by Chloe Morgan
My Little Secret
A Brother’s BFF Secret Baby Romance
Chloe Morgan
Contents
Description
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Epilogue
Copyright
Description
He’s the one guy that’s completely off limits.
And the only one I’ve ever wanted. My brother’s best friend.
I haven’t seen him since I left for college, but he’s back home for a while, and I am too.
My brother tries his hardest to get in our way, but the chemistry between us is too much. Taboo or not, he’s going to be mine.
And after he is? I’ve got to hide the truth.
He’s got too much on his plate, and we’re keeping things casual.
No way he’s going to want a baby. I can raise the little one on my own.
It’ll be my little secret.
Until it’s not.
1
Serenity
“Who’s ready for dinner?” my mother asked.
“We’re ready to take our daughter out,” my father said.
“Oh, sweetheart. We are so glad to have you home.”
My mother wrapped me in a bear hug just before I got my first suitcase unpacked. I appreciated their love, but I was exhausted. After graduating with my Master’s in Child Psychology and applying for the right research jobs, my only option was to come home until I could find something in my field of study.
“Come on, honey. We know you just got back into town, but Shawn’s very excited to see you,” my father said.
“I know, I was just hoping to unpack a bit before we went anywhere. It’s been a very long day,” I said, sighing.
“Well, a long day always calls for a nice drink,” my mother said, grinning.
“You found a new watering hole, didn’t you?” I asked.
“There’s this new place that opened up on the other side of Fort Collins. It’s fantastic. Shawn even likes it,” my father said.
“Shawn likes it? Like, actually likes it?” I asked.
“If you can believe it,” my mother said, giggling.
“Then it sounds like I need to check out the first place my brother has ever liked around here,” I said.
My brother and I were close. But he did not like the fact that we settled in the Fort Collins area. When my father retired from the Army, Shawn wanted to move. He wanted all of us to have a fresh start, especially since my father had done the two bloodiest tours of his career out of Fort Collins.
It seemed like he was finally coming around to the idea, though.
“Shawn!”
“See-See!”
My brother hugged me as we walked into the bar and grill. The food smelled wonderful, and my stomach started rumbling for the first time that day. I held my brother close, drew in his essence. I had missed him. Since the two of us had gone our separate ways for school, the only time we ever saw one another anymore was at our holiday functions.
“A Master’s looks good on you,” he murmured.
“And a career looks good on you,” I said, grinning.
“You’ll find one for yourself, too. Don’t worry about it.”
“I just hope I don’t find it before my student loan payments start to speed on into collections like they did for you.”
“A Master’s always trumps a bachelor’s,” he said, winking.
“Yeah, well. Tell that to the three jobs that have already denied my application.”
“Okay. One stiff drink for each, coming up!”
I shook my head at my brother as the four of us sat down. My brother and I had always been close, despite the almost six years’ age difference. We all sat down and ordered our first round of drinks, then got an order of chips and salsa for the table. It felt good, sitting with them again. Enjoying a family dinner like we used to before retirements and college and degrees got in the way of everything.
And then a blast from my past came into the picture.
“Chase!”
My head whipped around when my mother exclaimed his name. I watched my brother shoot out of his chair and clap his best friend on the back. I was shocked to see him. Last I had heard, Chase had moved away to the big city of New York to pursue a degree in Business. Six years had done him a lot of good.
He was no longer the scrawny high school boy that took my virginity.
Chase had always been tall, but his long limbs had filled out with muscle. His strong jawline was covered in a tailored stubble that made me want to run my hand over it. The last time I had kissed that pouty lower lip of his, he’d had a baby-smooth face. Trouble growing his peachfuzz mustache. But it didn’t look like he had any trouble doing much of anything nowadays. His bright blue eyes sucked me in as he looked at me with shock in his stare, and his jet-black hair was groomed into a pompadour I wanted to run my fingers through and latch on to.
Like I had all those times in the stairwell of my high school whenever he came to “visit.”
Oh, thirty looked very, very good on him.
“Chase, it’s been years,” my father said as he stood to shake his head.
“Mr. Woods. Mrs. Woods. Nice to see you,” Chase said.
“Nice to see them?” Shawn asked.
“Dude, it’s always nice to see you,” Chase said, grinning.
“Hey, Chase,” I said.
He looked at me with a bit of shock again, and I saw my parents smiling. No one knew about the fling Chase and I had had when I was younger. My brother had found out, and it pissed him off so badly that it had broken the three of us apart for a while. I went off to college a single girl with a broken heart, and Chase lost my number.
But my parents had always supported the idea of us being together.
“Chase, are you here with anyone?” my mother asked.
“Just came in to pick up my to-go order,” Chase said.
“Well, why don’t you sit down and have a drink with us? Eat your food? We’re about to order ours. It’s been years since we’ve all sat down together as a family. Catch us up on your life!” my father exclaimed.
My brother shot me a look, and I wanted to smack it right off his face.
“Then I guess I’ll be joining you guys,” Chase said.
He pulled up a chair and slipped it between Shawn and me—an action that pleased my parents but pissed my brother off. I looked at him and found him studying me. Drinking me in. Allowing his eyes to rush down my body before anyone could catch his motions.
But I caught them.
All of them.
“Serenity, you look good,” Chase said.
“You too,” I said.
“Back in the area for long?” he asked.
“She’s moved back in with us until she can find a job with the Master’s she just graduated with,” my mother said.
I slowly panned my gaze over to her, catching the broad smile on her face.
“Thanks, Mom,” I said.
“Well, it’s nice to have you back. I moved back into the area a few years ago, actually,” Chase said.
“You did? I take it the city wasn’t your speed?” I asked.
&n
bsp; Chase shrugged. “It was good for a romp, but my home will always be Fort Collins.”
I giggled at his statement and peeked at my brother, who didn’t look happy. I didn’t care, though. I was worlds away from the eighteen-year-old girl who had been chewed out by her brother for hooking up with his best friend.
“How’s your mom doing, Chase?” I asked.
“Is she getting any better?” my father asked.
“Please tell me she is,” my mother said.
“Well—to update you, Serenity—she was doing good there for a while, but a couple of years into my degree, the cancer came back, and it was more aggressive,” Chase said.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
“Dad needed help taking care of her, so I transferred my credits to a community college here to finish things up,” he said.
“Is the treatment not working this time around?” Shawn asked.
“We’re trying some other avenues,” Chase said as he peered around his shoulder.
“But?” I asked.
“No buts. We’re taking it a day at a time. I took care of Mom and finished my degree in Business, then I took a part-time job at my father’s logging company. Pays pretty good, and I bunk with my parents to help take care of Mom so he can keep the business from running into the ground,” Chase said.
“Do you enjoy your job?” I asked.
“I do, but I’d enjoy taking over the company from my father more. I can see it’s wearing on him. It’s why I got my degree in Business—so he could rest assured his CEO position would be in good hands once he passed it to me. But I think the business is his escape from what’s happening with Mom, and I can’t blame him for that,” he said.
My heart broke for him. I wanted to reach out and take his hand, but I knew my brother’s head would pop off and blow through the roof. I knew he was close to his parents, and I knew his mother well. The fact that she was fighting this cancer off for the second time made me sick.
“I don’t know what to say other than how sorry I am,” I said.
“I appreciate it. But we’re getting along. Same house, though, if you ever want to drop by and see her. I know she’d be thrilled,” Chase said.
“Maybe we’ll both drop by soon,” Shawn said.
I had to hold back the rolling of my eyes, lest I rolled them so hard they shook the damn walls.
Dinner was fine, but I knew Chase felt the tension. He excused himself pretty early—after finishing his dinner—and the second I got up to go to the bathroom, I felt Shawn hot on my heels. I went to push into the bathroom and he gripped my arm, stopping me in my tracks.
“What?” I asked.
“Don’t you dare go down that road again,” Shawn said.
“What road?” I asked.
“I saw how you were looking at him. I saw how he shoved himself between us. That’s my best friend, See-See. He’s literally known you your entire life. It’s weird.”
I yanked my arm out of his grip. “Shawn, I just moved back to town. I’m in the process of trying to find a job. Pay off these student loans. Get my life on track. The last thing I need is some man I have to run after.”
Then, I pushed myself into the bathroom to get away from him. Because deep down, something in my gut told me I’d just told the biggest lie of my life.
2
Chase
I knew that Serenity had come back into town because Shawn had told me, but to actually run into her last night and have them offer me a seat at their table? It somehow made it real. It solidified the fact that she was back in town. That after all these years, she was only a couple of minutes up the road again. I couldn’t get her out of my mind. She’d grown out her curly brown hair, and those ocean-blue eyes of hers held a depth I still felt the need to swim in. Her short stature had always made me smile—five four to my six two. Her head barely fell against my chest most days. But holy fuck, she’d grown into her body. She wasn’t the lanky, klutzy high school girl who had made me grin. She was a thick, curvy, gorgeous goddess with slopes I wanted to sink my hands into.
And that smile.
Damn it, that smile had lit up the entire bar and grill last night.
The past came rushing back. We had spent a brief two months together, during which we had explored all sorts of things that had opened her mind to the world of being an adult. I still shivered at the thought of our encounters. How wild she had been, and how eager she was to try new things. And then, Shawn had found us out only a few weeks before she was due to leave for college, and he had thrown a Grade A five-year-old fit about it.
But it had been the best two months of my fucking life.
My only regret was that Serenity and I hadn’t done much talking during those two months. I had left for college when she was thirteen and come back into the area because of my mother getting sick when she was fifteen. Even though we were only a couple of minutes up the road from one another, she was blossoming into her life. And I was struggling to keep my mother alive while finishing my useless community college Business degree. I kept a lot of that from her. Whenever she’d asked me how I was doing when I came over to see Shawn or his parents, I’d simply tell her things were okay.
Even though they weren’t.
I have no idea what changed, but when she turned eighteen, she got a strange look in her eye whenever she looked at me. Those long limbs of hers would gravitate to me, and her eyes would rake up and down my form. I was still lanky from high school back then. Twenty-two, newly graduated from college, and just beginning my journey at my father’s logging company.
But holy hell, those two months we had spent together had been the best of my life.
Serenity had meant everything to me. That little eighteen-year-old girl had had me wrapped around her finger from the moment her lips first settled against mine. Virginal. Innocent. And yet, so eager to explore. We barely did any talking back then. She didn’t know about my life, and I didn’t know much about hers.
I’d been an idiot, not telling her what she meant to me.
“What’s on that mind of yours, Chase?”
I looked up at my mother as the nurses hooked her up to the poison they were about to pump through her body.
“Just thinking. That’s all,” I said.
“Such a furrowed brow for a young man. Your father would disapprove,” she said.
“Well, he isn’t here right now. Just the two of us,” I said.
“Don’t be so hard on your father. He tries his best. You know that business alone is paying for my medical bills.”
“I didn’t mean it like that, Mom.”
“Uh-huh,” she said, grinning.
I reached out and cupped my mom’s cheek. And as I did, I wondered if it was time to tell Serenity how I had felt about her. How I still felt about her. When I sat down next to her at dinner last night, I had gotten those same butterflies in my stomach, and that same involuntary smile had trickled across my face. Gotten that same urge to grab her, kiss her, and strip her down before never letting her go.
Seemed as if six years didn’t change much.
“Don’t look at me as if I’ve got one foot in the grave,” my mother said.
“Don’t make those kinds of jokes, Mom,” I said.
“Then stop looking at me as if it’s reality. Okay?”
I nodded my head, but it was hard. My mother had fought so hard the first time around to be cancer-free, and now it had come back more aggressive than before. I was worried sick. Barely sleeping. Hardly eating. Spending way too much time in the home gym I had made for myself to use whenever Mom was sleeping. It was the only way I knew to blow off stress when I wasn’t working.
Even my father had started to use the gym.
I smoothed my mother’s thinning hair back while she puked. I wiped off her frail lips and tried not to stare at her pale skin. And when her body was done being pumped full of poison, I bridal-carried her in my arms back to my truck. I slipped her in and gingerly buckled the seat bel
t. Then, I drove us home to where my father was waiting.
It was his turn to slip her thin body into his arms and carry her up the stairs.
“Son, I’ve got this tonight. You take some time off,” my father said.
“It’s fine, Dad. Really,” I said.
“I didn’t suggest it.”
I looked at him as he slipped out of the bedroom and closed the door.
“She still asleep?” I asked.
“Out like a light. Which means you can go out and have some fun,” my father said.
“Dad, really. It’s not a big deal. I was planning on cooking—”
“No,” he said.
I looked into his eyes and saw a lot of emotions running around at once. Sorrow. Fear. Anger. Desperation. It was a look that had become familiar to me whenever I looked at my father, but there was one that caught me off-guard. One I didn’t expect to see.
Guilt.
“Go be a young man tonight, son,” my father said.
And I could hear it in his voice why he felt guilt.
“Dad, you don’t—”
“I said go.”
Fifteen minutes later, I was out the door. And before I knew it, I was pulling into Serenity’s parents’ house. I parked the car and knocked on the door. I saw Mrs. Woods’s smile blossom when she opened the door and saw me. She immediately went and grabbed Serenity, as if she already knew why I was there.
And when I asked Serenity to go get a drink with me, a fire ignited in my gut when she said yes.
3
Serenity
He hammered back Crown and Cokes, and I sipped on lemon drop martinis. The night was young. Like we were back six years ago. It was nice, sitting across from Chase. Gazing into his light blue eyes. Watching his lips curl around his drinks. Feeling his foot slip against mine underneath the table.
