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Chapter 1
Emma
Six Years Ago
“It’s bad enough that Colton cheated on me but now I’m stuck with this stupid haircut and dye job,” I buried my hands in my face, too pissed off to cry and too upset to laugh.
“Oh come on, you’re rockin’ that pixie cut,” my best friend Sara tried to reassure me. “And the bleach blonde look totally makes you look like one of those retro rocker babes.” She wiggled her eyebrows and waved a hand in the air to order our second round of drinks.
“You’re lying and I love you for it, but I don’t have the temperament to rock this haircut.” It was true. I’m a natural brunette with a small build, kind of mousy if you asked my ex-boyfriend. I wasn’t loud and boisterous like Sara. “This was just a failed attempt at reinventing myself after a heartache.”
“Oh please, there is nothing wrong with you, Em. It’s that skank of a roommate and that dipshit Colton who are wrong, don’t forget that.”
I snorted as our drinks arrived at the table and rolled my eyes. “Don’t think I’ll forget stepping into the apartment to see Ms. Skanky Pants riding Colton’s dick no matter how hard I try.” It was seared into my memory and that made it all harder to forget.
“Don’t worry about them, they’ll both get exactly what they deserve.” There was a gleam in her eyes I was scared to question, luckily, she lifted her glass. “To losing one hundred and sixty pounds the easy way. May his dick fall off and her twat close up prematurely.”
I laughed and clinked her glass before I took several healthy sips of my Manhattan. “I’ll drink to that. Again.” I took another sip as the heavy wooden door to Steel City Tap opened and slammed shut, and a tall man with thick black curls walked in. He wasn’t my type at all, with an arm filled with colorful ink and a bad boy expression written all over him, but there was something compelling about him. I couldn’t take my eyes off his broad shoulders and his confident stride as he took a stool at the bar.
“What you need,” Sara began, breaking into my thoughts, “is to lean into that old saying, the best way to get over one asshole is to get underneath another.” She laughed at her own joke. “You know what? Fuck that, get on top of someone else, you’ll enjoy it more.”
My lips tugged into a reluctant smile. I had the best best friend in the whole damn world. “I’m not sure that’s a good idea. Maybe I need to go off men altogether for a little while.” My gaze slid back to the tattooed bad boy who oozed sex appeal, and I shook off that thought. A guy like that was definitely even more trouble than a guy like Colton who was supposed to be the quintessential good guy. “Yeah, that’s what I need. Clearly, I suck at picking good ones.”
“That’s the good thing about a rebound dick. They don’t have to be anything other than a good fuck.”
My eyes widened and I looked around to make sure nobody was eavesdropping. “Sara, damn girl. Keep it down!” I wasn’t a prude by anyone’s standards, but I was also smart enough to not want to advertise my vulnerable state.
“What? You’re twenty-one, gorgeous, and on the prowl. There’s nothing wrong with the whole word knowing.”
“Who said I was on the prowl?”
“I did,” she answered with a proud smile before she turned to scan the bar. Steel City Tap wasn’t exactly hookup central which was why I chose it to drink away my sorrows.
Tears pricked my eyes and as I tried to shake them away, I realized something important. Colton hadn’t quite broken my heart, at least I didn’t think he did, so much as he took a sledgehammer to my confidence. I hadn’t been enough for him, and that’s what really stung.
“There we go,” she said and pointed at the man who I’d been surreptitiously eyeing up. “Yep, he’s perfect and he keeps looking this way.”
Shit, she’d noticed too? “Has he?”
Sara laughed loud enough that a few interested men looked our way. “You two have been eye fucking each other on the sly since he walked in.”
“Jeez, what are you, some kind of secret spy?”
“Nope, just a super observant best friend. Now wipe those tears, adjust those tits and go get that sexy beast of a man.”
I laughed at my crazy friend. “Just like that?”
“Yep.”
I looked over at the man whose gaze met mine in the mirror behind the bar and held it. He didn’t look away.Holy shit.“What if he turns me down?”
“Then we’ll know something important. That he’s an idiot.”
Another laugh escaped. “You’re just what I needed tonight, Sara.”
“I know and I’ve done my job. Now it’s time to let tall, sexy, and tattooed do his job.”
“I can’t.”
