Copyright
Copyright © 2021 Mary B Moore
All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced, copied or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without written expressed permission from the author, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. This is a work of fiction. All names, characters, businesses, places, events and incident are products of the authors imagination and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is purely coincidental.
Cover design: Kari March, Kari March Designs
Cover Photograph: Reginald Deanching, RplusM Photography
Model: Joe Wachs
Editor: B&C.
The use of actors, artists, movies, TV Shows, and song titles/ lyrics throughout this book are done so for storytelling purposes and should in no way be seen as advertisement. Trademark names are used in an editorial fashion with no intention of infringement of the respective owner’s trademark.
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment. 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 recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or if it was not purchased for use only, then you should return it to the seller and please purchase your own copy.
All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Copyright Act 1911 and the Copyright Act 1988, no part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior express, written consent of the author.
This book is intended for mature adults only and contains consensual sexual content and language that may offend some. Suggested reading audience is 18 years or older. I consider this book as Adult Romance.
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Dedication
Gemma—that last minute addition was amazing. Thank you for looking out for the crazy things I live for! And thank you also for the years of friendship and laughter. You’re amazing xox
* * *
C.M. & Elena—It’s been a hectic twelve months, but I can safely say I’d never have gotten through it without you. Thank you for being my sanity through the hard times. I love you both to the moon and back xox
Contents
Untitled
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
Epilogue
About the Author
Also by Mary B. Moore
Eat Crow
Logan
I made a mistake seven years ago and opened my mouth, letting words fly out of it that I didn’t mean. I said something about the one person I never wanted to hurt and lost my best friend. Now she’s back and needs help her with her loss, and I’m going to be the best rock in the history of rocks and make it right between us again.
I’d do anything to get Bexley Heath back in my life, even if it means helping out with her dog, who hates me and loves to destroy everything around him.
Time doesn’t kill love. Neither does a giant Irish Wolfhound eating my favorite chair.
Bexley
I’d successfully avoided Logan Richards for seven years, but somehow losing my grandpa brought him back into my life. Perhaps Papa was right when he said in his last letter that it was time to get over it and just let it go. Life’s too short, and forgiveness is divine, right?
He’s my anchor when I need it and my tissues when I cry. But that doesn’t mean I can’t reward my dog for causing him grief and destroying some of his furniture, though, does it? To heck with it, good Doyle.
Prologue
Logan
The countdown to graduation was on, and I was ticking off the days now.
There’d be no more getting up at the ass crack of dawn or staying up until my eyes started burning, working on papers about stuff I was never going to need to remember.
No more juggling life with football or teachers who spoke down to us like we were idiots.
Tonight we were having a party to mark the starting point of the end of school, and staring at the fire we’d started as I lifted my beer to my mouth, I worked out the number of days I still had to fake it for.
Seven weeks left. Seven times five days a week at school was… Shit, what was it? That’s how exhausted I was, I’d forgotten basic math. Thinking a little harder, I got it—thirty-five days.
A movement behind the flames caught my attention, and I watched as my dad’s best friend’s daughter laughed at something one of my teammates had said.
I’d known Bexley since we were babies. We’d spent every birthday, holiday, most vacations, and whatever else had come up together. She’d been my constant shadow from day one, and it hadn’t bothered me up until about two years ago when things had changed overnight.
We’d parted ways as the Logan and Bexley who were best friends, but then I’d had a dream about her. I’d kissed and touched her in it, and it’d been so vivid that I swear I felt how soft her skin was and how great she smelled.
The next morning, I’d noticed the changes in her.
Gone was the gangly and petite girl I’d always thought was pretty, and in her place was the new Bexley Heath. Long dark hair that reached to the middle of her back, tits that were slightly too big for her frame, an ass that would fit perfectly in my hands, and curves that made my brain go blank when she walked up to me in a freaking basic black tank that I’d seen her wear many times.
That’s all it took.
I didn’t want anything tying me down, so I’d tried to pull back from her, but our parents’ friendships didn’t allow me to do it completely.
Since then, I’d dreamt about her and watched, but I’d also changed how I was around her as much as possible. There was no more touching and no seeking her out. Instead, I’d thrown myself into football and everything else I could, and I’d gotten a ‘girlfriend’ seven months ago with no strings attached to the relationship.
It was the last thing on that list that’d had the most significant impact. Renna hated everything about Bexley, including her name.
See, Bexley was named after where her grandad—my grandad’s best friend—family came from, a place in London called Bexley Heath. It’d started as a joke when her mom was pregnant seeing as how his last name was Heath, but then her grandad had fallen in love with the sentimentality of it and it’d stuck.
Renna thought it was dumb and tacky, and she also hated the amount of time I spent with her outside of school, regardless what excuse I gave her for it.
And at that moment, I’d never seen anything more beautiful than Bexley Anne Heath.
Her head was thrown back as she laughed, with her hair was just tickling the top of her ass. Skimming my eyes down her, I stopped when I saw her tits bounce in the white t-shirt she was
wearing, that showed her white lace bra off more clearly than she likely realized.
Shaking my head and mentally kicking myself for being such a dick, I continued down her body and then noticed how her toned legs flexed in her cut-off shorts as she steadied herself.
It was just my luck the shadows from the fire emphasized all of the bits I loved the most.
And that was the crux of my problem—I wasn’t just a horny teen. I had a crush on Bexley, but I didn’t want to.
Arms winding their way around my neck almost made me jump, as the almost suffocating stench of cheap perfume mixed with the flavor of the beer I’d just sipped. There was a point where you wore that much cologne or perfume that people could taste it, and that’s how much Renna sprayed on herself. I swear my clothes and car were going to stink of it until I burned them or got rid of them.
“Hey, handsome,” she giggled in my ear. “What are you up to all on your own?”
I was breathing fresh air and enjoying life.
Grinding my teeth slightly, I muttered, “Nothing, just thinking.”
With her arms still around me, she sat down heavily on the log I was on, facing backward so that she was almost on my lap.
“About our future?”
This was her recent thing. She wanted us to be together forever. I was eighteen years old, for fuck’s sakes, I wasn’t settling down now. I didn’t know what career I wanted when I left college, or even if I wanted to go to it, but I did know I wanted to experience life. I couldn’t do that with someone I genuinely didn’t see a future with.
Her.
No matter how many times I told her or ignored her when she started, she just kept pressing it.
When I didn’t answer, she went straight to her next favorite subject.
“Is she still following you around?” she asked, looking where Bexley had been standing. “I heard she begged you for a ride tonight. That’s just pathetic.”
No, Bexley hadn’t. She’d said she was coming here to her mom, not knowing I was walking past her in the store, and I’d stopped and offered her a ride. I wanted to stay away from her, but I couldn’t stop myself at the same time. She’d tried to decline, but her mom was the one who’d said yes.
I wasn’t touching how relieved I’d been when I’d left, knowing I was going to be in a car alone with her for a measly ten-minute drive.
Sighing, I threw the rest of the beer that I couldn’t stomach anymore into the flames and made a note to come back in the morning to pick it up. “I offered her a ride, Renna. Just leave it alone.”
Her arms dropped, and then she took a deep breath in that meant she was going to rant.
“What does that mean? That you’re dumping me? Really? We’re seven weeks away from graduating, prom is soon, and you’re my date for it. And what about college? We’re leaving to start our lives together away from this shit hole.”
I’d never mentioned prom, college, nada, but Renna was the queen of drama and twisting shit. The only reason we’d last this long was because I was a teenager with hormones, and she’d been interested.
Yeah, I was that big of an asshole, but there’d been numerous occasions when she’d fucked other guys, so I’d just kept us as we were, relieved it wouldn’t lead to some sort of expectation that I couldn’t fulfill.
Until now.
Something had changed, and I didn’t know what it was, but the casual arrangement we’d agreed on had morphed into something crazy in her brain.
I was just so fucking tired of the drama and bullshit, and her screeching it all out for everyone to hear was the final straw.
Standing up, I let it all out, forgetting we had an audience as I said what I needed to.
“Dumping is too formal a word to use for what we have together, but I’ll make it clear just in case. Whatever we have together is over. It’s been over for a while, but we just never said the words, and that’s on me. We were never going to go to college together, never going to be more than this,” I gestured between us.
Mimicking my stance, she crossed her arms over her chest and glared at me. “It’s because of her, isn’t it?”
That’s when I snapped. “No, it’s not because of Bexley. How many times do I have to tell you the only reason she even registers in my life is because of our families? She’s nothing to me, a no one. Where do you think the money came from for me to take you out on dates? I get paid to drive her around and do shit with her.”
I didn’t hear the gasp that came from the girl we were discussing, who’d walked up behind me to tell me she was leaving. If I had, I’d have turned around and seen the devastation on her face as she fought back tears and done everything I could to take it back, regardless of how many people saw me doing it.
I was just too focused on ending this bullshit.
“You fuck other guys. Where in your mind does that make us an emotionally invested and committed couple? No, Renna, it’s over. I hope you have a good life.”
I said the last bit as I turned around to walk back to my car, meaning that I frowned when I saw Layla Townsend holding a crying Renna.
And I totally missed Mark Montgomery’s fist as it flew toward my face, making contact with my eye and knocking me out cold.
Six weeks later…
Bexley
“Honey,” Mom said quietly as I sat on the steps watching my dad and his dad laugh about something as they turned meat on the barbecue. “Are you sure you’re okay? I’m worried about you.”
Picking at the label on the unopened bottle of sparkling water in my hand, I shrugged and watched the bubbles moving around inside it.
“You didn’t go to prom, you’ve stayed home every night for the last six weeks, you don’t go to any of the games at school when Logan plays—”
“Don’t mention his name,” I hissed, squeezing the bottle.
Shuffling closer, she leaned her head closer to mine. “Logan? What did he do?”
“I know you paid him,” I rasped and then choked out a laugh. “Everyone at school knows y’all paid him to hang out with me and give me rides. I’m that chick, the chick a guy gets money to hang out with.”
“I never gave him a dime,” she argued, sounding incredulous. “Why did he say that?”
Feeling only slightly better about it all, I opened the abused bottle and took a mouthful.
Once the sharp feeling from the bubbles left my throat, I shook my head to clear it. “I don’t know. All I know is that he said it, so whoever who was at the party heard it. Now everyone at school knows, and I can’t even list all the names I’ve been called, including Bexley Hooker.”
“What?” she shrieked as she jumped up, getting the attention of both dads. “Which one of you paid Logan? Which one?”
That’s where it all began, her questioning both men while I let the numbness grow inside of me. Even Pops coming over didn’t help, and he was one of my favorite people in the world.
The human heart can only take so much hurt, and your emotions at the age of eighteen were fragile. So, I shut them off.
I didn’t feel anything, didn’t want to feel anything, but I knew that me going to the college I was going to was for the best. I’d been upset when I’d made my choice because of the distance from my family, but now I needed it.
And then the man who’d started it all walked around the corner, just as my mom laid into the dads about “payments” and “bullshit.”
Dad looked like he’d had his heart stomped on as she repeated what I’d told her, and Logan’s dad, Will, looked like he was going to be sick.
Slowly, Logan turned his head to look at me, and I caught the look of regret and pain in his eyes before I looked away again.
Ask me if I cared.
Not one fucking bit. Not even a crumb of a bit.
I was never going to see him again, and I hoped he lived with this for the rest of his life.
Chapter One
Logan
Seven long, regretful years later…
“
Now, Lawrence Heath’s granddaughter, his pride and joy, Bexley, is going to tell us about him,” the priest who was leading the funeral said to us all as we sat crammed into the pews of the church.
That’s when I got my first proper look at Bexley in seven years, as she walked up to where the priest was waiting for her, wearing a smart black dress. In the time that’d passed, she’d moved from being a beautiful girl to being a stunning woman.
At five foot five inches, she’d probably reach my collarbone, but the heels she had on would bring her to my chin. She still had her dangerous curves and long dark hair, but the innocence I remembered that she worn so well had been replaced by maturity.
Right now, it was also replaced with devastation because we were burying her grandpa, but I reckoned without that, she’d bring a man to his knees, because he’d know immediately she was totally out of his reach.
“I never wanted to think of this day happening,” she began, her lower lip trembling slightly. “I never wanted to imagine a day when I didn’t have my hero here to lean on, to talk to, to laugh with…” she cleared her throat after the last word came out sounding so raspy I almost winced.
“My pops was the best man I’ve ever met. When I was a little kid, he told me life would pass me by in the blink of an eye, and that I needed to make the most of it because I never knew what it’d bring. Last Sunday, when I rang him to see how he was, I never expected for a second that he’d have a heart attack while I was on the phone to him, or that he’d hold on until I got to the hospital to hold his hand.” On the last word, all of her strength disappeared, and she had to grab the lintel to stop herself from falling.
Eat Crow (Cheap Thrills Series Book 6) Page 1