Match This! (The UnSocial Dater#1)
Page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Also By MJ Fields
Introduction
Author's Note
Unsocially Yours!
Match This!
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Outtakes
Acknowledgements
Contact
Copyright © MJ Fields 2016
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of MJ Fields, except as permitted under the U.S. Copyright Act of 1976.
This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
1st Edition
Published by MJ Fields
Cover Design and formatting by: Jersey Girl & Co.
Cover Model: Ellie Mc Love
Photographer: Carolyn Jaime
Edits by: Ellie at Love N. Books
Thank you for downloading/purchasing this ebook. This ebook and its contents are the copyrighted property of the author, and may not be reproduced, copied, or distributed for commercial or noncommercial purposes. If you enjoyed this book, please encourage your friends to download/purchase their own copy at Smashwords.com, where they can also discover other works by this author. Thank you for your support.
*Disclaimer*
This book contains mature content not suitable for those under the age of 18. It involves strong language and sexual situations. All parties portrayed in sexual situations are consenting adults over the age of 18.
ALSO BY MJ FIELDS
The Men Of Steel Series
Forever Steel
Jase
Jase and Carly
Cyrus
Zandor
Xavier
Momma Joe
The Ties Of Steel Series
Abe
Dominic
Eroe
Sabato
The Rockers of Steel Series
Memphis Black (Memphis and Tallia)
Finn Beckett (Finn and Sonia)
River James (River and Kianna)
Billy Jeffers (Billy and Madison)
****
LRAH Legacy Series (These families stories are intertwined starting with The Love series, they move to the Wrapped Series, the Burning Souls series, and end in Love You Anyways. Many more series will spin off from these characters already written and each will be a standalone series but for those of us who love a story to continue I recommend reading in this order.
The Love Series (Must be read in this order)
Blue Love
New Love
Sad Love
True Love
The Wrapped Series
Wrapped In Silk
Wrapped In Armor
Wrapped In Always and Forever
Burning Souls Series
Stained
Forged
Merged
The Norfolk Series (Must be read in this order)
Irons 1(Jax and Frankie, book 1)
Irons 2 (Jax and Frankie, book 2)
Irons 3 (Jax and Frankie, book 3)
****
The Caldwell Brothers Series (co-written w/ Chelsea Camaron)
Hendrix
Morrison
Jagger
ABOUT MATCH THIS!
My name is Katherine Anne Teresa Brun, my friends and anyone else who doesn’t want to get cut never uses my name in full. To them, I’m Kat.
My Irish Catholic father, Sean Brun married Carrie Anne Reuben, a Jew. However, she thinks we’re full blown Irish. I guess she didn’t get the memo that she’s only Irish by injection. Doesn’t matter at all to her though. I’ve never met a more devout Irish Catholic woman in my entire life.
I’m not a redhead; my hair is naturally deep brown, now black by choice. I can’t stand cabbage. I am not a beer drinker and no matter how much you want to believe in the luck of the Irish, that’s a line of shit. Perhaps it’s the Jew/Irish mix. Jews may be the chosen ones, but… Hitler. Enough said.
When I was seven my father died in a car accident. When I was twenty-one my, very Irish Catholic, stepfather and mother divorced. It took them long enough to end their marriage. I don’t remember a time since I was eight that they actually seemed like a normal couple.
Normal couple. Just what the hell does that mean anyway. What’s normal? I mean what two people get engaged, devote the rest of their lives to be together and seriously think that’s going to happen? I don’t consider that normal, I consider it delusional.
AUTHOR’S NOTE
Dear Readers: I am so very excited to share Kat’s story with you. If you have already read the prequel UNSOCIALLY YOURS!, go ahead and skip to MATCH THIS! Either way, enjoy the ride!
A THOUGHT TO PONDER
I have read that little girls are made of sugar and spice and all things nice. I think it’s a nonsensical statement. Perhaps that’s why the English poet Robert Southey never mentioned it in his other works or papers...
PART ONE
Whore-able Beginnings
FALLING DOWN, DOWN, DOWN
Kat at 6 years’ old
“Katherine Anne Teresa, coat,” my mother says as I reached for the door to eat my after school snack outside. She throws the coat over my shoulders and holds out her hand for my apple and glass of milk.
I hand it to her and push my arms through the sleeves.
“You know the rules Katherine.”
“Yep.” I smile and take my glass and shiny red apple back.
“I’m going to start dinner. Don’t get lost out there.”
How does one get lost in the fenced in backyard in suburbia? They don’t. “I won’t.”
“No climbing that God forsaken tree either, I am not climbing up there to get you down.”
My friends climbed trees, they even got to walk to public school together, wearing normal clothes, without adult supervision, while I rode by and watched them laughing and talking from out the window as my mother drove me to private school.
I didn’t need help. I could do it myself. I, Katherine Anne Teresa, could manage it just fine, if she would just back off.
The day I fell out of the apple tree in the backyard at my family’s home in New Jersey, breaking my left arm was not the worst day of my life.
It was actually a beautiful early summer day. The sun was shining and there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. I knew this because while I lay on the ground looking up through the break in the trees branches, the suns beams warm the tears rolling down my cheeks and somehow calmed me.
I didn’t want to get up, I didn’t cry out in pain, I didn’t want to get in trouble for climbing the tree. I had been told not to a million times because my mother said it wasn’t ladylike and if my father wasn’t home, she wasn’t going to climb up there and get me down.
My father, Sean Brun, left work early that day and met us at the hospital.
“Hey Kitt
y Kat, you okay?” He brushed my hair back and kissed my head, while holding something behind his back.
I remember my lip trembling and then my mother sniffing loudly when she entered the room with a cup of tea to ‘calm her’.
“Hey Carrie,” he said and she set the cup down and dove into his arms.
“I told her not to. I knew this was going to happen. My God we could have lost her today.”
He kissed the top of her head. “Our Kitty Kat has nine lives. She is a young and curious sort.” He winks at me. “She’s okay.”
“Our little girl is defiant and stubborn. She should be playing with dolls and not bugs. She should be taking singing lessons, not going to baseball practice. She should be dancing in pink tutus and not throwing on a winter hat in June and climbing trees.”
“I think she just needs to wait until I’m home next time, okay Kat?”
I nod my head.
When mom stepped back, he pulled his arm out from behind his back and handed me a book.
The cover was hard and sleek and colorful, so very colorful; it wasn’t pink or about princesses. It wasn’t about Judaism or something to do with school or etiquette. It was beautiful and the cover read, Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll.
That day was not the worst day of my life. It was the day my life changed, because of a book.
POOLS OF TEARS
Kat at 18 years old
Freshman year, Harvard University
“We’re so proud of you Katherine.” My mother said as she hugged me soaking me with her tears, “Your father would have been proud of you too.”
She whispered the last part into my ear so her husband, my stepfather, Sam, didn’t hear it.
‘I don’t want to hurt his feelings,’ she said every time she spoke of my father.
Hurt his feelings? My father is dead and unless my mother and dead father are having a Patrick Swayze and Demi Moore, pottery wheel moment, I’m sure Sam would not have a problem with it.
‘He took on a widow and her child,’ she has said.
He got you knocked up a year after dad was gone. He really didn’t have a choice.
‘He is your new father,’ she has said.
This one always made me laugh, father Sam.
‘He is new at being a father,’ she has said.
No, not really mamacita, he was everyone at our church’s father, until you and he banged boots and he ‘divorced’ the church.
‘We are a strong Irish Catholic family,’ she has said.
Nonsensical.
When my father, Sean Brun, married Carry Anne Reuben, a Jew, they had a child, me, and they raised me to know both religions. My father made a big deal out of Christmas and Easter. And Mom went overboard with Purim, Pesach, Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, and Hanukkah.
Just thinking about the amount of holidays I’ve celebrated, let alone the confusion it caused, makes me want to pop a Xanax and chase it down with a bottle of Jack.
When Dad died my mother was in mourning for months. She said it was expected after a death. She wore black for months. Attended mass on Saturday and Sunday, and went and prayed on Wednesday. The only things she didn’t do was wear the veil. Oh and we never celebrated another Jewish holiday, ever again.
I guess she didn’t get the memo, that she’s only Irish Catholic by injection. Doesn’t matter at all to her though. I had never met a more devout Irish Catholic woman in my entire life.
Then Father Samuel O’Dell, became stepfather Sam. Soon after that, a move to Albany, New York. Not much later, my half-sister Darby was born.
Darby cried all the damn time. I’m not gonna lie and say at a young age the thought of covering her head with a pillow never crossed my mind, because it did. Go fuck yourself if you want to judge me, saying and doing are completely different.
Darby also appeared with flaming red hair and green eyes. She looked exactly like that little Disney chick with the bow, same attitude too. Needless to say she was a handful and required a lot of their attention. But that didn’t matter to my Irish Catholic mother; she swooned over that little girl. Her ‘Red headed Irish princess.’
I’m not a redhead; my hair is naturally deep brown, black by choice. I can’t stand cabbage. I am not a beer drinker, and no matter how much you want to believe in "the luck of the Irish", that’s a line a shit. Perhaps it’s the Jew/Irish mix. Jews may be the chosen ones, but…Hitler. Enough said.
I look at Darby, she’s alive, I didn’t suffocate her. Her eyes are red, lip is quivering and her hair a tangled mess in a haphazard ponytail. I open my arms, “Come here.”
She hugs me and whispers, “I can’t believe you’re leaving me alone with those assholes.”
I can’t help but laugh inside. The girl is 10 and curses more than I do. “You’ll be fine, Princess,” I tease, knowing she hates it as much as I did being doted on by Mom, but she is a hell of a lot more rebellious than I was.
“Bitch,” she says back and I know she’s crying.
“Two and a half hours away, no big deal,” I say hoping to comfort her.
“Yeah, whatever.” Darby tries to act like it’s no big deal.
I hold her for a few moments when I hear my mother’s muffled cries. I cannot believe she is sobbing in Harvard Yard.
“Get her out of here for me?” I ask.
“Come home for Thanksgiving and don’t make some lame ass excuse to stay here and I will,” she counters.
I let go, hold up my middle finger so no one can see, she does the same, then we hook and shake, our version of making a fucking promise.
****
The building is old but well maintained, I mean come on, it’s fucking Harvard University. One of eight schools in the country to be considered Ivy League. My parents wanted me to go to Brown.
I decide not to go into my dorm, instead I walk around a bit. I have no desire to go sit in my dorm, or the common room and what? Talk to people? No. Just no.
I end up in front of the John Harvard Statue that sits in front of University Hall, which houses the faculty of arts and sciences, and the graduate school of arts and sciences.
I should feel relieved, I am free of my mother’s reign, I am a full-fledged adult, I am at Harvard, but all I can do is look at old John Harvard and think, this motherfucker is my new mother. I scowl at him, as if it means a damn thing, and then flip him off as I walk away.
The next place I end up while I wander is the Tercentenary Theatre. Four long ass years from now I will be congregating with over sixty thousand people. That thought makes me sick too.
I decide to suck it up, fake a smile of sorts and go back to face the music.
Fuck, I hope these bitches have good taste in music.
THE RACE FOR TAIL
“It’s about time you got here, New York,” the brunette with the big knockers, one of the two chicks I am stuck with for a year says when I walk in. “We have to hit Annenberg and grab dinner before heading to Beantown.”
“Excuse me?” I ask.
“Roommates bonding time,” the short little dark haired one says pushing up her glasses.
“Tonight is one of the rare nights that freshman are the only ones on this God forsaken campus so if we have any hopes of making an impression on a hot townie it needs to be now.” The tall brunette rambles on again.
“Why would I want a townie when I’m here?” What is she crazy?
“Oh honey,” she sighs, shakes her head and looks at me like it was a pathetic question. “Ivy league boys spend more time in front of the mirror, at the esthetician, and spray tan salons than any man should. Townies see hot young ass like ours and your ten-minute tryst in the Ivy tower, will seem like riding a pony at the county fair compared to what the Beantown studs will do to keep you satisfied.”
“I’m not going anywhere,” I laugh it off and walk towards my room.
“Nonsense, get changed.” She totally dismisses me, leans in closer to the mirror and applies red lipstick.
The shorter
brunette looks at me and mouths, “Please.”
I look at her like she’s nuts, and she does it again.
If she were a puppy I would have melted right then and there, but she’s not.
“Come on New York, let’s get changed,” she snaps her fingers, “Chop, chop.”
“Please,” comes out as an actual sound this time and she truly sounds as pathetic as she looks.
“Fine, let me change.”
****
The three of us walk into Annenberg Hall. It is straight outta Harry Potter. I swear it looks exactly the same as the Great Hall. I’m expecting to see, Albus Dumbledore standing in the front of the rectangular shaped room, to perform the Welcoming Feast.
The amount of food they’re serving promises to make each of us gain the freshman fifteen plus feed a small village. It’s gluttonous.
“So New York,” the big knockered brunette says sitting next to me, “Your name is Katherine?”
“Or Kat,” I say much preferring my nickname.
“I’m Cecilia,” she holds out her hand.
“The pushy one,” I smile fakely, and shake it.
“No the one who knows her way around here. My second cousin graduated last year and I visited her a few times. Her sorority is the one we’ll rush and —”
“Clearly you haven’t caught on that I don’t like...people.”
She cocks her head to the side, “Well you like us and we’re all going to be great friends.”
“That’s unavoidable, however kissing ass has never been one of my strong suits and I’d like to keep my lips ass virgins.”
The little dark haired one laughs, and all of the sudden, she’s my favorite person ever.
We stare at each other, she’s trying to wear me down and I won’t be worn.