Total pages in book: 95
Estimated words: 90951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 90951 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 455(@200wpm)___ 364(@250wpm)___ 303(@300wpm)
Getting her pregnant? Career-ending penalty.
They call me the Guru—the guy who never loses his cool, never breaks the code, and definitely doesn't knock up his best friend's little sister after one perfect, reckless night.
But judging by Beatrice's new baby bump, six months ago, I did just that.
Now she's back in New Orleans, gorgeous, glowing, and determined to do this solo. She doesn't need my money, my help, or my suddenly inconvenient feelings.
Too bad. Because I'm not the kind of man who skates away from the woman I haven't been able to stop thinking about since the moment she left.
So I show up. I prove I'm not just the guy who got her pregnant, but the friend who listens, the partner who's got her back, and the lover who knows exactly how to make her forget why she ever thought romance might be dead.
And if keeping us a secret protects her peace? Fine. I'll play along.
But secrets have a way of hitting the ice when you least expect it. And when ours does, I'll have to prove to her brother, my team, and the woman I'm falling for that I'm not just chasing a win.
I'm playing for forever
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
Chapter One
BEATRICE NIX
Six months ago…
My big brother’s getting married.
My wild, party-loving, only-dates-cougars-on-the-rebound-due-to-suspected-commitment-issues brother is going to marry an amazing woman and live happily ever after.
I’m so happy for him.
So, so happy!
So happy that I haven’t stopped crying since he called me to tell me that Charlotte said yes…
What’s wrong with me?
I sniff, speeding my steps down a quieter street in the French Quarter, grateful for the spring breeze on my face. I have no idea where I’m going. I just had to get away from the noise, the people. Away from all the shiny surfaces outside the bar, reflecting what a mess I am.
I love Charlotte. Seriously love her. If someone told me I had to choose between Baylor, the brother who’s had my back my since the day I was born, and this woman, who came into my life just a few months ago, I would struggle to decide where my loyalty should lie. She’s been ten toes down for me from day one, even when things with my ex got seriously ugly. She never wavered or made me feel like a burden. She simply opened her heart and her home and took me in.
Charlotte is an incredible human being who loves my brother with every bit of her big, beautiful soul, and he feels the same way. Thanks to the love they’ve found, Baylor is an even better man than he was before. There’s no doubt in my mind that their marriage will be one for the ages.
So why is there a boulder in my throat?
Am I jealous? Is that it? Deep down, am I that petty?
“If so, then you’re a horrible person,” I mutter, words slurring as I swipe at the tears still leaking from my eyes. I’m tipsier than I almost ever get, but a hurricane on an empty stomach will do that to a girl. Food was on the way to the table, but I left before I could take a single bite of my fish tacos.
Thank God.
Thank God, I stepped outside the bar to take that call. Thank God, I texted my friends an apology for bailing early when the sniffling began, and started walking. If anyone else had seen me like this, I would be even more ashamed of myself.
Seriously, what is wrong here?!
Baylor and Charlotte basically saved my life. Not only did they help me escape Kai with minimal fallout, but they also provided shelter, support, and connections to the New Orleans music community. Hell, Charlotte even sang backup on the first solo release of my career.
They did everything in their power to smooth my transition from dysfunctional coupledom to peaceful single lady life. From a member of a mid-list band to a potentially mainstream solo artist. My first single, The Labor of Leaving, is still charting months after its release, and my forthcoming solo album has been named one of the year’s most anticipated releases by several well-respected industry publications. If I don’t seriously fuck something up, I’m on the verge of being famous.
Only I never wanted to be famous.
I wanted to make amazing music, live a happy life, and find someone incredible to share it with.
And so far?
Well, so far, aside from the new album, I’ve made formulaic music, lived under the thumb of a controlling asshole, and what I know about “true love” could fit inside a thimble.
I know it’s precious.
I know it’s rare.
And I know I might never find it.
Since the split with Kai, I haven’t been able to get laid, let alone anything more. I only started dipping my toe into the dating pool a little while ago, and meeting people is next to impossible when you spend most of your time in a recording studio, but still…
I’ve been on enough dates to know that men feel as foreign to me as the opposite sex did when I was a teenager. That’s how I ended up with Kai in the first place. He was problematic, yes, even back then. But he was also the first boy who seemed to “get” what it was like to be a woman, to see me as a main character, too, not a sidekick in his dude-centered adventure. I thought maybe that was because he was older than the other boys I’d dated—twenty-one to my seventeen.
Over a decade later, the hypothesis gave me comfort on my way out the door. Maybe finding connection would be easier the second time around, now that my dating pool was full of proper adults.
But after six months of disastrous first dates, I now suspect most men are simply dumb.
No, not dumb. That isn’t quite right.
They’re not dumb, they’re…willfully ignorant. Most haven’t bothered to educate themselves on what it’s like to navigate the world as a woman because they don’t have to.
They don’t have to be afraid of walking outside at night, or losing control of their reproductive systems, or being told they’re inherently inferior because they were born with girl parts. So, they don’t care.