Just a Boyfriend

by Wilson, Sariah

  PRAISE FOR THE #LOVESTRUCK NOVELS

  “Wilson has mastered the art of creating a romance that manages to be both sexy and sweet, and her novel’s skillfully drawn characters, deliciously snarky sense of humor, and vividly evoked music-business settings add up to a supremely satisfying love story that will be music to romance readers’ ears.”

  —Booklist (starred review) on #Moonstruck

  “Making excellent use of sassy banter, hilarious texts, and a breezy style, Wilson’s energetic story brims with sexual tension and takes readers on a musical road trip that will leave them smiling. Perfect as well for YA and new adult collections.”

  —Library Journal on #Moonstruck

  “#Starstruck is oh so funny! Sariah Wilson created an entertaining story with great banter that I didn’t want to put down. Ms. Wilson provided a diverse cast of characters in their friends and family. Fans of Sweet Cheeks by K. Bromberg and Ruthie Knox will enjoy #Starstruck.”

  —Harlequin Junkie (4.5 stars) on #Starstruck

  OTHER TITLES BY SARIAH WILSON

  The End of the Line Novels

  The Friend Zone

  The #Lovestruck Novels

  #Starstruck

  #Moonstruck

  #Awestruck

  The Royals of Monterra Series

  Royal Date

  Royal Chase

  Royal Games

  Royal Design

  The Ugly Stepsister Series

  The Ugly Stepsister Strikes Back

  The Promposal

  Stand-Alone Novels

  Once Upon a Time Travel

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Text copyright © 2020 by Sariah Wilson

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

  Published by Montlake, Seattle

  www.apub.com

  Amazon, the Amazon logo, and Montlake are trademarks of Amazon.com, Inc., or its affiliates.

  ISBN-13: 9781542094344

  ISBN-10: 1542094348

  Cover design by Erin Dameron-Hill

  Cover photography by Wander Aguiar Photography

  For Sarah Elizabeth Younger.

  To everything yet to come.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE EMBER

  CHAPTER TWO BASH

  CHAPTER THREE EMBER

  CHAPTER FOUR EMBER

  CHAPTER FIVE BASH

  CHAPTER SIX EMBER

  CHAPTER SEVEN BASH

  CHAPTER EIGHT EMBER

  CHAPTER NINE BASH

  CHAPTER TEN BASH

  CHAPTER ELEVEN EMBER

  CHAPTER TWELVE BASH

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN EMBER

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN EMBER

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN BASH

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN EMBER

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN BASH

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN EMBER

  CHAPTER NINETEEN BASH

  CHAPTER TWENTY EMBER

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE EMBER

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO BASH

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE BASH

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR EMBER

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE BASH

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX EMBER

  EPILOGUE EMBER

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  CHAPTER ONE

  EMBER

  “Hey, Mom said to tell you that Bash is coming to dinner.”

  My little sister, Lauren, stuck her head through my open door with a worried expression, waiting for a response. But I could only stare at her, my mouth hanging open, my newest young-adult fantasy book sliding out of my hand and landing on the floor.

  “Ember? Did you hear me? I said Bash is going to be here for dinner. Soon. Doug went to pick him up.”

  Her voice sounded really far away, like we were at opposite ends of a wind tunnel. Bash? Here? In my house? How was this possible? Somehow I’d thought I’d never have to see him again, and now my sixteen-year-old sister was telling me that I’d been wrong.

  My head filled with a howling, rushing wind that made it impossible to think. Or to process what was going on. My stepfather had gone to get Bash. And was bringing him here.

  My mother had lured me home from college under false pretenses. She’d offered me a home-cooked meal and said she had something to tell me. Turned out she had someone to show me, instead.

  How was I going to face Bash again?

  To stand in the same room with him and not fall apart?

  “When?” I asked. I had a million other questions, but that one seemed the most important.

  She shrugged one shoulder. “I just told you. Any minute now.”

  A bone-deep paralysis engulfed me. I had to move. To speak. To do something to stop this from happening. But it was inevitable, and although I had delayed it for a long time, today apparently was the day of reckoning.

  “You look upset,” Lauren said, sitting down on the edge of my bed.

  “Well, at least we know my face is still working.”

  My face. And my hair. I had to do something with both. I couldn’t see him with a messy topknot and a shiny nose. I jumped up and ran into the shared bathroom on the second floor. I started throwing open drawers. Did I still have any makeup here? If I did, it would be left over from high school and would most likely give me an eye infection. I didn’t care, though—it would be totally worth it. There, in the bottom drawer. A very old stash of some of my makeup that included most of the basics. Including pink eye from using it, probably.

  Both Lauren and Marley, my stepsister, kept their makeup in their respective rooms after a screaming, hair-pulling fight over which one of them owned an expensive and hard-to-get tube of Red Hot Romance lipstick. I’d suggested cutting it in half in order to find out who the real owner was, but nobody had been amused.

  And given that grudges were nursed for a long time in this household, there was no way either one of them would have helped me out since I hadn’t picked their side. Lipstick was still a dirty word in these parts. I could have tried to beg and cajole and plead to borrow some makeup, but there wasn’t enough time.

  So permanent blindness it would have to be.

  Lauren had followed me into the bathroom and studied me critically as I dug into the hardened eye shadow. “How long has this weird thing with Bash been going on?” she asked.

  I’d never told her all the details, and I had no intention of telling her what had happened. She thought we just didn’t get along, and it was easier to let her believe that. I used my right ring finger to brush the neutral beige onto my eyelid. “It’s Wednesday, right? So for, like, three and a half years.”

  She nodded as I grabbed an eyeliner pencil. “Yeah, I thought it was something stupid long like that. You have any embalming fluid in there?”

  That made me pause. “What? Is that some kind of crack about me being old?” I was about to turn twenty-one, but to my teen sister, anybody over the age of eighteen was old.

  “No. Remember how you said the only way you’d see Bash again would be over your dead body? Mom will be pissed if you start decomposing at the dinner table. So, embalming fluid.” She looked so pleased with herself.

  “You are not being very helpful right now!” I yelped as I jabbed myself in the eye with the eyeliner. Yep, definitely getting an infection.

  “My dad just called. They’re almost here!” Marley ran up to us in a blur of blonde hair and bright-white teeth, her voice giddy with
excitement. She reached for Lauren’s hand. “Come on! I’m so excited!”

  Despite the Great Lipstick Wars, Lauren and Marley were the absolute best of friends. Marley had wished for a sister her entire life, and when Doug and Mom married, she was thrilled to be given one exactly her same age. I’d always been kind of an afterthought, not really getting close to anyone in my new family.

  Well, except for Bash.

  I let my dark-brown hair down and began brushing it savagely. There was a lot of noise and excitement downstairs, including Roscoe, our corgi, barking as loudly as he could. I didn’t hear any masculine voices, though, so I still had time. Not enough time to get in the shower and wash my hair, so I settled on a high ponytail and spraying all the frizzies into place.

  There. A little bit of lip gloss that tasted like cherries, which seemed hopelessly optimistic, given how unlikely it was that anyone would be kissing me today, and I was ready. Well, readyish.

  How could anyone be ready when the love of their life was about to walk through the front door? And after three and a half years of absolute radio silence? Not a text, not an email, not even a like on an Insta post. Nothing.

  Maybe seeing him again would be good for me. It would be the closure I’d never gotten. I’d see him, say hello, suffer through dinner with him, and then move on with my life.

  I heard the front door open to cries of delight and Roscoe frantically yelping his excitement. I heard men’s voices, and my heart dropped to the floor. How was I going to do this? I wasn’t strong enough.

  Yes, you are, a voice inside me said. You believed in the tooth fairy for the first nine years of your life. You can believe in yourself for the next two hours.

  Right. I totally could.

  And I believed that clear up until I got to the bottom of the stairs and saw him.

  Bash.

  Still ridiculously tall, with the same blond hair as Marley, the same dark-green eyes, and the same brilliant smile. He was so good-looking it bordered on being suspicious. His football build strained against his white T-shirt as he hugged everyone in the foyer. Roscoe was so excited I thought he was going to throw up.

  Which I totally understood, because then Bash directed that smile at me, and I melted. He walked toward me, and giant butterflies formed in my stomach. Not regular little monarchs. But, like, ones that had been grown at a mad scientist’s laboratory inside a vat of radioactive goo and then set loose in my stomach, their humungous wings flapping and rearranging my internal organs.

  While my insides churned, my heart felt like I had strolled into a time machine and been warped back to my seventeen-year-old self, who had loved him enthusiastically and wholeheartedly. A girl who couldn’t imagine the heartache that was waiting for her.

  “Hi, Ember.”

  I couldn’t help it. I had to close my eyes, just for a second. His voice. How had I forgotten how much I loved the deep timbre of his voice? Instead of saying hello, it was like he had started performing open-heart surgery on me, exposing all of my hidden emotions to the world. Because I had all of the feels again. All of them.

  When he’d run away because he’d been so repulsed by me or by the idea of having a relationship with me, I had very maturely decided that Bash was not the holder and keeper of my self-confidence or my self-worth. That I was beautiful and awesome, and any guy would be lucky to be in a relationship with me. That I was totally fine without him.

  Now all those things were being exposed for the lies that they’d so obviously been. All my defenses were being stripped away, and all he’d said was hi.

  The same thing he’d said to me so many times before in high school, and in the few weeks we’d shared a home, and it caused a pang of nostalgia so powerful I couldn’t speak.

  Which he, of course, noticed. “Sorry, I guess hi was a big ask.”

  He teased, but I heard something else in his voice. Fear? Of what? I’d never known Bash to be afraid of anything. Was he worried about how I’d respond?

  “Nice to see you,” I said, hearing how strained my voice was. “You look . . .” I trailed off as I tried to use an appropriate word. Not the ones that were currently whirling around inside my head. Like gorgeous. Drool-worthy. Jumpable. I settled on, “Older.” It was true. The boy I’d loved was gone, replaced by a man who had somehow managed to improve about a hundredfold with age.

  He let out a little laugh. “Time tends to do that to people. You look good, too.”

  I felt indignant at his remark, like he’d somehow known exactly what I’d been thinking. I hadn’t said he looked good. He wasn’t allowed to put words in my mouth, regardless of how true they might have been.

  Before I could make a proper retort, I noticed Roscoe dancing in circles around Bash’s feet. Roscoe had instantly fallen in love with Bash when my family had moved in. Not that I could blame the little guy, having had a similar experience myself several months prior to that event.

  But Roscoe quickly added Bash to the list of People Worth Waiting by the Door For. He would sit in the foyer, tail wagging as he waited for Bash to come home from practice. Even after Bash had moved to Pennsylvania to live with his maternal grandparents, Roscoe still expected him to arrive home, not understanding that Bash wasn’t coming back.

  My heart broke all over again the day Roscoe stopped waiting for him.

  That memory . . . just . . . wrecked me. I couldn’t stand here and make jokes with Bash or hug him like everyone else had. I found that I couldn’t even speak. So I did the only thing that was left.

  I turned and ran. Back up the stairs, back to the privacy of my sort-of room, where I could irrationally overreact to my heart’s content.

  When the Carlson women had moved into the Sebastian home, there weren’t enough bedrooms for everyone. It was suggested that Lauren and Marley share, but my mom had worried that all the kids would need their own space in order to better adjust to all the big changes that were happening.

  So Doug had taken the game room above the garage and split it in half. He put up some framing, hammered down Sheetrock on one side, and installed a door. It gave the illusion of privacy, and I’d tried my best to make it feel homey, but mostly I’d just put up a bunch of posters. Doug had always intended to finish it off by adding wiring and insulation, and making it sturdier than it currently was. He never did. Every time I closed the door to my bedroom, the entire wall would shake slightly.

  Much as it did now. I knew not to slam the door, even though the urge was there. I tried hard to catch my shaky breath and calm my even shakier hands. How had I possibly thought seeing him again would give me closure? If anything, it had given me . . . whatever the opposite of closure was. Opener? All I knew was that it meant reopening old wounds and suffering. Nothing felt neat and finished.

  There was a strong knock at my door, making the faux wall shimmy. I knew it was Bash. I also knew that whatever he was going to say needed to be said, and I had to listen. Even though I’d just chosen avoidance as an action plan, it wasn’t sustainable. His dad was married to my mom. We were going to see each other on special occasions. We weren’t stupid teenagers anymore, running around with our hearts on our sleeves. I had to figure out a way to be mature and civil and polite.

  I also didn’t want to do anything to add to my mother’s stress levels. And fighting with Bash would definitely make her upset.

  So while I wanted to tell him to go away, instead I said, “Come in.”

  Bash opened the door and said, “Hey, do you have a sec?”

  “I have lots of secs.” It was only after the words left my mouth that I realized how that sounded. “Seconds. I mean I have lots of seconds. As in measurements of time.”

  He entered the room and shot me a barely suppressed grin, like he wanted to laugh and tease me but was refraining. For which I was grateful.

  “I’m guessing no one told you I was coming to dinner tonight.”

  “No, not until right before you got here. I didn’t really have much say in the matter.
”

  “Yeah, I’ve found the people providing the free food and shelter can usually make you do things you don’t want to do.”

  There was a hint of bitterness in his tone, and as much as I was dying to ask him what it meant, I stayed silent.

  Bash walked over to one of my windows with the built-in seat perfect for curling up to read about dragons and witches and valiant princesses. It had been my favorite place when I’d still lived here. He pushed the curtain to one side, looking out into the front yard. The sun had begun to set, and a golden light reflected off his hair and lovingly bathed his strong, angular face, making him look otherworldly.

  “Do you remember the last time we were in here together?” He murmured the question, almost as if he hadn’t intended to say it out loud.

  Did I remember? Did. I. Remember? Was he being serious right now? I felt like I was on the verge of hyperventilating. Someday, when I was a hundred and five and had developed dementia like my great-granny had, the memory of him, of us, in this room would be the very last thing to go. It would be the memory I would cling to for the rest of my life as being the most perfect moment in all of the history of humankind with the worst possible ending.

  I would never forget.

  But before I could say as much, he spoke again. “There’s something I wanted to get off my chest.”

  That little voice inside my head that usually cheered me on and helped me make right choices had apparently pledged allegiance to all things Bash as it said, Please let it be his shirt. Please, oh please, let it be his shirt.

  I hissed at it to be quiet. “What?”

  “I’m sorry. I know you must hate me after what happened. I shouldn’t have just left like that, without any explanation.”

  In that moment, even though I’d thought I’d wanted an apology, I found I didn’t need one. It didn’t really matter if he was sorry or if I was. Things had happened the way they had, and we had both moved on. Or, at least on my part, I was still trying to move on and not compare every guy I met to Bash.

  Something I was failing miserably at.

  “I don’t hate you, Bash. I never hated you,” I told him. And it was the absolute truth. Even when I had desperately wanted to, thinking anger had to be better than pain, I couldn’t.