Everything Changes Read online

  Everything Changes

  A novel by

  Shey Stahl

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, sponsors, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, dead or living, is coincidental.

  The opinions expressed in this book are solely those of the author.

  Warning:

  This book is not suitable for anyone under the age of seventeen. This book contains explicit and detailed sexual encounters, explicit language and drug and alcohol use between minors. Please be warned.

  Everything Changes

  Copyright © 2013 by Shey Stahl

  Published in the United States of America

  EBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared, or given away. The unauthorized reproduction or distribution of this copyrighted work is a crime punishable by law. No part of this book may be scanned, uploaded to or downloaded from file sharing sites, or distributed in any other way via the internet or any other means, electronic or print, without the publisher’s permission. Criminal copyright infringement including infringement without monetary gain is investigated by the FBI and is punishable by up to 5 years in federal prison and a fine of $250.000.

  All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of Shey Stahl.

  Cover Art: Sarah Hansen © Okay Creations

  Interior Design and Formatting: Shey Stahl Productions

  Edited by: The Polished Pen - Maxann Dobson

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to everyone, including my loving family, who supports me and reads my stories. I couldn’t do it without your love and support! A special thank you to the girls that walked me through every step of the way on this book, Callie, Kari, Laura, Judie, Maxann, Megan, Heather, Danielle, Barb, Tray and Kim.

  Also have to thank Sarah Hansen for her amazing cover once again!

  The blogs who pimp everything I write: Shh Mom’s Reading, The Book Hookers, Stick Girl Book Reviews, Totally Booked, Smardy Pants Book Blog, Kindlehooked, Romantic Reading Escapes Book Blog, Sugar and Spice Reviews, Chris’ Book Blog, The Book Avenue Review, Flirty and Dirty Book Blog, Reading Is My Breathing and Up All Night Book Blog. You bloggers do so much for authors for nothing but your love for reading. I love you gals!

  This book is dedicated to the boy, the one that changed everything I thought I knew.

  I knew a boy once.

  He was a boy that changed everything.

  I didn’t know Parker O’Neil outside of the occasional smile and wink. The AMA Supercross racer came to our small town one winter, and I had no idea what he was capable of. How could I have known that he would change my life forever that summer?

  Eventually, the occasional smile became a smile I grew to love and longed to see. The occasional wink became a gesture that made my soul sway and my heart ache. In the canyons of the desert, he showed me his lifestyle and his love.

  What I didn’t see was the control he had over me. It was a power the glitz and glamor of his professional lifestyle had and eventually what tore apart any life I thought I knew.

  In his world of banging bars and soaring jumps, there was no room for someone like me. But for five years, every time he called or touched me, everything changed again. It was a touch that could heal anything and a smile that could light even the darkest nights.

  I will prepare and someday my chance will come.

  Abraham Lincoln

  Copyright © 2013 by Shey Stahl

  Acknowledgements

  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

  CHAPTER 30

  CHAPTER 31

  CHAPTER 32

  Meet the Author

  PROLOGUE

  Rowan Jensen

  Lipstand

  This happens when a rider crashes face-first into the ground.

  July 27, 2002

  All of this started with a question. Words would be spoken and a vow would be made.

  A ring would be exchanged and a kiss would be placed.

  That meant something to me, but when I saw him again, I couldn’t remember that promise because it meant nothing since it would be promised to the wrong man.

  When the ground shifts beneath you and everything you thought you once knew changes, can you handle it or do you collapse?

  I couldn’t—that much was evident—and I collapsed face-first into the dirt.

  If you understood the dilemma I faced now, you would probably wonder what in the hell went wrong. Well, everything went wrong.

  That was the only answer I could come up with. It was just one mistake after another, and it was certainly mutual as both of us avoided the truth. The truth was we were using each other, both for a different reason. We hung on to that little piece of ourselves we found that summer. Five years later, under the warm summer night air of Moab, Utah, we were tangled up in skin again. The bright orange sun danced across the valley of red rocks as it set in the distance, the shimmering light catching sparks from his chocolate hair that fell in his eyes, and it reminded me of what we once had.

  “Oh God!” Burying my face in my hands, wishing away the regret, I asked, “What have we done?”

  “Are you going to tell him?” His voice was anxious.

  “What?” I tore my hands away from my face, shocked. “No…it would kill him.”

  His face fell and I realized by not telling him, I was killing both of them. His blue eyes held the same disappointment they did when he left the first time. Only now, any hope he once had was gone.

  It was hard to understand how we were here once again when we swore we never would.

  Confused and broken, everything had changed. But like I said, it wasn’t just one mistake that led us here. It was one after another.

  CHAPTER 1

  Rowan Jensen

  Starting Gate

  This is the gate where the riders all line up alongside each other for the start of the race. The event starts when the gate is dropped.

  January 9, 1997

  “Hey, Ro, come meet the new mechanics!” my dad yelled. I was in the office pretending to work, but really I was painting the tips of my fingernails with whiteout to give myself a French manicure.

  When I stepped into the shop and saw two boys around my age standing there, life working at my dad’s shop suddenly looked a little more appealing to a seventeen-year-old girl.

  “Ro...” My dad motioned to them. Both boys were looking around the shop taking in the other mechanics and old cars lined up in the ten bays we had. “This is Justin and Parker O’Neil. They’re here until the fall maybe.”

  Justin looked at me and smiled, shaking my hand as he said his name and then spoke for his brother. “This is my younger brothe
r, Parker.”

  Parked tipped his head as if that would be his only acknowledgment. A soft shy smile tugged at his lips as he shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans.

  I gave my own nod, a little shy myself, and then jetted the other direction to observe in private.

  Boys were definitely something that caught my eye these days, and those boys were like candy.

  My mom, Sarah, used to tell me that you could be anywhere when your life begins but you wouldn’t know it until it changed everything you thought you knew. When she said it at the time, the phrase didn’t have much meaning to me. Seeing Parker O’Neil, I finally understood what she meant.

  My mom was my best friend growing up. She made me feel…normal. I looked her and thought to myself, “At least you’re not like her.” She may have been a few cans short of a six-pack, but that wasn’t her fault. Besides, it was what made her so entertaining.

  I had my mom as a friend until I turned ten and met Adeline Grace Ayers, or Addy as we called her. At five foot two, she had these adorable blonde ringlets that framed her heart shaped face and big blue with and a personality just as bright.

  Addy was another individual that made me feel just a little bit more stable than the rest of the world. If you knew her, you would completely understand.

  We went through every milestone together: school, wearing makeup, shaving, first period (on the same day), and first kiss (same day, too). We used to joke that we’d probably lose our virginity the same day, except that would have been kind of weird.

  During our junior year at Shelton High School, Addy and I worked for my dad, Rick. He had a local custom repair shop where Addy and I acted as his office staff. We did more goofing off than actually working and spent an unhealthy amount time fantasizing about the mechanics. My dad also owned a coffee shop, which was right outside the office, that we manned as well.

  It seemed we worked a lot for only being seventeen but it had its perks too.

  I would say we did it for the money, but we loved being there. Between the crazy customers and the mechanics in the shop, we had a good time and that shop became our home, a place where we were comfortable and acted like ourselves. In high school, where so much of what you say and do is constantly scrutinized, it was nice to have a place like the shop to hang out.

  When June rolled around and summer break encroached upon us, it was rare that we weren’t at the shop drooling over Parker and Justin. That was our thing. We worked there mostly because of the eye candy that was provided. Why would two teenage girls want to work in a shop full of greasy mechanics if not to look at them?

  You would think that we had the overweight guys who wore holey jeans and wife-beater tank tops with their ass cracks hanging out, but we were selective about the mechanics.

  Parker O’Neil was the shy younger brother who, up until this year, was a professional dirt bike racer. From what my dad had told me, they came to Shelton for summer work and so they could ride some of the toughest trail riding the northwest had to offer in Belfair and Tahuya.

  Shelton, Washington, a place I call home, was a small town in the Puget Sound built around logging, farming, and oyster cultivation. It was also known as the Christmas Tree Capital. Everywhere you looked was thick with dense Evergreen and Douglas firs. With plentiful rainfall, the ground was soggy most of the time. When summer came along a cool breeze remained as weather moved in from Pacific Ocean.

  It was kind of funny to me that anyone would travel to this small town, but I guess it had its appeal just like any city. Some people thought it was so cool to live where there were hundreds of miles of trails only thirty minutes away, but just like any town, it had its drawbacks. It was just a town to me, one I badly wanted out of at times. Just north of this town, buried deep in the forest, were some of the best dirt bike trails known to any enthusiast around. Technical, single track mostly, with steep muddy, sharp, and undefined turns, thick overgrown grass, and roots and stumps schooled even the adept riders.

  I understood why they came here. It was exactly where any dirt bike rider would want to train for anything technical so they could get better at that type of riding. Knowing Parker was a Motocross guy, it was probably right up his alley.

  Since Parker arrived he had yet to speak to me directly, but I did get a lot of smiles from him. One time I got a wink out of him but never words. It wasn’t like I had never heard him talk; he just never talked to me.

  After a while, it was sort of a mission for Addy and me to get him to talk us, but we never succeeded. Soon, I became obsessed with Parker and why he wouldn’t talk to me.

  No more than a few weeks after they arrived, Justin and Parker began attending Shelton High School with us and became the topic of our small town, everyone wondering why they were here. From what Justin said, it was the trails and I could understand that, but it seemed there was a bigger reason as to why they came here. It didn’t make a lot of sense how Parker raced professionally and then one day suddenly didn’t.

  Gossip and sighing admirers followed Parker everywhere in school, as did I. I couldn’t help myself. He was amazingly good looking and kind of intriguing with the way he was so shy.

  He wasn’t your stereotypical, obnoxious high school jock that made it to the big time at a young age. Parker O’Neil was someone you noticed, no matter how hard you tried not to. Whether you wanted to admit it or not, he drew you in.

  I found myself checking him out when I saw him the day he arrived in town and then again in school. I was just as much in awe of his tall, lean figure, tousled chocolate hair, and the mysterious blue eyes as the next hopeless girl.

  As hopeless as I was, I still hadn’t talked to him as summer was approaching.

  May 31, 1997

  As the winter progressed and turned to spring, I was still stalking Parker at school and at work in hopes of actually having a conversation with him but never did. Day after day, I tried to make excuses to flirt with him or strike up a conversation, all with failed attempts that left me feeling more and more like a loser. It was like I was some kind of mental case any time I was around him, and I forgot how to speak and walk, let alone my own name. The more that happened, the more I despised being a teenage girl.

  I felt like time was my enemy, too, because how long would someone like Parker stay in this small Northwest town? If I didn’t have to stay, I wouldn’t have. Shelton had nothing to offer besides logging or farming. There were people who had good jobs, but they usually commuted to the larger cities surrounding us like Olympia or Tacoma.

  It was a few weeks before the end of my junior year. Addy and I were messing around in the office before closing up for the night when she sprung her summer plans upon me and how I initially found myself talking to Parker O’Neil.

  “Do you think your parents would let you go somewhere this summer?” she asked, filing purchase orders for the week.

  Sitting down at my desk, I thumbed through a few work orders for Saturday’s schedule. “Well let’s see. My mom asked me yesterday if I’d be graduating college next week, so I’m certain she wouldn’t even know where I was, and Rick…he might have something to say about that.” I gestured around to the mountains of paper work surrounding us.

  Addy had an answer for everything. “What if I found him a replacement for the summer so we could act like normal seventeen-year-old kids?”

  My eyebrow arched in question. Addy always had ulterior motives for everything, and she never exposed the plan until she had you hooked. “Who?”

  “My sister…Mia.”

  Mia Hanson was not Addy’s sister; she was her guardian. Addy’s parents couldn’t take care of her when she was younger so her mom’s best friend obtained custody. Mia cared deeply about Addy and her safety, given her rough childhood, but she also encouraged Addy to enjoy life. She could basically do what she wanted and when she wanted as long as she checked in.

  “What would make Mia want to sit inside an office all summer long?”

  Mia was a teac
her at the elementary school in town, so she had summers off. Why she would want to work all summer when they paid her to enjoy her freedom seemed odd to me until Addy giggled.

  “Ben. Why else?”

  Ben Peterson was our new lead mechanic in the shop who my dad adored, as did Mia apparently.

  “Come on, Rowan.” Addy brought out the begging and worked those blue eyes to her benefit. “We haven’t done anything fun beside work here.” Her eyes could persuade even me.

  “And what do you suppose we do?” I looked up from the work order in my hands to her smiling face.

  Getting out of this town for the summer was exactly what I needed. I didn’t have any friends outside of Addy, and with my mom’s memory slipping, it would do me some good to get away from everything and see what this world had to offer. I needed some me time and something more than what I had here. I guess you had to understand that other than trips to Seattle and the one trip to Idaho to see my grandparents last summer, I had never left this sleepy northwest town.

  Addy’s eyes dropped, a ringlet of blonde hair falling into her eyes. “We could go to Moab…”

  I knew exactly where this was going. “And would this have anything to do with Justin going to Moab?”

  Her shy smile gave it away. “Gee, I guess that’s a yes.”

  Justin and Parker lived for riding. They both had these Suzuki RM 250 dirt bikes that they were on pretty much every day. Living in the Northwest where the cloud cover and trees took over, they had an ample amount of space to tear up the dirt.

  Justin looked like a badass, a good looking badass, with shaggy light brown hair and dreamy blue-gray eyes. He was always smiling and striking up a conversation with anyone who stopped by the shop and the complete opposite of Parker.

  Addy was, without a shred of doubt, in love with Justin O’Neil—even without his two-stroke. I had a feeling if he asked her to marry him, she would but under one condition: they rode off into the sunset on his bike.