Now or Never

by Nyora René

  Now or Never

  Nyora René

  Garden Avenue Press

  Contents

  Blurb

  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

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Excerpt from Love Rekindled

  Also by Nyora Rene

  Visit us

  About the Author

  Blurb

  * * *

  Crystal Harris has been in love with her best friend, Brendon Marks, since they were in high school. He was the perfect gentleman, always supportive and encouraging her, and she’s spent the last ten years loving him in secret, too scared to tell him how she feels.

  * * *

  Brendon has a secret himself…he’s in love with his best friend and doesn’t know how to tell her. He doesn’t want to ruin their friendship, but as the days go by, his feelings for Crystal continue to grow stronger and stronger.

  * * *

  What do you do when you feel like your feelings are about to bubble over? When is the perfect time to tell your best friend you’re in love with them? What makes you say, “It’s now or never?”

  Now or Never by Nyora René

  * * *

  Copyright © September 2020, Nyora René

  Garden Avenue Press

  Atlanta, Georgia

  ISBN: 978-1-946302-30-4 (Ebook edition)

  ISBN: 978-1-946302-31-1 (Paperback edition)

  * * *

  This book is a work of fiction. All names, characters, locations, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination, or have been used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, locales, or events is entirely coincidental. No part of this e-book may be reproduced or shared by any electronic or mechanical means, including but not limited to printing, file sharing, and e-mail, without prior written permission from Nyora René.

  www.gardenavenuepress.com

  Prologue

  “Hi, I’m Brendon. Mr. Lewis said you were looking for a math tutor. You still need one?”

  Crystal Harris looked up from her algebra one textbook into eyes dark as night framed by long lashes. Her eyes travelled over golden-brown skin, full lips, and a muscular physique. She gulped, her fourteen-year-old hormones cataloguing every facial feature of the teenage god in front of her.

  “Hello? Do you still need help?” the god asked, snapping Crystal out of her daze.

  “Um, yeah? I mean, yes, I need help. I’m Crystal,” she whispered, lifting a trembling hand to offer a handshake.

  Brendon smiled and shook her hand, and a tingle ran up Crystal’s spine, goosebumps breaking out over her skin.

  “Nice to meet you, Crystal. What are you struggling with? Is it algebra in general, or something specific?” Brendon asked, sitting down beside her at the small table she had commandeered in the school’s library.

  Crystal stared at Brendon, unable to believe he was sitting next to her. Brendon Marks was a junior and the star running back on their school’s football team. He and her sister Amethyst were in the same grade and had some of the same classes.

  Clearing her throat, Crystal took a deep breath. “It’s everything. I hate math, and I’ve always struggled with it. Then they added letters to the numbers, and now nothing makes sense.”

  Brendon chuckled. “Yeah, if you’re not a math person, the letters, as you called them, can be confusing. They’re actually just symbols that represent the unknown number, or variables. Show me what you’re working on.”

  Crystal’s brow furrowed and she glanced at the clock behind the checkout desk. “Don’t you have practice? Why are you here? I mean, I’m thankful for the help, but I’m confused…”

  Brendon shrugged. “Coach is making us tutor freshmen as part of the team’s community involvement, and since I’m good at math, I chose to volunteer to do algebra tutoring. This is our study hour before practice, so here I am.”

  Crystal’s shoulders sank and she looked down at her lap. “So you’re only doing this because you have to. Got it,” she said, gritting her teeth. She picked up her pencil and focused on the math page in front of her, ignoring Brendon.

  “Hey, I mean, yeah, I’m doing this for football, but I genuinely want to help. What’s the problem?” he asked.

  Crystal looked over at him, ignoring the flutter her heart made at how good he looked. “The ‘problem’ is I don’t want pity help. I don’t want you to feel obligated to help me. If you’re going to help me, do it because you want to, not because your coach made you. I don’t want someone who, at the first opportunity, will bounce the moment football season is over, leaving me in the lurch. No thank you.” She turned away from him.

  Crystal groaned. Why oh why must math be so hard?! The letters, or variables, as Brendon called them, seemed to glare at her the harder she looked at the problem. Taking a deep breath, she wrote the problem on her paper and tried to remember how to solve for x and y.

  “First, you want to isolate the x. Let me show you,” Brendon said, taking the pencil out of her hand.

  Crystal rolled her eyes and snatched the pencil back. “Don’t do me any favors. Like I said, I need someone who wants to tutor me and will stick around.”

  “Look, can we start over? I’m sorry if it seemed like I’m only here because I have to be, and I promise, I won’t disappear once football season is over. So what do you say?” he asked, bumping her shoulder.

  Crystal studied him, not saying a word. Could she trust him? She glanced at the problem on her paper and scowled. What choice did she have? Either she got help in math or she failed, and failure in her house was not accepted.

  “Promise?” she asked.

  He looked her in the eyes and nodded. Then, he took the pencil back from her. “Yeah, and I don’t break promises, they mean a lot to me,” he said. “Now, back to what I was telling you.” Brendon bent over the paper and proceeded to show her how to solve for x and y.

  The hour passed by fast, and before he left for practice they exchanged numbers and agreed to a tutoring schedule on Mondays through Fridays. Crystal was impressed. Not only did Brendon know math, but he was fun to talk to and didn’t treat her like a dumb freshman. A lot of the upperclassmen treated the “fish,” as they called freshmen, like pimple-faced social pariahs. Brendon was cool and he didn’t make her feel dumb.

  Her sister Amethyst walked up to her table, her blue and yellow cheer duffel hanging from her shoulder. “Hey sis, you ready to go? Coach cancelled cheer practice today.”

  “Yeah, let me pack up,” Crystal said, standing. She quickly gathered her books and stuffed them into her pink and grey backpack.

  “How did you do on that algebra quiz today? You know Daddy will not be pleased if you don’t have at least a B,” Amethyst said as they made their way out of the library.

  Crystal rolled her eyes. Amethyst was such a goody two-shoes, it was annoying. She got straight A’s in school, was on the varsity cheer squad, in National Honors Society, and was the secretary of the student government association. In a word, she was perfect. She never put a foot wrong. Then there was her. She wasn’t a straight A and B student, and her only extracurricular activity was restructuring and piecing together bomb outfits from the hand-me-downs she got from her three older sisters, and turning them into units to put on her forbidden Instagram and Pinterest accounts.
<
br />   Her parents did not like social media and had forbidden her and Amethyst from getting accounts. Luckily, Jade, one of her older sisters, had helped her set up and hide hers.

  “I got a C, but…I also have a tutor now, so that should take some of the steam out of Dad’s disappointment,” Crystal said, opening Amethyst’s car, a ten-year-old champagne Intrepid.

  “Really? Who’s the tutor?” Amethyst started the car.

  Crystal smiled, remembering dark eyes, a deep voice, and a cute face. “Brendon. Brendon Marks,” she said on a sigh, ignoring the heat from Amethyst’s look that she felt on the side of her face.

  For the rest of the ride, Crystal looked out the window, not seeing the trees and houses that zipped by. Instead, she relived the moment Brendon’s hand touched hers when he took her pencil out of her grasp. A small smile crept over her face. She was looking forward to tomorrow’s tutoring session.

  1

  “If you take a picture, it’ll last longer,” an amused drawl said, interrupting Crystal’s thoughts. Flicking her gaze towards her lunch companion, she stuck her tongue out.

  “Real mature,” Ruby, Crystal’s older sister, said.

  Crystal shrugged. “Oh well, aren’t you always claiming I’m immature and need to grow up? I’m just living up to your decree, oh wise one,” Crystal teased.

  Ruby pursed her lips. “When are you finally going to tell Brendon that you’re in love with him instead of ogling him from afar? And don’t deny it, I just caught you looking at him as he got in his car.”

  “You need to mind your own business. I’ll tell him how I feel around the same time you stop denying that your boss makes your panties wet,” Crystal said, smirking.

  Ruby crossed her arms and glared at Crystal. “Must you be so crass?”

  “Must you have a stick up your ass? Hey, that rhymed!” Crystal said, laughing.

  Ruby picked up the menu and perused the options. “You are so juvenile, Crystal. It’s a miracle you’re able to take care of yourself. And for your information, I do not have designs on my boss.”

  “Yeah right. Your boss is fine and bossy. He looks like the type to take over in the courtroom and bedroom. You need an alpha man like that, instead of these wimps who you end up ditching after the second date,” Crystal said, picking up her own menu.

  They were at their usual lunch bistro in the middle of downtown Springfield. Kat’s was centrally located between Crystal and two of her three sisters’ jobs and was the designated lunch spot for their weekly Thursday luncheon.

  “Can we please not discuss my boss in those terms? The last thing I need is to be thinking about what he could do to me in the bedroom…I mean what he could do for me in the courtroom…I mean…hell…” Ruby said, rubbing her forehead.

  “Ah ha! So are you finally going to admit that you’re crushing on your boss? That you’ve thought of him in ways that have nothing to do with him writing your check, but in ways that have you screaming, ‘yes, Counselor!’” Crystal placed her menu on the table and leaned forward, eyes wide.

  Ruby glared at her and put her menu down, too. “Seriously, Crystal, grow up. You talk like you’re a teenager. You’re twenty-four years old and you make a living hocking products on social media. You have no 401K or any kind of retirement plan, you have no backup contingency in case you find yourself without money…do you even have a savings account? How about you focus on that instead of what I think about my boss,” Ruby said, eyes boring into Crystal’s.

  Crystal resisted the urge to roll her eyes at her sister. Ruby was the oldest and took her role as big sister to the extreme. She meant well, but she was annoying to deal with on most occasions.

  “So it’s okay for you to comment on my feelings for Brendon, but I can’t do the same about your boss? For your information, I have a nice chunk of savings, and an investment portfolio. I’m not an immature teenager or some brainless chick cashing in on her looks. You seriously need to take that stick out of your ass, it’s not a good look on you.” Crystal took a long sip of her iced water.

  Ruby’s eyes narrowed and she sat ramrod straight in her seat. “So, I have a stick up my ass because I refuse to talk about my boss like he’s a piece of meat and because I’m worried about your future? For your information—”

  “Uh oh, looks like baby sis and big sis are at it…again. Don’t you two ever get tired of arguing?” a soft voice said.

  Crystal smiled at her other big sister, Amethyst. At twenty-six, Amethyst was the sister closest to her in age. Ruby was the oldest at thirty, followed by Jade at twenty-eight. Their mother, Opal, named all of them after gemstones in a nod to her and her mother, their grandmother, Pearl. Their father had capitulated as long as he could choose their middle names, and so they were stuck with the names of gemstones and Disney princesses. There was Ruby Aurora, Jade Ariel, Amethyst Belle, and Crystal Jasmine. The Harris sisters had seen their fair share of teasing based on their monikers.

  Crystal stood to hug Amethyst. “Well…Ruby is being an old bore again.”

  Amethyst smirked. “Let me guess. When are you going to get a real job? Selling flat tummy tea on social media is not a respectable job,” Amethyst said in a perfect imitation of Ruby.

  Crystal cackled and even Ruby cracked a smile. It was hard to be in a bad mood around Amethyst. She was the only sister who could tease all of them and no one would get mad at her—although for Crystal that hadn’t always been the case.

  “I’m not that bad…am I?” A smile lingered on Ruby’s full nude lips.

  Crystal and Amethyst looked at each other, then turned towards Ruby. “Yes,” they said in unison.

  Ruby’s honey skin darkened and she glanced away, smoothing her hands over her immaculate hair. Crystal and Amethyst glanced at each other, concern causing their brows to draw together.

  “I just don’t want you to struggle, Crystal,” Ruby said quietly. “You’re the only one without a degree whose job depends on the whims of others and their shopping habits. We all know how badly Mama and Daddy struggled, and I don’t want that for you. You seem to just go about life with no care for your future.”

  Crystal reached out and placed a hand over Ruby’s where it lay on the white tablecloth. “I know, sis, but trust me, I’m okay. I know your comments are coming from a place of love, but you’ve got to back off a little…or a lot…and I’m sorry for teasing you about your boss. I’ll stop.”

  Ruby nodded and cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, too, about making fun of your feelings for Brendon. Also, I’ll try to not bug you about your future, but I make no promises.”

  “What’s with the somber looks? Did somebody die?” another voice asked.

  All three sisters’ heads snapped in the direction of the new voice. Crystal jumped up and squealed, throwing her arms around her sister, Jade.

  After all three sisters hugged Jade, they sat down, broad smiles on their faces as they looked at each other.

  “What are you doing here? I thought you had a photoshoot,” Amethyst said to Jade.

  Jade was a world-famous fashion photographer, and the sister Crystal was closest to. Amethyst was an executive assistant to a CEO and Ruby was a lawyer on the fast track to partner.

  Jade smiled, her thick lips spreading into a beautiful smile. With her curly brown hair that was threaded with natural honey highlights, and hazel eyes, Jade was gorgeous. “You not happy to see me, Beast?”

  Amethyst groaned and put her head on the table as the other three sisters cracked up. Once they got over the teasing about their names, they found a way to embrace their uniqueness. They often referred to each other by the fairytale prince associated with their princess. Crystal was Aladdin, Amethyst was Beast, Jade was Prince Eric, and Ruby was Prince Philip. Amethyst was the only one who hated her nickname and wanted to be called Prince Adam instead, but no one knew Beast by his human name, so her request was vetoed.

  “Must you call me that?” Amethyst said once the laughter died down.

  Crys
tal smirked. “Come on, you know you secretly like the name. It suits your personality perfectly.”

  Amethyst’s eyes widened. “It does not.”

  Ruby shook her head. “I hate to break it to you, but Beast does suit you. Case in point, when one of your co-workers took off of work for a week, you went berserk.”

  Amethyst let out a small growl, and Crystal hid her laugh behind the large menu as she reviewed the offerings.

  “That idiot took a week off and left me to do work that should have been done two weeks before he left! I ended up staying at the office all night completing his work so that we wouldn’t lose a multi-million-dollar account! Do you know how bad that would have been?” Amethyst seethed, arms crossed.

  “He took off to go to his granny’s funeral, Amethyst. You went ballistic when he came back. Have a heart,” Jade said, shaking her head.

  “Correction, he took off to go on a week-long cruise. He lied about his dearly departed granny,” Amethyst snapped.

  “How on Earth do you know he lied?” Jade asked incredulously.

  “The idiot posted his pictures to social media, forgetting that we were friends. While I barely use those sites, I happened to log in to…well, it’s not important why I logged in. I did, and there he was going live and drinking tequila out of some woman’s belly button. Needless to say, he didn’t have a job when he came back. Had he done his job before he left, he would have been fine. Apparently, he’d been planning this cruise for months but didn’t have the vacation days left, so he lied about his grandmother dying and needing to rush back home to be with his family.”