by Mj Fields
Copyright © 2020 by MJ Fields
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual, locations or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This book is intended for mature adults only. It is not suitable for anyone under the age of 18.
27 Truths (Truth About Love Duet, Book One)
Copyright © 2016 by M.J. Fields
First published in 2016.
All rights reserved.
Cover Design and formatting by Jersey Girl Design
Editing by C&D Editing
27 Lies (Truth About Love Duet, Book Two)
Copyright © 2016 by M.J. Fields
First published in 2016.
All rights reserved.
Cover Design, Interior Design and Formatting by Jersey Girl Design
Editing by C&D Editing
Cover Model: Quinn Biddle
Photographer: Michael Downs
Contents
Family Tree
27 Truths (Ava’s Story)
Preface
Prologue
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
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
Afterword
27 Lies (Luke’s Story)
Preface
Prologue
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
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Epilogue
Preview of Her First Kiss
Acknowledgments
Also by MJ Fields
About the Author
27 Truths (Ava’s Story)
Truth About Love Duet, Book One
Preface
Note To Reader
There is a moment that your breath is taken away. You feel a connection, one that you know is only made for two people. A moment you are so frightened of losing that words are lost. So, without reason, you allow that beautiful once in a lifetime moment to be felt, but you never put it into words.
A moment like that deserves words.
Moments like that deserve so much more than a memory you will relive in your mind forever as the time you fell in love with the person you know you were meant to spend eternity with.
I am sure I am not alone in this observation. But love isn’t only a feeling. So many things come into love’s equation.
The scent of love is distinct. It’s not covered in store-bought aromas that are flowery or musky. It is a scent that you never forget yet can’t describe. It is a smell that, when it wafts through the air and tickles your nose, you will instantly remember the first time you encountered it. Yet, instead of trying to understand it, you simply bask in it and pray for its return.
The look of love is not two dimensional; it’s not even three dimensions. There are endless sides, different depths, and it can change in the blink of an eye.
The truth about love is that the fall isn’t the most beautiful part. It’s the whole story: the beginning, the middle, and everything in-between. It doesn’t end.
The truth about love is that there aren’t just two people. People bring their pasts with them. They bring their pain, their joy, their wounds, their experiences, their knowledge, and their desire to make it work.
The truth about love isn’t easy to tell. It isn’t black and white.
You love someone, and they will surely love you. If you give of yourself selflessly enough, so will they.
In each chapter heading is a truth about love given to me by a friend, family member, or reader just like you. It does not necessarily introduce the chapter.
This book doesn’t end with a typical HEA, but it is about love’s truths and tragedies.
It is about the beautiful and the broken.
XOXO
MJ
Prologue
You can’t run or hide from love. Love will always find you. — H. Scully
Seven Years Ago
For as far back as I can remember, I have loved Luke Lane.
Luke’s father, Tommy, was my father’s best friend. Dad and Tommy went to school together, played football together—they did everything together. They planned to play football in college together, but Tommy Lane fell in love with Jade Ross, and Jade fell in love with Tommy.
From the stories I have been told, they were the happiest high school couple ever. They shared a love story for the ages.
One night during their senior year in high school, they went to Syracuse. Tommy was driving with Jade by his side. My father and Ryan, a friend of theirs, were in the back seat. A drunk city bus driver ran a red light, hit the vehicle on the driver’s side, and Tommy was killed. They were all rushed to the hospital where Jade found out she was pregnant.
My father did what he knew Tommy would do for him. He helped Jade in any way he could. And when Jade’s son was born, he was named after my father, and my father became his godfather.
My father is not particularly close to his own parents. The Ross family became his family, even after the breakup with his high school girlfriend, Tessa Ross. They still loved him and included him in nearly everything. By default, my brother Logan and I were part of that family, as well.
Even when Jade married Ryan, my father was still a huge part of their lives. He loved Luke Lane like he was his own. He loved Luke Lane because he was Tommy’s son.
I love him because I know that we are meant to be together.
Growing up next-door to him, we saw each other often. With our families being so close, I saw him even more often. Holidays, birthdays, cookouts, pool parties—we even vacationed together.
Luke Lane was taller than me, bigger than me, older than me, and there was always a part of him that was protective of me. He watched out for me, much like my father watched out for him.
When all the kids would choose teams for beach volleyball or kickball, I was always the last ch
osen. Luke once told me that I should stop wearing my tutu and my crown all the time, and then they might take me a little bit more seriously as an athlete. I told him, when he was captain, he should choose me, anyway, because that’s what people who love each other do. I was young, very young, and he was … Luke. He nodded and said, “Fine.”
From then on, I was always his second pick. I understood that he needed to make sure his team had a chance to win, and he understood that I was still going to wear my crown and tutu.
There are pictures of him and me in abundance: me on his shoulders in the pool, me tagging along behind him, me at his football games, him at some of my dance competitions, and hundreds of photos at get-togethers. There are more pictures of the two of us than me or him with anyone else.
Those things don’t just happen; they are signs. A sign that Luke Lane and Ava Links are meant to be together forever.
When I went through my “awkward phase”—you know the one: body changing, boobs growing, things like that—he no longer put me on his shoulders in the pool. He no longer picked me to be on his team when we played games. Instead, he distanced himself.
At first, it hurt.
At school, when I told my best friend Harper, his second cousin, that I had been reading magazine articles on how to make a guy fall in love with you, she laughed.
I didn’t think it was funny at all.
“Oh, I’m sorry, Ava. I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings. It’s just …” She stopped, and I waited.
Harper Abraham was that girl you wish you could be. She was the top of our class academically; any sports she played, she excelled at; and she was a friend to all, kindness pouring out of her. She did not do drama, and she smiled often. As a result, when she laughed at my teenage heartbreak, it pissed me off.
“Just what?” I asked, packing my book bag full of magazines and books.
“Ava, don’t be mad. He’s just … I don’t know, older and, like, family,” she finally said.
“You’re his family; I’m not.”
Harper and I went through a rough time after that. I left the library and never mentioned his name to her again. I hid my love for Luke for a while. When she brought it up, I shot it down. She didn’t get it. He was mine, I was his, and that was the way it was. Harper wasn’t the kind of girl who dreamed of her Prince Charming, though. She was too worried about spreading kindness and helping the less fortunate. (Seriously, she is that perfect.)
When Luke started dating, I accepted it. He didn’t love those girls. I mean, what was there to love? They didn’t know him, and he didn’t know them.
Harper was right. Our age difference was an issue, but someday, it wouldn’t be. Until then, I had to believe that true love would prevail.
And it would.
Luke joined the Army. The day I found out, my heart broke.
“Why?” I asked him when no one else was in earshot.
“Why, what?” he asked, also looking around to make sure no one could hear me, including his bimbo girlfriend.
“Why are you doing this? Leaving me?” I waved my hand around. “Leaving us?”
He looked at me and crossed his arms over his chest. “I’m a man, Ava. Until you grow up, you won’t understand this, but I need to make my own way.”
Tears immediately sprung to my eyes. My emotions were all over the place: hurt that he saw me as a child, sorrow because he was leaving, and anger because he just didn’t get it.
Then he hugged me.
“Someday, you’ll understand, okay? I’ll be back.”
You’ll be back for me, I thought. For me.
I prayed for Luke Lane every night. I prayed for his safety. I prayed for his return. I prayed for his love. God knew he was made for me, and so did I. That was all that mattered.
He came home on leave in time for graduation. His brother Jackson, Harper, his cousin Liam, and I all graduated that year. A few days after graduation, there was a party celebrating his safe return. And like every time he came home, there was a girl waiting. She was not me. She was physically my opposite: tall, big boobs, and red hair. I am short and dark-haired with less than average sized breasts and an ass that brings attention that I’m undetermined whether I like or not.
Alexis was also a complete bitch. Bitches come in droves, so that bitch brought her mini-bitches. The mini-bitches and queen bitch ate, drank, and were merry. They clearly enjoyed their time poolside, strutting around with their plastic personalities and plastic-enhanced body parts.
I overheard a conversation they had about how hot he was and “obviously he could do better than being a soldier in the Army because his family clearly could afford to send him to college.”
It happened to be a day when I was liking the size of my ass. I had snuck a few drinks and decided to go plant my butt amongst the bitches.
“I’m Ava.” I smiled nice and big, getting comfortable. They all clammed up. “So, I heard you talking shit about Luke.”
They gasped and vice bitch, the one closest to Alexis, rolled her eyes. “We were just saying he could do better.” She waved her hand about. “I mean, look at this place. It’s not like he has no other options. Clearly, he could take better care of Alexis if he just worked for his family.”
I pulled my shades down and looked over at them. “He’s busy taking care of a country. And what exactly is she doing? No, never mind, I heard. She quit school.”
“So she could be available for him,” vice bitch snapped.
“Then what does she do the other eleven months out of the year? Sit around and bitch to you guys about needing a man to take care of her?” I hold my hand up. “Never mind. Don’t give a shit. You’re all trifling ass bitches, anyway.”
“And who the hell are you?” one of them gasped. “Some teenage trust fund baby?”
“No, bitch. I’m going to be a woman who will make damn sure I can take care of myself and my man. The only sucking off him I’ll be doing is—”
“Ava, I need your help,” Harper said, grabbing my arm and yanking me up.
“But—”
“Now.”
“Bitches,” I grumbled as I walked away.
“Fat ass,” one said behind me.
I tried to yank my arm away as I turned around. “Your boyfriend liked it.”
“Ava,” Harper snapped, pulling me into the garage.
“What a bunch of cu—”
“You’re loaded,” Harper gasped.
“So?” I huffed. “At least I’m not a cu—”
“Ava, everything okay?” Luke’s brother Jackson asked, snickering.
“Bitch told me I have a fat ass.” I turned around and bent over. “It may be fat, but it’s a nice fat ass, right?”
“Everything okay in here?”
I looked back as Luke walked in the garage.
They all said everything was good, all except me.
“Do you think my ass is fat?” I asked.
His eyes locked onto mine. There was something different in them, something that heated my body in the center and spread into every cell.
“Answering a question like that can get a man in trouble,” he said, his nostrils flaring a bit.
“Trouble is my middle—”
“Ava’s had too much to drink,” Liam interrupted, coming in behind Luke.
After that incident, the crowd thinned. My parents stayed to help Jade and Ryan clean up. I did, too. Then Mom and Logan left before Dad and I got in the pool to cool off from the drunken cleaning in ninety-degree heat.
Luke’s brothers, Riley and Jackson, were in the pool with their girlfriends. Lauren, his sister, was walking in the house with Jade.
I was on an inflatable floating tube, and Luke was standing by the edge of the pool. He was shirtless, his arms crossed over his expansive chest, wearing black board shorts hanging low on his hips, exposing the small trail of hair leading beneath his waistband. He was so beautiful it was almost painful to look at him. I swore he could have made my eyes bleed.
His jet black hair was cut short on the sides, his full lips completely kissable, and his deep, dark blue eyes were cast down.
He looked up as if he could sense me looking at him, his face unreadable. I wondered what he was thinking. God, I wished I knew what he was thinking.
He squatted down and put his hand in the water as if to test the temperature. When he looked up at me again, he lifted his hand and curled his finger, beckoning me.
I pointed to myself because I was unsure he was truly referring to me.
The side of his lips curled up, and he looked around then back at me with his eyebrow raised and nodded.
I let out a very slow breath that was held as I looked around. We were alone. Everyone had left. Totally alone.
I paddled toward him, my eyes not leaving his, his never leaving mine, as I reminded myself to breathe. Just breathe.
It seemed like it took forever to get to him, but if it truly did, it was okay with me. He was looking at me, and it was so very different than it had ever been.
As I swam closer, I expected him to stand, but he didn’t.