Cuffing New Year's Resolutions

  Cuffing New Year's Resolutions

  C.M. Kars

  Copyright

  Cuffing New Year’s Resolutions

  Book Four, The Cuffing Season Series

  by C.M. Kars

  Copyright © 2022 C.M. Kars

  All rights reserved.

  This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in any retrieval system, or transmitted in any form by any means—electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording, or otherwise—without prior written permission of the publisher, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

  Cover design by Indigo Chick Designs

  Editing by Kasi Alexander

  Contents

  WANT TO STAY IN THE KNOW?

  OTHER WORKS BY C.M. KARS

  PREWITT FAMILY TREE

  1. ONE

  2. TWO

  3. THREE

  4. FOUR

  5. FIVE

  6. SIX

  7. SEVEN

  8. EIGHT

  9. NINE

  10. TEN

  11. ELEVEN

  12. TWELVE

  13. THIRTEEN

  14. FOURTEEN

  15. FIFTEEN

  16. SIXTEEN

  17. SEVENTEEN

  18. EIGHTEEN

  19. NINETEEN

  20. TWENTY

  21. TWENTY-ONE

  CUFFING AND LOVING

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

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  C.M.

  OTHER WORKS BY C.M. KARS

  The Never Been Series

  Never Been Kissed

  Never Been Nerdy

  Never Been Loved

  Never Been Under the Mistletoe

  Never Been Boxed Set

  Sera & Hunter: A Never Been Collection

  The Fangirl Chronicles

  Fangirling Over You

  To All the Footballers I Loved Before

  Bias Wrecked

  Pucked Romance

  Never Say Never

  The Fangirl Chronicles Boxed Set

  The Cuffing Season Series

  Get Cuffed

  Cuffing and Turkey Stuffing

  Cuffing and Tree Trimming

  Cuffing New Year’s Resolutions

  Cuffing and Loving

  PREWITT FAMILY TREE

  ONE

  “Are you ready, Evalyn?”

  I frantically shake my head, my brain stuttering and trying to recall the guy’s name. I know that I know his name, it’s just nowhere to be found in my memory. I’m drawing a complete blank, and all I can do is blink at him.

  My feet have gone completely numb in these boots I’m wearing, and this jumpsuit is starting to feel kind of damp with how much I’m sweating.

  And my heart? I don’t even want to think about it.

  I don’t want to think about how hard it’s beating right now, like a whole stampede of horses are trampling my chest. I don’t want to think about the whooshing sound in my ears, the way my hair feels completely soaked underneath my helmet, and how my goggles are starting to fog up so now I really can’t see.

  Wonderful. Spectacular.

  I’m going to die, I know I’m going to die. Why am I doing this to myself?

  Because I made myself dumbass New Year’s Resolutions, that’s why. Like an idiot.

  Because my last relationship ended in a bust, and Evan threw that terrible word at me that might not hurt other people, but it sure as shit hurt me, and it hurt me badly. The very word confirming what I’ve always known about myself—that I’m not that interesting of a person.

  Evan called me boring.

  Boring!

  And it broke me a little, if I’m being honest, when I was trying so very hard to be what I thought he wanted me to be.

  So what did my dumb ass decide to do?

  Prove him wrong by taking my own stupid life in my own stupid hands and going skydiving—in the winter, of all times.

  Who’s boring now?

  Still me! I don’t want to do this!

  I swear, if I end up jumping and the parachute doesn’t open, I’m going to kill someone. And if that doesn’t work out, I’m going to come back and haunt all the people who have slighted me over my lifetime. Twenty-seven years of life can drum up a whole slew of people that pissed me off or made me feel small.

  They will feel my wrath.

  If I die.

  Which I don’t want to do.

  “Evalyn?”

  “What?” I snap, fiddling with my goggles to get the gross fogginess out of them. I don’t know how I’m moving as my body doesn’t feel like my own, but like it’s being controlled somewhere by master headquarters and people are scrambling to press buttons to override the fear paralysis that should be happening right now.

  Except I am moving—sluggishly, yeah, but moving nevertheless.

  My mouth’s drier than a desert, teeth tingling as my breath whistles over them fast and hard as fear fogs my brain.

  Funny thing is, we talked about this.

  There’s a whole orientation and signing of waivers, and all that before we even get on the plane. While I wanted to make a run for it the last second on the tarmac, I forced my stupid (boring) ass up those stairs and took a seat in the plane, rocking back and forth and wondering if now was the time to ask for a bathroom.

  I’m an idiot.

  A total idiot.

  What am I trying to prove?

  My heart gives a feeble kick against my sternum again, a paltry reminder that yes, I am alive, and I could not be once I jump out of this plane.

  God, God, God, if I die, I’m going to come back as the best avenging ghost in the world. That’s all there is to it.

  “Are you okay?” the instructor, Noah, asks. Apparently, we’re going to tandem jump.

  He’s going to strap me in with him, mount me like a stallion on top of a mare, and we’re going to fling ourselves out into the sky and hope that the parachute opens, and I can make it down to safety without breaking my legs to stick the landing.

  Sweat’s my constant companion. Pretty sure there’s a half cup floating between my boobs in my sports bra, and my hair feels veritably damp underneath the helmet, droplets of sweat pouring down the side of my temples—or at least, it feels that way.

  “Do I look okay to you? Honestly,” I groan, opening my jumpsuit just a little to get some air to my skin. “Does anybody look okay?” I swing my glance to the two other people who are jumping with me on this cold winter’s afternoon.

  I have a fleeting thought if the air will be so cold that it’ll freeze the very mucus from my nose, but I didn’t think of that when I booked this jump in the middle of the world’s biggest pity party, getting drunk on wine coolers of all things, and eating too many pretzels to chase it down. I should have thought about a lot of things, apparently.

  Evalyn Prewitt died because she didn’t think things through.

  No. No, no, no.

  The interior of the boorishly loud plane has me yelling out my answers, my voice in an odd limbo between fighting for dominance over all the horrible noise coming from the plane, and the wind whistling through the open door that I will not look at until the time comes.

  I double check my jumpsuit, smoothing out wrinkles where I can because honestly, that’s all I can do right now to not freak out.

  Everyone else in the plane apparently has nerves of steel, and I’m the only human being in here.

  Apparently.

  I sniff hard, ignoring the way my body’s vibrating with the need to move, but paralyzed to do so even while my hands pat down my body as if I’m checking for valuables when I have all of that safely stashed away in my car.

  My cousin Izzy is going to get a kick out of this.

  A kick.

  I pull in a deep, deep breath through my nose, pulling it deep into my lungs and holding it there for a few split seconds before letting it out in a gush.

  Noah looks less than impressed.

  Which is the kind of look I want on a guy that’s about to strap himself to me as we take a freefall out of this incessantly loud plane before I become a human pancake on the planet’s surface.

  I’ll show you boring, Evan. Look! I’m about to pee myself, but I’m here! I’m going to do it!

  Someone’s going to have to push me out of here. I’m going to need a little help.

  “Are you ready, Evalyn?”

  I’ve told the guy to call me Evie a hundred times, and still he uses my stuffy, annoying full name.

  “No, no I’m not,” I say on a pained growl, my teeth squeaking along each other as I grind them. “But we’re going to do this because I’m not a boring person,” I growl to myself.

  I should be embarrassed, voicing it out loud, the part of me that worries that I’m not enough for the kind of long-term relationship that always felt more like an adventure to me than anything else. And yet apparently, I am the person jumping out of a plane today on a whim.

  What did the gladiators say before stepping into the arena?

  We who are about to die salute you? Is that it?

  “Let’s do this,” I say, jaw clenched tight, my entire body shaking in fear. “Let’s do this.”

  “All right, we’re almost there, another couple of minutes,” Noah says, nodding at me
, holding up a hand for me to wait.

  I can’t tell much else from his expression when all I can see his mouth and chin, which I know will disappear under a neck warmer to deal with the icy air at this altitude.

  Humans weren’t meant to be at this altitude, oh my God. I’m going to die!

  I probably won’t die.

  These guys, and jumpers/instructors, are the most popular in the city, and the most reputable.

  Knowing my luck, though, I’m going to be that idiot person who gets stuck in a tree or something and dies horrifically.

  The adrenaline’s pumping through my veins so that time seems to move slowly, stretching across the seconds that feel like minutes as Noah steps up behind me once I give him permission to do so and ties me to him, like a sad excuse of some sort of BDSM shit that I’ve only ever read about.

  That’s the problem, I think, with me.

  I read, and read, and read—but I never do.

  That’s why I’m boring, I guess.

  And this year was meant to change that.

  I was going to transform into Evie 2.0.

  While I’ve dyed my virgin hair to an icy blond that I absolutely love, and may eventually dip my toe into going pastel, and I’m wearing honey-colored contacts because I always thought those where the most beautiful warm eyes (not because one of romantic hero book husbands had those exact same eyes, of course not)—I don’t feel any different.

  Even when I’m standing in this plane, about to plunge to my death apparently.

  “Ready?” Noah practically yells into my ear, making sure we’re secured together, close as two people can be (without all the clothes in between), Noah pressed up right against my back.

  And how sad is it that this is the most I’ve been touched by a guy in the past couple of months? That it feels nice?

  Am I allowed to like it? I don’t know.

  Noah walks us closer to the maw of the plane, where the great expanse of sky and land below has me dizzy for a split second, my heart beating even faster and harder in my chest, as if reminding me that these are the last few beats I have left.

  “Count us down, Evalyn,” Noah says, and I resolutely shake my head. I am doing no such thing, no such thing.

  I jerk my thumb back at him, trying to tell him without words that I want him to do it. Still, in this moment, I’m not brave enough to take that final step, it looks like.

  Crushing disappointment makes my shoulders slump, and while my hands are placed on either side of the door, clutching on to the frame for dear life, I duck my head down and stare at this bird’s eye view that really gives me no reference at all to how high we really are.

  I’m just going to be jumping into space.

  I give one last final nod, and Noah counts us down.

  “Three, two, one…”

  I take a step out into space, knowing that no one’s going to catch my fall.

  “So how was it?” Noah asks after we’ve separated from each other, and I’m sitting on the open ground, in the middle of the snow, fighting to catch my breath. I did nothing but jump out into the air, and I feel like I’ve sprinted for too long.

  I flop onto my back, staring at the gray sky, squinting up at it now that my goggles are off and vow to myself to never regret the ground I walk on ever again.

  “Good,” I murmur, my voice hoarse from all the yelling I did. I didn’t know I could yell so loud or long. “It was…good.”

  Noah glances down at me from his standing position, hands on his hips. We’re currently waiting for the two other pairs of people to come down since I took first crack at it. I stare up at him while my body fights the post-adrenaline shakes, and I have the awful urge to cry.

  “You survived,” he says, crouching down as I sit up so we’re both eye level. I sniff horrendously, trying to stave off the impending tears while I blink at him, a little too quickly. “You did it, Evalyn.”

  “Evie,” I whisper, voice gone to shit. “Evie, remember?”

  If I had time to think about it, I’d say that Noah is handsome, the kind of handsome that’s overlooked. Not the movie star type that knocks you on your ass, but the kind of solid features that could feel like home.

  Feel like home? What’s the matter with you?

  I shake my head, trying to dispel those kinds of thoughts and watch as the two other pairs come down and eventually land in front of us, sticking the landing without anyone getting hurt.

  We’re driven back to the main headquarters, give back the jumpsuits, settle up what we need to, and head out to the parking lot to our respective cars.

  Noah’s apparently leaving at the same time, too, since it’s getting darker now the closer the time ticks over to three-thirty in the afternoon. He gives me a wave as I get into my car, legs still a little shaky as I just allow myself to breathe, to soak in the experience that I just had that felt like some sort of dream, or as if it happened to someone else.

  I know that’s partially due to the fact that my brain is flooded with all kinds of neurochemicals right now, and the endorphin high should be hitting soon, but the crash is very real, and it all feels…hollow.

  I cover my face with my hands as I curl forward, forehead meeting the steering wheel, and sob, letting it all out.

  Everything feels too much and not enough, and my heart hurts and my nose is already starting to leak as tears fall down my cheeks. I press my forehead more firmly against the wheel, the tiny flare of pain grounding me.

  What a way to start the year, huh? Trying to be a better version of yourself, and instead, you’re moved to tears in Vick’s car.

  I jump when there’s a knock at my window, and I hastily sniff hard and swipe at my cheeks, as if my tears are shameful. I glance over to see Noah standing there, frowning down at me. I give him a jerky wave, trying to shoo him to his car even though I’m sure he’s freezing standing out in the cold like that.

  He mimes for me to roll down my window, and I oblige him, opening it up a sliver once I turn the key in the ignition.

  “Are you okay?” he asks again. “Are you safe to drive home?”

  I nod hastily. My number one defining characteristic is being responsible (and boring, apparently). “I’ll be fine. I’m just going to stay here for a little while longer.”

  “Do you have anything on you that you can eat?”

  I grab the protein bars that I have stashed in the glove compartment, leaning back into my seat to show it to him. “See? I’m fine. Please go. I’ll be all right.”

  “Take your time here until you feel safe to drive,” he says, looking at me sternly.

  Who the hell is this stranger, looking after my well-being? Why is he being so nice?

  I wince, trying to shake off this web of conflicting emotions I seem to be stuck in. I clear my throat, cough into my fist, and rip open my protein bar, taking a vicious bite.

  “I’ll be fine. I’m sure you have somewhere to be.”

  Noah frowns at me, then nods slowly, taking me at my word.

  He gives me another wave was he walks backwards and then heads to his car across the parking lot where I imagine employees need to be. He waves again when he takes off, and I wave back, still feeling empty, but a little better now that I’m munching on the protein bar.

  I sit a while, letting my car get completely warm before washing down the bar with water from the bottle I always keep in my purse, and then start heading out of the lot and get onto the main road that’ll eventually take me to the 10 and back into the city.

  I cry intermittently on the drive home, getting mad at myself because I need my eyeballs to be free of tears to actually see the road.

  I make it home just fine, my tiny one-bedroom apartment empty save for the lonely succulent sitting on the far windowsill in my kitchen – the only one that cares if I show up or not, looks like.

  I take a hot shower, easing my aching muscles from being tensed up for the last however many hours it was, wash my hair, and then put the whole mop of it in a hair mask, lamenting my decisions to go so extreme with my hair color. Maybe I’ll go back to brown, if I can find the time.

  I pull on soft jammies and fuzzy socks because regular socks don’t cut it anymore, and a giant hoodie that used to belong to Evan but that I kept because he left it more times at my place than I can count, and it’s comfy and warm, and reminds of a younger, better version of myself that I want to get back.