Page 1 of Hard Pass

PROLOGUE

Dublin

Cabo San Lucas is loud.

Not just the music thumping through the walls or the laughter spilling onto the street, but the kind of loud that gets under your skin. There’s heat from so many bodies packed close. There’s a pulse of recklessness humming through what feels like everything and everyone here.

It’s the place you come to lose yourself for a bit. To pretend to be somebody else. Then once you board your flight home, you forget it all.

Or pretend to.

It’s taking everything I have to live by that motto for the next couple of days. Everything I have and a copious amount of alcohol to believe that I just might act on it.

“Dare I ask how many drinks you’ve had?” my best friend, Willa, asks as she studies me.

“Don’t know. Don’t care.” I close my eyes and let my head fall back as the bar moves around me.

“Four?”

“So observant, but I honestly can’t tell you,” I say with a lazy salute and glance across the vast space to where a large crowd is cheering on someone.

“Dublin? What’s going on?”

I laugh and the sound is lighter than I feel. I’m buzzed—well, more than buzzed—but I have all my faculties about me and just enough liquid courage to make some deliciously bad decisions. “You said this trip was for me to let loose for a few days. To be someone I’m not.”

Her eyes narrow slightly. “Yeah, but—”

“Yeah, but I’ve never actually done it before and now that I am, you’re questioning your suggestion?” I laugh again and hook an arm around her shoulder. “I start a new job in five days. You, my best friend of all friends, are moving in with her boyfriend and will no longer be my roommate. And I haven’t been laid in way too long. You said it yourself, if there was ever a time for me to break out of my rut, this weekend getaway is it.”

“This isn’t like you,” she says finally.

“I know.”

And she’s right. This isn’t like me, the woman who’s been dubbed the no-fun queen more than a couple of times in the past few months. The one who stays home to work instead of going out, who plans instead of reacts, and who always—always—makes the safe choice.

This trip—tonight—doesn’t feel safe, and that’s what I need.

“You’re being a tad melodramatic, Dub. You might be super rigid and scheduled, but you’ve never been in a rut.”

“Ha. You’re so full of shit. I am and I’m totally okay with it. I’m proud of who I am and all I’ve accomplished—”

“Says the genius of our friend group.”

I wave a hand at her to dismiss her comment. “But also, maybe this weekend I don’t want to be that girl, ya know?”

My gaze drifts again, landing where it’s been returning all night whether I mean to or not.

Him.

He’s the focus of attention on a raised platform near the back of the bar, surrounded by people cheering him on like he’s the main event. Like he’s a god. Beer in hand, head tipped back in laughter, women and men alike vie for his attention, and yet he’s completely and effortlessly at ease.

He’s tall and shirtless with tanned skin, broad shoulders, and sculpted abs for days.

And I’m far from the only one in this club who’s noticed how attractive he is.

He’s everything I never go for—center of attention, loud, a man who takes up space without ever questioning if he should. And definitely someone I’d never expect to give me the time of day, especially not here, in an atmosphere where skin is abundant and inhibition is worn like a badge.

But I’m not her tonight. Not Dublin Locke, who has both a planner she writes in with a pen and an electronic calendar she uses as a backup. Not the woman who checks her front door three times before she leaves to make sure it’s locked and then worries a few more times that it isn’t. And definitely not the woman starting a serious job next week that utilizes her attention to detail and her ability to make sure people adhere to the rules.