Showing results by author "Melissa Toppen" in All Categories

Ten hours… That’s how much time we spent together. How much time I got with the man whose bright eyes and sultry smile almost made me forget that I was sick. Six hundred minutes… That’s how long it took me to fall in love. Thirty-six thousand seconds... And then it was over. And all I wanted was more. More seconds. More minutes. More hours. More him. Ten hours… Such a small, insignificant amount of time. Yet those ten hours changed everything.

I met Thad Mitchell for the first time when I was just a child. I didn’t remember much about him - except that he pushed me off a swing set when I was four years old and broke my arm. Not the best thing to remember about a person, but there it is. He moved away a couple years later and soon became a distant memory. That is until I walked into my parents' house after being gone for four years to find him sitting at the kitchen table with my family like he’d been there all along.

It was destiny - the night I met Hudson Demasi. We spent one incredible night together under a haze of tequila - a perfect night. And when I woke the next day, he was gone.... I never expected to see him again - especially not five years later standing on a stage in front of thousands of screaming fans as none other than hot new country artist Hudson James.

It was destiny - the night I met Hudson Demasi. I remember how effortlessly he stole my heart - his dark eyes and quick smile forever etched into my mind. We spent one incredible night together under a haze of tequila - a perfect night. And when I woke the next day, he was gone. I never expected to see him again - especially not five years later standing on a stage in front of thousands of screaming fans as none other than hot, new country artist, Hudson James.

Life is hard. There’s no secret in that statement. Life. Is. Hard. Simple enough. But my life hasn’t just been hard… I’ve gotten used to it over the years - come to expect it really. So when fate hands me yet another big f--k you, I’m not even a little bit surprised. Why should I be? I mean, after everything I’ve been through, why not throw my best friend’s ex-boyfriend into the mix and see how royally I can screw this up too. It doesn’t matter that he loved her first. It doesn’t matter that he’s wrong for me in every way possible.

Life is full of choices- of chances- of moments. Chances we regret not taking. Choices we wish we could change. And then there are the moments that define us. Kam was my choice.... The one who stole my heart instantly. Kane was my chance.... The one who set me ablaze with just one look. They were my moment.... Two brothers that both owned a part of me. Two brothers that I loved in different ways for different reasons. One brother shattered my heart. The other put it back together. Both changed me forever.

I remember the very first time I laid eyes on Cole Lincoln. It still feels like yesterday when he stumbled into my life with his messy brown hair and dark eyes. Even though I was only 10 years old at the time, I knew right then and there that he was going to change everything. From that point on, Cole and I were always together, inseparable, and I naively believed we'd be best friends forever. But forever didn't last nearly as long as I expected. We grew up and grew apart, life driving the distance between us.

It only takes one night-one moment, one small snippet of time-to change everything. At sixteen-years-old, Sebastian Baxter taught me that. He taught me a lot of things. He never had to work for my heart. In some unexplainable way I think it had always belonged to him anyway. Some might think our love story is over, but deep down I know it's only just beginning. Because it's not about where the night begins, it's about where it ends.

Our parents’ friendship meant we had to co-exist. But it didn’t mean we had to like it. He purposely did things to get under my skin. Like spreading rumors about me in junior high so no boys wanted to go out with me. Or sleeping with several of my high school friends, just to prove he could.

At twenty-six, I thought I knew exactly what my life would look like. Marry my fiancé, Blake. Buy a big house on the California coast and have a couple of kids. Everything was so clear, until my mom got sick, and then suddenly it wasn’t anymore. In the span of one year, my entire life was different. My mom was gone. I had abruptly ended my engagement. And I found myself three thousand miles away from home, trying to reassemble the pieces of my life when none of them seemed to fit together anymore.

I remember the first time I saw Sutton Barnett in perfect detail–like a fragment of time suspended in front of my eyes. I remember his shirt–faded blue against tanned skin that had seen countless hours of the summer sun. Wet droplets peppered his shoulders from where his still wet hair had dripped onto the fabric. He rounded the bottom of the stairs, our eyes meeting for only a fraction of a second before he looked away, but it was long enough for me to know right then and there that nothing would ever be the same again.

I had a lot of plans entering my senior year of college—dealing with Archer Copeland in any capacity was most definitely not on that list. The cocky quarterback and I have been at odds since last year when he posed naked for one of my art classes. Okay, so he was wearing a towel, but really, that barely even counts. Apparently, he enjoyed how uncomfortable the whole situation made me and decided that messing with me was his new favorite past time.

I fell in love with Sutton Barnett the first time I saw him. I couldn’t explain it, or rationalize it, but in some weird way, it’s like I knew he was the one that would change everything. And he did. Just not the way I expected. I blamed him for my pain. Let it fester in my chest, until it had ripped apart any shred of the girl I once was. But he wasn’t the first to break me. No, that came before Sutton. Before his bright blue eyes made me believe in something more.