So True

by Serena Bell

  “A lot of men like the breezy feeling—”

  “Mom.”

  “Sorry. No kilts. I’ll make a skirt for Kee, instead.”

  He guessed that if she moved to Tierney Bay they’d probably invite her to family dinners and family game nights, and he could live with that. She wasn’t perfect, but she was his mom.

  Evan’s treatments were going well. When Levi heard about the bribe his father had used to separate Jax and Chiara, he’d said he wanted no part of the money. He’d insisted on paying Jax back the repaid “loan,” and when Jax had resisted, Levi had redirected the money to Evan’s care. Evan and Jax had hooked up with the organization Chiara researched, and it had helped them apply for the drugs Evan needed at reduced cost, based on his income—which, as a small business owner, would probably never be very high. He was doing great—no pain, no other symptoms, and no serious side effects—although he had to be a little careful about germs. It just meant that the game store had an above-average number of hand sanitizer stations, which, given the amount of traffic it was getting these days, was not a bad thing. Not only had Meeples thrived right through the middle of an Oregon coast winter, but it was doing better this spring than anything Chiara had predicted.

  Trey had moved in with Auburn at Beachcrest. They were ridiculously happy and over-the-top in love. And Beachcrest was doing the best business of its existence, to the point where sometimes they could refer visitors to Cape House. Once upon a time it had always been the other way around.

  Not that Levi begrudged it.

  He saved all his begrudging for Grace Utrecht, the wedding planner.

  And Mason—

  Mason was his usual self, which was to say no one knew anything about what was going on with him. If Chiara asked how he was doing, he shrugged and said, “Pretty how, thanks.” And if she probed more?

  He shut down.

  The Campbells—and Evan and Asher—had finished up eating and were organizing themselves into games. Evan and Asher were going to host a table of Terraforming Mars and Auburn wanted a Pandemic table.

  “You want to save the world or start a new one?” Jax asked.

  Two clusters were forming around the two tables.

  “Mmm,” Chiara said. “I want to sneak out and go walk on the beach. And then I want to have a lot of sex. And then I want to have breakfast at the Tierney Bay diner.”

  “What if they put the pieces away all wrong?” he murmured.

  “I don’t care.”

  The biggest grin ever crossed Jax’s face. He grabbed her hand and they bolted towards the door.

  “Chiara. Jax. Get your asses over here,” Auburn ordered.

  But it was too late. The chimes over the door were already signaling their escape.

  Thank you for reading So True! I hope you’ve loved spending time with Chiara and Jax. If you—like many of my readers—can’t wait to find out all about Mason, you can read his story in So Good, coming in early 2021.

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  If you missed So Close, Auburn and Trey’s story, you can catch up with their enemies-to-lovers battle over the future of Beachcrest Inn in book one of the Tierney Bay series.

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  Find SO CLOSE here.

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  If you’re hungry for more love stories with heat, heart, and lots of emotion, check out my Returning Home series. You can start with HOLD ON TIGHT, the second-chances story of a badly wounded hero, the woman he never stopped craving, and the son he never knew he had.

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  Find HOLD ON TIGHT here.

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  Join my newsletter list here.

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  I appreciate your help in spreading the word, including telling a friend. Reviews are like hugs for authors, and they help readers find books! Please leave a review on your favorite book site.

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  Turn the page for an excerpt from Hold On Tight.

  Excerpt from Hold On Tight

  He didn’t expect her to say yes. He asked on a whim, throwing the words out into the warm night as an experiment. “Let’s go in.”

  They stood with their bare feet in the sand at the edge of the lake. The surface was a strip of glass—cool and mysterious, reflecting a row of spiky trees the moonlight had thrown between sky and water.

  Pale light shone in her eyes. Her bottom lip was glossy and begged to be nipped. Her hair was something he wanted to get lost in, the way he wanted to get lost in her. He was out of time, and it made him brave. In a week, he’d be fighting in Afghanistan, and this—whatever it was—would be a memory.

  This wasn’t supposed to be happening. He wasn’t the kind of guy who could meet a girl and feel things for her. He was the type who should’ve spent his leave drinking beer with his buds and longing to get the hell back to the war. Whereas this guy he’d become, this new version of himself, couldn’t spend enough moments with his face pressed against Mira’s hair, breathing peace.

  She was eighteen; he was twenty. He’d picked her up in a Seattle bowling alley, where she’d come with friends, the first night of his leave. He’d been raring to burn off training testosterone. They’d made it as far as his car before she’d confessed how young she was and admitted she’d never been picked up by anyone in her life. He’d been planning to take her to a hotel room, but she was only a month past her birthday and obviously not that kind of girl, so they took a drive instead, the night air rushing by their open windows, the narrow roads hemmed in by trees. He found himself telling her everything in his head. Stories. Favorite books, childhood vacations, old friends, anxiety dreams . . . as if the pent-up thing in him had never been lust at all, but words, months’ worth of thoughts he’d kept locked up tight.

  At the end of that first night, she’d leaned over and kissed him, and he lost his mind in the softness of her lips.

  Before he’d flown home, his fire team leader had gathered them together. “We deploy in a month. Don’t get distracted. And for fuck’s sake, whatever you do, don’t get married.”

  Jake leaned over and nudged Mike, his buddy, his teammate, and said, “No fucking chance.” Because if there was one thing Jake knew, it was that he was never getting married. Never having a family.

  When he first got home, he’d stopped in to see his folks. They were as miserable as he remembered, drunk when he arrived, snarling and snapping at each other. There were faded bruises on his mother’s arms and circles under her eyes. It had always been that way: his father on disability since Jake’s childhood, drifting through life since he’d fallen off a roof he was de-mossing; his mother using cheap wine and online shopping to drown the misery of a bad marital choice made worse by circumstance.

  Jake had known at age twelve that he had to get out as soon as possible. And then at fourteen, the first plane had hit the first tower and he’d known where he was going to. He would take the fight to those assholes, wherever they were; he would rain destruction down on them like they’d rained it down on New York City. On his country.

  He’d scoffed at the idea that he could be distracted. The month of post-training leave couldn’t go fast enough; deployment couldn’t come soon enough; he couldn’t wait to put a bullet through the first motherfucker’s head.

  Except then there was Mira. Three weeks so far, nights strung together like shiny beads in his memory. Nights she told her parents she was with her friends, nights she stole from her life as a good girl. Movies, sitting side by side, the heat of her arm sinking into his skin and making it hard for him to sit still, a slow burn twisting in his gut. Nights at Dick’s, splitting french fries and chocolate milkshakes and passing iPods across the speckled table to share songs.

  In the car afterward, Mira setting the pace, her kisses bolder every night, their mouths sliding over each other’s, slick and hungry, bodies tangled and sweaty, fighting the gearshift and the emergency brake, her kneeling
over him, trying to press as close as possible.

  Her hands gained confidence as they moved across his heated skin, as they unfastened the button and zipper of his jeans, as they slipped beneath the waistband of his briefs.

  She’d never said she was a virgin, but he guessed she was because she’d seemed surprised when he’d flicked his thumbs over her nipples. When he’d tongued them. When he’d slid his hand down the front of her pants and worked a finger through the tangle of her curls to tap her clit. The first time, she’d come against his hand with a soft, broken cry.

  That, like everything else, wasn’t supposed to have happened. Nor was the tiny ping in his chest, a seed bursting through its tough shell to germinate, at the sound of her voice.

  And now there were seven days left.

  Not much time for what he wanted from her, which was all of her, under him, around him, over and over.

  But it couldn’t be more than that—not more than a week of sex. Because he was never getting married. Because she’d told him that first night that she’d deliberately chosen to get herself picked up by a stranger as an act of rebellion. Her father had just informed her that he wouldn’t pay for her to attend art school, but would only give her money for “a real college.” She’d been so pissed at her dad that night, she would have slept with a sixty-five-year-old hardened ex-con to get a rise out of him.

  “My dad’s a total control freak,” she’d told him on their third date. She’d grown up on Bainbridge Island, college-bound before she’d popped out of the womb. Her parents were the same brand as his father, ex-hippies, but unlike his father, all whitewashed and clean living. She’d said, “My father would kill me. I never meant this to be anything other than a one-night thing.”

  “You and me both,” he told her, but they didn’t push it any further than that.

  There was only now. The sand under their feet, the gathering mist over the water, her mouth curving into a smile. There was no future.

  This is all there is. Now.

  He willed her to feel it, too.

  He listened so hard to hear her answer that he almost missed it, because she didn’t give it in words. She unbuttoned the top button of her blouse instead. Long fingers fumbling with the pearl-white disk. No revelation at first, only that undoing. Then another button, and the shirt fell open, revealing her breasts mounded high in pink lace cups.

  An ache bloomed at the base of his spine, the root of his dick, in his balls. His mouth ached, too. Before Mira, he hadn’t understood that sex could make you crazy. That it could take hold in your teeth and knees and chest. That you could want something so badly you’d beg for it.

  He’d kept the begging inside because he hadn’t wanted to frighten her.

  She undid another button and a sound came out of him he’d never heard before, something grating in his throat.

  She smiled. “You like that?”

  “Hell, yeah,” he said.

  Another button, and another, and the shirt hung down at her sides. He cupped her breasts in his hands. Now the ache was in his throat and his jaw and God, fucking everywhere.

  With other girls, he’d kissed them because it was the thing to do, the time to do it. With Mira, he kissed her because he couldn’t not. And he kept kissing her because it hurt to stop, played with her nipples and grabbed her ass and rocked her up against him because he wanted to have all, fucking all, of her; there wasn’t enough of her, he couldn’t get enough of her. That was how it was with Mira.

  The way she got in his arms. Like something fierce, writhing and live. Like he could barely hold her. And that lit his craving worse. He wanted to trap her, wanted to rub his heat and need off on her, but she wouldn’t be contained.

  She wriggled out of his arms and darted a short distance away.

  “Come back.”

  She shook her head and dropped her shirt to the sand behind her. She undid her bra and arched her back a little so her breasts swelled and her nipples tipped up. Something roared in him, but he stayed where he was because the visual was so fine he couldn’t stop looking. Saliva rushed into his mouth, blood poured into his dick. And then her hands found the button of her denim shorts and slid them and her underpants down her long, white legs to the sand. The whole, perfect fantasy revealed in the moonlight.

  He lunged, but she ran into the water, laughing at him. She gasped at the cold. “Get in here and warm me up.”

  He got out of his own clothes so fast he tripped over his jeans and got an arm tangled in his T-shirt. The cool water slid across his heated limbs. His body tightened and shrank, but his desire stayed sharp beneath the surface of his skin, like an undercurrent. He kicked and swam out, then back, stretching his legs and luxuriating. She treaded water and watched.

  “C’mere,” she said.

  In the water, she was cool and slippery, heat hidden in the places where he buried his fingers and his face. They stood in water up to their shoulders, and her body warmed his until she pressed his erection between his belly and hers.

  “Do you want to?” A gesture so vague she could have been asking if he wanted to go to the grocery store, but even in the dim light he could see the flush rise in her cheeks.

  He wanted to. So much he couldn’t answer, couldn’t choke out yes, fuck yes, oh my God please yes.

  “I have two blankets in my bag,” she said.

  “I don’t have condoms.”

  “I do.”

  She’d planned for it and—he wanted to believe—longed for it. Jesus. He kissed her hard and lifted her off her feet and tried to press up into her despite the mad impossibility of those logistics.

  She laughed at him. “Hang on. Hang on.”

  He swept her into his arms and carried her up the beach. He squatted, balancing her across his thighs, ignoring the burn, grabbing the blankets out of the tote bag she’d brought and laying them out as best he could on the sand. He set her down on one and she spread the edges out, then reached for him and pulled him down so abruptly he lost his balance and fell beside her.

  He crawled over her and dropped his mouth to hers. Her body was a dizzying contrast of warm and cool, her tongue a wild, aggressive thing. He couldn’t catch his breath. She made senseless sounds, moving against his fingers, shifting to press her breasts up so he could duck his head and lick circles around her tight nipples. Her next noise was a definite moan. It swirled in his belly and made him so hard it hurt.

  “I want you,” she whispered in his ear.

  His brain had shut down, and whatever part of him was in charge could only think: In. He moved over her and positioned himself, swollen and leaking pre-cum. He felt her wet heat give against his tip, felt her all over his head, and he almost came right then and there, almost blew his wad and ruined the whole fucking night.

  “Condom,” she said.

  “Shit.” He withdrew.

  She tugged her bag over and found one, tore it open and reached for him. He had to use all his self-control to hang on. He made a choked sound, and she hummed her approval as he got between her legs again and she lined him up against her wetness. He thrust forward. An inch, and he wouldn’t have thought it possible but he wanted her even more, her fierce heat squeezing him, and he pressed farther, farther, until he noticed she’d gone still beneath him.

  He was so crazed with lust that it took him a moment to catch on. She’d turned her face away, too.

  “Mira,” he whispered.

  “Ow,” she whispered back.

  “Oh, Christ, I’m sorry,” he said, and drew back, which elicited another squeaked noise of—he now recognized—pain. “I’ll go slower.” He dropped a hand between her legs and began to slick his thumb lightly back and forth over her clit.

  “That feels good,” she said, but as soon as he tried to move again, she made another noise of distress.

  He kissed her, hard, and her mouth opened to him, got wetter against his, but her body got more rigid. She drew back. Some nasty animal part of him wanted to grab her and re
fuse to let go, but he was stern with his lust and it subsided. His erection was doing the same. Shrinking away from her misery. In a few seconds, he’d slip out of her. The thought filled him with despair. This is all there is, the now. A few minutes ago, it had seemed like infinite space, unlimited promise. Now it was the end.

  He withdrew and rolled away.

  “I’m sorry.” She had tucked her face under her arm and her shoulders shook. Crying. He felt it, a hollow pain in his chest.

  “Don’t be. We’ll try again.” He tried to soothe her with a hand on her hair, but she didn’t soften under his touch.

  “There’s no time. We don’t have enough time.”

  “We have a week,” he said, but he felt desperation lock around his ribs.

  “I’m an idiot,” she said.

  “This wasn’t your fault. It was your first time, right?”

  She nodded.

  “It’ll be better next time. I’ll make it better.”

  Because he wanted to leave her with something that mattered. Something she would always have. In case she met assholes in college who took advantage, who didn’t know what they were doing, who didn’t see how amazing she was, how she deserved the best he could give her. Not like this, not halfway and awkward, but the way he would do it next time, as much a revelation as the first time she’d cried out and arched in his arms.

  But she was shaking her head. “I’m not an idiot because of that. I’m an idiot because I didn’t see this coming.”

  “What?”

  “How I would feel—”

  His chest got tight. Tighter.

  “That I would fall—”

  “Don’t say it,” he said.

  She turned away. Her shoulders slumped. He ached to reach out and pull her in. To be a different guy with a different life, to say, We have all the time in the world.