by Abby Brooks
Love is Everything
Abby Brooks
Little Bird Publishing, LLC
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Connect with Abby Brooks
Also by Abby Brooks
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
26. Epilogue
Also by Abby Brooks
Copyright © 2016 by Abby Brook
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.
Created with Vellum
For my Bill. My crazy, beautiful, everything.
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Also by Abby Brooks
The Moore Brothers Series
Blown Away (Ian and Juliet)
Carried Away (James and Ellie)
Swept Away (Harry and Willow)
Break Away (Lilah and Cole)
Love Is…
Love Is Crazy (Dakota & Dominic)
What Happened in Vegas (Dakota & Dominic’s Wedding)
Love Is Beautiful (Chelsea & Max)
Blissed Out (Chelsea & Max’s Wedding)
Love Is Everything (Maya & Hudson)
Chapter One
I might be a little drunk.
Okay, wait. There’s a pretty good chance I’m more than a little drunk.
Scratch that. I am most definitely drunk.
I stare at my sister Chelsea over the rim of my massive margarita glass as I take a long drink. She, of course, looks stunning. Her shoulder-length blonde hair gleams in the flashing lights careening around the dance floor here at Aura—the hottest nightclub in Cincinnati, just ask anyone. She runs a hand over her pregnant belly and bobs her head to the throbbing music.
“You having fun?” she asks, leaning in, elbows on the table, yelling to be heard. “I mean how can you not have fun at Aura, right?”
“Sure,” I say while I try to blend the two Chelsea’s dancing in front of me into one Chelsea. Damn tequila. “As long as you’re not getting accosted in the bathroom.”
Which actually happened to her last year. Like, full on sexual assault with press releases and police officers and everything. Needless to say, it shocked me when she agreed to come here with me tonight.
And speaking of shocking things, I can’t believe I even suggested this place when she asked me if I wanted to go out. I’m not a ‘hang out at the club’ kind of girl.
My sister frowns at me. “Maya…” She finishes my name with a sigh and tilts her head to the side, her eyes filled with sadness and judgement.
“There it is,” I say, lifting my eyebrows. “The ‘totally disapproving big sister’ look.” I waggle my finger at her and try to look equally disapproving. I fail, of course. Miserably. But that doesn’t stop me from trying.
“We came here to cheer you up.” Chelsea glances at our younger sister, Dakota, and then points down to her own little baby bump. “This isn’t exactly high on my list of places to spend a Friday night what with the not being allowed to drink alcohol and being exhausted all the time and all the wonderful things that come with being pregnant.”
I swirl my straw in the glass, staring across the table at Chelsea. “Well. Then. Maybe it’s you who needs a little cheering up.”
And there it is again. The ‘totally even more disapproving older sister’ look.
Dakota slaps the table and flashes me her thousand-watt smile. “Come on. Lighten up. I think it’s time to have some fun.”
“You know what?” I take a drink and blink furiously as the world swims a little more out of focus. “Fuck my life.”
“Maya…” Chelsea glances at Dakota.
“No. For real. I hate everything about it.” I put down my margarita and lean in. “I hate my tiny little apartment and my sensible car. I hate that I’m drowning in student loans but still feel obligated to maintain a perfect credit score. I hate that I can’t quite bring myself to hate my job because sometimes I’m the only thing standing between a child and … you know …” I wave my hands in the air, trying to catch the right word. “Death.”
“Maya…” Both my sisters speak in unison.
I hold up a finger. “No. Hear me out. Do you have a single clue how hard it is to come out of surgery and tell parents who have put their hope and faith in me saving their kid … the tiny little person they made out of their love for each other…” I pause and scour my poor tequila-flooded brain for the right words. “The one single thing they love most in this world…” I shake my head, getting sad just thinking about it. “Do you know what it’s like to come out of surgery only to have to tell someone their child isn’t going to live anymore?”
Chelsea’s hands go to her belly, instinctively protecting her unborn child from the drunken surgeon drooping over her margarita across the table.
“Yeah,” she says. “But how many times have you been the only reason those parents are going to get to see their child again? You’ve only ever lost one, right? And that was years ago.”
I shake my head. “You only need to lose one to know that you never want to do that again.”
And there’s the thing. I’m not even out of my residency. The chances are high that at some point in my career, I will lose another patient. I want to love surgery. I really do. But, even though I’m good at what I do, the honest truth is that I only went into medicine to please my parents. In an attempt to make some mark on my life that felt like my own, I specialized in pediatric surgery because I wanted to make a difference. No one prepared me for the times when the difference I made wasn’t a good one.
Chelsea looks at me sadly. “I can’t even begin to imagine.”
I wait for her to give me all the reasons I should be happy. Knowing Chelsea, she probably has it all printed out in a list—alphabetized and filled with bullet points—and is just waiting for a chance to whip it out of her purse. It’s probably a bad sign that she’s just sitting there, swiping at the condensation on her glass, looking at me with what might be pity.
“That’s bad, isn’t it?” I ask Dakota.
Dakota polishes off her whiskey and stares sadly into the bottom of her glass. “What? That the whiskey is gone and I have to fight my way through the crowd to get to the bar?” She makes an exaggerated sad face. “Yeah. That’s bad.”
“No, jerk face,” I say. “I’m talking about the fact that
Chelsea hasn’t started into her list of a hundred reasons why my life is fine and I shouldn’t feel so bad about things.”
Dakota looks from me to Chelsea and then back again. “Yeah. That’s probably a bad sign.”
And then she’s off, navigating her way through the crowd towards the bar in search of more whiskey. Dakota is this tiny little thing with one hell of a massive personality. Instead of having to zig and zag her way through the crowd, a path just magically appears in front of her.
Anyone else would have to turn sideways to get past people and apologize and reroute. Not Dakota. She’s always made her own way.
I know I’m being a total downer tonight. Maybe it’s time for me to try and be a little more fun, especially since Chelsea and Dakota came out specifically to help me feel better. But that’s the thing. How can they make me feel better when there isn’t one specific thing that’s gone wrong in my life? I’ve just been in a funk ever since Chelsea’s wedding for no discernible reason.
Well, no. That’s not completely true. I’ve been seriously questioning every life choice I’ve made for the better part of the last decade and discovering that almost all of them have been bad. I guess that’s a pretty discernible reason to be in a funk.
Chelsea puts a hand on my arm. “What do you want, Maya?”
That’s one hell of weird question all out of the blue like that. And she looks so very serious. Like, so serious that something tells me this is a conversation I’m going to want to avoid.
“Right now what I want is another margarita.” I swirl my straw around in my glass and slurp down the last of it. “I probably should have gone with Dakota.”
Chelsea shakes her head and the look on her face tells me that we’re about to have a Very Serious Conversation whether I want to or not. “That’s not what I mean,” she says. “What do you want? What would make you happy?”
Hell, no. We’re not getting into that. Not here. Not tonight. Not ever. Because I’m so far away from happy that I couldn’t even begin to tell her what I want. The answer is simple: I don’t know what I want.
“Wow,” I say, shaking my head. “That’s a question that definitely requires more alcohol.” Without waiting for her to reply, I stand and run away, trying to follow the path Dakota made. Instead of having the crowd part before me like they did for her, I end up having to push past people, turning sideways to slip behind them and apologizing when I inevitably bump into someone.
When I get to the bar, I don’t find Dakota. Instead, I find this Adonis of a man, his blonde hair long and falling into his face, partly obscuring his chiseled features but doing absolutely nothing to hide one sexy set of dimples. Not only is his smile worthy of a toothpaste commercial—with his perfectly white and perfectly straight teeth—but he’s got dimples. Oh hell, I am such a sucker for dimples.
His white button down shirt exposes just enough of a massive chest to make you want to run your hands up it, grab a handful, and squeeze. He’s got the cuffs of his sleeves rolled up, showing off the tattoos that snake up his arms—his strong, powerful, ridiculously muscled arms. We’re talking thick, corded forearms that I can’t tear my eyes away from and damn if he’s not wearing a watch. I have a thing for men with dimples wearing watches. He’s like a super hero dressed like a movie star wrapped up in a full on dose of hot and sexy.
Everything about him screams off limits for me. He’s fun and dangerous and looks like he just doesn’t give a shit about what anyone says or thinks about him. His smile comes quickly and easily and he uses it like a weapon, tossing it at the women around him and watching them melt. Of course, when I say women I actually mean the supermodels hanging on his every word. Tall blonde things who know how to toss their hair and lean in all flirtatiously, giggling and batting their eyelashes.
He looks up and our eyes lock. It’s like, I don’t know, this charge of electricity surges through my body. I forget to breathe. I think my heart forgets to beat. There’s just this moment of him and me looking at each other and then he raises his glass, smiles—damn, those dimples!—and tosses back a drink.
I return the smile, try to toss my hair the way the supermodels next to him have been doing, and manage to knock myself off balance. Thank goodness the bartender shows up with my drink so I don’t have to watch the sex god at the end of the bar laugh at the chunky brunette as she stumbles in her heels. And by chunky brunette, I mean me. I pay for my margarita and try not to glance at the man who is so out of my league it’s funny, failing miserably of course. How could I not look at him? He’s everything.
One of his blonde models has her hand on his arm and he’s leaning in to whisper something in her ear. She looks equal parts shocked and excited by what he said. I sigh and push off the bar just in time to see his eyes flicker my way. A tingle of wonderfulness shoots through my body as I wander back towards my sisters, imagining his eyes on my ass the whole way. Not that it’s a particularly nice ass. And not that I’m exactly walking in the straightest of lines. But whatever. He looked and I saw it and I liked it, so there.
Chelsea and Dakota are laughing when I get back to the table, both of them looking so ridiculously happy I could just about puke with jealousy. They each found the man of their dreams last year. I’m talking fairy tale ending kind of stuff with perfect happily ever afters. Like winning the lottery or getting struck by lightning or something equally as impossible. The kind of thing that would happen to Chelsea and Dakota, but never to me. Maya, the invisible London sister. Sandwiched between perfect Chelsea and spunky Dakota.
“You know what I want?” I ask, interrupting their conversation. “I wanna do something irresponsible. I’m so over worrying about what I should do and what I’m supposed to do. I wanna just let go, you know?”
Chelsea’s pretty face erupts into a smile. “Yes.” She leans in. “Start listening to your heart instead of your head.”
Dakota slaps my arm. “I live my whole life like that. I wholly recommend it.”
“I’m tired of worrying about being good and I’m tired of worrying about consequences.” I frown as I realize just how hard it is to say that word. Con-se-quen-ces. Who the fuck can even say that? “I just want to let go and live,” I say and take a long drink of my margarita and think of the sex god at the bar. The tattoos and the long hair would normally be enough to completely turn me off from him because, clearly, he is not a man who operates inside the rules. But you know what? Fuck the rules.
“Exactly,” says Dakota. She raises her glass and I do the same. We look to Chelsea who doesn’t look quite as enthusiastic as she raises her water to clink against our adult beverages of choice. Maybe she can see what’s in my mind. Maybe she can see that man with his muscles and dimples and maybe she knows exactly how badly I want to run my hands all over that body and then lick him from head to toe.
“You know what I need?” I ask after we each take a drink. “Something sexy. Something unscripted. I need something I’ve never done before.”
I swear, I couldn’t have timed it more perfectly if I tried. As soon as the words are out of my mouth, the song that had been blaring over the speakers at Aura ends and in that moment of silence, the crowds part just enough to show a direct line of sight to the man at the bar. It’s as if the universe itself is agreeing with me. Saying: ‘Yes, Maya. You do need something sexy. And here he is. Do him.’
He doesn’t see me. He’s still talking to those supermodels who are basically climbing onto his dick right here and now. You’d think that his choice in company would be another huge turn off, but it only goes to prove exactly how perfect he is. I’m not looking for anything permanent and clearly, neither is he. I just want something superficial and from what I can tell, he’s more than fine with that.
This Greek god with his muscles and tattoos and bad boy hair is absolutely the worst possible choice for me and that makes him one hundred percent perfect.
Chapter Two
Fuck me. I am so bored. These chicks with me tonight are hot eno
ugh but, damn. I don’t care how gourmet your chef is. If he made the same meal every day you’d get fucking tired of it eventually. I know I could have any of these women the very minute I make my mind up over which one I want.
Shit. Let’s get real. I don’t even have to decide. It wouldn’t take more than another drink or two and I could have all three of them at the same time. And of course, what’s better than one piece of ass? Three pieces of ass.
So what if I can’t really stand listening to them talk? Once I get them riding my dick, I’ll forget about how much they drive me crazy because I’ll be too busy driving them crazy. I only have to pretend to care about what they’re saying long enough to get them to want to leave the club with me. And let’s be real. They’re already there. I just have to say the word.
And then, out of the blue, I find myself staring across the bar at the most beautiful woman I’ve seen in a long time. Long cappuccino-colored hair I can’t wait to run my hands through. Soulful brown eyes. Bright red lipstick I’d love to see staining my cock. There’s something so real about her. The blondes beside me are hot, but I bet it takes them hours to get there. This brunette? She just is what she is.
And she’s captivating.
“Hudson,” whines blonde number one. I think her name is Tara. Or Tina. “You weren’t even listening to me, were you?”
I tear my eyes away from the woman at the bar. “Nope,” I say and shoot Tara/Tina my best grin. There isn’t a woman on earth who can resist my dimples. Sure enough, I watch her frustration melt away and she puts a hand on my arm.
“I said…”
I zone out again as she blathers on because I really could care less about what she has to say. They all pretend to care about me, but I know the truth. They don’t see who I am any more than I see who they are. What they see is a professional football player with a million-dollar paycheck and a body that makes them squirm. And what I see is a hot piece of ass to stick my dick in for the night.