by Len Webster
The Results of Unrequited
Copyright © 2018 Len Webster
Published by Len Webster
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form, including electronic or mechanical, without written permission from the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re- sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it to the seller and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
Published: Len Webster 2018
Editing: Jenny Sims
Cover & Interior Design: Qamber Designs & Meda
BOOKS BY LEN WEBSTER
The First Touch of Sunlight
The Wait For You
The Sometimes Moments Collection
Sometimes Moments (Sometimes Moments #1)
Sometimes, Forever (Sometimes Moments #2)
Sometimes. Honestly? Always. (Sometimes Moments #3)
Coming Soon
Thirty-Eight Series
Thirty-Eight Days (Thirty-Eight #1)
Thirty-Eight Reasons (Thirty-Eight #2)
What We’ll Leave Behind (Thirty-Eight #2.5)
What You Left Behind (Thirty-Eight #3)
All We Have (Thirty-Eight #4)
With The First Goodbye (Thirty-Eight #5)
With The Last Goodbye (Thirty-Eight #6)
The Science of Unrequited: The Story of AJ & Evan
The Theory of Unrequited (The Science of Unrequited #1)
The Solution to Unrequited (The Science of Unrequited #2)
The Results of Unrequited (The Science of Unrequited #3)
The Dissolution of Unrequited (The Science of Unrequited #4) Coming soon
No Peace (4:43)
-Sam Smith Ft. Yebba
For the Lenatics,
Because your loyalty and support always leaves me in awe.
But your time and your love … that’s a gift I’ll forever treasure.
I love every single one of you.
This book is for you.
PROLOGUE I
ALEX
How did we get here?
After everything.
After all this time.
How did we get here?
When I said goodbye to Evan Gilmore, I had no idea that this would be the outcome of our goodbye.
That I would be here.
And he would be there.
I had no idea it could get worse.
I didn’t think it could.
But it did.
It is.
I’m no longer the same.
He’s no longer the same.
Our lives were at the mercy of the universe.
And I was its puppet.
I used to believe that I could be everything I ever wanted as long as I had my best friend with me, by me, always supportive of me.
But I was naïve.
When I was seventeen, I thought I had experienced the worst pain of my life when Evan chose to take Addison to prom.
I sat on his doorstep and waited.
Every second that passed was all the realization I needed.
I gave too much of myself to someone who could never love me back.
My love was unrequited.
I thought our road trip saved us.
I was wrong.
It hadn’t.
It had prolonged the true destruction of us.
See, I loved Evan Gilmore with every atom that makes me whole.
I loved him enough to wait for him.
I loved him enough to give up dreams for him.
I loved him enough to give him all of me.
And that was the problem.
I loved Evan Gilmore more than he could ever love me.
I thought that was normal, but as time passed, I realized it wasn’t.
It wasn’t fair to my heart.
His silence wasn’t fair to my love for him.
And that was my mistake.
We were a failed hypothesis.
A failed theory where a solution was a null void.
Our experiment did not have the conclusive evidence to save us.
Last Christmas, Evan Gilmore told me he loved me.
He gave me a necklace that was symbolic of my meaning in his life.
This Christmas, Evan broke the heart he had repaired.
My heart.
Atoms split.
Atoms exploded.
Black holes were created.
My heart could not take any more.
So months after Christmas, I reclaimed my heart, my life, my soul, and my future.
Evan Gilmore might be my soul mate.
But being someone’s soul mate doesn’t mean you’re the love of their life.
And I would find that.
In a someday.
In arms that didn’t belong to my best friend.
Whose heart purified mine.
And that someone came with a smile that brought back my heart’s beats.
He was patient.
He was kind.
He did the one thing Evan Gilmore couldn’t.
He waited for me.
PROLOGUE II
EVAN
Time and time again, I never cease to surprise myself at how low I could go.
How stupid I could be.
When I said goodbye to my best friend after the road trip that brought us back together, I didn’t think this could happen to us.
Alexandra Parker loved me.
Purely.
With all her heart.
She loved me more than enough to give me her heart.
To give me intimacy.
To bless me with her soul.
To give me her time and her life.
To give me what I never deserved.
Her love.
All of her love.
Her entire heart’s affections.
Alexandra Parker gave me what many didn’t.
Through all the pain and torture I inflicted on her, she loved me unconditionally.
I was wrong when I called her selfish.
I’m still the selfish one.
And as I look at her, I can see what I’ve done to her.
That trust.
That love.
That belief in me.
Was gone.
I deserve it.
All of it.
I pushed her away when all she did was love me.
She waited for me like a fulfilled promise.
I abandoned her like a broken oath.
I chose everyone else over her.
One night, she asked me who she was to me.
And I told her that she was my best friend.
But I didn’t tell her the truth.
I didn’t prepare her for what would be next.
She became the girl whose heart I destroyed by disre
garding her feelings.
I begged for her back, only to throw it in her face.
The pressure of making her happy after winning her back was too immense.
I was going to do her wrong.
Alexandra Louise Parker would wait every single day of her life to make me happy.
It was never about her happiness.
It was always about mine.
It will continue to always be about mine.
Because I’m selfish enough to know the truth.
That, I, Evan Gilmore, have been—and always will be—a fuckup.
Especially when it came to my soul mate.
My everything.
The absolute love of my life.
Because here’s the truth.
The real truth.
I didn’t and couldn’t love her the way she loved me, and that was the biggest sin I had ever committed.
Her love was too pure.
Too honest.
Too heartbreaking.
Too much to live up to.
Too easy to disappoint.
When I lost Alexandra,
I met Molly.
When I met Molly,
I truly lost Alexandra.
For good.
Forever.
That was what she had said to me as the Christmas snow surrounded us.
White snowflakes tainted by her tears.
And her heartbreak.
And my lies.
And hidden by the truth.
51 Sb
antimony
ALEX
Now
He slept facing her.
He always slept that way.
Somehow, every morning, she’d wake up with his arm over her and his face tucked against her side or even on her stomach from when he had passed out from practice. He’d come home and beg her to lie on the couch with him before dinner. He’d ask her about her day, and then he’d ask her about tomorrow.
They clicked in ways she had never thought possible.
It was perfect.
He was perfect.
Everything about him was perfect.
And everything about him was right.
Her heart agreed.
So did her head.
Nothing made her second-guess herself when she was with him.
Alexandra Parker was the girl he loved.
The one he moved mountains for.
The one he rushed from the airport to see.
And right now, Alex was going to be the first person to wish him a happy birthday.
Reaching over, she set her hand on his shoulder, letting her thumb brush his bare skin. He let out a soft sigh as Alex pushed him gently onto his back and threw a leg over his body to hover over him.
She smiled at him, pulling away to let the ends of her hair tickle his smooth face. Slowly, she let her weight fall on him as she straddled his stomach, her palms on the pillows as she bent down and pressed her lips to his neck.
He groaned as she trailed kisses up his neck and along his strong jaw until she reached his ear. Suddenly, his hands settled on her hips, and she bit back a smile, knowing he was awake.
“Happy Birthday,” she whispered by his ear and then moved to kiss his cheek.
His hands left her hips to wrap around her back. Alex glanced over to see his eyes blink open and the sweet smile she loved waking up to spread across his lips.
He hummed. “Where have you been all my other birthday mornings?”
Alex felt her cheeks heat as he gazed up at her. Using a hand, he shifted to sit them up. A laugh escaped her at their swift position change.
This.
Alex in his lap with her hands cradling his jaw was far more intimate than before.
Far more beautiful as she stared into his stunning blue eyes.
Her heart stood no chance when he looked at her.
It sped freely without restriction or doubt.
Without fear or worry.
She loved him.
Truly and madly.
“Back in Massachusetts,” she informed.
“Yeah,” he breathed as he pressed his forehead to hers, his hands slipping under the shirt he’d put on her last night. His palms skimmed up and down her back. “And I was in Connecticut.”
“You were,” Alex agreed as she pulled back and took in her boyfriend’s sparkling blue eyes.
How he looked so beautiful in the mornings, she would never know.
Landon Carmichael had not only been her boyfriend for almost a year, but he had been what made her love college and North Carolina. He made her confident with who she was. He put her first every time.
He loved her for who she was.
And she loved all of him.
It had taken time.
A long time to trust the truth her heart was saying.
That Landon Carmichael was worth the chance.
And when she had finally given it to him, he took it.
He made her his without hesitation.
He was so sure of his love for her.
And he made her so sure of her love for him.
She had let go.
Chosen herself.
And him.
Alex leaned forward and captured his lips with hers. She intended for their kiss to be short and sweet before she cooked him breakfast, but Landon deepened their connection by grasping her hips. He brought her closer to his hard body, causing her to gasp. His tongue slipped past her lips and found hers.
Their kiss intensified as her hands moved to his hair.
She rotated her hips against him, eliciting a moan from them both.
They didn’t stop kissing.
It always shocked her how much she wanted him.
How much she found herself loving him.
How much she craved and needed him.
She knew she had to end their kiss.
Alex had a whole day planned for him.
It was Thursday. They didn’t have class, and Alex had finished her papers.
Everything had been planned for weeks.
But Landon Carmichael and his damn mouth was ruining it.
She couldn’t stop answering his kiss with her own.
Her brain was consumed with fog.
With desire.
And when he flipped them over so she was on her back, she gave up and decided he was all she needed.
Alex widened her legs as he settled between them and allowed his weight to fall on top of her. She let out a moan at the contact, loving how he felt against her. No matter how many times she and Landon made love or had wild, intense sex, nothing beat him being on top.
Nothing had ever been as intense as when he whispered just how much he loved her as he reached his peak and spilled inside her.
And though Landon gave her the best orgasms of her life, one boy showed her what Landon hadn’t in Rhode Island.
It seemed so long ago.
It had been a long time ago.
She refused to think about him.
What he taught her was the power of selfishness.
The true cost of unrequited to her heart and her belief in him.
He became her past.
And she had no intentions of ever revisiting that past again.
Not when the most beautiful, loving boyfriend in the world pressed his lips down her neck to the business shirt she’d worn to bed. Last night, she had picked him up at the airport after his trip to LA.
A simple dinner had turned into so much more, and they’d made love three times before they were spent.
Landon abandoned his kisses and pressed his palm on the bed, propping himself up as he looked down at her. “So it’s my birthday …”
“I’m
well aware.”
“Can I request a present?”
Her brow arched. “I already bought you a present.”
His blue eyes flashed with desire. “It’s one that can’t be bought, Alex.”
“And what is that?” She feigned ignorance.
“Unbutton my shirt and let me see you.” His voice was low and laced with sin.
Alex bit her lip as she reached the top button of his shirt. She paused and asked, “Like this?” before she popped the button open, showing him a little more skin.
“Keep going,” he encouraged.
One by one, she continued to tease him with her unbuttoning until finally the shirt was free of its confines.
Landon pressed his free hand between her breasts and slowly trailed his palm down her skin until he reached the material of her panties. The lacy black pair was his favorite. The matching bra was somewhere on the floor where he’d thrown it after he ripped it off her body last night.
To say they were desperate for each other last night was putting it mildly.
He and a number of other top-ranked college basketball players had been invited to attend a two-day conference to meet important people in the NBA. People who could change his life. It not only meant him being in a suit and tie most of the time, but it also meant that she was without him.
So when he had surprised her with the news he was coming home a day early for his birthday, she had changed her plans and driven his Range Rover to the airport to pick him up.
His finger traced along the skin above her panties, causing her to squirm. “Landon,” she breathed as need tortured her.
“I know what you want, baby,” he teased as he drew up his legs and sat on his knees. Then he pushed the shirt away from her, exposing her breasts to him.
Her chest heaved as her heart hammered against her ribcage.
The anticipation was thick and torturous.
He always liked to tease her.
Edge her, as he claimed.
Make her beg.
His fingers dipped into the front of her underwear to discover just how much she wanted him. “I love how wet you get for me.”
It was true.
She could feel just how wet she was.