“You said she wasn’t dating anyone seriously.”

  “I said I wasn’t sure but that things with this guy didn’t seem serious,” my younger brother, Trey, corrects.

  “I told you to keep an eye on her. Don’t you think that this is something that I would have wanted to know? Before she had a Goddamn ring on her finger?” I’m pacing the length of my small office, trying my best to keep my voice down with the thin walls separating all of the doctors on the floor.

  “You asked me to keep her safe,” he retorts. “You didn’t say anything about cock blocking her or interfering in her dating life or whatever the fuck. I do have a life of my own, you know. And what difference does it even make? You broke it off with her. So, you’re subscribing to the belief now that if you can’t have her, nobody can?”

  That’s exactly how it is. Whitney Monroe belonged to me regardless of our current relationship status. I don’t know who this guy is, but there’s no way in hell she’s walking down that aisle with him.

  “That’s exactly what the fuck I’m saying.” I decide to tell him the truth because I told Trey everything. Even about the intense two-year long relationship I found myself in with my best friend’s daughter. The relationship that left her broken-hearted when I ended things and me with regret, raging self-loathing and anger at myself for letting things get so far. I hadn’t ended things to be cruel or because I didn’t love her, I ended it because I felt we didn’t have a future. I was not only her parents’ best friend but her godfather which meant according to every rule in life, she should have been off limits to me. I’d been there the day she was born and through all of her milestones, all of her birthdays and even helped teach her to drive. I’d been there with her father threatening the boys with what would happen if any of them ever hurt her.

  The irony that I also taught her to fuck and ended up hurting her way worse than any of those boys is not lost on me.

  It all happened so fast. The summer she turned eighteen somehow coincided with the summer I lost my mind when the girl I’d known for eighteen years became a woman right before my eyes. A woman that suddenly had all my attention and we found ourselves unable to keep our hands off of each other and sneaking around behind everyone’s back. At my office, my car, my house on weekends, there was no chance her parents would drop by unannounced and if they did, we always had contingency plans and practically every Four Seasons Hotel in the State of California.

  I don’t know how no one caught on to be honest.

  Our affair was intense, bordering on a burning obsession with each other. I hadn’t felt that way about anyone maybe ever. I woke up consumed with her. I went to sleep with her on my mind if she wasn’t curled up in bed next to me. If I was away from her for more than a few hours, my hands itched with the need to touch her. My mouth desperate to kiss her, taste her skin or the wet flesh between her legs. I was enamored with her. I was in love in a way that I’d never felt before and it hit me hard and fast.

  I had been engaged once before breaking it off a few weeks before the big day at which point, I vowed never to get serious with anyone again and I had a series of flings and short-term relationships throughout my thirties.

  Enter legal-aged Whitney Monroe.

  I’d learned that she’d been infatuated with me for years, praying for the moment she turned eighteen and that I’d maybe reciprocate her feelings. “Or at very least one night of sex.”

  That one night of sex where I took her virginity turned into another night and another until it was almost every night and some days. Weekends away. Secret vacations where she’d told her parents she was away with friends. Sneaking out in the middle of the night because she still lived at home at the time so we could fuck in my car.

  The sneaking around was fun and the thrill of the forbidden kept us both coming back for more but it grew to be more than that.

  There were I love you’s and talks of the future together. There were nights when we were drunk on tequila and each other as we whispered our vows of devotion. We’d been together two years and her parents still didn’t know. The only people she had told were friends at school that weren’t as familiar with our family dynamic and her cousin Chloe who almost lost her shit when she found out. And that was only because Trey had accidentally slipped up and told her during their pillow talk or whatever.

  I’d gone so far down this road with her that I didn’t know how to explain it to my best friends who just happened to be her parents. How could I have let things go on this long without telling them? How did I let things get so far? How did I let myself fall in love with the one person I knew I couldn’t have? Shouldn’t want?

  I went back and forth for weeks, wondering what was the worst thing they could do. They could forbid me from seeing her. But Whitney wouldn’t listen and suddenly there would be this irreparable rift in their family that I would have caused. Uncomfortable holidays and family functions, heated arguments, and tension so thick and able to divide a family. Not to mention, on top of all of that, I’d lose my best friends.

  It wasn’t until Doctors Without Borders needed me on another team, this time in Mexico to help when COVID-19 hit that I decided it was time for Whitney and me to have a talk about us. The look on her face still haunts me when I told her the news that I was leaving and that it would be best to use this as the ending point of our relationship.

  Three Years Ago:

  “I can’t come with you…?” Her brown eyes are brimming with unshed tears, realization dawning on her that I wasn’t telling her to pack a suitcase. “Doctors are supposed to just up and leave their families?”

  “Technically yes. If it’s your first time, you’re not allowed to bring family at all.” I wince, wishing I’d left out that part, knowing she’ll have a rebuttal for it.

  Her brows furrow and I can see the wheels turning in her head. “But it’s not your first time. You opened that hospital in Mexico years ago…” She bites her bottom lip and under normal circumstances that visual would have prompted my mouth between her legs. “JP, I don’t want to be without you for eighteen months or possibly even longer.” She crosses her arms and curls her lips into a pout which is a look I’d been on the receiving end of many times and always ended with me giving her whatever she wanted. I flinch at her calling me “JP,” the nickname she’s had for me for years. She’d stopped calling me that when we first started this, opting to call me by my first name instead in an attempt to shift the dynamic of our relationship. She’d only called me that when she was feeling extra vulnerable or at times in bed when we’d tapped into her daddy kink.

  “Whitney, sweetheart, you have school and a whole life ahead of you where you have to decide what you want to do. And furthermore, how would you explain being in Mexico with me? Do you think your parents would want you traipsing off to another country while the world is in such chaos? I don’t even know what I’m walking into.”

  “Classes are going to be virtual anyway next semester. But I can also take some time off. My parents would be fine if I was with you. They know you’d take care of me and maybe this is the sign we need to tell them about us. I mean, we’ve been hiding this for almost two years now. Maybe it’s time they know?” She lists off the exact counter arguments I knew she’d use. Ones that made sense in a perfect world. But our world wasn’t perfect. It was messy and intertwined with so many other players that would be less than pleased about the news of our relationship.

  The idea of telling my two best friends that I’m head over heels in love with their daughter and have been sleeping with her regularly for two years has the anxiety slithering up my spine.

  Kevin and Michelle Monroe have been my best friends since freshman year of college. I was roommates with Kevin that first year and Michelle lived across the hall. It was love at first sight for Kevin and Michelle and before long, the three of us were inseparable. I’d even dated her roommate for a while making the four of us annoying co-dependent assholes. I’d been the best man at their wedding, godfather to both Whitney and her older brother Mason and had been a part of every memorable date of their lives until now.

  How was I supposed to tell them this? I’d lose the two most important people in my life outside of those I was blood related to, the two constants I’d had for almost twenty years.

  But the trade-off was losing Whitney, and I didn’t love that either.

  “Whitney…” I take a deep breath preparing to say the words that will undoubtedly break her heart. “It’s just not a good idea.”

  “Wh-what isn’t?”

  “Any of it. You coming to Mexico. Telling your parents. It’s going to destroy them, Whitney. Your relationship with them. My relationship with them.”

  “But… what about your relationship with me?” The unshed tears from earlier are now cascading down her cheeks at full speed. Her heart clearly communicating to her tear ducts what was about to happen. She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes before opening them again. “Are you breaking up with me?”

  My heart thumps painfully at the thought of not being with her. Not being with the most amazing, brilliant, kind, unbelievably gorgeous woman that I’d ever met. Be strong, Jacob. She needs this. She’s young and she needs to experience life. “I just don’t see how it can work, Whitney.” My words are quiet and soft. The tone I use when I’m making love to her. I swallow. “It was never supposed to get this far… I wasn’t… we weren’t…”

  “You weren’t supposed to fall in love with me? Is that where you were going with that?” she says, her tone harsh and more biting than it had been before. “Or was this all just a fucking game to you?” I can see the pain she’s trying to hide beneath the anger but I won’t have her thinking that this wasn’t real.

  “It was never a game and you know that. Sometimes things just don’t work out no matter how bad we want them to.” In its most basic terms, that is what this comes down to. We want to be together but it isn’t that simple. Our life isn’t that simple.

  She stands, wrapping her arms around herself. “I don’t get a say in this at all? You’ve just made up your mind about this without a care in the world about my feelings? Let me guess, ‘when I’m older I’ll understand?’” The sarcasm drips from her voice, even though I believe that there’s some truth to her statement whether she thinks it or not.

  “I do think time and some worldly experience will give you some perspective, baby.” The word slips out and I chastise myself when I see the anger fall from her face at the one word leaving my lips.

  “You don’t want this.” She moves into my arms and wraps hers around me. “I know you love me.”

  “I do,” I tell her honestly. I wasn’t about to lie to her after all we’d been through and I wasn’t about to let her think that this wasn’t going to be hard on me as well. “I do love you. But sometimes, love isn’t enough. Sometimes loving someone means letting them go.”

  “I don’t believe that.” She squeezes me tighter and wipes her tears on my shirt. I rub her back as her shoulders begin to shake. “Please don’t let me go.” Her voice wobbles and I wish I could take her pain away. “I can’t do this without you. I need you.”

  Her words cause a painful thump in my chest because in this moment, I don’t know how to move forward without her either. But, one of us has to be strong. “Please don’t do this,” I beg, knowing that she has the power to break me if I don’t shut this down.

  “I love you,” she murmurs. “Please.” She sniffles.

  I rest my chin on top of her head trying to keep the tears of my own at bay at the thought of it being over between us. “I’m sorry.”

  “I can’t believe this is the end.”

  “Neither can I.”

  I’m well aware that I haven’t said anything to Trey in a few minutes as the particular trip down memory lane that I’ve avoided for the past three years comes at me in full force. I clear my throat and the words are out of my mouth before I can stop them.

  “I’ll be home in two days.”

  Get What Was Meant to Be now!

  This book was born out of the many times I’ve been asked to write an ex boyfriend’s dad book. (I may still do that someday.) But, the idea of a messy best friend’s dad romance had been on my mind for over a year and it was finally time to share it! I hope you loved Avery and Theo’s story—you’ll see them again!

  Anna, Alexandra and Logan: Thank you for Beta reading and all of your early feedback and ideas! Some of my favorite parts of this book were inspired by your dirty thoughts. Thank you for loving hot dads as much as I do!

  Tanya and Rachel, thank you for always being in my corner. Thank you for stepping up and helping me with so many things. For your advice and your support. I love you guys so much.

  Kristen Portillo, thank you for helping make this book perfect! One day I’ll get my tenses and my timelines right the first time around. Until then, I’m grateful I have you to catch them. I appreciate you immensely!

  Stacey Blake, thank you for always making the interiors so gorgeous and exactly what I want! Thank you for making my books so pretty!

  Shaye and Lindsey: Thank you for all the things and keeping me so organized. What would I do without you? You guys are rockstars and I love you!

  Ari Basulto, I would be lost without you. Thank you for all that you do to keep me organized! Thank you for running all of my teams and overall Q.B.’s life better than I could. A million thank yous.

  Emily Wittig, These are easily my favorite covers you’ve done! I’m obsessed. They are so perfect and I love them. Thank you for always understanding my vision.

  Pang Thao, thank you for all of my gorgeous teasers and all of my last minute promo things and all the things I ask you to make me all the time. You’re so good to me and I appreciate everything you do!

  Becca Mysoor, Thank you for all of your help with this book and always being available when I’m on the ledge. You’re the best.

  To the babes on my street team and ARC team, thank you for your excitement! Thank you for your love for me and my books and that you’re always willing to let me take you over a cliff. The reason I can do what I do is because of you guys in my corner. Thank you for always clapping the loudest. I love you guys so big.

  To all of the bloggers and bookstagrammers and TikTokers, thank you for your edits and your reels and your videos and always sharing my books! For still talking about books I wrote two and three years ago and loving them so much. For sharing with your friends (and sometimes your family? Ha) Thank you for everything you do. (Because seriously? Videos are so hard.)

  And finally, and most importantly to YOU, to the readers, thank you for letting me into your minds and your hearts again with another book. I hope you enjoyed it! I love you all. Let’s do this again soon—like… really soon.

  STANDALONES

  My Best Friend’s Sister

  Unconditional

  Forget Me Not

  Love Unexpected

  Always Been You

  What Was Meant to Be

  Keep Her Safe

  BITTERSWEET UNIVERSE

  Bittersweet Surrender

  Bittersweet Addiction

  Bittersweet Love

  CAMPUS TALES SERIES

  First Semester

  Second Semester

  Spring Semester

  Available through the Read Me Romance Audio Podcast

  Fantasy with a Felon

  Bestselling author and lover of forbidden romances, tacos, coffee, and wine. Q.B. Tyler gives readers sometimes angsty, sometimes emotional but always deliciously steamy romances featuring sassy heroines and the heroes that worship them. She’s known for writing forbidden (and sometimes taboo) romances, so if that’s your thing, you’ve come to the right place. When she’s not writing, you can usually find her on Instagram (definitely procrastinating), shopping or at brunch.

  Sign up for her newsletter to stay in touch!

  Qbtyler03@gmail.com

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  Reader Group: Q.B.’s Hive

  Instagram @qbtyler.author

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  Twitter: @qbtyler

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  Q.B. Tyler, The Worst Kept Secret

 

 

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