi

  6. Inigo

  7. Levi

  8. Inigo

  9. Levi

  10. Inigo

  11. Levi

  12. Inigo

  13. Levi

  14. Inigo

  15. Levi

  16. Inigo

  17. Levi

  18. Inigo

  19. Levi

  20. Inigo

  21. Levi

  22. Inigo

  23. Levi

  24. Inigo

  25. Levi

  26. Inigo

  27. Levi

  28. Inigo

  29. Levi

  30. Inigo

  31. Levi

  32. Inigo

  Want free bonus content?

  Also by Zach Jenkins

  About the Author

  If you enjoyed this book…

  Again! Again!

  Zach Jenkins

  1

  Levi

  Levi nervously squeezed the empty Styrofoam cup, and considered pouring some more coffee. He’d been waiting in the cramped office for nearly a half hour to meet his kid. Levi had missed the first five years of the boy’s life, but now that he knew he existed, the torture of waiting another minute to meet him was unbearable.

  His fidgety fingers tore off the lip of the cup.

  “What’s taking so long?” he asked the empty room.

  Something’s gone wrong.

  As a firefighter, Levi was used to things not going right. He trained for chaos and trouble, and never flinched when part of a roof collapsed on his head or an old lady fainted on the other side of a burning room.

  He stopped tearing off pieces of the cup and listened for any noise out in the hall that might give him a clue about what was holding things up. He could hear two voices, a woman and a man, but couldn’t make out what they were saying. The woman sounded annoyed.

  They’re going to take my kid away from me before I even get a chance to see what color his hair is.

  He tried using the only thing from his firefighter training that seemed useful, and focused on his breathing. Panic would only make him wild and irrational, and put him at risk of getting hurt.

  This is stupid. I can’t get hurt here.

  When the doorknob turned and sent his heart sinking into the pit of his chest, he discovered that there were definitely ways to get hurt without the physical danger of a fire.

  “Sorry for the delay, Mr. Hamilton,” the rail-thin woman with the shoulder-length salt-and-pepper hair said.

  “Levi,” he replied instinctively.

  “Right.” The woman tugged at the end of her power suit jacket that looked like it had been found in a secondhand shop.

  Levi took a deep breath to remind himself that she was just doing her job, and her job was to protect the kids, even if it meant making Levi’s afternoon miserable.

  “I’m so sorry, Levi, but there was a problem with the paperwork.”

  Levi didn’t hear her next words.

  I knew something wasn’t right. They probably found out he isn’t really my kid. I mean, what are the odds of a random hookup getting the mom pregnant, anyway?

  “... Levi?”

  “What’s that? Sorry, I was…this is all very confusing to me,” he admitted.

  “Of course it is,” she said with a friendly nod. “But don’t worry. Everything will be fine. There’s just a missing form in the file. It should just take a day to get it fixed. We should have everything ready on Monday. You can come as early as you want, but—”

  “No, that won’t work. I live more than an hour away across the border in Illinois. I can’t just come back on Monday. I have to work. I can stay as late as I need to today, so let’s figure out a way to make this work.” Hearing the frustration rising in his voice, he glanced at the name on her desk and added, “Please, Dorothy.”

  Dorothy pursed her lips and fidgeted with a pen. “I can’t make any promises, but I will try to pull some strings and get the form fast-tracked. It wasn’t your fault, and neither you nor Daxter should suffer because the foster parents made a mistake. But it won’t get done until the end of the business day. Then everything will have to get notarized in the morning.”

  “But that’ll be Saturday. Won’t you be closed on the weekend? I said I can’t come back on Monday.”

  She raised her hand to silence Levi’s complaint. “I can make sure that it gets done right away in the morning as long as the form gets in the file tonight. But I can’t work on it until you shake my hand and agree to meet me here tomorrow, and leave me alone to do my work. Can you get a hotel for the night?”

  “I suppose. I mean, of course I can. I really appreciate any help you can give, and I’ll do anything you ask to help get this done this weekend.”

  Dorothy stood and held out a business card, ending the conversation. “All you’ll need to do is show up sometime after ten. The doors will be locked because we’re not officially open on Saturdays. Call the number on the card, and I’ll come let you in.”

  He took the card and gave it a quick glance. “Thank you so much, Dorothy. I can’t even describe how much I appreciate your help.”

  “Mr. Hamilton, we’re as happy as can be when we can place kids with their real parents who are happy to have them. I have a good feeling about you and Daxter. Do you need help finding your way out?”

  Levi stood and shook her hand. “No, I’ll be fine.”

  He smiled when he heard Dorothy already dialing the phone as he left her office.

  Tomorrow, he’d be a father, something he had never even thought about wanting to be. He had slept with plenty of women and men over his thirty-five years on the planet, but he had never once met someone he had considered settling down with.

  He had always expected that it would happen someday, he supposed. Things would just click with one of his partners and change his worldview entirely, like in the movies, assuming the partner happened to be a woman. He would have one last big wild bachelor party and commit to his new spouse and get working on making babies.

  It looked like he was going to be doing things out of order. With no relationship prospects on the horizon, things were still about to change in a major way now that he was a father.

  I’m going to miss my freedom.

  He felt guilty at the thought while standing in the parking lot next to his car.

  He had only even learned about Daxter a couple weeks ago. Everything had been a dizzying whirlwind of paperwork and planning since then. He hadn’t even had a chance to celebrate the occasion.

  He sat in the car, turned the engine on,
and tried to decide how to spend his last night without the responsibilities of fatherhood.

  I need a party. But I can’t get drunk and show up hungover tomorrow. Hell, I might as well just grab a bite to eat, go back to the hotel, and get used to the fact that random hookups are going to have to be a thing of the past. Anyone I date starting tomorrow will have to at least have some potential of being the real deal.

  2

  Inigo

  Inigo tapped his foot, growing angrier with each passing minute.

  Where the hell is he?

  The night had started out bad enough. His team had lost the roller derby bout when he had wiped out and allowed the other team to score the game-winning point.

  Inigo shifted in the chair to take some of the pressure off of his sore butt, and shot another glance around the lobby of the hotel when he heard the sliding doors open. It was just an old man, pulling two suitcases, leading his wife to the front desk.

  Even with as horrible of a Friday night as Inigo was having, he couldn’t help but smile watching them. Who didn’t want that kind of long-term relationship? Someone to share the joys and heartaches during all their years together.

  He growled in frustration. Todd, the man he was supposed to be meeting, wasn’t someone he planned to share the years with. They’d met on Grindr and were hooking up for a one-night stand while Inigo was out of state on the team’s little road trip. Nice and simple.

  Well, it was supposed to be.

  “Where are you, Todd?” Inigo asked, shifting painfully again in his chair.

  “What?” a man asked from directly behind Inigo.

  With a smile exploding across his face, Inigo turned, ready to forgive and forget, and get to the fucking that he so desperately needed. The smile evaporated when he saw the man towering over him.

  Not that he was bad-looking. In fact, Inigo couldn’t stop staring at the tall, lean, and perfectly muscled man standing behind him. He would have happily hooked up with the stranger. But the guy wasn’t Todd. At least according to the profile picture.

  Knowing how often people used fake pictures, he crossed his fingers and asked, “Todd?”

  The man shook his head. “Sorry. Levi.”

  Inigo usually preferred Lees, but as he looked down at the man’s tight pants and the hint of his impressive bulge, he decided it might be time to try on a new brand. As he continued staring, but couldn’t get his mouth to work, he started to feel like an idiot. He tried shrinking further into the seat, but the pain on his sore butt stopped him short.

  Levi must have seen his grimace. “You okay? Anything I can do?”

  Inigo nodded, but then realized that this guy wasn’t about to let Inigo fuck him just because he was having a bad day. Before Levi could say anything else, Inigo added, “No. Just one of those days, you know? My team lost, and then my Grindr hookup stood me up. I should have just stayed home this weekend.”

  Levi nodded. “That’s happened to me plenty of times. The date part, at least. Almost always when I set up a date with someone on Grindr. I just wish I knew what to change so I could be someone’s first choice instead of their backup option.”

  Inigo’s mouth flopped open in shock. Finding out Levi was gay was shocking enough. His gaydar rarely let him down. Well, there was that time with Quinn. I completely missed that one. But if Levi had trouble landing a date on Grindr, what the hell were guys looking for?

  “Sorry,” Levi said. “You said Grindr, right?”

  “Yeah,” Inigo said, starting to regain his composure.

  Levi laughed. “God, that’s good. I was worried you’d said Tinder, and I’d projected my own gayness on the conversation.”

  “That’s funny. No, I’m as gay as they come,” Inigo said, while rising to his feet. He was still several inches shorter than Levi. At a little over six feet tall, Inigo wasn’t used to guys towering over him. “So, what’s a handsome, gay guy like you doing in a place like this?”

  “Picking up my son tomorrow.” As harmless as the statement was, Levi seemed to have trouble saying it.

  Afraid of ruining an otherwise pleasant conversation, the worry on Levi’s face still prompted Inigo to say, “Sounds like there’s a story there.”

  Levi shrugged. “Not as much as you might think. How about the CliffsNotes’ version?”

  “Only if you want. Happy to listen if it will help.”

  “Why not? It’s not like we’ll ever see each other again, right? We’re just strangers passing in the night.”

  Damn. It’s true, I’m sure, but damn.

  “Right. Use me however you please.”

  Inigo swore to himself that he’d tried to hide the flirtatious undertone, but based on how quickly Levi’s eyebrows rose, he hadn’t done a very good job.

  Clearing his throat, Levi dropped into the chair next to the one Inigo had been using. Inigo sat down too, and leaned on the armrest closest to Levi.

  It took Levi a few seconds of silence to gather his thoughts. “A while back, I hooked up with this girl after a concert.” He paused again.

  When he seemed lost in his own thoughts, Inigo asked what felt like the most harmless question possible. “What band?”

  “Lollapalooza.”

  “Oh, nice. Went to that back in ’93. Saw Cypress Hill and Sinead O’Connor on the same day. How wild is that?”

  Levi laughed. “That sounds like quite a lineup. Anyway, we hooked up in her SUV at some point during the day. After that, we ended up getting split up because of the friends we’d each come with, but we swapped numbers. She was from out of town, though—New York—so nothing ended up coming from it and after a couple of weeks we never contacted each other again.”

  Levi rubbed his hands through his hair and sighed. He stared out the window, looking as if he wanted to run far away.

  “Until recently,” Inigo offered, reminding Levi that he was still there.

  “Right. Well, kinda. I didn’t hear from her exactly. Some state agency. Apparently the woman—shit, I don’t even remember her name—died a few years back. The kid bounced between a couple of foster care programs, but somehow they eventually found out I was the dad, and gave me a call. So here I am.”

  Inigo gave up any thoughts of getting laid. Levi certainly had more important things to worry about. “Shit, I’m so sorry.”

  “Thanks. I barely even remember what the mom looked like. Blonde, I think. And I never knew she’d gotten pregnant. I’m a little shocked by it all, to tell the truth. What would you do if that happened to you?”

  Inigo was surprised to be asked such a personal question out of the blue. Levi clearly had a lot on his mind. He wished he had the right answer, but the topic was way outside his comfort zone. He chuckled and held his hands up defensively. “Guys don’t get pregnant, so that’s one call I won’t be getting.”

  Levi looked at Inigo and smiled. “Right. Bi Guy Problems for one hundred, Alex.”

  Inigo couldn’t imagine all of the emotions that must be going through Levi’s head. He was unsure whether he should try to get Levi to talk about the pressure of raising a kid he’d never met, or the sadness of losing a lover. Even if the guy had only known her for a few hours many years ago, that had to be rough on him.

  Instead, he was surprised to hear himself say, “Damn. That’s all very heavy. And here I was hoping I’d talk you into a night of debauchery. How can I help? Want someone to go to the meeting with you tomorrow? I’m free.”

  “No.” Levi looked out the window as if contemplating making a run from all of the challenges life had recently thrown at him. With a sigh, he forced a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. “I think I should meet him on my own. It’ll be strange enough for the poor kid.”

  Inigo had expected as much. He knew he was being silly, but he was still a little disappointed when he heard the words. In the end, though, he wouldn’t have wanted a stranger going with him if the tables were turned.

  The worst part was that all of the energy had leaked o
ut of their conversation because of his stupid offer. Inigo was about to make up some excuse to head back to his room when Levi threw a curveball.

  “But if you’re free, that night of debauchery sounds like a fucking great idea.”

  Inigo’s eyes darted over Levi’s face, looking for a sign that the other man was joking, but he only saw hunger. “You serious?”

  “Are you?”

  “Yeah, but I was just looking to fuck away some pent-up energy because of a roller derby loss earlier.”

  “Seriously? You’re on a derby team? I didn’t know guys did that.” Levi’s whole body language changed. He sat up straighter. He gazed into Inigo’s eyes. He looked ready to embrace the moment.

  “It’s making a comeback. Anyway, I screwed up. We lost, and I’m pissed about it.”

  Levi leaned toward Inigo. Their faces were inches away when Levi asked, “That means you want it rough, right?”

  Inigo nodded. He wanted to reach out and touch Levi’s cheek and maybe even dare to pull him in for a kiss. Instead, he sat frozen and wondering where his normal cockiness had gone.

  Am I losing my mojo? Am I getting too old? Levi must be about ten years younger than me.

  Whatever doubts were causing Inigo’s hesitations were not being felt by Levi. Inigo’s eyes widened as he watched Levi lean even closer until their lips lightly pressed against each other, and Levi gave him the lightest of butterfly kisses.