by Blair Holden
The Bad Boy’s Forever
By Blair Holden
THE BAD BOY’S FOREVER
All Rights Reserved © 2019 by Blair Holden
eBooks are not transferable. They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.
Published by Blair Holden
Table of Contents
Part One
Chapter One: Where We Stand on Operation Laxation
Chapter Two: Mrs. Weasley’s Howlers Cower Before Tessa’s Verbal Bitch Slaps
Chapter Three: Alcohol Manages to Turn Me into Charlie Sheen on Fleek
Chapter Four: They Respect My Privacy Like McDonald’s Respects Arteries
Chapter Five: I’m Shivering Like Cousin It at the Sight of a Hairdresser
Chapter Six: You Attract More Women Than Victoria’s Secret on Black Friday
Chapter Seven: I’m as Stable as Nana Stone after Three Shots of Tequila
Chapter Eight: I’m Going to Volunteer Quicker than Kanye Can Tweet and Delete
Chapter Nine: Like a Zit, He Waits for the Worst Time to Pop up
Chapter Ten: Is That a Euphemism?
Chapter Eleven: If Denial Was an Academy Award, I’d Be Meryl Streep
Chapter Twelve: Turning Bad Breakups into a Savings Account for Dummies
Chapter Thirteen: Smoldering and Sexy, the Double S’s of Doom
Chapter Fourteen: You Don’t Win Wars with Morning Breath
Chapter Fifteen: I Feel Like I’m the Kevin to Your Nick and Joe Jonas
Chapter Sixteen: I Look Like a Perverse Polly Pocket
Chapter Seventeen: The Place Has Been Hit with Hurricane Colessa
Chapter Eighteen: They’ll Do Just About Anything If You Feed Them Enough
Chapter Nineteen: Nana Stone’s Already X-raying My Stomach
Part Two
Chapter One: My Goal for The Year; to Not End up in a Body Bag
Chapter Two: A Tween Would Find It Easier to Resist Velour Tracksuit Bottoms
Chapter Three: You’re an Ovary Whisperer
Chapter Four: Do You Own a Suspiciously Oversized Trench Coat?
Chapter Five: Desperate Times Call for Maxing Out Your Dad’s Credit Card
Chapter Six: I’ll Time Our Liaison for High Impact and Zero Public Indecency
Chapter Seven: My Confidence Shrivels up Like a Prune
Chapter Eight: The Guy’s Still Got the Perceptiveness of Roadkill
Chapter Nine: Nothing Screams Platonic Like Being Able to Discuss Facial Hair
Chapter Ten: You Can’t Live with Them, Can’t Order a Mob Hit on Them Either
Chapter Eleven: Let a Higher Power Take the Wheel and Drive My Car off a Cliff
Chapter Twelve: I’d Sooner Decline the Dessert Menu Than Fight with Cole
Chapter Thirteen: I Think It’s Time to Call Off That DNA Test
Chapter Fourteen: A Valley Girl Stores Kale Like a Camel Stores Water
Chapter Fifteen: I’m as Subtle as the Front Cover of a Romance Novel
Chapter Sixteen: You’ve Got the Tenacity of a Chihuahua
PART ONE
Chapter One: Where We Stand on Operation Laxation
Soft light filters through the window, and beside me I feel Cole start to wake up. I’ve been awake for some time now; after the bomb he dropped last night, I couldn’t really relax enough to go back to sleep. There’s a reason behind why he’s so adamant about protecting me, about protecting my privacy. I remember feeling awed and then it hit me, the realization that everything’s about to change.
Things happened at the training camp, big things for Cole’s career. He’s an engineering major so he’s always got a more practical backup plan. But of course, like every college boy playing football, the dream’s always there—the one where you go pro, and life as you know it tilts on its head.
I swallow heavily. I’ve always known he’s remarkable, always known that he’s meant for great things, but this is huge, and whenever I think about it, I feel like the breath’s been knocked out of my body.
Gentle kisses rain down my neck, hands shift inside my shirt...well, technically Cole’s shirt, and keep moving upward. I’m shaking, shivering with a need to be close to him after it’s been so long, and I can feel the same need in his touch. The way his strong hands move over my body, touching and caressing, kissing my neck, my jaw.
Instinctively, my back straightens as I realize that I still do have a roommate who might need to have some form of psychiatric therapy after the number of times she’s witnessed Cole and me in compromising positions. Beside me, Cole grumbles, “She never came back, Shortcake, said her boyfriend’s visiting so she’s staying with him.”
I turn my head so fast, it’s surprising I don’t pull a muscle. He’s here; he’s here and we still have a while before he tells me that even this, him being in my dorm room, is too much. I take in everything about him, from his rumpled, sleep-tousled hair to his bright blue eyes to the sharp slope of his cheekbones. I run the back of my hand across his unshaven jaw and he exhales heavily before swooping in and kissing me deeply.
Morning-breath kissing is okay as long as both people have morning breath.
He pushes me onto my back and hovers above me as we continue kissing. I’ve missed him; I’m scared and still upset, but the time we’ve spent apart, the time I’ve spent doubting everything we have, and now when he’s so close to me, when he’s touching me, I can’t muster up any other emotion than the kind of heady love I have for him.
“You kill me when you look at me like that.” Cole’s voice is husky from a mixture of sleep and desire.
I wind my arms around his shoulder and pull his mouth down to mine. “I fell asleep on you last night. We didn’t even get to...”
He kisses the corner of my lips. “Talk?” I can feel his smile against my skin.
“Among other things. That was some bomb you dropped.”
He looks apologetic but distracted, mostly, as he rains kisses all over my face.
“I want a timeout, let’s discuss this later. Right now, I just want to remind my girlfriend why she shouldn’t give up on me.”
I quirk an eyebrow. “Pretty confident about your skills, aren’t you, Stone?”
“I have yet to be proven wrong.” He winks at me as he makes me sit up so that I can push his shirt over my arms.
His distraction is working quite successfully, but something still irks me—it’s that word.
Girlfriend.
“Am I still your girlfriend?” My voice sounds hollow, losing the previous playfulness almost immediately. Cole’s expression falls, his eyes growing somber.
He cups the back of my neck with his palm and presses our foreheads together. With his free hand he takes my wrist and drags my hand up his naked chest and places it right above his heart, which races furiously beneath my fingers.
“That word doesn’t even come close to explaining what you are to me.” He looks me right in the eyes as he says this, and I see the conviction, the belief, the possibility right there. “I want to call you something else if we’re giving out titles, but I know th
at’ll freak you out right now. But one day soon, I’ll ask you a very important question, Tessie, and everyone will know that there’s no one out there for me but you.”
I can’t speak; I can’t breathe. I can only look at him and know with every part of me that he loves me more than I could ever imagine someone would love me.
“But to answer your question, yes, you’re my girlfriend, you’re the fucking love of my life. I’m only pretending for as long as it takes me to make sure that I can take care of you. Between us, you’re still mine and I’m still yours. For everyone else...I don’t give a fuck about them, but they’ll know to not even look your way.”
I kiss his shoulder. “You’ll be putting us through hell. Nothing has to be this complicated.”
“Damn it, I know that, Shortcake!” He growls against my neck, “But I’d go through hell ten times over to make sure they never get to you.”
You can’t fight that kind of conviction, so I didn’t. I just draw his mouth to mine and kiss his worries away. I’d be there every step of the way for him; all that worries me is if Cole’s digging himself a hole too deep to be able to find his way out.
***
I learn the hard way that wanting to teach someone a lesson isn’t as fun as you’d think. But my intentions were more than noble; I wanted Cole to get it into his head that whatever comes our way, I’d be more than happy to face it with him. But if he keeps wanting to wrap me up in Bubble Wrap and wishes to keep us in “storage” until he feels the time is right, then we’d be there for a long, long time.
I’m at the gym, working out under Bentley’s strict supervision. I attempt to bring up Amanda or even the day’s weather, to be honest, to keep his scrutinizing gaze away, but he’s watching me carefully.
Not like, it’s my responsibility if she manages to smash in her skull with training weights, but more like her boyfriend supposedly broke up with her; shouldn’t she be a little catatonic?
Like I’m doing with everyone else on campus who seems to be vaguely aware of my situation, I could ignore him. But with Bentley I know he’s coming from a good place and is only concerned for me as a friend, so I make it a goal to remember to tell him that nothing has happened recently that should put me on suicide watch.
“So,” he asks once I’m done working out, “if you haven’t got any plans for the weekend, I was thinking you might want to finally meet Amanda. She wants to see more of my friends but they’re, well...” he shrugs, “dicks, to be honest, who’ll spend way too much time staring at her chest.”
“Well, clearly, I won’t be doing that. Sure, I could embarrass you by acting like a complete idiot, but I won’t be sleazy.”
He laughs, looking partly relieved that I still have some sense of humor left. He tells me that he’ll text me all the details and that we’ll probably go for dinner sometime in the evening. We part ways as I head back to my dorm and only then do I finally check my phone. It’s blowing up with texts from my best friends, Megan and Beth, and my brother. They’ve been witnessing my roller coaster of a relationship since Cole’s interview on ESPN, and surely they’ll want to know what the recent update is. Who needs all those different versions of the Real Housewives when you’ve got me?
“Hey.” I balance the phone between my ear and shoulder as I use my student ID to get inside the elevators leading up to my floor. Thankfully I’m alone so nobody hears Beth yell, “Do I need to cut an appendage?”
I cringe at the volume. “Bethany,” I sigh leaning against the back of the elevator, “why are you shouting? Didn’t Travis tell you to lay off the sugar until after six p.m.?”
“Hey, this isn’t the result of three bags of Sour Patch Kids. I’m at the mall and one of the Hemsworth brothers is here; people are going crazy. I swear I saw one woman just take off her top in front of her eight-year-old.”
I shudder; I’m sure actually viewing it must have been a more traumatizing experience.
“And that reminded you to call me.”
“Hey, I was in the food court, trying to kill some time, and I noticed that the ESPN interview from hell still hasn’t been taken off, which means Cole hasn’t rescinded his statement. I still feel the need to do something really violent.”
“Calm down, femme fatale, we’re working on it.”
I can practically see that one calculated eyebrow raise. “How are you working on it if that interview hasn’t been taken down and he’s still breathing?”
“How do you know he’s still breathing?”
“I know someone who knows someone,” she says casually, like that doesn’t make her sound like a crime boss.
“So you either spoke to Cami or Sarah, and since Sarah’s petrified of you, it’s got to be Cami.” The doors open and I make my way down the floor down the hallway feeling numerous pairs of eyes on me.
“I just wanted to know where we stand on Operation Laxation.”
Well, thank Christ I don’t start having a coughing fit in the middle of the floor. Hurrying down to my room, I shut the door behind me and whisper-yell into the phone despite the fact that Sarah isn’t here.
“Please don’t tell me you did what I think you did!”
“Well, if you haven’t heard about it from Mr. Douchebag Heart of Stone, then my little minion has been slacking on the job.”
“Beth, you have no idea about what’s going on; leave him alone,” I hiss, feeling my blood pressure start to rise. Between my friends and boyfriend, I’ll be lucky if I make it past the age of twenty-five.
“What I do know is that you’re hurting and that you’re probably as confused as I am. Those two things don’t go well together, and they are certainly not what you need from a relationship.”
I press my fingers into my throbbing temple and take a seat at the foot of my bed.
“He made things pretty clear last night when we talked.”
There’s silence on the other end, but I can sense the question she’s about to ask.
“Last night as in you guys were together with a bed in the vicinity?”
“He didn’t sleep with me to manipulate me, Beth; he’s not that kind of a guy and you know it as well as I do.”
Although Beth doesn’t talk about her past a lot, I get the feeling that she’s always met the wrong kind of guys, so it takes her a lot more time to trust them. She has no reason to be so mistrustful of Cole, but I guess the doubt’s always going to be there.
“Okay, yeah, that was way out of line, but I did think that for a second. But you know you can’t always use sex to shove your problems into a corner.”
“We didn’t; he didn’t. We talked about stuff, a lot of stuff, and he told me something big, which we’ll know more about in the coming days. I understand a lot more now than I did before and...”
“And?”
“I’ve never wanted to kill Nicole more than I do right at this very moment.”
“Ah, so that’s the whole problem, isn’t it? The fake breakup? Is he honestly still hung up on the idea?”
“He’s more than hung up; he’s actually going through with it.”
More silence.
“Well, I can’t wait to see that shit storm blow up in his face.”
Groaning, I fall onto my back and stare at the ceiling. “Everyone can see that but him, and the only solution I see is making him realize that he doesn’t always know what’s best.”
Amusement colors Beth’s voice. “You’re up to something, aren’t you? You’re going to teach him a lesson.”
“One he can’t forget.”
“God, you’re lame, but I love you; hope you kick his smug ass.”
***
I feel really smug right now.
“Going out like hell!”
Cole’s throwing a tantrum, an actual live tantrum like the four-year-olds all men are inside. So I watch him in silent joy as he stomps around the room, all while painting my nails. “It’s a club, not a live Magic Mike reenactment, Cole, relax.”
If he could
have fire coming out of his nostrils right now, it probably would be happening.
“Have you ever been to the place? Do you even know what it’s like?”
“It seems like you’re rather well acquainted with it.” I arch an eyebrow, hoping it looks intimidating.
He doesn’t even look guilty. “We went there once after a game; you said you were studying.”
I blow out a breath so that I don’t end up throwing something at him. “Well, I’m going now, and since we can’t be seen together…”
“Whoa, hold up, that’s not what I said. There’s no reason for me to stay away from you; like I said, people will think we’re hanging out.”
His words make me cringe since he’s making it sound like we’re in friends-with-benefits situation and I’m the girl who starts to have feelings that are never reciprocated.
“Look, I know we’re doing this to keep me away from the public eye or whatever, but what will it say about me when we’re seen ‘hanging out’ just days after you’ve more or less publicly humiliated me?”
“I haven’t—” he begins to bellow but I raise a hand to make him stop.
“Hear me out. This is what it’s at right now; everyone thought we were together and even though none of them could stomach the fact that someone like you was with someone like me, they still didn’t come right out and question whether or not we were a couple. Now that you’ve very publicly announced that we’ve broken up or, even better, told everyone that you’re not one for relationships, people have started thinking that I let you use me.”
His face grows tense, but he’s a wise man, since he doesn’t try to interrupt me.
“What kind of person will they think I am if I’m so comfortable parading around on your arm; do I not have any self-respect in this hypothetical alternate universe you’re trying to create?”
“Damn it, you’re sexy when you get mad at me.”
What am I going to do with this boy?
“I need you to take me seriously. If you’re fine with people thinking I’m a spineless, desperate, ditzy blonde with no self-respect, then we’ve got a problem.”
All at once his playful expression dies, and he stares at me, hurt all over his face. He starts to say something but then stops and stares at me a little and then leaves his own room, slamming the door behind him. I fight tears and take a seat at the edge of his bed because I don’t trust my shaky legs.
