by K. A. Linde
“Let him go,” Cole said. “Let him walk it off.”
“He’s never going to forgive me. No one is ever going to forgive me.”
“Do you need forgiveness?”
“I just …” I sighed heavily and watched as Ash disappeared from view. “I wasn’t lying to him when I agreed to marry him. I did want to do it. And then it all spiraled so far out of control. It wasn’t what I’d agreed to by the end.”
“That’s all that matters, Lila,” he said. “You don’t have to justify yourself to anyone else. You did the right thing.”
“You would say that.”
“I would. But that doesn’t mean I’m wrong. I was right about everything else, wasn’t I? You do still love me.” He took a step toward me.
I nodded with a sigh. “So much, Cole.”
His smile reminded me of the first day I’d ever met him. When everything was shiny and new and he knew even then that he wanted me above anyone else.
“And you didn’t talk to me because you still wanted to be with me.” He took another step, bridging the gap.
“My feelings have never changed. In all the time and distance, they’ve remained steadfast.”
“Same, Sunflower,” he said, brushing back a loose curl. “Same.”
“What do we do now?”
“Whatever you want.”
“All of my stuff is still in the church. I can’t go back in and get it.”
“Leave it. Marley and Josie will handle it.” He slowly slid his hand into mine. “Why don’t we just go for a walk? Maybe grab milkshakes.”
“Milkshakes?” I asked in disbelief. “In my wedding dress?”
He shrugged. “Why not? It’s how we started.”
“It is, isn’t it?”
He squeezed my hand. “I love you, Delilah Greer. I love you with all of my heart.”
I leaned forward against him, feeling his arms come tight around me. “I love you too.”
He looked down at me. “And I’m not saying you have to marry me right away.” I laughed. “I’ll give you a whole week.”
“What if I never marry you?” I teased.
He tilted my chin up. “Then we’ll just be blissfully happy for the rest of our lives.”
“Is that a promise?”
“Yes.”
His head dipped down, and he captured my lips with his. A promise sealed with a kiss.
Cole took my hand again, and we walked away from the church. Away from the biggest decision of my life. I was certain I’d made the right choice this time.
Though I’d have to deal with the aftermath, the moving out and moving on, I’d leave it all for another day.
Right now, I was here with Cole.
Where I was always meant to be.
And I wouldn’t trade it for the world.
Thank you so much for reading HOLD THE FOREVERS! I hope you enjoyed Lila, Cole, & Ash’s story. It was such a great joy and rollercoaster to write that I just couldn’t leave them alone and wrote a bonus epilogue, HOLD ON TO FOREVER. You can read it for free here!
Grab HOLD ON TO FOREVER now for FREE!
AND I decided to write our dear Marley! Grab Marley and Derek’s enemies to lovers novel, AT FIRST HATE. “Derek Ballentine and I have always been on opposite sides of everything. Now, my grandma has passed away and he’s the attorney helping the people trying to steal her legacy. I hate him at first sight…but I also want him at first hate.”
* * *
My next book is a stand alone friends with benefits story set in the Wright world about Jordan Wright & Annie. Perfect entry point for new readers! Grab Wright with Benefits now!
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Three of my closest friends also recently released new books, and I cannot recommend them enough! Check out Close Quarters by Kandi Steiner if you want more angst, Staci Hart’s Bet the Farm for a cute small town romcom if you need a palette cleanser, and Eastern Lights by Brittainy C. Cherry for an emotional read.
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TURN THE PAGE TO READ A SNEAK PEEK OF MY NEXT BOOK WRIGHT WITH BENEFITS…
Wright with Benefits
Chapter 1 — Annie
A brisk wind whipped around my bare legs, swirling the skirt of my black dress, and flipping it upward Marilyn Monroe style. I shrieked, batting at the material in a desperate attempt to bring it back down to an acceptable length. The wind didn’t seem to hear my string of curses, because it just bit into my harder, making me regret forgoing tights.
“Oh my God,” I snapped as I clutched the dark material in my hands.
The wind just whistled in response. A cackle if I’d ever heard it.
I glared up at the stupid Lubbock wind. It wasn’t enough that the temperatures were in the low thirties already at five-thirty on this Friday afternoon right before my last semester of medical school started; the wind just had to rub it in.
“Annie, what are you doing standing out here?” Cézanne asked. She wore a black jumpsuit that highlighted her dark brown skin with her box braids pulled up into a high ponytail. She somehow looked professional and like an imperious, avenging angel. “It’s below freezing.”
I prayed to the Lord for patience and grinned at my closest friend in my cohort. “The wind attacked me.”
She eyed me skeptically. We’d known each other pre-med school and she still sometimes looked at me like I’d sprung a second head.
I waved her off. “Whatever. I’m not having a good day.”
Which was an understatement. My house had flooded! Like straight flooded. My room was a wreck. I’d lost half of my closet including all of my shoes. Like every pair except the impossibly high snakeskin heels that I’d scrounged out of a pile of donation I hadn’t gotten to yet. My room was essentially a wash until maintenance showed up. I’d be living on the pull out couch for the foreseeable future.
If that hadn’t been bad enough, I’d been nearly run off the road on the way here. Some dipshit had driven straight through a red light and I’d had to swerve to avoid getting T-boned.
Today was officially over.
I stepped inside of the rustic building the medical school had rented for the event and Cézanne closed the door.
“Well, if you’ve been having a bad day, I hate to ask, but where’s the wine?” Cézanne asked warily.
“What wine?”
“The…wine. You know the case of commemorative wine for Professor Rodgers and the rest for the retirement party. The entire school is coming and…there’s no wine.”
“What the hell? Who was in charge of that?”
Cézanne looked at me blankly.
“No,” I told her.
“It has your name next to it.”
I shook my head. “I swear I wasn’t in charge of the wine.” She passed the list to me and saw where my name was scrawled unintelligibly. I groaned. “Are you sure it was even called in? I didn’t do it.”
“I’m not sure who called it in, but I have the original order request.”
“Let me see it.”
I plucked it out of her hand and stared down at it. Phew! It was three thousand dollars worth of wine. The commemorative case along was a grand. Well, no wonder Cézanne was wondering where the hell all the wine was.
Unfortunately it didn’t say who had put the order in. But I knew for a fact it wasn’t me.
I took a deep breath and then released it. “How can I help?”
Cézanne grinned. “Can you please call the Wine Boutique and find out what happened?”
“Yeah, I can do that.”
“Thank you. Thank you. I knew I c
ould count on you to get shit done.”
I sighed. What else could possibly make this day worse? Might as well try to get the wine so we could all get fucked up today. Professor Rodgers was only retiring once.
Cézanne She checked off a slot on her to-do list that rested on an actual clipboard. I loved Cézanne to death, but sometimes her organizational skills were so extra. There was a reason she was top of our class and in charge of all of our events.
I stepped away from Cézanne to make my phone call. The Wine Boutique’s number was on the top of the order, and I dialed it with another sigh. This was what I got for being dependable. The line rang and rang and rang. It felt like an eternity before the voicemail clicked over.
“Thank you for calling the Wine Boutique. Sorry we missed your call…”
I hung up and tried again. And again. And again.
No answer.
Their hours said that they were open until six. I had another thirty minutes. They should have answered their phone.
“Gah!” I growled, wanting to throw my useless phone across the room. Of course no one was answering. It was just my day. I checked the address on the sheet again. I knew where this place was. It was only a five minute drive downtown on a good day. Today was not a good day, but I had enough time to still make it. “Cézanne!” She glanced over at me. “No one is answering. I’m going to just…head over there and find out what happened.”
“You’re a goddess, Annie. Truly.”
“I still say that I wasn’t in charge of this.”
“Well, find out who was then, k?”
“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered as I headed back outside.
I braced myself against the cold and hustled back toward my car. As soon as I shut myself back inside, I blasted the heat. The Spirit Ranch was a wedding venue on the north side of town that we’d gotten at an uber discount since it was the off season. But Cézanne had somehow still made the space look gorgeous even going as far as renting an outdoor tent complete with heaters. But with the sun already going down, I couldn’t imagine standing out there. Maybe with enough alcohol in me.
I winced.
Right…alcohol. That thing that we didn’t have.
With a groan, I peeled away from the building and headed toward downtown. The Wine Boutique was nestled in the heart of the city between an old city hall and a historic hotel which had recently been renovated into high-end apartments. The downtown was finally finally beginning to blossom into the Lubbock local scene that everyone had always hoped for. It had a long way to go, but I could see where it was headed.
I parked out front, bracing myself for the cold and rushed toward the front door. My hand settled on the gilded hand and I yanked on the door. I groaned, feeling my shoulder give as I pulled too hard on a door that wouldn’t budge.
“Fuck,” I spat.
The hours on the front door said I had another fifteen minutes, because of course it had taken me longer to get here, before they closed. I peered inside of the darkened interior. A few lights were still on and a woman sat behind the counter, typing on the computer.
I banged on the front door. “Hello!”
The woman’s head popped up in confusion. Then she was dashing across the room, unlocking the door, and throwing it open. I nearly fell inside in my hurry to escape the cold.
“Hey! Sorry about that. I didn’t expect any other customers,” the woman said. She wore a dark blue dress with sensible heels. Her dark hair severely parted down the middle and pulled back into a loose bun. Her lips were painted a pretty dark pink and her dark eyes lightly lined.
“Not a problem,” I told her.
“I’m the owner, Sophia. How can I help you?”
“Annie,” I said, taking her outstretched hand and shaking. “I’m actually here from the medical school. We’re hosting a retirement party for one of our distinguished faculty up at the Spirit Ranch today. We ordered a few cases of wine from here, but it was never delivered.”
I passed over the order form to Sophia, who looked even more surprised when she scanned it over.
“I have this order,” she said instantly, “but it’s for next weekend.”
“No, it’s for today. We’re all back in rotations next weekend.”
“I don’t even have to look it up. I know that I have it for next weekend.” Sophia said she didn’t need to look it up but went immediately for the computer. I followed her, standing before the desk. She quickly printed out a similar form and passed it to me.
I glanced down at it. It was actually identical to the form I’d handed her except that the date was in fact for next weekend. What the hell?
“Oh God,” I groaned as I looked at the signature.
Who the hell put Bryan Clifford in charge of this? Bryan was our resident fuck up. He’d only gotten through the last three years of medical school because his mother was on the board and kept bailing him out. I prayed for anyone who had him as a doctor after we finished all of this. Lord save me from mediocre white men.
I had no idea how it had gone from my name on Cézanne’s list to Bryan ordering the wine and putting the wrong date on it. But I was sure going to find out after all of this.
“You’re right. It is for next weekend,” I said dejected.
“I’m really sorry,” Sophia said quickly.
“Do you have the wine in stock?” I asked hopefully.
“Sure, I have it,” she said quickly. “But my drivers are already gone for the day. I don’t even have a van here tonight to deliver it myself.”
My heart sank. “Can’t you call someone?” I asked, teetering toward desperate. “It’s like a three thousand dollar order. You’ll lose that if we don’t figure this out.”
She shot me a panged expression. “I have a meeting after close. I don’t know who I could get to come in time. I can text a few drivers, but I’m sorry. It seems like a stretch.”
“That would be really great. I’d appreciate it. I don’t know what else we’re going to do.”
Sophia patted my hand across the desk. “Let me shoot off those texts. We’ll see what I can do.”
“Thanks,” I said with a sigh and then pulled out my phone to text Cézanne about the disaster. I had a feeling Bryan Clifford was about to get eaten alive by her after she found out.
“So far it doesn’t look good,” Sophia said just as the bell over the door jingled.
I looked up from my phone, praying to whoever would listen that one of the drivers had come back for some reason or another. Some serendipitous reason that would save my shitty day. We could pack up the van, drive out to the ranch, and I’d look like a hero.
Instead, I turned around and found the last person in Lubbock I wanted to see. The one person who had fractured my trust and left me a little more cynical than I’d been before. Who I still avoided like the plague. A line had been drawn in the sand and no matter that we’d had a one night stand with the best sex of my life, I wouldn’t open myself up to even a friendship that could shatter me the way one look into Jordan Wright’s deep dark brown eyes were capable of.
One click Wright with Benefits now to read more! Get now!
A L S O B Y K. A. L I N D E
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Hold the Forevers
At First Hate
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One Cruel Night
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Spin off stand alone novels set on the Upper East Side—
Cruel Promise
Cruel Truth
Cruel Desire
Cruel Marriage
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Like stand alone companion novels about one big family—
WRIGHTS
The Wright Brother
The Wright Boss
The Wright Mistake
The Wright Secret
The Wright Love
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he Wright One
A Wright Christmas
Wright with Benefits
Serves Me Wright
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RECORD SERIES
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For the Record
Struck from the Record
Broken Record
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