by Linda, R.
He set me down on my feet. “Of course it would. I wasn’t worried,” he said, trying to play it cool.
“Uh-huh,” Linc interrupted and came to stand behind me, sliding his hands around my waist. “We need to get going. It’s getting late, and we’ve got a long drive.” He placed a kiss on the top of my shoulder, causing a shiver to run up my spine.
Jack stood in front of us, eyes downcast and chewing on the corner of his bottom lip. A sad puppy dog had nothing on him. My heart broke. I really was going to miss him. Three years of friendship, all the ups and downs, living together, late night chats, dreaded shopping trips—he was the best person a girl could want as a friend. I lunged for him, pulling myself out of Linc’s hold, and wrapped my arms around his waist.
I didn’t even realise the tears were falling until Jack tipped my face up to look at him and wiped them away. “Aww, baby cakes. Don’t cry. We’ll see each other all the time. I promise.” He tightened his arms around me and kissed the top of my head.
“But long-distance relationships are so hard, Jack. What if you forget about me?” I sniffled.
“Never. Going. To. Happen.”
“Promise.”
“Scout’s honour.”
“You never went to Scouts.”
“I’ll pinkie swear if I need to, baby cakes,” he said, rubbing his hand comfortingly up and down my back, suddenly full of confidence. Two minutes ago, I had been comforting him.
“I believe you.” I gave him a half smile. I couldn’t muster a full one.
“Let’s get you in the car and on your way,” Jack said and grabbed my hand. He shot Linc a look over my shoulder, daring him to challenge him or say something about our hands, but Linc just gestured to the door and let us go out first.
The house was almost empty. Barren. A wasteland with all our stuff packed in boxes and loaded into the two trucks. Linc brought his own truck, and Ryder borrowed Jayden’s, with Jayden driving Ryder’s car back to Blackhill for him. We had left Jack with enough furniture to get by. He was keeping all the big items, but without our personal touches, the place looked empty.
Outside, Jack shook Ryder’s hand before pulling him into the awkward man hug for a little too long, making Ryder look uncomfortable, but I knew he was going to miss having him around. As much as Jack annoyed him, they were great friends. Bailey hugged him goodbye and promised he could stay with them when he came to visit or should he decide to move to Blackhill himself. I didn’t think he would move there, though. He was too big a personality and too outgoing for a small town like ours. He’d do well in a big city where he had more opportunity to advance his acting career. We all knew he’d be a star one day. Acting was as natural as breathing to him.
Jack turned to Linc, and they glared at each other, mouths set in a firm lines and arms crossed as they seemed to be in some sort of standoff. Jack broke first, reaching out and shaking Linc’s hand. “Look after my girl, or I’ll hunt you down.”
Linc smiled and nodded. “She’s right with me. See ya, man.”
And then it was my turn, and I really wasn’t ready to say goodbye. I bit my bottom lip in an attempt to hold back the tears, but it was futile. There was no stopping them.
“I’m going to miss you most of all, baby cakes,” Jack said softly, blinking rapidly to stop his own tears as he swept me into his arms for one last hug.
“Call me every day,” I said into his chest. “And if you can’t call, I want text messages, emails. A letter. Send me a letter.”
“Every day.” He placed one last kiss on my forehead and let me go, pushing me into Linc’s waiting arms. The tears were flowing freely. I couldn’t even see as Linc led me to the car and helped with my seatbelt like I was a child, but I was shaking and too upset to do it myself.
“Love you,” Jack said, blowing me a kiss just as Linc closed the door.
“You’ll see him soon, Ace,” Linc assured me once he was in the driver’s seat beside me.
I couldn’t speak, so I closed my eyes, not wanting to look at Jack as we drove away because I might have thrown myself out of the car to get back to him. I didn’t think saying goodbye to him would be this hard, but it felt like I’d already lost him completely.
We drove in silence for the longest time, Linc’s fingers threaded through mine and our hands resting on the console between us.
“How you doing over there?” he asked after a while, his voice startling me back to reality.
I shrugged. I didn’t know how I was doing. I’d just said goodbye to my best friend and was moving back to my home town, without a job, without any sort of plan but to be with Linc. He was my plan. He was all I knew I wanted. All I had ever dreamed about, and now that dream was going to be a reality.
“Marry me?” I blurted out.
“What?” His head turned to face me, eyebrows raised in shock before he looked back at the road.
“Marry me?”
“That’s not how this is supposed to work, Ace.” He lifted our joined hands and pressed a kiss to my knuckles.
“You don’t want to marry me?” My voice trembled. Had I gotten this all wrong?
Linc swerved to the side of the road and pulled the car to a stop. Ryder’s truck sped past us as Linc turned off the ignition.
Grabbing my face in his hands, he forced me to look into his eyes. “Yes.”
My heart dropped, and tears blurred my vision. Yes. He didn’t want to marry me?
“I want nothing more than to make you my wife,” he said, wiping away the tears on my cheeks with a gentle caress. “I just wanted to propose the right way, with a big gesture, be all romantic and stuff.”
“Romance is overrated.” I smiled through my tears.
He wanted to marry me.
“Say it again.” He leaned his forehead against mine.
“Stupid ass?”
“Not that bit.” His fingers wove into my hair.
“I love you.”
“Ace?” His lips grazed over mine.
“Marry me?” I whispered.
“Yes,” he breathed against my mouth before kissing me, his tongue sliding against mine. Long. Slow. Deep.
“Good answer,” I mumbled and pulled him back for another kiss.
***Sneak Peek***
Harper and the One-Night Stand
Novel #3
R. Linda
Coming Spring 2018 from Limitless Publishing
Then
Harper
The thing about one-night stands is they’re supposed to be just that.
One night.
One night of fun. One night of no strings. No commitment.
But sometimes a one-night stand won’t go away. Sometimes a one-night stand keeps reoccurring, against your better judgement. Sometimes a one-night stand is just what you need, over and over again. But then it’s not really a one-night stand anymore. Then it becomes something else entirely, even when you didn’t want it to. It becomes something you can’t walk away from, even though you know you should. Even though you know it can’t continue without hurting someone else.
But sometimes…
You. Just. Can’t. Walk. Away.
Sometimes you find yourself waking up in their bed when you should have been home alone in your own.
Sometimes you find yourself doing the walk of shame at the crack of dawn, attempting to sneak past their roommate’s door before anyone finds out you were in the one place you both knew you shouldn’t have been.
With my heels in my hands, I crept down the hallway that had become as familiar to me as my own, silently trying to escape before anyone woke up. The sun had barely risen, so I knew it was early. I should have felt guilty for sneaking out, but I knew even though it might hurt him to find his bed empty again, he’d understand. He didn’t want this getting out of hand any more than I did. He didn’t want anyone finding out about our…extracurricular activities any more than I.
We knew we were asking for trouble. We knew if we didn’t stop this, it woul
d blow up in our faces. And yet, we continued. There was something that kept bringing us back together. No matter how hard I tried to resist, all it took was one smile, and I was putty in his hands. But it was getting risky, and we really needed to stop.
“Don’t forget your purse,” Linc called from the kitchen. I froze, one foot on the fluffy grey rug, the other on the cold timber floorboards. Four more steps and I would have been free. Linc walked into the living room where I was contemplating running, with my purse in his hands. “Wouldn’t want anyone to know you were here again last night, would we?”
Again?
I turned to face him, my fingers fiddling with the straps on my heels. “How long?”
“How long, what?” He raised a questioning eyebrow and threw my purse down on the coffee table beside me.
“How long have you known?”
He laughed and clapped his hands on his legs. “That it was you? About a month. That he’d been sneaking someone in here every couple of weeks? Since we got back from Fiji.” He turned away from me and headed back into the kitchen. “Coffee?” he called over his shoulder.
My eyes widened, and I rushed after him into the small room, stopping on the other side of the counter. “Fiji was three months ago.”
“Walls are thin, sunshine.” He handed me a cup of black coffee and placed the smallest scoop of sugar into his.
My cheeks warmed in embarrassment. Oh God, he’d heard. I took a gulp of the liquid gold in my hands, scalding my throat, but I barely noticed. He’d heard.
“Don’t worry. I have noise-cancelling headphones.”
“You can’t say anything,” I pleaded, clutching the coffee cup to my chest. “To anyone.”
“You’re playing with fire, you know.” He narrowed his gaze on me, bringing his mug to his lips and taking a long, slow sip of coffee.
“I know.” I hoisted myself on the barstool at the counter and ran my hands through my hair. “But please don’t say anything to anyone. I don’t want anyone to get hurt.”
It was only supposed to be one night. One night of too many drinks and waking up one morning in Fiji to find myself in his bed with no memory of the night before.
He lifted a shoulder casually and leaned against the counter, facing me. “I’ll be quiet.”
“You will?” I sagged in relief.
“He’s my mate. And I know exactly what it feels like to want the one person you know you shouldn’t want, remember?” His smile was full of understanding, and in that moment, I knew Linc would keep our secret. At least for now. He’d secretly been in love with his best mate’s younger sister almost their entire lives, so he understood the struggle and the need for silence.
“But I don’t…It’s not like—”
“I don’t care what it’s like. It’s none of my business. But you need to…you both need to figure this shit out now, before either of you gets too attached and anyone else becomes collateral damage. If this is only something casual, end it now before you hurt either of them.”
“I don’t want to hurt them.”
“Then you need to figure it out.”
“Do you really think it’ll hurt Brody?” Even asking the question, I knew I sounded like an insensitive ass. Of course, it would hurt him. And that was the last thing I wanted. But there was something about Nate Kellerman that had me coming back for more.
“His cousin sleeping with his ex-girlfriend?” He screwed his face up and nodded. “Yeah, it’ll sting. Just a little.”
Just a little.
It wouldn’t hurt just a little. It would hurt a lot.
I needed to end this now. I didn’t want to be the cause of anyone’s pain.
“I’ll end it.” I sighed and lowered my head to the counter. I didn’t want to hurt Brody or lead Nate on if I didn’t know where this was going. Because, really, I didn’t know what I wanted. I didn’t want a relationship, but I liked the way Nate made me feel. “It’s done. As soon as he wakes up, I’ll tell him.”
Linc didn’t speak. He eyed me sceptically and nodded once before pouring his coffee down the sink. “Good.”
And then he picked up his surfboard that was leaning against the wall in the corner and left. He left me sitting there alone, waiting for Nate to wake up so I could end whatever it was between us before things got any more out of control.
BEFORE YOU GO…
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Acknowledgements:
First and foremost, I must thank my family, my partner and children for giving me the time to write this book and for understanding when I didn’t go to bed until after midnight and woke up hours before everyone else just to write these words down.
My mum, for helping out with the kids when I needed more time to write, and for her top-notch writing advice and scene ideas, even if they didn’t make the final cut.
The team at Limitless Publishing for giving me this opportunity and liking my work enough to publish a second book.
My amazing and very patient editor Lori Whitwam for putting up with my complete lack of organisation and inability to meet deadlines. It was tough, but we got there.
Deranged Doctor Designs for their incredible cover design and knowing exactly what I wanted when I didn’t know I wanted it.
And my beautiful friend Fiona, once again our late-night chats, your words of encouragement, advice and allowing me to bounce ideas off you, not to mention your exceptional research skills, helped me in more ways than one with this book.
Thank you all.
About the Author
R. Linda drinks wine and writes books.
A coffee-addicted, tattoo-enthusiastic fangirl with a slight obsession for a particular British boy band and solo artist, she is a writer of Contemporary YA/NA Romance and Suspense, sometimes dabbling in Paranormal as well.
Renee lives in Melbourne, Australia, with her husband and two sons. When not writing, she can often be found reading books to her children and cuddling up with them on the couch to watch their favourite movies.
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