CHAPTER ONE

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Hope, Chance, and Happenstance

Logan

What the hell does a twenty-three-year-old “player” know about love? No more than the rest of the damn world, but at least I can admit it.

Love’s a fucking game. Its players are hope, chance, and happenstance.

Hope that it’s reciprocated and that those in the game have the common goal to win—I’ve seen the strongest teams lose to love.

Chance is pure coincidence that you’re at the right place at the right time, together—doesn’t happen often.

Happenstance is a fucking fluke, normally crushed by love.

I know I love my family, but if they weren’t my family, I wouldn’t know them, let alone love them. I would have been born to another, who I would have loved because they were my family.

I know I see love in the eyes of my sister Ava. For her children, she would do anything for them. Hell, she would die for them, so would I.

Right before Christmas, Dad and I went to Brooklyn, where she and Thomas, the man she was planning to marry who was killed in an accident, were building a life. She was holed up in their flat with the twins, Chance and Hope, doing something she considered living, but she clearly wasn’t truly living, not the way she should have been.

You see, her first love was Luke Lane. They fucked around on the sly for years until he broke her heart after she admitted sex wasn’t really all she wanted from him, that she had secretly loved him all her life.

It all started when they hooked up one summer night when he was home on leave and she had just graduated high school. For seven years, when he was home on leave, they continued to do so. When she graduated law school, passed her bars, and had her feet planted firmly, she admitted she wanted more, that she in fact loved him.

He ditched her.

Unbeknownst to them, however, he left a little bit of himself behind. Chance, their son.

The night after Luke broke her heart and left a little bit of himself behind, Thomas Hardy, drummer for The Burning Souls, was home for Christmas. He confessed his love for her. Ava and he slept together. He also left a little something brewing, as well. How fucked up is that?

Hope is Thomas’s.

Apparently, Thomas lied to her and told her the paternity test she had done while pregnant said he was the father of both the children.

Then, the same night Thomas died, Luke was in an explosion. The stress Thomas’s death caused had Ava going into labor. She delivered the babies soon thereafter.

When the facts surfaced about Chance and Hope not having the same father, she was so afraid of judgment and what it would do to them, to all of us—those who were very close with the Lane family—she hid it. In her grief, in her fear, in her overwhelming challenge of being a new mom, she pushed us all away.

When Luke healed and put two and two together, he finally stepped up, and yeah, he admitted he loved her. Ava being Ava, she pushed him away...until she couldn’t.

So, yeah, I know that love is real, but really fucked up. It’s not all happy ever afters, and it can crush a person. The only crushing I want to do is on the field.

I know I love my father. As annoyed as I am with him right now, as I run on the treadmill, trying not to fucking explode, I know that man loves hard, so hard. So fucking hard he’s running beside me in jeans and a fucking sweatshirt, which pisses me off and makes me eternally grateful at the same damn time.

I know I love my mother. Admittedly, as a kid, I was a momma’s boy. I loved the way she doted on me. The way she told me that one day I was going to grow into a man who was even better than my dad. The way she needed me. The way she praised me for every little thing I did. The way she looked at me was with pride and adoration.

She would lay in bed with me every night, reading to me. One book in particular is in the forefront of my mind, Love You Forever. I remember when it finally clicked that the book, was about a son growing up and moving away. That the woman snuck into his place and rocked him every night as an adult. And that when she was too sick and too old, he had to take care of her.

I never told her, but I loved her enough that I knew I would someday take care of her like that.

Little boys and their fucking moms. They either make you a good man or break you so that you just don’t know how to be.

She broke me. She wrecked me with the lies she told me, trying to villainize a man I look up to. She told me he and Tessa, his now wife, had been messing around for years. It made me question him. It made me question love and what the hell it was supposed to be between a man and a woman.

Every day of my life, I saw him treat my mother like gold, treat us all like we were everything to him. I felt duped, and any idea of growing up, falling in love with someone who I could one day get married to, have a family with, became a joke. At the same time, as all that happened, I dated a girl, who was not my first fuck, but she was into me, and when I was physically in her, I started to understand why Dad was good to Mom, even if it wasn’t her that he loved.

Sex.

Fucking.

Getting hot and sweaty.

Feeling that heat inside you, surrounding you, became a replacement to a boy who was confused by the emotional part of love, because Mom and Dad, they clearly hadn’t figured it the fuck out.

I needed her physically which, even though I didn’t love her, was enough to put up with a whole lot of fucking shit. Until she told me she was knocked up.

She wasn’t. I knew damn well she wasn’t. Dad had filled my nightstand, glovebox, and pockets with condoms since I started fucking. Hell, I didn’t have a clue how he knew I was, but he did. I never went in without one.

She told me one broke once when I was drunk. I knew better.

I took her to the clinic immediately, and she tested negative.

I broke up with her a week later.

No way was I ready to be a dad, and no way was I in love with her.

Then...well, then Mom started crying and my parents became distant. She went to Jersey more often to visit her family, and Dad wasn’t going nearly as much. I figured out pretty quickly that I was her little fucking scapegoat on trips to Jersey, not wanting her to go alone. This was where she was meeting her lover while I was dealing with the biggest asshole on the planet—my grandfather Landon and his fake bullshit.

I love her anyway.

You don’t have to like someone to love them. I figured that out over the few weeks I spent in the city, trying to get her to step up her mom game for Ava, for Chance, for Hope...and for fucking me.

Didn’t work. Fucking Senator Big Head, her new husband, kept interfering. Asked me to come work with him. I told him to fuck off. Mom didn’t like that all too much. I told her to fuck off, too.

I spent two days at Ava’s old place, surrounded by shit she left behind when she finally agreed to come home and face the music, wondering how the fuck a woman could walk away from her kids. Then I realized she couldn’t, not the woman who raised me. So, I kept fucking trying.

Still didn’t work. But, at least I knew the last time I was there, she wasn’t as cold. She looked affected, and she hasn’t been lately. By affected, I mean when I pushed him out of the way and burst into the penthouse, while he screamed at me that she was sleeping, she came out of her room and hugged me.

“I’m sorry, Logan,” she whispered as she hugged me. “I love you, and I’m sorry, but it has to be this way now.”

His fucking security guy came rushing in and almost put his hands on me.

Almost.

I would have killed the fucker, but when Mom told him that I would leave on my own, there wasn’t shit I could say or do.

Hurt as fuck, I left.

And no, I didn’t tell her I loved her, even after I heard her sob as I walked out.

I increase the speed and push myself harder, trying to outrun what happened over the past few weeks while I was in New York City, trying to outrun the fact that, just a few hours ago, I drove into a building that was full of people, innocent fucking people, being shot up because some motherfucker was too much of a pussy to end his miserable existence before killing twenty-seven people, and forever changing the lives of everyone there at that bar, having a good time. Changing the lives of everyone who watched the live feeds on Facebook as partygoers used their cameras to share the chaos. I won’t even try to wrap my head around why they would do that. We’re not all the same, but fuck, some of those clips on the news showed people getting mowed down.

I increase the treadmill to the max, because now I have to outrun her and her fucking lips on his within less than an hour after I admitted to fucking loving her, not knowing if I would have the chance to say it when I knew it was the right time—we might not have made it out.

I should have known not one good thing comes from that type of admittance, not one that fucking lasts anyway. She fucking kissed that bitch Fletcher.

I see Dad stop and hear him yell something, so I tune back into the here and now.

“No cameras!”

He gets off the machine and stalks toward the news crews who made their way into the gym. I’m sure some idiot let them slip in behind them.

“Logan Links, we just have a couple questions,” they say as Dad forces them back as if he’s the entire defensive line.

Pussies.

I shut off my machine, grab my hoodie, and throw it on. Then Dad and I push past them and walk outside to more cameras, lights, and news people yelling questions.

We keep walking. Anyone who gets in our way, they are quick to move. Neither one of us are stopping.

As we are almost to Dad’s vehicle, I hear her name.

“Logan, was London Fields inside the club, daughter of Brody Hines and—”

I turn quickly, ready to lay him out, when Dad grabs my fist mid-throw.

“In the SUV. They aren’t worth it.”

“She’s enrolled here at SU, under the name of Elle—”

I lunge forward, and Dad’s chest crashes into mine. He pushes me back.

I look over my shoulder when the door opens from inside. “Come on, Logan. You need some rest.”

Tessa.

In the car, Dad whizzes through the streets and gets on the ramp for 81 southbound. I don’t even have to ask where we are going.

Home.

Tessa is on the phone in the back seat, talking to whom I assume is Emma.

“We’re on our way,” she whispers. “I agree. Maddox and Harper’s have the best security and is far off the road.” She sighs. “We’ll see you in about an hour.”

Dad clamps his hand on my shoulder. “Get some sleep, Logan. It’s going to be a busy day tomorrow.”

I want to tell him to fucking sleep, which would be stupid since he’s driving, but I’m sure as hell not thinking straight.

When I close my eyes, the darkness behind them is filled with her.

In the dark, the lines between love and hate become blurred.

Love?

What a bunch of shit.

I want to know how the hell I let it happen, so I think back...

§

“Tell me I look pretty.”

When she asks me to tell her that, I think she’s being a smart ass. I think she’s being...London.

She leans in and pushes up on her toes, like she does when she dances in those shoes—it’s called dancing pointe. Yeah, I checked it out. Curious is all...Not true—that move is badass.

When she whispers it again, her cheek pressed against mine, it’s almost a plea.

“You know damn well you do.” My fucking voice is hoarse, rough...different.

She grabs my earlobe between her teeth and tugs.

Chicks get chills and butterflies, not guys. Well, at least not me...until really fucking recently, with her.

“Tell me.”

I try to pull it together. I also try to let her know with a look that it’s not okay for her to look that damn good when she’s around assholes like that bitch boy Fletcher, or the whole fucking SU campus, or my damn team.

“You look too good to be here with all those fuckers.”

She shocks me when she takes my hands that are all fisted up, because I know I need to control them, and puts them on her hips. She’s taking charge, and not just in words, like she tries to do when she thinks she’s being a badass, but in actions. Fucking plural.

“Logan, tell me.” She runs her tongue down my neck.

Game on.

I am toeing the line, waiting for the snap. If I don’t keep my shit together, hold steady, I am going to get a flag on the play.

Her eyes, though, they are begging in a way I have never seen. She isn’t London with the little buds and a sassy attitude. She’s like Taylor Hill on the runway at a Victoria’s Secret fashion show, and I am feeling like a fourteen-year-old boy who’s about ready to run from the living room to the bathroom to hide my chub and jerk off to that image.

But I can’t run. I should. Instead, I tell her the truth.

“You look sexy.”

“You, too.”

When she kisses down my neck, I know I am so fucked.

When she looks up at me, I feel like a bitch, so I look up and away from her.

She continues pressing kisses on my skin, hot, wet...fuck.

“What are you trying to do here, London?”

She hooks her finger in my mouth and pulls my damn head down so I have to face her. “I’m sick of trying to protect myself against you.”

And that nearly gets her laid. But...I need to be in charge.

I suck on her finger, and her eyes turn liquid. I have seen it a hundred times, but it’s never been so fucking hot.

She pushes herself against me, and I not only see, but feel what she is feeling.

She needs to know, though...I need her to know...Fuck, what do we need to know?

Oh, right. I’m the man. And I’m not into fucking her up any more than she has already fucked me up.

“I was so pissed at you the other night.”

She puts her fucking hand over my mouth. “You were pissed at yourself.”

I am ready to let her have it when she takes one of my hands and runs it up her tight little abdomen, stopping just below her tits, ones that need me to either take or tease so she knowns who is in charge of whatever the fuck this is.

“London...” I warn.

“I need to figure out a lot of things, Logan,” she interrupts, “and so do you. But it was really, really cold the other night, and I tried every blanket I had to warm me, comfort me, soothe me, and nothing worked. Then I thought, it’s cuddle season.”

Her voice is so fucking sexy, needy, and her hand is again controlling mine. She pushes it down to her lower back, stopping just north of her ass.

Tits and ass, right here, begging me to take.

Control, Links, I scold myself.

“Jesus L....Fuck.”

She pushes my shirt aside then untucks the tee-shirt under it before running her hands up my abs. “Then I thought about how warm you are.”

When she slowly moves her hands up, I have never been more grateful that she is so fucking innocent. Had she headed south, I would have come in my pants, or ripped her begging, little pussy apart.

“And I thought how you said things are quieter with me.”

And that does it. I let myself bitch out for one night. I will forever be haunted because of it.

At the snap...Control it, Links, I tell myself.

I redirect her play. “Well, right now, they’re harder.”

She’s a fucking formative opponent. She covers my mouth with one hand while moving the other up a little farther. It feels really damn good to be touched like that, by someone who knows me. I don’t know if I’m okay with her being anything like the others or not.

“I need you to be my friend, Logan, but I want to be able to do this, too. I don’t want the entire campus watching me or you, and I don’t want you to need anyone else but me.”

Why in the fuck am I letting her control this?

She presses her head against my chest, uncovers my mouth, and sighs. “I’ve come up with a plan...with conditions. If you can promise me that you won’t need anyone else while you’re here for the rest of this semester, I can promise you I won’t overthink it and that I won’t need a label or a commitment. I just need to put some limitations and—”

Fuck this.

“London.” I make her look at me now. “It goes against every natural, male instinct while fully and painfully erect to be one hundred percent honest, but I’m going to do my best.”

Her eyes soften, and she looks ready for me to do this. For me to tell her what’s up and give it to her straight.

“I have no fucking clue what I’m going to be doing when I’m done, and if I were you, I would not offer up something like that to me.”

Un-fucking-real that those words just came out of my mouth!

“What the fuck is wrong with me?”

“Love is unconditional,” she tells me.

Not the fucking L word! No, nope, not gonna be like that.

“I’ve come up with some conditions that makes this okay,” she continues.

Lock it down, Links! Fuck...

“I will promise that I won’t touch another, because I am going to explore every fucking inch of you to an almost indecent precision.”

She nods, agreeing with me.

Thank God!

Then she starts talking. Again with the talking!

“First condition, you gotta take it slow with me.”

And back to the physical. Thankfully, I can handle that.

“Oh, baby, it’s going to be so slow you’re going to throw one of those little fits because you’ll want my cock so bad.” I kiss her neck and inhale a scent that is her—sweet, cherry...mine.

Her breath hitches, and my need increases.

“Logan?”

And...she’s talking again.

I keep my lips on her neck, not backing down, and answer, “Yeah?”

“The next conditions are: we don’t fall in love, we are honest with each other, and this doesn’t end badly. I need you in my life.”

What she just said is everything I needed to hear, so why does my reply, “I promise,” taste a little bitter?

“Logan?”

She’s frustrating as hell, and I’m trying here, trying to give her what she needs, wants, asked for, but still...the damn talking.

“Yeah?”

She grabs my face between her hands and pulls me away from her neck. “Kiss me.”

Game changer.

Game. Change. Er.

I’m at the line, the quarterback is yelling the play, and I’m restraining myself, waiting for the snap.

Control. Know your opponent. Know your damn self.

“You’re sure?” I ask.

“It has to be you.”

She’s one hundred percent right.

I grab her face. “You’re damn right it does.”

She closes her eyes, looking so fucking ready. So ready and needy. So ready and wanting. And now shit’s going off in my head, because this has to be right. It has to for her, and for me, and for the five weeks of hell I have endured away from her. Five fucking weeks that can’t happen again. But I have some conditions of my own.

“London.”

She opens her eyes, blinking as if the light hurts them, but it’s not the light. It’s the stall.

I hold back. Needing, wanting, desiring to do the right fucking thing by her. This has to be perfect for her, which means I need to make sure I remove anything that will trigger me and make me become that dick. I just don’t want to be the one who oddly only she can make me.

I push my forehead against hers and tell her, “I need you to do something for me first, and this is a deal breaker.”

She nods.

“You need to ask yourself a question.”

“Okay.”

“Do you want your first kiss to end with murder and mayhem?”

§

A horn blows as Dad hits the brakes. I open my eyes as I grab the dash.

“You okay?” he asks.

I nod, happy to be pulled from the thought of her.

I hear a phone vibrate and reach into my pocket, only to realize I don’t have my phone. My phone was in my fucking truck. My truck’s in a goddamned building with a bunch of dead fucking bodies.

“Logan?” Dad begins.

I look over at Dad as I reach up and turn on the radio, not wanting to talk. “Bad At Love” by Halsey starts.

I force myself to lean back and let the fucking truth in the words fuck me a little harder than life did tonight.

I start to close my eyes then decide not to, looking out the window instead.

When we pull into town, he turns right instead of left.

I sit up and turn down the radio. “Just wanna go home.”

“Not tonight, Logan.”

“I’m not going there,” I snap.

“Logan,” Tessa says quietly.

“What?”

“Logan...” Dad begins, telling me I crossed a fucking line.

“Right now, I would like to be alone.”

“I’m sure you do.” Tessa squeezes my shoulder. “But the police are going to be at Maddox and Harper’s in a few hours. It’ll be easier if you’re all together.”

“You also don’t want the media showing up at the house. Chance and Hope?”

Fuck, right, I think and then nod.

“If they sit in the driveway, lights blazing on the house, or bang on the door, it’ll wake them up,” he continues.

I nod my agreeance.

“Don’t wanna draw them there,” I say on a sigh, pulling my hat down.

“You wanna be alone after that, there’s always Doe Camp,” Tessa offers.

“Sorry, baby, but he doesn’t need to be alone,” Dad tells her.

“Yeah, I do,” I argue.

“Let’s get through the next few days, okay? Then you have your apartments back in Syracuse.”

Dad still has a few properties in the area, ones we have been working on for the past few years in summers and on breaks when we aren’t busy. It’s kind of a pet project.

I have taken an interest in green energy and, as usual, he figured out a way for me to explore something I am interested in. When I decided a few weeks ago to continue my education, Dad and I discussed me taking it over, living in it, managing it, renting out some of the units that are finished. I agreed. Now I’m not even sure I want to fucking be here. But right now, I’m not going to say shit, because I’m not a total dick. I know he just got Ava back here, and if I tell him I want to jet, it’s going to fuck with him. Last night, today—we have all been fucked with enough.

When Dad laughs uncomfortably, I look at him.

“What?”

“Well, you’re gonna have to get a new vehicle before you go back to ‘Cuse. Your truck is all sorts of fucked up.” Then he laughs out loud, causing Tessa to giggle before covering her mouth to stop it.

I look at her, and she shakes her head, mumbling, “Sorry.”

Takes me a minute to respond, but the truth is, I did fuck it up.

“No need to be sorry. It’s not everyday someone purposely runs into a building.”

Dad chuckles, but it’s forced.

I look at him, seeing his jaw is taut.

I know I am owed a lecture, so fuck it, I open that door. “What?”

“Dumb fucking move, Logan. You could have been killed. That fucker could have shot you. As your father, I want to tell you what an asshole, fucking stunt that was.”

I nod once. “I get it.”

“And as someone who loves London,” Tessa says, bringing my attention to her, ready to tell her I don’t love her, that love is as fucked up as my truck. But then she places a hand over her heart, and I realize she’s talking about herself. “From the bottom of my heart, Logan, thank you for helping her.”

I nod once then turn away from her. I see Dad give me a sideways glance.

“When shit calms down, I’d love to know how you knew where she was.”

“Maddox called,” I tell him, not wanting to revisit it later.

“How the hell did he know where she was?” he asks.

I keep my eyes focused forward, not answering him.

“Maddox and Brody have their ways, Lucas,” Tessa says quietly.

“That include my son?” he says with some bitterness.

“Dad,” I warn.

“Fine.” He sighs.

I don’t tell him it had nothing to do with Brody, that it was all Maddox and that bracelet she wears—the way he tracks her. The way I always knew where she was...from him.

When we pull down the drive, passing Dad and Tessa’s place, heading down the dirt road to Maddox and Harper’s, the sun is rising behind it. I glance at the dash and see that it’s almost five in the morning. I have been up for twenty-four fucking hours.

When I woke up yesterday morning, made reservations to fly home, cleaned up a little at Ava’s place, then later took a cab to JFK to catch a flight home, I had plans, big plans, that included the big fucking butterflies in my damn stomach. I planned on surprising her, then listening to her yell at me for not messaging or calling for the past few weeks, and then kissing her to shut her up. I planned on telling London that she and I would be extending cuddle season until we got sick of each other, hoping like hell we wouldn’t, yet fearing the bullshit first loves entail.

Instead, the day ended in murder and mayhem.