Go Away, Darling - Alexis Anne Page 0,76

this wasn’t over. I’d just fucked it up was all. She was smart to get rid of me.

Didn’t mean it had to be permanent.

I was three years older. Three years wiser. Three years more determined to win back the woman I knew without a doubt in this world was the only woman for me.

I just had to prove to her that marrying Ryker was a mistake and that she should marry me instead.

Third time’s the charm, right?

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Last Fall (an excerpt)

Meet Jack Cassidy (Berlin’s ex-husband), Zoe, Erik, Seth, and more!

Friday morning the natural alarm clock in my brain woke me at six like it did every other day. At first I tried to go back to sleep. I was comfortable and ridiculously happy in Erik’s bed. He was a funny sleeper though. He liked to sprawl on his stomach. Luckily he had a king-sized bed. I’d woken up with his forehead pressed between my shoulder blades and a small percentage of the mattress in comparison.

I was a fetal position kind of sleeper so it didn’t bother me at all. In a weird way we fit together perfectly. So for a little while I didn’t move. Instead I soaked up the sounds and smells of his room. The condo was high enough up that I didn’t really hear the sounds of cars or traffic. Instead it was the whir of the air conditioning clicking off and on, attempting, even in the early hours of the day, to keep the room cool. His fan spun above us. There was a little tick, tick it made every second or so.

The only other sound was Erik’s soft breaths. Seth had chosen to sleep over at his on-and-off again girlfriend’s apartment so it was just the two of us.

After a little bit I flipped over and faced him. Dawn had broken so some light was creeping in around his blackout curtains. I’d already learned that Erik liked to sleep as long as possible after being on the road, so the curtains were a necessity, but it was just bright enough that I could make out the lines of his jaw and nose, see the stubble shadowing his chin. He and Wes joked that they’d grow playoff beards but I wasn’t so sure it was a joke. I liked that Wes and Roman had pulled Erik into their goofball plans. I understood that Erik would always be the serious one, but it was nice to see him loosen up a little bit.

Honestly it was his serious side that I was so attracted to. It made him easy to read. It was obvious what he cared about and he made it abundantly clear how he expected everyone else to care as well. He was loyal and loving and just plain amazing. It scared me a little how integral he already felt to my life. If he were hurt or had to leave for some reason, I knew it would hurt more than anything I’d ever felt before.

Which of course made me feel a lot of things that were too much for lying around in bed, so I quietly slid away, grabbed one of his shirts, and slunk off to the kitchen.

After brewing up a pot of coffee and scrounging up a plate of cheese and crackers, I settled into the couch to work on my next chapter. I was so deep into my scene that I didn’t even notice the sound of a key in the door.

I also managed to miss the door opening. It wasn’t until Jack was closing the door that I noticed anything at all.

“Well, well, well. You have no idea how happy I am to see you in my little brother’s t-shirt,” he chuckled softly.

I jumped, not that crushing my laptop to my chest would have stopped a robber, but human instinct is what it is. “Jesus, Jack. You scared me.”

He shrugged, not looking at all sorry. “I promised Erik I’d stop by and drag him out to breakfast. He gets jittery before big games. I’m guessing something distracted him and he forgot.”

The ridiculous grin on his face told me he was genuinely happy about this little mix-up. “Why are you so happy about this?”

“Because,” he made himself quite at home by pouring a cup of coffee, “I like you and I think you’re a good fit for him. The Cassidy family is very serious about relationships, in case you haven’t noticed.